Free Republic

...a Northern Ireland politician has said. The attraction in Sichuan province, about 930 miles from the sea, will let hundreds of people at a time experience the shipwreck. The Titanic was built in east Belfast. Former Lord Mayor of Belfast Jim Rodgers said he had asked the Chinese firm behind the 1bn yuan (£100.7m) project to reconsider their plans. He said that while it was a "great idea" to build the Titanic replica at the Romandisea Seven Star International Cultural Tourism Resort, "to have a simulation of an iceberg collision is going a step too far".

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — An Orange County firefighter's decision to paint a confederate flag on a county-owned fire ax has resulted in a 12-hour unpaid suspension, Channel 9 has learned. The ax was discovered at the scene of a house fire in Pine Hills. The report claims a black man who lived at the home that was burning was already upset about the fire at his home, so when a fire department lieutenant saw the ax with the flag painted on it, he told a supervisor about it and took it away before the homeowner saw it.

...three (tragic) stories and a legendary plane Few days ago, Dario Leone, a long time reader and a huge F-14 Tomcat fan, sent me an email to point out what he had noticed about the date Tony Scott, the famous director of “Top Gun”, chose to commit suicide. He had observed that Aug. 19 was the 31th anniversary of the day when two F-14s downed two Libyan fighters in 1981 (something that Scott, most probably, didn’t even know) and provided some interesting news about the fate of the two Tomcats involved in the dogfight and their crew members. “Top Gun...

...Supermarket chain says decision to remove the design followed tweets 'by a limited number of concerned customers' Aldi has removed T-shirts from its Australia Day range after the supermarket chain was accused of racism. Aldi advertised shirts which said “Australia Est 1788” to go on sale as part of its Australia Day range. The shirts drew criticism on Twitter where the supermarket was accused of racism for seeming to say Australia was only established after it was colonised in 1788, despite the existence of an Indigenous population before then. In a statement Aldi Australia said it had decided to remove...

Houston ISD bus drivers came together to support a coworker and to protest a move by the school district. Related Content More: Free ABC13 iPhone, iPad and Android apps More: Got a story idea? Let us know! Several drivers were reprimanded for praying with that coworker, after she lost a child. In response to that -- they're praying even more. On December 16, a 12-year-old girl was struck by a car as she walked home from school in north Harris County. She would later die from her injuries. She was the daughter of an HISD bus driver, whose coworkers rallied...

Groups of people often emulate flocks of sheep. Sheep are not politically correct, but political correctness appears to be a subset of herd behavior. In October of 2012 I wrote that Political Correctness is a Communicable Disease. Political correctness (also known as rhetorical cowardice) involves being less than candid, not only about various protected classes but also about unprotected classes. Protected classes include some but not all members of racial (Black, Latin American and American Indian but generally not Oriental) and religious (e.g., Muslim) minorities, gender specific (Feminist and “gay”) and ideological (Librul) groups. Unpleasant truths must not be tolerated. Pleasant truths sometimes...

I'm a moderator on a popular science and energy (global (skeptical) warming) website, and we find all sorts of "interesting" real-world trash and spam as it gets caught in the filters. Found this today - due to some unknown error on the part of the anonymous robotic writer pawing through the internet - and wanted all interested parties to see "how" a spam writer thinks, and "programs his/her computer to "randomly generate" spam comments. { {I have|I’ve} been {surfing|browsing} online more than {three|3|2|4} hours today, yet I never found any interesting article like yours. {It’s|It is} pretty worth enough for...

I have over 300 GB of high quality (256 and 320 MP3, and FLAC) digital audio in a hard drive on my home server.About forty feet away is my living room stereo, an old but quite decent sounding Technics receiver (which far predates the networking era) and floor-standing JBL speakers.What I would like to figure out is a way to get the latter to pull tunes from the former, via my wireless router.Is there a device that will read the server contents and feed them to my existing receiver's audio inputs?? What is it?? Or do I need to get...

Optimism is good and can often preserve sanity. However, excessive optimism led to disappointment in 2013 and worse seems likely in 2014.There are plenty of clowns, many of them in Washington. They are funny in weird ways but the giggles they produce suggest derision rather than pleasure.Political correctness = ideologically mandated conformityA&E's recent spasm of sanity was most likely due to its recognition of an impending reduction in its all-important bottom line. Accordingly, it decreed a temporary halt to that effort to mandate political correctness. It was only one battle and many more continue. What other forces of political correctness have decreed comparable...

Although most Americans claim to venerate the ideal of freedom of speech when it comes to actual practice there are few purists. Unfortunately, most so-called advocates of freedom of speech in America subscribe to four basic rules: 1) Revere freedom of speech when you agree with what is being said, and revile it when you don't 2) Don't gauge the offensiveness of speech by what was said, but by whether it supports or contradicts your political, religious, social, and/or economic agendas 3) Realize that your hypocrisy will be camouflaged by the failure or refusal of most people to engage their...

When I was a kid growing up in Detroit and Boston, there were multiple Christmas celebrations in public school. Everyone participated in the celebrations, including the Jews and the many individuals of Middle Eastern descent. Christmas carols were sung, presents were exchanged and food was consumed in a partylike atmosphere. There were very few people stoking the fires of sensitivity or trying to make everyone feel different. There’s nothing wrong with diversity, but there is also nothing wrong with unity and enjoying overarching fun and good will. When someone said “Merry Christmas,” it was regarded as a salutation of good...

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by my (imaginary) friend, the Very Honorable Ima Librul, Senator from the great State of Confusion Utopia. He is a founding member of CCCEB (Climate Change Causes Everything Bad), a charter member of President Obama’s Go For it Team, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Chairperson of both the Islamic Relations and Meretricious Relations Subcommittees. He is also justly proud of his expertise in the care and breeding of unicorns, for which his Save the Unicorns Foundation has received substantial Federal grants.  We are honored to have a post of this caliber by a...

Steve Martin is under fire for tweeting a racist joke and offending many of his fans on Twitter, though he did delete it himself and apologize immediately. The actor/comedian was having some fun on Twitter, answering questions about grammar rules, in what is one of his usual hilarious social media routines. Then, things took a bad turn. When one of the 68-year-old's followers when one asked him "Is this how you spell lasonia?" Martin then replied with this racially charged joke: "It depends. Are you in an African-American neighborhood or at an Italian restaurant?" As mentioned, Martin quickly took the...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Justine Sacco was fired because she told the politically incorrect, accurate truth about AIDS A company called InterActiveCorp just fired empoyee Justine Sacco because she tweeted the following:“Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”Before Sacco made that tweet, The New York Times reported:“The rate of AIDS among black women is 27 times the rate among white women.”This is precisely why math is the most politically incorrect academic subject. No matter how much the radical left wants to see “racism” where none exists – no matter how much they claim to be...

Church and State Church and State They must separate The ACLU says they're gonna sue Oh, boy. I can hardly wait. Passing by the court In a rural southern town I see a Creche and snort Vowing to take it down, oh... Church and State Church and State They must separate The ACLU says they're gonna sue Oh, boy. I can hardly wait.

My memory gets addled sometimes, so maybe I’m wrong about this. But didn’t it used to be the case that when politicians were caught out lying, they made some sort of shame-faced apology to the nation and begged for our forgiveness? I’m sure that was it, you know. So if I’m right, to judge by the case of our Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, things have turned precisely 180 degrees. Mr Grieve has just offered a full and unqualified apology for having told the truth. I thought that politicians were meant to do that — tell the truth? And what an...

<p>North American Aerospace Defense Command website showing Santa Claus delivering presents while flanked by fighter jets has some child advocates raising concerns about Saint Nick's new travel companions.</p> <p>NORAD Tracks Santa, operated by the joint U.S.-Canada command, has provided children with information about Santa's whereabouts since 1955. In recent years, Santa updates have included animated videos showing Santa on his flight path.</p>

Why does Santa need a fighter escort? Children's groups outraged as NORAD militarises Christmas Eve tracker • NORAD officials say the inclusion of jet fighters is a nod to the true mission of the agency - which is to track and intercept airborne threats Outraged child advocates are blasting NORAD's new 3D Santa Tracker program because it includes a fighter jet escort for jolly old Saint Nick. Some say the new online portrait could give kids the wrong impression about Santa Claus - associating him with the military and violence. But Pentagon officials argue the North American Aerospace Defense Command...

This one is truly a “man bites dog” story. Never before has a campaign for a seat on a local community college board mattered so much to so many, and we have Dave Wilson in Houston to thank for it. For Dave Wilson has proven that truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Dave Wilson would’ve made C. Thomas Howell’s character in the 1980s cult classic movie Soul Man proud. The Caucasian Wilson took a page right out of that movie’s controversial playbook by leading voters in a largely black district to believe he was also black in order to win...

• Racism controversy dampens Holland's Sinterklaas tradition Children across Europe eagerly await the arrival of St. Nicholas on December 6. But in Holland, the tradition has racist implications that the Dutch aren't quite willing to give up. For the Dutch, Sinterklaasavond (St. Nicholas Eve) on December 5 is the biggest celebration of the year - bigger than Christmas. That evening, families gather and exchange presents, and children leave out their shoes in the hopes that Sinterklaas will have fill them with candy by the next morning. What seems like a harmless holiday devoted to gifts, candy, and children, has a...