Free Republic

Gary Goddard looks back on what really happened back in 1992 when the Downtown City Fathers were looking for a way to revitalize the downtown core and attract more visitors. In 1992 downtown Las Vegas had become a distant second to the Las Vegas Strip. Where at one time, downtown Las Vegas was the center of the action, the increasing magnitude of the Las Vegas Strip, with the expansion of Caesar’s Palace, the Mirage having opened, and with more and more mega resorts on the way, 80% of the Las Vegas market was now on the Strip, leaving only 20%...

Professor James Hitchcock has said that many in the media belong to a "self-defined 'enlightened' class who claim the right to judge other people's beliefs, even when they do not understand those beliefs, a claim which clearly contradicts the same enlightened class's constant sermons about 'respect' and 'understanding.' Their favorite cause is 'sexual freedom' and nothing sets off their alarm bells faster than the suggestion that chastity may have some value...Religious believers are continually accused of trying to impose their beliefs on others, which in reality means resisting having secular beliefs imposed on them...The enlightened class obviously does not understand...

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — When the makers of "Top Gun" were filming on board the USS Enterprise, they donated a set of black fuzzy dice to liven up the ship's otherwise drab interior. A quarter-century later, the dice will still be dangling inside the tower of "the Big E" as the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier sets sail on its final voyage Sunday...

A proposed pipeline project that could transport up to 190,000 barrels of ethane from Appalachian shale fields to the Texas Gulf Coast has secured enough customers to move forward, Enterprise Products Partners announced today. The Houston company, which revealed two months ago that it had lined up its first long-term contract to use the pipeline, now says it has enough in place to make the project financially feasible. The 1,230-mile line is expected to be running in early 2014, taking advantage of the increased production of natural gas liquids and their lower price relative to oil-based liquids. “The willingness of...

After a number of fake Apple retail stores in China gained publicity online, Apple appears to have taken legal action, undoubtedly looking to shut down the counterfeit locations designed to look like its own operations. Apple has gone on the offensive against a number of defendants, including 50 John Does and unnamed businesses, in a new trademark infringement suit. The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of New York remains under a court seal, so the specifics of the complaint are not known. However, one of the defendants in the case is "Apple Story Inc.," matching...

According to the USS Enterprise's website the ship is the eighth to bear this name, and it is the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. It is also the world's largest active warship.

Merciless mocking from Republicans hasn't put President Obama off his focus on the economy, as the White House insisted Thursday that the president is taking "enormously seriously" the hardships Americans are enduring. "It's patently obvious that the president is focused on the economy, that he takes enormously seriously the hardship that Americans continue to endure," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said. Earlier in the week, at a jobs council meeting, the president was called out for saying that "shovel-ready projects' weren't quite as shovel-ready as he thought. Then later, in an interview with NBC News, Obama suggested that innovation...

General Electric, along with General Motors, is the prototype of Big Business in the Age of Obama. GE bills itself as the world's largest industrial company; currently it ranks #4 in the Fortune 500, with revenues in 2010 of around $156 billion. All has not been well at GE, however. Since 2002, the company has laid off around 20 percent of its work force in the U.S., while expanding its overseas operations. And the company's financing arm, GE Capital, sustained massive losses and had to be bailed out by the federal government: General Electric, the world's largest industrial company

NORFOLK -- The secretary of the Navy issued censure letters Friday to four senior officers after an investigation into controversial videos shown aboard the aircraft carrier Enterprise, including the captain who masterminded and starred in the videos, Owen P. Honors. Known as career killers, the censure letters also went to Capt. John Dixon, who succeeded Honors as executive officer; and to the two officers who served as the carrier's skipper during Honors' tenure, Rear Adm. Larry Rice, who recently left the Norfolk-based Joint Forces Command, and Rear Adm. Ron Horton, who was fired this month from his position as commander...

A former commanding officer of the USS Enterprise who faces possible punishment because of lewd videos shown to the crew has lost his job as head of a Singapore-based logistics group. Rear Adm. Ron Horton, commander, Logistics Group, Western Pacific, was promptly relieved of command on Thursday by Adm. Patrick M. Walsh, commander of the U.S. Pacific fleet. Walsh said he based his decision the findings of the investigation into the Enterprise videos. Those findings were announced earlier Thursday by Adm. John C. Harvey, commander, U.S. Fleet Forces Command. Harvey has called for Horton to be censured by Navy Secretary...

The U.S. Navy was repositioning its heavy-hitting warships around North Africa tonight as America and Britain dramatically increased pressure on Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi. The aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, which had been on pirate-hunting duty off the coast of Somalia, has now steamed to the mouth of the Suez Canal in the Red Sea. The deadly strike force aboard the nuclear-powered carrier is already within flying distance of Libya but the Enterprise is said to be heading closer to country and its rogue dictator.

USS ENTERPRISE, Red Sea (NNS) -- Enterprise Carrier Strike Group (CSG) transited the Suez Canal and entered the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility (AOR), Feb. 15. Enterprise transited the canal along with guided missile cruiser USS Leyte Gulf (CG 55) and fast combat support ship USNS Arctic (T-AOE 8). "Our ability to use the Suez Canal in a routine manner and according to long-standing plans demonstrates the ongoing stability of this important waterway," said Rear Adm. Terry B. Kraft, commander, Enterprise CSG. The 120-mile Suez Canal, constructed in 1869, runs north to south across the Isthmus of Suez in...

The U.S. Navy will temporarily relieve Capt. Owen Honors of his post pending investigation of the series of explicit videos he is said to have produced when he was second in command of the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, sources tell ABC News. Capt. Honors is under investigation for a series of raunchy videos in which he appeared from 2006 to 2007. The videos featured a series of skits that aimed to provide some humor during the long deployment at sea. At the time the videos were produced, the Enterprise was operating in support of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq....

The Obama administration is “one of the most corrupt administrations in modern times” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) Sunday, January 2st. As the incoming chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, we can expect some explosive revelations. The larger question is how long can a nation survive when its east and west coasts are occupied by liberals who are so out of touch with reality they cannot understand why the rest of the nation would disagree with them about anything? Two States alone, California and New York, are so broke and

A top officer aboard a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier broadcast to his crew a series of profanity-laced comedy sketches in which he uses gay slurs, mimics masturbation and opens the shower curtain on women pretending to bathe together, a newspaper reported. The Virginian-Pilot reported in its Sunday editions that Capt. Owen Honors appeared in the videos in 2006 and 2007 while he was the USS Enterprise's second-ranking officer, and showed them across the ship on closed-circuit television. He took over as the ship's commander in May. (snip) "The videos were intended to be humorous skits focusing the crew's attention on specific...

December 7, 2010 — On Wednesday, Dec. 8, SpaceX will attempt the first-ever test flight of its Dragon capsule -- a new spacecraft designed in the last decade to carry supplies and eventually humans to and from the International Space Station and other orbital destinations -- and only the second ever test flight of its Falcon 9 two-stage launch vehicle. Dragon's mission, which is the first demonstration for NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, will see it circle the Earth twice before re-entering and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. If successful, the flight to 186 miles (300 kilometers)...

Think about This!! Wal-Mart vs. The Morons 1. Americans spend $36,000,000 at Wal-Mart Every hour of every day. 2. This works out to $20,928 profit every minute! 3. Wal-Mart will sell more from January 1 to St. Patrick's Day (March 17th) than Target sells all year. 4. Wal-Mart is bigger than Home Depot + Kroger + Target +Sears + Costco + K-Mart combined. 5. Wal-Mart employs 1.6 million people, is the world's largest private employer, and most speak English. 6 Wal-Mart is the largest company in the history of the world. 7. Wal-Mart now sells more food than Kroger and...

BURIEN, Wash. – Carlos Hernandez packed up his family and left Arizona after the state passed its sweeping immigration crackdown. The illegal immigrant's new home outside Seattle offered something Arizona could not: a driver's license. Three states — Washington, New Mexico and Utah — allow illegal immigrants to get licenses because their laws do not require proof of citizenship or legal residency. An Associated Press analysis found that those states have seen a surge in immigrants seeking IDs in recent months, a trend experts attribute to crackdowns on illegal immigration in Arizona and elsewhere. "It's difficult being undocumented and not...

Today, President Barack Obama will attend a groundbreaking ceremony in Holland, Mich., for a South Korean-owned factory that will make batteries for electric cars. The purpose of the trip is to highlight the “success” of the President’s $862 billion economic stimulus package which the White House claimed yesterday has already “saved or created” 3 million jobs. Specifically, this factory is being subsidized by $151 million of stimulus funds from an even larger $2 billion honey pot of stimulus money set aside for electric car battery investments. This one plant is expected to employ 300 workers. That works out to more...

Today, the White House is launching its second annual SAVE Award, which encourages federal employees to submit ideas on how to save taxpayer dollars. Federal employees will be able to rank the submissions submitted by colleagues, and then the general public will be able to vote on the top submissions later this year. Last year’s contest generated more than 38,000 submissions from government employees and more than 84,000 votes. Last year’s winner? A Department of Veterans Affairs employee from Colorado who suggested that VA medical centers should permit patients to take home extra bandages and medication when they are discharged....