Free Republic

Apparently Kid getting his 15 minutes. Same link here

A Brazos County jury on Wednesday awarded a $27 million in a lawsuit against McDonald’s relating to the 2012 deaths of two Blinn College students.Jurors found McDonald’s negligence to be 97 percent responsible for the deaths of Denton Ward, 18, of Flower Mound, and Lauren Bailey Crisp, 19, of Flower Mound, both of whom died in the early morning hours of Feb. 18, 2012. The remaining 3 percent of liability was laid on the men who violently attacked Ward and his friend, Tanner Giesen, 21, in the parking lot of the McDonald’s at 801 University Drive. The jury’s verdict reflects...

When Adam Smith put to paper the principles of market systems that Marx would later dismiss as capitalism, people were still dedicated to their religious faiths. Smith -- who was not in Washington at the time (ba-dum-tssshhh) -- knew this, and, even prior to releasing this monumental work, he laid the foundation of what his market system would be based on: “moral sentiments”. Smith was not a relativist, but he believed that morals were commonly held -- after all, Christendom was still holding on, albeit just barely and for dear life. True, enlightened capitalism, while inferior to distributism, is at...

To direct the Federal Trade Commission to prescribe rules prohibiting the marketing of firearms to children, and for other purposes.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office isn’t the only federal authority that has taken a stance against the name of the Washington Redskins. A federal judge in Maryland issued a ruling last week that purposely did not contain the team’s name, which has been described as an offensive slur against Native Americans. U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte, who is presiding over a lawsuit that former New York Giants linebacker Barrett Green brought against the Redskins, issued a 21-page ruling with this footnote on the first page: “Pro Football’s team is popularly known as the Washington ‘Redskins,’ but the Court...

ISIS emerged around the same time Iraq experienced its warmest March-April-May season on record. It may just be an interesting coincidence, but it could mean more.This winter was not a good one for farmers in the Fertile Crescent. A punishing drought hit most of Syria and northern Iraq during what’s normally the wettest time of the year. In the mountains of eastern Turkey, which form the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, snow and rain were less than half of normal. The region has seen one of the worst droughts in decades. Drought is becoming a fixture in the...

There is rarely a good time to do hard things, and America won't advance if legislators act like seat-warmers. When I learned that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor had lost his Republican primary, my heart sank. Not simply because I think he is an intelligent and talented member of Congress, or because I worry about the future of the Republican Party. Like others who want comprehensive immigration reform, I worried that Mr. Cantor's loss would be misconstrued and make Congress reluctant to tackle this urgent need. That would be the wrong lesson and an undesirable national consequence of this single,...

President Obama’s instincts about Iraq and Syria have been sound from the beginning: Greater U.S. engagement probably cannot make things better but certainly can make them worse, both for the people of the region and for our national interests. Obama’s only mistake was to buy, for a time, the notion that Bush’s troop surge had miraculously healed ancient divisions and made the dream of a pluralist democracy still possible. There are aspects of Obama’s foreign policy that I question. His heavy reliance on drone strikes may create as many terrorists as it eliminates. He should have realized that the National...

Judge: PTSD approved for medical marijuana use PHOENIX — State Health Director Will Humble acted illegally in denying access to medical marijuana to people — many of them former soldiers — suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, an administrative law judge has ruled. Judge Thomas Shedden said Humble relied solely on the lack of scientific “peer-reviewed” studies in determining that PTSD should not be added to the list of conditions for which marijuana could be made available. But the judge said the health chief should also have considered the testimony of doctors and nurses who said the drug has helped their...

....Obama negotiated with terrorists. He broke the laws that govern transfers at Guantánamo Bay. He has strengthened the enemies of the Afghan government that the United States has fought to establish with blood and treasure for a decade.... ... in the administration’s answers to all these criticisms, it becomes apparent that this weekend’s prisoner swap is about more than Sergeant Bergdahl. It is a statement of Obama’s deeply held views about American foreign policy,

Only hours after appearing at a press conference to give thanks for the freeing of his POW son in exchange for five top Taliban leaders, Bob Bergdahl returned to Twitter to promote a Guardian video in which family members lobby for the release of five Tunisians held at Guantanamo Bay. Earlier, Bergdahl had apparently deleted a tweet reading, “I am still working to free all Guantanamo prisoners.”

... What is needed from Washington is not a heroic exertion of American military power but rather a sustained effort to engage with allies, isolate enemies, support free markets and democratic values and push these positive trends forward. The Obama administration is, in fact, deeply internationalist — building on alliances in Europe and Asia, working with institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations, isolating adversaries and strengthening the global order that has proved so beneficial to the United States and the world since 1945. ... A Democratic Advisory Council committee headed by Acheson called Eisenhower’s foreign...

GOP activist Karl Rove is being accused of gutter politics in a response by Hillary Clinton’s reps after remarks last week, reported by Page Six, that the former secretary of state may have brain damage from a blood clot she suffered in 2012. “From the moment this happened 17 months ago, the right has politicized her health,” Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said in a statement. “First they accused her of faking it. Now they’ve resorted to the other extreme — and are flat-out lying … All he wants to do is inject the issue into the echo chamber, and he’s...

Neandertal: The Answer Is Epigenetics Not Evolution by Jeffrey Tomkins, Ph.D. * Recent genome reports show that the Neandertals are essentially fully human, causing scientists to reclassify them as "archaic humans."1,2 But what about the apparent subtle differences in anatomy that first caused scientists to claim that Neandertals were a completely different species? It turns out that the answer can be found in epigenetics, according to newly published research.3 Epigenetics, in the more modern sense, refers to the heritable chemical changes performed by cellular machines to DNA that alter gene function without actually changing the DNA nucleotide code. In the...

Rev. Nancy Ellett Allison has joyfully officiated same-sex marriages in her corner of the conservative South since 2006. “It is just a delight to be able to help these couples celebrate their lives together and work with them to craft their vows,” said Allison, her bright voice laced with a twang.

Senate approves in-state tuition for undocumented students: The Florida Senate voted Thursday to let undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates at public colleges and universities. The 26-13 vote came as no surprise. The sponsor, Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater, was confident he had the votes for week. But that didn’t stop him from getting emotional in debate on Thursday. “The eyes of America are on us,” Latvala said moments before the vote. “I think we’re setting an example. I think we’re doing the right thing.” Read more Medical Marijuana Photo Source Hightimes.com House passes non-euphoric medical marijuana bill: The Florida...

Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, estimates that the U.S. added a mediocre 180,000 jobs to the economy in April. “We have a little problem here, we still have the weather issue to be sorted out,” he says. He thinks it’s possible that the unemployment rate inches down to 6.6% but “we haven’t had any fundamental changes, you just always see a little bouncing around.” “People don’t realize this, but we spend a lot of money on prescription drugs,” he says. “The reason we do that is because the government is giving drug companies patent...

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush has said that illegal immigration is like an "act of love" and promoted amnesty at a "Davos in the Desert" education conference in Arizona. Now, the potential 2016 GOP presidential contender has suggested that parts of America's immigration system should be more like Canada's. Jeb Bush ✔ @JebBush Canada has an economically driven immigration system. Why can’t we fix our broken one? http://t.co/gT1Zby7xZL 5:03 PM - 23 Apr 2014 Skilled immigrants to be offered 'express entry' to Canada in 2015 The Canadian government is forging ahead with anew immigration system that will offer "express entry"...

(Reuters) - A family of four rescued from their sailboat after their infant daughter became seriously ill at sea returned safely to San Diego on Wednesday aboard a U.S. warship that picked them up in the Pacific over the weekend, a Navy spokeswoman said. The parents, Eric and Charlotte Kaufman, and their two daughters, 3-year-old Cora and 1-year-old Lyra, left the Navy frigate Vandegrift after the ship arrived in port around 10 a.m. local time and proceeded to their family doctor, according to Lieutenant Lenaya Rotklein of the Third Fleet. Rotklein declined to give any further information about the arrival...

When it comes to Obama-era scandals, the American Right’s predominant emotion is frustration — a frustration that causes hypertension levels usually seen only in Cubs fans and the unfortunates hired to do PR for Lindsay Lohan and Shia LeBoeuf... --snip-- Why is this happening? Ironically, the mainstream media heavyweights may feel liberated from the responsibility of covering Obama administration malfeasances because of the existence of the alternative conservative media that have arisen over the past 20 years — talk radio, Fox News, and multiple websites...