Free Republic

Kyle Bishop figured it was risky when he applied to a University of Arizona Ph.D. program in English eight years ago by proposing a dissertation on zombie movies. Prof. Kyle Bishop's undead treatise. McFarland & Company He was dead wrong. The program approved Mr. Bishop's proposal, and he is now chairman of Southern Utah University's English department. The 40-year-old has been invited to give zombie lectures in Hawaii, Canada and Spain. "It's clearly now acceptable to study zombies seriously," he says. Just as zombies—those mythical revived corpses hungry for living human flesh and gray matter—have infiltrated pop culture, they have...

Centuries after Shakespeare wrote about King Lear's symptoms, there's still no perfect way to care for sufferers of dementia and Alzheimer's. In the Netherlands, however, a radical idea is being tested: Self-contained "villages" where people with dementia shop, cook, and live together—safely. We, as a population, are aging rapidly. According to the Alzheimer's Association, one in three seniors today dies with dementia. The process of finding—and paying for—long-term care can be very confusing, unfortunately, and difficult for both loved ones and patients. Most caretakers are underpaid, overworked, and must drive far distances to their jobs—giving away some 17 billion unpaid...

In an announcement likely to rewrite the book on early colonization of the New World, two researchers have proposed a location for the oldest fortified settlement ever found in North America. They believe that the legendary Fort Caroline, a long-sought fort built by the French in 1564, is located near the mouth of the Altamaha River in southeast Georgia.

News organizations often disagree about what Americans need to know. MSNBC, for example, apparently believes that traffic in Fort Lee, N.J., is the crisis of our time. Fox News, on the other hand, chooses to cover the September 2012 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi more heavily than other networks. The American people, for their part, disagree about what they want to watch. But everyone should agree on this: The government has no place pressuring media organizations into covering certain stories. Unfortunately, the Federal Communications Commission, where I am a commissioner, does not agree. Last May the FCC...

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Tuesday that the country doesn’t need to worry about another government shutdown in January when the current stopgap spending bill runs out. The government shutdown lasted for 16 days in October, after Republicans demanded that President Obama defund his signature healthcare law. To avoid another shutdown, Ryan said either he and Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) would strike a budget deal or Congress would pass a stopgap keeping existing spending levels. “Either of those two scenarios will prevail, and we will not have a government shutdown,” he said at the...

The state’s $69 million Obama­care website is “overbudget,” has missed deadlines and now is bringing in eleventh-hour engineering assistance from Oracle, in the face of looming cutoff dates that could force some to go without health insurance, the Herald has learned. The fix comes after the Herald reported Saturday a mere 1 percent of applicants facing canceled health plans had managed to enroll in Obamacare plans through the state’s website, with just weeks before many plans 
expire Dec. 31. Gov. Deval Patrick yesterday brushed off any concerns about the system.

As health exchanges open Tuesday to high traffic and technical glitches, numerous fake Obamacare websites are out there trying to steal personal information. Although the federal website exists at healthcare.gov, there are numerous state and third-party websites that don't have uniform domains. To prevent getting scammed, "absolutely do not use a search engine as your starting point when looking for coverage," writes Christopher Budd, threat communications manager for Trend Micro security. Instead, start at a known trusted source including the federal government's or your state government's websites. "Use these sites to identify the resources they’ve identified as trustworthy," Budd writes....

"On September 7, 2013, at approximately 4:25 p.m., Officers of the Pine Bluff Police Department responded to a disturbance at 1411 W. 16th. When they arrived, they were able to determine that an Aggravated Assault had occurred against two people at the residence. The suspect, Monroe Isadore (M, 107 years old), had pointed a weapon at them. The officers had the two victims leave the residence, for their safety, and approached the door to the bedroom where Isadore was supposed to be. When officers announced themselves, Isadore shot through the door at them. No officer was hit or injured by...

Hawaii is hoping to take the burden off its welfare system by saying aloha to its 17,000 homeless residents. The state will offer one-way tickets home to any eligible homeless person to anywhere in the continental United States. Hawaii has allotted $100,000 for a three year trial run of the so-called 'return-to-home' program, which could also even offer participants beds on cruise ships bound for their homes.

On Jan. 4 of last year, a local narcotics strike force conducted a raid on the Ogden, Utah, home of Matthew David Stewart at 8:40 p.m. The 12 officers were acting on a tip from Mr. Stewart's former girlfriend, who said that he was growing marijuana in his basement. Mr. Stewart awoke, naked, to the sound of a battering ram taking down his door. Thinking that he was being invaded by criminals, as he later claimed, he grabbed his 9-millimeter Beretta pistol. himself in his jail cell. Sean McCabe The police say that they knocked and identified themselves, though Mr....

For decades, a so-called anti-propaganda law prevented the U.S. government's mammoth broadcasting arm from delivering programming to American audiences. But on July 2, that came silently to an end with the implementation of a new reform passed in January. The result: an unleashing of thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs for domestic U.S. consumption in a reform initially criticized as a green light for U.S. domestic propaganda efforts. So what just happened? Until this month, a vast ocean of U.S. programming produced by the Broadcasting Board of Governors such as Voice of America, Radio Free...

BOSTON—Scott Segal considers himself an adventurous eater committed to seafood from local sources. But even he got a little squeamish about the Cape Cod Blood Cockle on his plate at Area Four, a Cambridge, Mass., restaurant. A local clam that is typically banished from New England menus because, true to its name, it is filled with blood-red goop, the cockle was coated with a spicy rub and served as part of a "Trash Fish" dinner hosted earlier this year by Boston chefs. The event is one of many ways the local culinary community is promoting cooking with so-called underutilized species...

FITCHBURG -- Detectives with the Fitchburg Police Department have yet to make an arrest in the February burglary of the city's police station, in which clothes and other souvenir police memorabilia were stolen. The break occurred in the early-morning hours of Monday, Feb. 25, according to Sgt. Glenn Fossa. The culprit broke the window of an exterior security door and gained entry to the hallway of the first floor of the station. Dispatchers received a call from a concerned neighbor, saying the window was broken. "The investigation has progressed, but I just don't have a public statement as to how...

In an exclusive sit-down interview with The Brody File, Jeb Bush says that, “Hillary Clinton is a formidable force on the left.” We sat down with Jeb Bush Friday morning at the Faith and Freedom Coalition event in DC. If Jeb Bush decides to run for president, he will most likely be considered the frontrunner for the GOP nomination. The full story on Jeb Bush runs Monday on The 700 Club.

The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation. Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today. Her successor, Joseph Grant, is taking the fall for misdeeds at the scandal-plagued unit between 2010 and 2012. During at least part...

Turn over any green-energy rock, and wiggling underneath will be the usual creepy mix of political favoritism and taxpayer-funded handouts. Add to this the Clintons, Mississippi and a murky visa program, and you've got a particularly ripe political embarrassment for Terry McAuliffe. Everyone remember The Macker? Best Friend of Bill. Chairman of Hillary's 2008 presidential campaign. Famed money-tree shaker. Former Democratic Party chief. Failed 2009 contender for the Virginia governorship but now back as the party's nominee for that position in this fall's election. Oh—and in Mr. McAuliffe's words—"a Virginia businessman" intent on "creating jobs." Or at least that was...

SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX 5) – A controversy has been re-ignited this week as ten new ads go up on San Francisco Muni buses containing quotes used by terrorists. “Killing Jews is worship that draws us closer to Allah,” reads one of the ads, which has people debating the line between free speech and hate speech. “The purpose of our campaign is to show the reality of Jihad, the root causes of terrorism. Using the exact quotes and text that they use,” said Pamela Geller of the American Freedom Defense Institute.

With all the chatter about firearms from the Entertainment World,I was struck by this. Smoking is verboten in TV and movies now. But firearms are not. In one episode of Strike Back, a Brit spy series on CineMax, I counted 23 bodies in 60 minutes. If the Elites are so convinced of their position, let them ban smoking firearms from TV and movies first. My guess is that script writers will have to produce real stories rather than a linked stream of shot'em ups.

The U.S Department of Health & Human Services will recalculate disproportionate share hospitals (DSH) payments for more than 100 hospitals, as well as pay interest on any additional amounts owed, according to an order from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Last week, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered two cases be vacated and remanded to HHS for recalculation of reimbursement amounts for healthcare services rendered to low-income patients. According to the judge, the additional proceedings must be consistent with Northeast Hospital Corp. v. Sebelius, in which the agency's decision to exclude Medicare Advantage patient days from...

It's a countdown until massive cuts hit Medicare providers. With only a few days left in the calendar year, providers are waiting with bated breath about the outcomes of fiscal cliff talks on Capitol Hill. And unlike previous short-term fixes, the threat is real this time, American Medical Association (AMA) President Jeremy Lazarus told Forbes. The decision of lawmakers will determine the outcome of Medicare cuts that hang in the balance in these final weeks of the year. Unless Congress and the White House administration can agree on plans to avoid the fiscal cliff, a 27 percent reduction in Medicare...