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N. Korea moves up planned rocket launch to between Feb. 7-14: report 2016/02/06 18:45 TOKYO, Feb. 6 (Yonhap) -- North Korea has moved up its plan to launch a long-range rocket to between Feb. 7 and 14, Japanese media reported Saturday, citing a Tokyo government announcement. Earlier this week, Pyongyang informed the International Maritime Organization (IMO) of its plan to launch a satellite between Feb. 8 and 25. Japan's Kyodo News reported that the North has informed the IMO of its change of plan. Experts earlier expected that the North would likely launch the rocket around Feb. 16, the birthday...

With the first real votes being cast in the presidential race Monday, this is an opportune moment to do some last-minute comparison shopping on the candidates' tax reform plans. On this issue there's a lot to cheer about. All the Republican candidates have crafted plans that would slash tax rates for everyone and most would vastly simplify the thousands of pages of IRS tax code. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have endorsed flat-tax plans that, for full disclosure, were designed by Arthur Laffer and myself. These plans have drawn some criticism from the Right of late, though these attacks are...

Welcome to the Free Republic CaucusPlease read the rules, and participate according to the guidelines provided.  Thank you. REMEMBER:  To find the Caucus thread for the day, Search "Caucus".       The New Hampshire Primary takes place in three days. Only vote on this thread on: 02/06/2016  another thread will pop up five minutes before: 02/07/2016Wait to vote until 12:00 midnight EST, and don't vote after 12:00 midnight EST at the at the end of the day.  Look for the new thread. Votes outside the 24 hour period, will not be counted.  Give it five minutes or so on...

PORTSMOUTH, New Hampshire "And you can tell them to go f**k themselves," Donald Trump told a crowd at a Portsmouth Rally on Thursday night, uttering the expletive at the climax of the riff on his tax proposal. He was referring to companies that have relocated overseas for more favorable tax rates. (Trump: I'd be a "much different person" as president) Trump often relies on expletives and crude language to spice up his stump speech, though Thursday evening's event was a little more profane than usual...

   ***** ~ Tunes For Our Troops ~ *****~ Support The Artists ~   Support the artists you hear throughout the Canteen! Click on the links below! Keep the music going! ArtistDirect l  Internet Radio l  AOL Music l  Sonique (Lycos) l  Real Radio Live365 l  971TheRiver  l  GotRadio  l  Wherehouse  l  Target  l Shoutcast AFRTS l  VH1 l XM Radio l  BET l  audiophile l  Virgin Radio l  Soma (Alternative) Acaza l AudioRealm l VH1 l  Yahoo! Launch Music l  Radio Disney l  Live-Radio Net ITunes l Amazon l Salsa Radio l MTV l CMT l Ticketmaster l...

On Monday night, the Republican Party gave the first victory of 2016 to the first Hispanic candidate for president of the United States, Ted Cruz. Sen. Cruz won for many reasons: his outsider appeal, disciplined message, and sophisticated get-out-the-vote operation. But after two trips to Iowa to volunteer for Cruz, I noticed something else about the Cruz campaign that probably made a difference. I’ve worked on many campaigns. I started with George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign when I was 14, and I’ve volunteered at the grassroots level every year since. A wise mentor once told me the kind of organization...

Standard & Poor's (S&P) Ratings Services on Friday affirmed its 'A+/A-1' long- and short-term credit ratings for Israel, with a stable outlook. The ratings are supported by Israel's prosperous and diverse economy, strong external balance sheet, and flexible monetary framework.

Let’s start with when Starbucks opened up its location in Riyadh. The coffee siren is the face of Starbucks. Her flowing locks of java love strike those brand affinity chords nationwide and across the pond, so why not in the Middle East? Because boobies or some such. The logo was considered a bit too randy for the locals, so Starbucks completely caved and came up with a falling star on the Sydney Opera House in Australia. That story didn’t gain a lot of traction, but this more recent one is definitely approaching #PRFail territory. Women have been officially “barred” from...

Hundreds of people are feared trapped in collapsed buildings after a 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck Taiwan. 'Multiple' buildings - including at least one residential block - are said to have fallen following the quake which shook the island at about 4am on Saturday. Reports emerging suggest Tainan, on the south-west coast, was the worst affected, with pictures of buildings partially or completely destroyed circulating on social media, while video footage shows rescue workers wading through water after the mains burst.

Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who became the sixth man on the moon when he and Alan Shepard helped NASA recover from Apollo 13's "successful failure" and later devoted his life to exploring the mind, physics and unexplained phenomena such as psychics and aliens, has died in Florida. He was 85. Mitchell died Thursday night at a West Palm Beach hospice after a short illness, his daughter, Kimberly Mitchell, said. Mitchell's passing coincides with the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 14 mission, which ran from Jan. 31 to Feb. 9, 1971. Mitchell, one of only 12 humans to set foot...

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Scientists identified the Zika virus in the saliva and urine of two infected patients, a top Brazilian biomedical research institution said on Friday, prompting its president to urge pregnant women not to kiss strangers just as local carnival celebrations begin.

New York billionaire Donald Trump promises "forward motion" on so called gay rights if elected president. While speaking with Bay Windows publisher Sue O'Connell Friday, Trump spoke about his wishes to unite the country on gay and lesbian issues. According to a report by Bay Windows: O'Connell, who is also Bay Windows' Publisher, identified herself as a lesbian in a question that noted the progress the LGBT community has made in the last two decades and asked Trump if voters can expect him to continue that momentum if elected "When President Trump is in office can we look for more...

The internet this month feels like nothing but a great big shouting match between the Bernie Bros and the Hillary Stans, a furious, overheated debate among people who basically agree about most issues. It’s even spilled over into the world of online dating, where Tinder has started banning users who were feeling the Bern a little too enthusiastically. Two women, who’d sent pro–Bernie Sanders messages to hundreds of men between them, told Reuters they’d had their accounts deactivated. Robyn Gedrich, 23, said she sent this campaign message to 60 men a day for two weeks: "'Do you feel the bern?'...

The initial stupefaction and dismay with which liberals greeted Donald Trump's candidacy have slowly given way to feelings of Schadenfreude- reveling in the suffering of others, in this case the apoplectic members of the Republican Establishment. Are such feelings morally wrong? Or can liberals enjoy the spectacle unleavened by guilt? As Republican voters start actually voting, is it okay to be sad - alarmed, even - by the prospect that the Trump hostile takeover of the GOP may fail? There are three reasons, in descending order of obviousness, for a liberal to earnestly and patriotically support a Trump Republican nomination....

Goodell proposes ejection for two personal fouls By Marc Sessler Around the NFL Writer SAN FRANCISCO -- NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell made it clear on Friday that he's prepared to crack down on egregious on-field penalties. --SNIP-- "I believe the league should pursue a policy where if there are two personal fouls in a game, there's an automatic ejection of a player," Goodell said. "I believe that that's consistent with what we believe are the safety issues, but I also believe it's consistent with what we believe are the standards of sportsmanship that we've emphasized."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. employment gains slowed more than expected in January as the boost to hiring from unseasonably mild weather faded, but rising wages and an unemployment rate at an eight-year low suggested the labor market recovery remains firm. Non-farm payrolls increased by 151,000 jobs and the unemployment rate slipped one-tenth of a percentage point to 4.9 percent, the lowest since February 2008, the Labor Department said on Friday. The payrolls gain was a sharp step-down from the average 231,000 jobs per month during the fourth quarter. "The fact that payroll gains fell back to earth is not necessarily...

"I would have said if I didn't agree with what's being — which he did say that — I would make sure that it didn’t happen again," Carson noted in an interview with Todd Starnes' podcast, as reported by BuzzFeed News. "And I would take corrective action. Not to take corrective action is tacitly saying eh, it’s OK, or it's sort of like, as Hillary Clinton said after Benghazi, 'what difference does it make?'"

Our buddy Rick Shaftan just forwarded us the latest spot that his messaging shop has put together for the pro-Ted Cruz Courageous Conservatives PAC, and it’s really something. It frames the GOP race for the folks in New Hampshire as a three-way contest – with Marco Rubio as the lightweight, Donald Trump as the deadweight and Cruz as the heavyweight. And its critique of Rubio and Trump – namely, that while Rubio is likable he doesn’t have a whole lot of accomplishments on his resume signifying his fitness to be president (Rubio probably has more than the ad gives him...

When asylum seeker Fouad Nour Aldin from Gaza arrived in Germany a year ago, he used to spend all day brooding inside his shelter -- until a scheme hooked him up with German buddies. The 41-year-old Palestinian, a former bus driver, is one of more than a million migrants who arrived in Germany last year. Like many others, he initially struggled to communicate, knew little about German life and had hardly any contact with locals. “We don’t have any plans and our days are long and boring and if you just sit there thinking you can get stressed,” he said....

A high-ranking Department of Veterans Affairs official on Tuesday defended the VA's failure to discipline two employees accused of misconduct, and blamed the outrage over their lenient treatment on "considerable external pressure" by the media and Congress to punish personnel who may not have done anything wrong. Sloan Gibson, deputy VA secretary, praised a judge's recent decision in personnel cases that stopped the demotions of Diana Rubens and Kimberly Graves, two VA officials accused of together stealing more than $400,000 in benefits from the government. ... According to the inspector general, Graves had pressured a colleague to leave his job...