Free Republic

A beneficiary of President Obama's signature healthcare law standing behind the president during his speech Monday in the Rose Garden nearly fainted toward the end of his remarks. Karmel Allison, who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes according to information provided by the White House, began holding the hand of a woman standing next to her at the event and breathing deeply. Noticing the disruption, Obama halted his remarks to turn around, just as Allison appeared to be falling backward. Another event attendee braced her from behind while the president held her arm to prevent her from falling. A White...

On Tuesday, Mediaite White House correspondent Tommy Christopher added another chapter to his ongoing self-promotional crusade masquerading as a career in journalism. And this time, it didn’t involve a shameless ploy to be an invited guest on whatever incarnation of Chris Hayes’ show MSNBC is currently airing. During Tuesday’s White House briefing on Tuesday, Christopher, whose name isn’t really “Tommy Christopher,” asked a question about President Barack Obama’s health-care reform law that incorporated his personal experiences with health insurance after his 2010 heart attack. ...more (w/video)...

ost people think that Springtime is the time to start growing that vegetable or herb garden. But there are many types of plants that should mainly be grown during the cooler months. Fall is a great time to try your hand at growing leafy greens, and that makes this a great way to save some money on produce. If you end up with a good harvest, you'll have a bountiful source of vegetables while other people are paying higher prices for greens at the grocery store. Here are 6 cooler weather plants you may want to try your hand at...

Pest control in Xinjiang seems to work, but many fear felines will freeze Hundreds of stray cats have been released in northwestern China's prairies to control the region's rat rampage, but the effort has sparkled online debate and concern. In early August, eight stray cats were released in rat-plagued grassland in Bole, the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. They are among a group of around 100 cats that have been introduced this year to control the prairie's rat population. The city's prairie workstation started introducing urban strays for rat control as early as 2011. So far, more than 600 stray cats...

With each passing day, it seems the United States of America, “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave” is becoming more and more like the Communist Russia I learned about in elementary school where people weren’t allowed to grow their own food unless the State “allowed” it. In this latest crackdown on citizens simply trying to provide for themselves using the most basic of skills – gardening – the USDA’s Rural Development Agency is forbidding Rosie, an industrious 4-year old girl in South Dakota from using a small, unused area outside her subsidized housing unit to grow green...

The Korean Food Foundation (KFF), promoter of "hansik," is shedding light on food from North Korea, currently more infamous than famous because of its nuclear brinkmanship. It is publishing a 120-page book “The Hidden Taste of North Korean Food” that contains recipe of 50 meals based on document research and interviews with North Korean defectors here, the foundation said, Thursday. The primary goal of the project is to preserve authentic recipes and cooking methods for North Korean dishes. At the same time, the book will help raise international awareness of the secretive nation’s signature meals, it said. “The English-language version...

Western-funded green groups are wrongly accusing mainland companies of causing environment destruction and creating social problems in Southeast Asia to restrain China's economic influence in countries along the Mekong River, a top government think tank claims in a new report published yesterday. Two studies, part of a Chinese Academy of Social Sciences annual report on co-operation and development in the Greater Mekong sub-region, admitted that agricultural, mining and hydro projects with Chinese investment had caused adverse environmental impact in countries including Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia. But international environmental groups working in the region, most of which receive funding from Western...

Marijuana is now legal in Washington, and the Seattle police have been remarkably mellow about the whole thing. In fact, the city's Police Department plans to be at Hempfest, what has become the largest pot rally in the world. And they're taking bags of Doritos in case anyone, you know, gets a little hungry.

Chinese consumers are responding to a powerful new marketing tactic that plays to a widespread fear of food contamination - the promise of safe groceries sold online. Pledging produce direct from the farm, vendors have found food is becoming one of the fastest-growing segments of Internet retailing as they cash in on scares from cadmium-tainted rice to recycled cooking oil. The trend is adding momentum to a Chinese online retail boom driven by a rapidly expanding middle class, with companies such as COFCO Ltd and Shunfeng Express betting that a decent slice of a 1.3 billion population will pay for...

There are two topics that you don’t discuss in Singapore: the weather and politics, because both generally remain the same. Food, on the other hand, is a subject that unifies the people of this small island like nothing else can. Eating out here can range from horrifically expensive - S$300 for a steak if you go to a celebrity chef restaurant - to terrific value, such as S$3 for a bowl of delicious noodles, eaten out of a plastic bowl while sitting under strip lighting. Yet it is the traditional and inexpensive food sold at hawker centres that sparks an...

What do you think Fred Phelps, the fringe preacher with the Westboro Baptist Church, would say about Alberta's floods? He'd say what he always says - that they are God's punishment for Canada because of our tolerance for gays. Or, as his protest placards say, "God Hates Fags." He's the idiot who protests at funerals of U.S. soldiers. See, he even blames wars on gays. Canada has our own versions of Fred Phelps. They say natural weather events, like seasonal floods, are "proof" that God Hates Oilsands. (They tend to say Mother Earth or Gaia.) As TV images of Albertans...

The rationale for the federal government’s “Head Start” program is to give disadvantaged students a boost with their school work. Sadly, though, a recently completed research study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reveals that students enrolled in the program actually do worse than similarly disadvantaged peers not in the program. The biggest deficits show up in math and behavior. Secretary Kathleen Sebelius urged that “we should not read too much into these findings. Given our society’s widespread access to computers, calculators, and cash registers that can do the math for us, proficiency in math may not...

Stung by being called an “idiot” by Senator David Vitter (R-Louisiana) for his claim that victims of 2012′s Hurricane Sandy suffered more than victims of 2005′s Hurricane Katrina, Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev) attempted to explain his way out the scathing characterization. “My colleague’s focus on quantitative data overlooks qualitative differences between the two events,” Reid argued. “First, New Jersey and New York are states where many important people live. Many of the homes that were destroyed were million dollar properties. The same could be said for the businesses.” “Most of the properties destroyed by Katrina were more like broken down...

This is a guest post by Senator Ima Librul (D., Utopia) on the fine art of growing pineapples. I am a Librul and justly proud of the great good we are doing for the entire World. This is my creed: it is irresponsible to be concerned about the future when our own leaders and our other experts tell us that only good things will happen if we do exactly as they say. The brightest and best, we are never wrong! Don't think. Don't question. Just follow our Dear Leader. My small garden had thirty pineapple plants. Twenty of them had...

“I don’t think legitimate sportsmen are going to say, ‘I need an assault weapon to go hunting,’” Cuomo said, according to the New York Times. “There is a balance here — I understand the rights of gun owners; I understand the rights of hunters.” Cuomo indicated the state will likely force some kind of permit process on owners of semi-automatic “assault weapons.” In addition to generating revenue and expanding the size and reach of government, the effort will allow the state to confiscate the weapons of citizens who do not comply. “Confiscation could be an option. Mandatory sale to the...

"On this Thanksgiving Day, let me say this: God Bless America the only country on this [bleep] planet where you still have the freedom to build AKs in defense of Motherland! The only country where a [bleep] shovel can become an awesome weapon of death and destruction."

After finding a portrait subject, he asks her to put together a hot-pot meal using veggies and ingredients native to her country. They then assemble the foods into the shape of a gun and do a portrait shoot. Once the photograph is made, Ozawa and his model disassemble the delicious weapon, cook the ingredients, and share a meal together.

If President Obama is reelected, redistribution will go into even higher gear. I want His promise that I'll get mine. Now, so I will know how to vote. As President Obama well knows, the best socio-economic system ever devised is based on the premise "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." Now old and creaky, my abilities are few and my needs are great. When President Obama again makes history by being sworn in as our first reelected President of this century on January 20th, soon to be celebrated annually as ChristObamamas, there are some...

I just saw a funny Tweet from @jimnorton, in which he “condemns” Mitt Romney’s father for “murdering roses” when he placed one on his wife’s bedstand every night. (Romney scored emotionally in last night’s speech when he recalled that his mother found out his father had died because the rose was missing.)Thing is, Norton’s jibe is not quite as off the wall as some might think. Switzerland has, for instance, placed the “dignity” of individual plants in its constitution. The government then asked a big brained bioethics commission to explain why individual plants have dignity (they share molecular material with...

A funny thing happened on the way to economic Armageddon: Iceland’s very desperation made conventional behavior impossible, freeing the nation to break the rules. Where everyone else bailed out the bankers and made the public pay the price, Iceland let the banks go bust and actually expanded its social safety net. Where everyone else was fixated on trying to placate international investors, Iceland imposed temporary controls on the movement of capital to give itself room to maneuver.