Free Republic

For most Americans, toilet paper is an absolutely necessary grocery list item, but some women are opting out for both economic and environmental purposes. In a HuffPost Live discussion, bloggers Angela Davis, Kathleen Quiring and Makala Earley explain why they've decided to go paperless, revealing that it's not as messy or unhygienic as it may sound. 'It is definitely possible,' insists Mikala, who says she and her husband stopped using toilet paper about a year ago. 'It is almost seen as a necessity [and] it doesn't have to be, and it's been a lot of fun to learn how to...

“Mental disorder” is the leading “diagnostic group” for disabled people receiving federal disability insurance benefits, with 35.5 percent of all disabled beneficiaries having such a disorder, according to the latest Annual Statistical Report on the Social Security Disability Insurance Program. The report provides a statistical profile of the 10,088,739 disabled beneficiaries who were receiving federal disability benefits as of December 2012. Those 10,088,739 disabled beneficiaries were almost double the 5,044,388 disabled beneficiaries who had been in the program as of December 1995. In Washington, D.C., according to the report, 43.2 percent of disabled beneficiaries as of December 2012 had been...

TOURE: "...... I’m sorry, I can only do so many fun, awe-struck stories about the weather and the extraordinary weather events without saying this is because of climate change. That's why we're having all of these extraordinary weather events and we don’t talk about it enough. When a quarter of America thinks these are not caused by human activities. When we act like all this is fun, you know what we are doing? We’re dancing on the deck of the Titanic."

Animal Exceptionalism Morally Irrelevant The attack on human exceptionalism these days is unremitting–and highly ideological. The latest assault on our uniqueness comes from Edge.org, which asked the world’s supposedly most “brilliant minds” to come up with ideas that should be retired in science. Harvard professor (of course!) Irene Pepperberg–oh, so predictably–argues that the time has come to reject human uniqueness. Based on what? Pepperberg makes the obvious point that different animals also have remarkable capacities. From her essay (republished in the Guardian): Yes, humans do some things that other species do not – we are indeed the only species to...

"The day after that conversation, my 12-year-old daughter took her toddler brother to a playground, only to return very soon and very shaken. This park is Harlem in miniature. There are two playgrounds, less than 300 yards apart, an old basic one and a new shiny one. In the new playground, well-dressed toddlers of different races, most of them minded by dark-skinned nannies, played together. At the old one, a few black kids played while their older siblings kept reluctant watch. A couple of drunken men loitered nearby. Apparently, one of them had lashed out at my daughter, calling her...

Among the thousands of documents Connecticut police released December 27 related to the heinous crime at Sandy Hook Elementary, the contents and files of Adam Lanza's computer include files on mass shootings, mass murders, pedophiles' rights, and a man/boy love story. According to police reports contained within the documents, Lanza's laptop computer contained "hundreds of bookmarks," a number of which were for "mass murder killing spree" and "mass murders." His desktop had a "document written showing the prerequisites for mass murder spreadsheet." Lanza's desktop also had a "document written advocating pedophiles' rights" and a "screenplay or script describing a relationship...

Michael Eric Dyson tells Joy Reid the Bible could be viewed as homoerotic. ...The Ed Show was guest hosted by MSNBC contributor Joy Reid, who kicked off the show discussing Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson's comments about homosexuals...Reid welcomed Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson, whom she praised for his knowledge on American history and Biblical theology. Reid started the segment saying that the Bible can be manipulated to support any argument. She admitted that the Bible views the act of homosexual activity as a "sin" but also said, in her opinion, that the Bible is also anti-Christmas trees. Reid used...

Staff members of the Arizona affiliate of Planned Parenthood are celebrating the season by changing the lyrics of the traditional Christmas carol, “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” to accommodate the abortion industry. Planned Parenthood Arizona says it "wants to wish everyone happy holidays and a wonderful 2014!" They add, "We hope you will enjoy this original song written by staff and performed by volunteers. And, if you want to know more about the different types of birth control mentioned in the song, visit www.ppaz.org."

Jeff White discovered the code after checking in for a Delta Air Lines flight from Pensacola, Florida, to Albany, New York, earlier this month, the Washington Post reports. “At first I didn’t think I read it right,” Mr White, a student at the University of West Florida, told the newspaper. “I was worried that another customer might think I somehow picked that code. If I were a gay male, I might have thought that a Delta worker purposely gave me that code, and that would have made me extremely uncomfortable.” Delta Air Lines apologised for any “concern or misunderstanding”, but...

He was bullied for his outspoken opinions and didn't care much for Republicans. Karl Pierson, 18, who stormed his Colorado high school brandishing a shotgun and bearing hatred for his debate coach, critically injured a 15-year-old fellow student before shooting himself to death Friday afternoon as he was cornered by heavily armed police. "He had very strong beliefs about gun laws and stuff," said junior Abbey Skoda, who shared a class with Pierson during her freshmen year, The Denver Post reported. "I also heard he was bullied a lot." After undergoing surgery Friday, the injured girl was listed in critical,...

Each Friday, Politico Magazine picks the political scandal of the week, and our colleague Mike Allen asks Playbook readers to weigh in with their crisis-management expertise, both professional and otherwise. This week’s scandal: the spectacular implosion of Martin Bashir, the MSNBC daytime host who resigned Wednesday as controversy mounted over his remarks about former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Here’s what got him in trouble: On his Nov. 15 broadcast, Bashir called Palin "a world class idiot" because she made a comparison to slavery while discussing U.S. debt to China. The host then read an excerpt from the diary of a...

The novelty of flying cars never materialized. But flying novels are right around the corner. If you aren’t nervous enough reading about 3-D printers spitting out handguns or Google robots with Android phones, imagine the skies thick with crisscrossing tiny drones.

<p>Remember Sandra Fluke, the 30-year old student who got her 15 minutes of fame last year by becoming the poster child for subsidized birth control?</p> <p>She’s fortunately faded away, but the issue is still with us because the courts are being asked to decide whether government has the right to coerce people into decisions that violate their religious values.</p>

It happens every year. Someone on the left goes so overboard in their hatred for America that they can’t even let Thanksgiving pass without their wacky comments. This year, Huffington Post author Nicole Breedlove didn’t disappoint. Her piece bashed America under the headline: “Happy National Genocide (Thanksgiving) Day!” Breedlove doesn't miss a beat—slamming everyone from Columbus and to the Pilgrims while invoking images of the Holocaust and 9/11. She began her piece talking about how her family “always gave thanks that all the Native Americans weren’t wiped out when Columbus ‘discovered’ America.” Because, of course, liberals assume Columbus personally killed...

When Thanksgiving 2013 is over, will Americans remember it as the holiday when the Obama administration body-snatched their friends and family and turned them into Obamacare robots? Maybe it happened to your own loved ones. Maybe Cousin Sue brought her favorite cranberry Jell-O mayonnaise salad but when she opened her mouth she sounded like Jay Carney on a roll. As for Uncle Al, there’s a reason he kept asking “Have you thought about signing up for health insurance on the new marketplace?” every time it was your turn at Scrabble. BarackObama.com told them to. Turning Thanksgiving into Obamacaring was clearly...

True story. A couple of years back, I was walking home at night on North Capitol Street here in Washington, D.C., when two dudes randomly assaulted me before running away without stealing anything. At the time, I didn't think it was all that strange—I've lived in urban areas all my life, and plenty of people I know have been victims of anonymous street crime.

It’s been 35 years since 918 people, including 257 children, died on Nov. 18, 1978, at the Peoples Temple massacre in Jonestown. The mass murder inside the South American jungle commune in Guyana was engineered by Jim Jones, a murderous cult leader, and was the only time in American history a member of Congress, Leo Ryan, D-Calif., was killed in the line of official duty. Most of the victims were forced to commit suicide by drinking a fatal cocktail of poisoned punch spiked with a Valium tranquilizer. In the days that followed the slaughter of the innocents, Jonestown became a...

BOSTON -- Sergeant Sean Murphy, the retired Massachusetts State Police photographer who released photos of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's capture, has penned an open letter to Bill Maher on his Facebook. Maher, who stars in HBO's Real Time, has received pushback for comments he made about a moment during the recent World Series championship parade in Boston. Red Sox players placed the championship trophy on the marathon finish line and sang "God Bless America" and "Boston Strong" while paying homage to the April attack and its victims....

The first step to a cure is recognizing that you have a disease. YouÂ’ll need a diagnosis before you can get a prescription. If youÂ’re a liberal who is out of touch with reality, we really canÂ’t do much to help you until you are at least willing to admit it. If youÂ’re exhibiting any one of these 6 symptoms, then you can safely diagnose yourself as an out-of-touch liberal and seek treatment immediately. 1. You think that George W. Bush caused the recent recession YouÂ’ve probably heard the narrative promoted by the wigglejaws on MSNBC: George W. Bush caused...

An Ohio woman who lived much of her life as an animal lover may have died a dog killer. Sandra Lertzman, 62, was found dead along with 31 of her dogs, many of them puppies, in a running car in the garage of her Moreland Hills home on Monday. Investigators told WOIO that they found a suicide note in the house and several prescription vials in the vehicle. It wasn’t clear how she and the pups died. One of the dogs managed to survive by finding a small opening in the garage where it could breathe, authorities said. Lertzman was...