Free Republic

FORE! Score? And seven trillion rounds ago, our forecaddies brought forth on this continent a new playground, conceived by Robert Trent Jones, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal when it comes to spending as much time on the links as possible — even when it seems totally inappropriate, like moments after making a solemn statement condemning the grisly murder of a 40-year-old American journalist beheaded by ISIL. I know reporters didn’t get a chance to ask questions, but I had to bounce. I had a 1 p.m. tee time at Vineyard Golf Club with Alonzo...

I come into the living room to take the dogs for a walk and the TV is on NBC. All of a sudden Cynthia McFadden comes on the screen and announces "We are awaiting a speech from President Obama, who will speak from a working vacation, at Martha's Vineyard". And I spit out some coffee I had just taken. So I turn the channel to ABC and listen to his speech. Fine speech. Appropriate words and then Stephanopoulos ascribes all kinds of emotion to the speech with excellent superlatives indicating a range of emotions. I don't know but, the whole...

Senate hopeful Scott Brown again got help from a former Republican presidential nominee, as Sen. John McCain spoke to a crowd of GOP faithful at a town hall meeting Monday.

A Martha’s Vineyard photographer quietly deleted photographs of President Obama dancing during a birthday party after they went viral online. Editorial and fine art photographer Elizabeth Cecil posted two photos of the president on her Instagram account from the party that was closed to the press. The photos featured President Obama dancing and one of him offering a birthday toast to Ann Jordan at a party at the Farm Neck Golf Club. The party included about 150 guests, including former President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary Clinton. The photo of the president dancing was discovered on Instagram early Thursday...

Nobel Peace Prize recipient Jimmy Carter takes to ForeignPolicy.com to argue that the key to ending the current war in Gaza is "recognizing Hamas as a legitimate political actor." Writing along with fellow "Elder" Mary Robinson (part of an "international group of elder statesmen"), the former president pins the blame for the current conflict on Israel's refusal to appreciate a "major concession" made by Hamas in April and to recognize the new Palestinian government formed by the Hamas-Fatah "reconciliation": This tragedy results from the deliberate obstruction of a promising move toward peace in the region, when a reconciliation agreement among...

The Army has selected a new camouflage pattern to begin fielding next year, an unidentified senior Army spokesperson announced in a statement late Thursday. “The Army has confirmed through testing that the pattern would offer exceptional concealment, which directly enhances force protection and survivability for Soldiers,” according to the statement from the Army. The pattern will be used in all combatant commands, including Afghanistan, the Army said. Uniforms and equipment with the existing pattern won’t be discarded, but replaced only as they wear out. The pattern was developed by the Army under the name Scorpion W2 to replace the much-maligned...

Dead bodies of illegal immigrants are turning up in south Texas as Central Americans pour across the U.S.-Mexico border, and a veterinarian who ranches cattle 70 miles from ground zero has the photos to prove it. Dr. Mike 'Doc' Vickers of Brooks County, Texas showed some of the grisly images to MailOnline, all of them far too grotesque to publish unedited. One picture shows a corpse propped up against a tree near his ranch in Brooks County, his eyes missing and dried blood cascading down his shirtless body. 'This guy, obviously, had to lay down up against that tree, and...

Argentina has defaulted again. Argentine Finance Minister Axel Kicillof is now addressing the world from Argentina's consulate in New York City. He has delivered the news that Argentina is in default, having failed to satisfy the demands of a group of hedge fund creditors negotiating over $1.3 billion worth of debt owed to them for over a decade. "The Argentine Republic has filed for a stay [on payment] with Judge Griesa... The Judge decided that if the vulture funds said there could be a stay there would be a stay," said Kicillof. "The vulture funds were not willing to grant...

(Language warning) A Taliban fighter caught by U.S troops planting an IED in Afghanistan. Shortly after planting it, he accidentally steps on it.

Microsoft attempted something different and daring with Windows 8. It introduced a whole new interface and means of interaction with your PC that was identical to a smartphone or tablet. It threw out the “Start” menu and mouse-driven interface people had used for decades in favor of a touch-driven interface with tiles, some of which received active information updates. And people hated it. “They tried to get their entire audience to jump from a UI [user interface] they were comfortable with to a brand new one with a serious learning curve,” California-based Creative Strategies tech analyst and president Tim Bajarin...

Think Progress, a website operated by the liberal Center for American Progress, failed to vet a phony story which claimed that Minnesota U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann proposed “Americanization” labor camps for Central American unaccompanied children. “I’m calling on all of us, Obama and Congress and everyone, to chip in and build special new facilities…‘Americanization facilities,’ if you will,” Bachmann said, according to Think Progress, which has since corrected its embarrassing flub. […] Think Progress published the erroneous story on Sunday but corrected it and issued an apology after another liberal website, the Raw Story, pointed out the massive hoax. […]...

Paul Farhi of The Washington Post writes today about a trend at the White House—and throughout journalism—that threatens the quality and credibility of news-gathering: Public-relations "minders" are injecting themselves into our interviews with politicians, CEOs, and other policymakers. Minder madness joins the surge of "background briefings" and the decline of access to decision-makers as evidence that the White House—and other big instititutions—are manipulating the press. It's that, but it's also something worse: It's evidence that journalists are ceding control when they should be seizing it, accepting canned news rather than breaking it. Farhi writes, "Almost every officially sanctioned exchange between...

KATY PERRY @katyperry So INCREDIBLY sad to hear that there were 100 volunters for UNICEF on flight #MN17 Sending our prayers to all of the families affected :( UNCIEF have assured the public that no employees or volunteers for the world organisation were onboard the MH17, Malaysian Airlines flight that was shot down over Ukraine last week after Katy Perry, an ambassador for the company, tweeted that 100 volunteers had died in the accident. ** snip ** With 54 million followers, more than any other Twitter user, Perry's tweet obviously caused confusion and for many, probably panic. It's unclear where...

Yahoo released second-quarter earnings today, and they depict a company that’s still struggling to find answers for its flagging display and mobile ads business. Investors are trying to hang on to the initial good feelings they had for CEO Marissa Mayer when she took the helm two years ago, but quarter by quarter, they’re finding it harder to do so.

No, the United States isn't trying to build a military force of centenarians. It just seems that way after the Selective Service System mistakenly sent notices to more than 14,000 Pennsylvania men born between 1893 and 1897, ordering them to register for the nation's military draft and warning that failure to do so is "punishable by a fine and imprisonment." The agency realized the error when it began receiving calls from bewildered relatives last week.

Less than a month after its official release date of June 10, Hillary Clinton's book, "Hard Choices," has today plunged below the Amazon Top 100 list to a humbling #102 as of this writing. Over at Simon & Schuster, the book publisher who paid Hillary a big campaign contribution in the form of a whopping $14 million advance, there is now a lot of angry finger pointing according to the New York Post's Page Six. Just as humbling is the news that Hillary's book has been replaced at the top of the New York Times Best Seller list by Edward...

In a stunning display of callousness, the Defense Department has announced that thousands of soldiers — many serving as commanding officers in Afghanistan — will be notified in the coming weeks that their service to the country is no longer needed. Last week, more than 1,100 Army captains — the men and women who know best how to fight this enemy because they have experienced multiple deployments — were told they’ll be retired from the Army. The overall news is not unexpected. The Army has ended its major operations in Iraq and is winding down in Afghanistan. Budget cuts are...

There’s hand-wringing and finger-pointing at Simon & Schuster over the soft performance of Hillary Clinton’s “Hard Choices,” for which she got a $14 million advance, sources said — and which was replaced at No. 1 on the best-seller list this week by an “exposé” about Hillary and Bill Clinton. The former secretary of state’s tome sold 161,000 copies in its first three weeks, according to Nielsen BookScan — but 85,000 of those were sold in the first week. That number has dropped sharply to 48,000 and 28,000 in subsequent weeks, with the most recent numbers due out Wednesday.

A Fourth of July hot dog eating contest in western South Dakota turned deadly when a contestant choked to death. Walter Eagle Tail, 47, of Custer, died at a hospital Thursday after attempts to save him at the scene failed, Custer County Sheriff Rick Wheeler told the Rapid City Journal.

Google gets a lot of [justified] flack for not being patriotic. Today, they celebrated. Comments. Click the link. Press the second "O" [Go] then listen.