Free Republic

A WOMAN has been arrested after burning down part of her home in an attempt to kill a spider, police say.Ginny Griffith, 34, used a cigarette lighter to set fire to some towels after seeing the arachnid in her bathroom. But as the blaze spread, five fire trucks were called to her apartment in Hutchinson, Kansas, US at around 1.36am (local time) on Friday morning to put out the inferno. Firefighters were able to bring the fire under control within a matter of minutes. Deputy Fire Chief Doug Hanen said in a statement that firefighters had found smoke coming from...

ear Demetria: I am the mother of two. I have an amazing husband and father to my children. The last child is not his, and he is unaware. His best friend and I had a one-night stand two years ago when my hubby was out of town. I can’t bring myself to come clean. I just started going to therapy about this. The guilt is making me miserable. I feel honesty would break our whole family apart. I'm afraid to find out what my husband may do. —Anonymous My grandmother had a saying about truth: “What’s done in the dark...

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) was invited Tuesday, along with fellow members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, to test drive — er, test ride — a driverless car on the Capitol grounds. Well, the ride never happened, because Norton did a particularly good job of testing the car’s bright-red “kill” button — which, as captured by WRC-TV’s cameras, killed the car to the point that it could not proceed with the test ride. “Oh, no, don’t push it!” an engineer from Carnegie Mellon University cried after Norton pounded the mushroom button. “It shuts everything down.” [...]

The mayor of San Marino has stepped down after he was captured on surveillance video tossing a bag of dog waste onto his neighbor’s walkway earlier this month. Dennis Kneier announced his immediate resignation Tuesday in a letter to the city and the City Council. “As is well known, early in the evening of Saturday, June 7, I had a lapse of judgment and discarded dog waste on a neighbor’s walkway,” Kneier wrote. “It was insensitive, disrespectful and wrong. I have apologized to my neighbor for my action, and I will pay a fine for littering. I can understand why...

More than 2 million people who got health insurance under President Barack Obama's law have data discrepancies that could jeopardize coverage for some, a government document shows. About 1 in 4 people who signed up have discrepancies, creating a huge paperwork jam for the feds and exposing some consumers to repayment demands, or possibly even loss of coverage, if they got too generous a subsidy. The 7-page slide presentation from the Health and Human Services department was provided to The Associated Press as several congressional committees are actively investigating the discrepancies, most of which involve important details on income, citizenship...

Today, at a joint press conference between Barack Obama and Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski in Warsaw, Secretary of State John Kerry pulled the old "dad on the couch" move, testing the limits between what he called "a really long blink" and what looked more like a very short nap. The tell is always in the jerk back to wake up. Twitter: Brian Rie$ ✔ @moneyries Secretary of State @JohnKerry taking a power nap in Warsaw (in his defense...long flight!) http://twitpic.com/e5dtql John Kerry ✔ @JohnKerry Follow .@moneyries just a really long blink! The other dead giveaway is protesting too much.

CNN has updates on the story of the Georgia SWAT team that threw a flash bang while executing a no-knock warrant that severely burned a nineteen-month-old baby. Habersham County Sheriff Joey Terrell says the deputies involved are "devastated" and that they've been called "baby killers" and received threats. "All I can say is pray for the baby, his family and for us," the sheriff told CNN. Terrell has insisted his officers and those of the local police department did nothing wrong and blamed the target of the warrant (not found at the house that was invaded) on the attack on...

Maybe the reason why women didn’t find Rodger attractive is because they found him gay. He sure looks, talks, and acts gay. What do they say about a duck?. Watch what this psychiatrist has to say in the video below...

It’s the feel-good video of the day. I’d trade it for six cute puppy or kitten videos. (WeIl, except maybe this one.) It happened in Syria, when a bunch of terrorists, said to be from abroad, got together for a little party. (Video below) Sean Brown of Mad World News reports: The Syrian-based terror group is all sitting around singing,

An unidentified Obama administration official exposed the name of the highest-ranking CIA officer in Kabul on Saturday by accidentally placing it on a list of names provided to a bunch of media outlets. The list contained the names of several senior U.S. officials who took part in a military briefing during President Barack Obama’s surprise Memorial Day visit to Afghanistan to glad-hand with the troops, reports The Washington Post.

France's national railway operator SNCF has ordered 2,000 new trains that are too large for many of the stations they are due to serve. The train operator has admitted failing to verify measurements it was given by the rail operator before ordering its new rolling stock. The costly mistake has sparked an urgent €50m operation to modify 1,300 platforms on the regional network. SNCF has admitted that one in six regional train stations is affected. In the worst cases it has discovered two trains can no longer pass each other on adjacent lines.The French minister of transport described the situation...

France's national rail company SNCF said on Tuesday it had ordered 2,000 trains for an expanded regional network that are too wide for many station platforms, entailing costly repairs. A spokesman for the RFF national rail operator confirmed the error, first reported by satirical weekly Canard Enchaine in its Wednesday edition. "We discovered the problem a bit late, we recognise that and we accept responsibility on that score," Christophe Piednoel told France Info radio.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ircHCzcg3WY

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — US Airways apologized Monday after a pornographic image was posted on the company’s Twitter feed. The company often responds directly to disgruntled passengers, but was seemingly unaware that one of its replies included a lewd photograph. “@thatkatzkat We don’t like to hear this, Alex. Please provide feedback to our Customer Relations team here,” read the tweet, which also included a link to a photo of a woman with a model airplane protruding out of a body cavity. The airline later removed the tweet and apologized for the incident.

A Twitter user thought to be a teenage girl has received unwanted notoriety after she sent a terrorism-themed message to American Airlines. (snip) The girl – who identified herself as a 14-year-old named Sarah in her now-suspended Twitter account – sent this tweet to American Airlines' @americanair account Sunday morning. "hello my name's Ibrahim and I'm from Afghanistan. I'm part of Al Qaida and on June 1st I'm gonna do something really big bye." American responded, saying: "Sarah, we take these threats very seriously. Your IP address and details will be forwarded to security and the FBI." (snip) According to...

Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) may want to pay more attention next time. On Wednesday, he showed up at the wrong hearing, then asked the wrong witness a fairly long question that had nothing to do with the hearing he was in. It took a note from a staffer to inform him he was in the wrong place, The Washington Post reports. "I just got a note saying I’m at the wrong hearing,” Coats said. He was supposed to be at a hearing held by the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, but instead showed up at an...

U.S. President Barack Obama has caused confusion after claiming yesterday that Kosovo held a UN-assisted referendum for self-determination – misleading people over the true origins of the country. The U.S. President used the example to hit out against Russia's annexation of Crimea, but experts have noted that no such referendum took place, and implied that Obama's "incredible mistake" should elicit a retraction or correction from the White House.

You know it wasn’t a racist comment. You also know it doesn’t matter. MSNBC has their see-what-racists-all-Obama-opponents-are talking point for the next few days. More to the point, though, knowing Donald Rumsfeld he doesn’t care about any of that, which is one of the things I love about him. The far more important point here is the point itself - that the U.S. had a good relationship with Karzai in Afghanistan when the Bush Administration was in office. It was only when Obama and crew came in that we suddenly couldn’t work with him.

A British warship accidentally launched an inert torpedo during a training exercise on Wednesday, sending a dummy weapon crashing into a wharf at a naval base in southern England used by nuclear submarines.

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- A Somali police officer says a suicide car bomber accidentally detonated his explosives near a popular hotel in the Somali capital. Capt. Mohamed Hussein said the bomber appeared to have prematurely detonated his explosives-laden car Saturday as he tried to park near a hotel. No others were hurt or killed in the blast...