Free Republic

Apparently, when the President was in South Korea, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak handed him a dobok (Taekwon-do outfit) and presented him with a blackbelt. This is an honor that takes the average student at least a year and a half. It took me around two years for my first degree of blackbelt and ten years to achieve my current rank of fourth degree blackbelt. The original Taekwon-do started by General Choi splintered into two main groups: the World Tae Kwon Do Federation(WTF) and the International Tawkwon-do Federation (ITF). I belong to the ITF, which is the traditional group and...

Sheriff's office broken into over the weekend An investigation is underway after someone broke into a Kentucky sheriff's office. Sometime over the weekend…someone entered the Whitley County Sheriff’s Office office….and police say a crime was committed. (My emphasis) “We got the call yesterday that the Whitley county Sheriff’s office had been burglarized,” said KSP Trooper Don Trosper. The question remains how the thief or thieves got past the courthouse’s main entrance…through the door into the department…and then into Sheriff Lawrence Hodge’s personal office. “It’s ongoing….Det. (Billy) Correll began the investigation yesterday..so it’s still in its infancy,” said Trosper. Detective Correll...

Columbus-Bound Flight Delayed By Otters Wednesday, December 23, 2009 6:23 AM Updated: Wednesday, December 23, 2009 7:10 AM Video Print Story E-mail Story COLUMBUS, Ohio — A Continental Airlines flight from Houston to Columbus was delayed for more than an hour Tuesday night after otters making the trip in the plane's cargo hold escaped their cages and made a break for freedom. The otters were apparently being unloaded from the plane in Houston when they managed to get loose. "People thought it was a joke at first, I think," a passenger said. Another passenger said an otter made its way...

FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) -- The parents who carried out the balloon boy hoax were sentenced to jail Wednesday and given strict probation conditions that forbid them from earning any money from the spectacle for four years. Richard Heene was sentenced to 90 days in jail, including 60 days of work release that will let him pursue his job as a construction contractor while serving his time. His wife, Mayumi, was sentenced to 20 days in jail.....

Teens who listen to music that mentions marijuana are significantly more likely to use the drug, a new study finds. The research was based on surveys with 959 ninth-graders. "Students who listen to music with the most references to marijuana are almost twice as likely to have used the drug than their peers whose musical tastes favor songs less focused on substance use,"... "Interestingly, we also found that exposure to marijuana in music was not associated with other high-risk behaviors, such as excessive alcohol consumption," Primack said. "This suggests that there is a real link between the marijuana lyrics and...

Despite reports that the Obama White House Christmas Tree is festooned with decorations of Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse Tung and a drag queen, those with a knowledge of dendrology believe the story to be Christmas Fool’s joke on conservatives. News of the Obama Administration’s White House Christmas Tree decorated with Communist and alternative-lifestyle ornaments has been carried by conservative media outlets Big Government and Fox News. The fact that Simon Doonan, who has used the famous Christmas window at Barney’s New York to make his left-wing political feelings known, was chosen to decorate the White House tree this year...

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. (AP) -- Necklaces and Christmas ornaments made from dime-sized pieces of reindeer droppings have earned a Bloomington, Ill., zoo nearly $21,000 this holiday season. The Miller Park Zoological Society made about $5,000 selling reindeer-dropping ornaments last year. It added necklaces this year when customers asked if jewelry was available.....

LONDON, A London scientist has authored a paper arguing angels as classically depicted, mostly-human forms with wings, would be unable to fly. Professor Roger Wotton of University College London wrote in his paper, which was published by the school's Opticon magazine, that human-appearing angels with feathered bird-like wings would not be able to use the wings for flight, The Daily Telegraph reported Tuesday. "Even a cursory examination of the evidence in representational arts shows that angels and cherubs cannot take off and cannot use powered flight," Wotton wrote. "And even if they used gliding flight, they would need to be...

A Galt teen is back home for the holidays after the successful, seven-month-long treatment of a brain tumor that was only discovered after he made a dangerous mistake before school one day. He passed out and was rushed to the emergency room to be treated for alcohol poisoning, and a CT scan at the UC Davis Medical Center revealed a tumor in the brain of the unsuspecting eighth grader.

PETA Agrees With Pope That Environment Should Be Taken Seriously and Calls On His Holiness to Lead by ExampleFor Immediate Release: December 22, 2009Contact:Bruce Friedrich 757-622-7382Washington -- This morning, PETA sent a letter to Pope Benedict XVI commending him for his statement in which he linked world peace to preserving the environment and urging him to lead by example by going vegan and serving only vegan meals in Vatican City, including at the papal residence. The pope's statement for the World Day of Peace, which will be observed on January 1, called for "[moving] beyond a purely consumerist mentality." In...

WARREN, Mich. - Police in Michigan said a man with a 5-inch knife lodged in his chest walked into a restaurant , called 911, ordered coffee and sat down to wait for paramedics. Warren police said the 52-year-old man told the 911 operator he had been stabbed in Warren and walked half a mile to Bray's Hamburgers in Hazel Park to use the telephone, WDIV-TV, Detroit, reported Tuesday. Restaurant employees said the man then sat down and ordered a coffee while waiting for the ambulance. "It was like out of a movie," said George Mirdita, an employee at the restaurant....

Epic sci-fi crap typically ain't my cup of tea. I get a lot of angry e-mails from people whose bottle of Mountain Dew it is. The notes are usually pretty threatening, as though me not liking something these people love is a matter of utmost importance. As though the fact some as***le with a web site doesn't care for what they do threatens the substance of their passion. My nephew Jimmy is one of these people. He is spurred to action only when someone insults the s**t he likes. Then, his first reaction is to insult whomever doesn't share his...

To be honest, the only things we’ve ever thought banana peels were good for were to fill the compost and to make people fall. Then we came across these genius ways to reuse the slippery guys…

  MEMPHIS, TN (WMC-TV) - A Memphis attorney has admitted to biting off part of a man's nose during a confrontation at a popular Midtown restaurant.According to a lawsuit filed by Greg Herbers, Mark Lambert bit off and swallowed part of his nose during a dispute last June at Dish on South Cooper Street.Lambert is a trial attorney with the Cochran Firm.      The incident at Dish began in the men's room when Herbers became annoyed because the urinal and stalls were occupied.Herbers says two men were together inside the same stall. He says Lambert carried on a conversation with...

The "Arbeit macht frei" sign stolen from Auschwitz in southern Poland has been found in the north and five men are being questioned by police. The five suspects, aged in their 20s and 30s, were not members of a neo-Nazi group, Krakow police said. The metal sign from the main gate, which symbolises for many the atrocities of Nazi Germany, had been cut into three pieces, they added. A major search was launched after the sign was stolen before dawn on Friday. Andrzej Rokita, the local police chief in Krakow - where the men were being questioned - said the...

COPS are hunting a pervert who smelt a supermarket worker's BUM at least 20 times. The bespectacled man, who is around 40, repeatedly sneaked up behind a 20-year-old employee on consecutive weekends. CCTV footage shows the 5ft 9in balding ginger weirdo pretending to pick items off shelves before crouching behind the shelf stacker. With his face near his victim's bum, he seemed to be taking a sniff - and once got so close his nose touched the man. The unnamed Co-op worker, of Plymouth, Devon, said: "I thought it was all a bit strange. I was shocked and couldn't believe...

A Greek man dressed in animal hide was mistakenly shot dead while out hunting wild boar for a Christmas dinner.

Need help identifying the following snow tracks: This is the third time I have found some strange animal tracks on my land. I live in western pa, 25 miles from Pittsburgh in the land of murrymom. The area is rural on the edge of suburban development. These tracks I photographed (iPhone) while snow blowing. The gate is 6 to 8 feet and the single track may be a double paw print. The single track is larger than my hand. The tracks entered my property near a wood pile (breaking a five wire electric fence) and traveled over two hundred feet...

BULLHEAD CITY - Police believe a 40-year-old woman swallowed a $3,000 diamond ring she was allegedly attempting to steal from Feil Jewelers Friday afternoon. Sandee Lynn Sisemore was arrested on suspicion of theft and possession of prescription drugs at the store, located at 2107 Highway 95. She was taken to the Mohave County Jail in Kingman. Reviewing surveillance video, Bullhead City police found Sisemore had replaced the ring with a fake one, stamped “China.” She also had two other fake rings and some fake IDs in her possession, according to police spokesman Lt. Jerry Duke. Police were unable to locate...

Will America escape such an onslaught? Hardly. There are sleeper cells throughout the nation as well as Muslim killer camps training Islamic devotees how to slit the throats of infidels. Homeland Security knows this in detail. Yet when Homeland Security is contacted by grassroots, no replies. Could Homeland Security side up to terrorist sleeper cells? Add to this the Marxist Muslim and wife seated in the White House. They were brainwashed against “white values” and Jews (“monkeys” and “pigs” labeled them by Jeremiah Wright, cultic leader of Trinity United Church of Christ) over twenty years. Michelle promises that the United...

Do you want the unique baby accessories for your baby? Well, this one is pretty unique. As you can see this is stainless steel baby accessories, includes toys, walker, cradle and many other. I didn’t saw something weird and bizarre in the last time, you must be weird person to make buy some of these. But you are not going to be in opportunity to buy something like this, those stainless steel are only art examples.

OYSTER CREEK, Texas—Officials are on the lookout for a Bengal tiger in Brazoria County. No joke. Police say a man recently reported spotting a tiger near the Buc-ee’s at FM 523 and Highway 332. That’s close to the town of Oyster Creek. Game wardens with Texas Parks and Wildlife have been searching the area, even using special goggles equipped with night vision in a bid to find the big cat. Authorities said they haven’t actually spotted the animal, nor have they found any tracks or other signs of it. Still, the chief of police in Oyster Creek wants his officers...

In these troubled economic times, when money is scarce for many people, it's important that we remind ourselves, and our loved ones, that the holiday season is not about buying things. Then we and our loved ones can enjoy a hearty laugh, because, of COURSE the holiday season is about buying things. Now more than ever, the U.S. retail economy depends on consumers spending money they don't actually have on gifts that nobody actually needs. That is the thinking behind the federal government's recently passed $783-billion Emergency Holiday Retail Stimulus Act, which will be used to purchase, among other things,...

On December 18, the English edition of Russia’s Pravda newspaper ran a story on a pyramid UFO sighting over the Kremlin, Moscow that day. The report cited amateur videos taken of the sighting by hundreds of cell phones. The only problem was that the pyramid UFO actually appeared on December 9, the same day of the mysterious Norway Spiral Lights, and one day before President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize speech. Was it simply a mistake or was Pravda deliberately trying to confuse the public over the Moscow sighting reported 9 days earlier by various Russian and Western media sources? More...

“We were devastated as a family. We were destroyed,” says Séamus T. “We went to court expecting some compassion. The system is upside down and backwards. The judge was worried about the rapists staying in school, getting evaluated, getting counselling and transportation. Everything is lavished on them. Nobody knocked on my door and said, ‘I’ll show you through the system’.” Séamus T’s appeals to first lady Michelle Obama, Maryland governor Martin O’Malley and state attorney John McCarthy have gone unanswered. He was treated with kindness by the Irish Embassy, which promised to intervene if he felt he was not being...

OTTAWA, Kan. A young girl and her family are calling a local man their “Superman” after he lifted a car off of her in an accident early Friday morning. Nick Harris, 32, was dropping off his daughter, 8-year-old Cheyenne, at Eugene Field Elementary school shortly before 8 a.m. when he saw the incident unfolding on Tremont Avenue — a driver backing her vehicle out of a driveway who was about to hit a student. “I was getting ready to pull the emergency brake when I looked up and saw the vehicle backing over her,” Harris said. “I didn’t even think....

"Everyone loves a good road movie, whether it's Hope and Crosby or Fonda and Hopper. But the scope of those films pales in comparison to the ground covered by the Hayden Planetarium's new video, The Known Universe. The video starts in Tibet and zooms out through time and space until it shows well, the entire known universe. The video, created for the new Rubin Art Museum exhibit Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, uses over a decade of data collected by researchers at the planetarium. Called the Digital Universe Atlas, the data encompasses the...

A short-sleeved squabble ended suddenly Thursday when Town East Mall security raided a kiosk and seized a stash of T-shirts that had southeast Dallas business owners up in arms. Half an hour after the raid, a half-dozen Pleasant Grove business owners gathered at the Southeast Dallas Chamber of Commerce and celebrated a medium-sized victory. In the center of the room, draped across the back of a chair like a pelt, was one of the vanquished T-shirts: "Welcome to Pleasant Grove," it read – below a silkscreen image of a man tossing a body into the trunk of an old Buick....

A 26-year-old man was arrested Thursday on accusations that he tried to pick up a fake prescription with a stolen check. William E. Fenner, no address available, was charged with obtaining narcotics by fraud and forgery. Johnson City police said Fenner went to a local pharmacy and attempted to pick up a fraudulent prescription that had been called in by someone using the name of a local doctor. Fenner also tried using a stolen check to pay for the medication, police said. He was jailed in the Washington County Detention Center

A U.K. man has been jailed for three years for killing his wife by throwing a television remote control at her head... Paul Harvey, 46, killed Gloria Laguna by a fluke chance after the remote struck her on a weak artery near her neck. The couple had been arguing when Harvey lost his temper at his wife, a former American diplomat in India. An argument started about maintenance which Harvey was paying to a stepdaughter from a previous marriage.

A controversial Christmas billboard which was vandalised will be resurrected today by the church which put it up. The Auckland billboard shows a deflated looking Joseph and a disappointed Mary lying in bed together, with the caption "Poor Joseph, God was a hard act to follow." It was put up by Auckland's progressive Christian church St Matthew in the City. The vicar says he wanted to lampoon the literal Christian conception story and get people discussing miracles and God. But a few hours after the billboard went up, an angry man with a pot of brown paint covered over Mary...

A former South Dakota lawmaker convicted of raping his two foster daughters has sent news organizations what he claims is a copyright notice that seeks to prevent the use of his name without his consent. A letter and an accompanying document labeled "Common Law Copyright Notice" said former state Rep. Ted Alvin Klaudt is reserving a common-law copyright of a trade name or trademark for his name. It said no one can use his name without his consent, and anyone who does would owe him $500,000. Klaudt was convicted in 2007 on four counts of second-degree rape for touching his...

12/18/2009 Crash of the Year New Penalties Facing Church Roof Flier? In January, David E. managed to drive his station wagon into the roof of a church 23 meters off the ground. Now, he may be in trouble again. For a television re-enactment, he got behind the wheel of a car -- possibly in violation of his driver's license suspension. His year didn't start well. In late January, David E. made headlines in Germany and beyond when he managed to crash his Skoda Octavia station wagon into the roof of a church some seven meters (23 feet) off the ground....

A giant triangular UFO was spotted hovering over the Kremlin in Moscow – in a film that has sent shockwaves throughout Russia. The flying object, which witnesses said could be up to a mile wide, was filmed by two amazed spectators – one at night from a car and another during the day. The hovering pyramid has been likened to Darth Vader’s Imperial Cruiser in Star Wars and has been showed repeatedly on Russian news channels. A clip of the UFO, which reportedly hovered over Moscow’s Red Square for hours, has become a Russian YouTube sensation. Nick Pope, who worked...

I keep thinking about our president’s hilarious Special Olympics remark on “The Tonight Show,” and I’m actually taking it personally. I’m not developmentally disadvantaged, exactly. Or mentally challenged. But I do kind of suck at bowling (not as bad as Obama). Plus, I’m lousy at tennis, embarrassing at basketball, can’t catch a pop fly to save my life, never played actual golf, etc. I have recently come to realize that I hate skiing. I used to be halfway decent at ping pong, but probably not anymore. Last week, when I filled out an NCAA bracket, I did so purely in...

VideoA drunken Santa Claus prompts a mom to call 911 after he stumbles into her yard apparently looking for his reindeer and scaring her kids. Officers ticketed 55-year-old Thomas Arnold of Sparta for having an open beer in a car. The man driving that car, 47-year-old Kevin Arnold, was arrested for OWI. But, the kids say they knew right away this Santa was a hoax. "He smelled like alcohol. So I knew it wasn't the real Santa because Santa doesn't drink alcohol," says 9-year-old Katie Dockerty. Katie says the Santa that ended up in her lawn was loud and had...

A cow has been caught jumping six feet on to a roof, after the owners thought they had been burgled. Neighbour William de Cothi, 17, photographed the animal after he spotted it on the roof about six feet off the ground. The Sixth Form student said: "I was looking out of my window when I saw the cow. "At first I thought that it was an illusion and that it was in the background and not really on the roof. "But after a closer look I could see it was actually on the roof." The teenager added: "I have heard...

As a joke, my brother used to hang a pair of panty hose over his fireplace before Christmas. He said all he wanted was for Santa to fill them. What they say about Santa checking the list twice must be true because every Christmas morning, although Jay's kids' stockings were overflowed, his poor pantyhose hung sadly empty. One year I decided to make his dream come true. I put on sunglasses and went in search of an inflatable love doll. They don't sell those things at Walmart. I had to go to an adult bookstore downtown. If you've never been...

PARIS - Many people love horses and traditionally, many French people have loved them even more with a side of salad. That passion, however, has slowed to a trickle in the last couple of years as crisis-hit French consumers buy less meat and years of campaigning by animal rights groups take effect. Looking to ram home their advantage, campaigners have launched a pre-Christmas blitz in Paris featuring posters of riding school ponies and graceful yearlings aimed at rending the hardest of hearts. "Every year in France, riding school horses like Caramel are sent to the abattoir," says one poster by...

A British family said their missing cat was discovered on a ferry that traveled to Spain and was treated to a luxury ride home in a $434 cabin. Tim and Patricia Austin , both 67, of Portsmouth, England, said their cat, Sandi, disappeared after they let him outside Thursday night and he did not return as usual in the morning, The Sun reported Wednesday. The couple said they received a phone call four days later informing them Sandi had been found hiding beneath a truck on the P&O Pride of Bilbao ferry as it was being unloaded in Bilbao, Spain....

An unholy row has broken out in New Zealand over a church billboard aimed at "challenging stereotypes" about the birth of Jesus Christ. A dejected-looking Joseph lies in bed next to Mary under the caption, "Poor Joseph. God was a hard act to follow". St Matthew-in-the-City Church in Auckland, which erected the billboard, said it had intended to provoke debate. But the Catholic Church, among others, has condemned it as "inappropriate" and "disrespectful". Within hours of its unveiling, the billboard had been defaced with brown paint. The church's vicar, Archdeacon Glynn Cardy, said the aim of the billboard had been...

Who am I?                                                                            Read the description, then click on the question mark at the right to see if you guessed right! I was born in one country, raised in another. My father was born in another country. I was not his only child. He fathered several children with numerous women. I became very close to my mother, as my father showed no interest in me. My mother died at an early age from cancer. Although my father deserted me and my mother raised me, I later wrote a book idolizing my father not my mother. Later in life,...

Lithium in the Water Supply: America has been adding fluoride to its public water supplies for decades to help prevent reduce tooth decay. Now researchers from Japan suggests expanding the list to lithium.

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's opposition Liberal Party has taken down from its website a doctored photo of Lee Harvey Oswald being shot and killed in which Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper's face was substituted for Oswald's. A Liberal official said on Tuesday the assassination picture, submitted as part of a photo contest in connection with the Copenhagen climate talks, should never have been there. The party on Tuesday also took down another doctored photo of Harper with his fist in a cow's posterior, which it had offered as one of the "best seven" depicting where Harper would rather be than...

WILMINGTON, N.C. — The body of an elderly woman remained in her bed for up to eight months even though caretakers paid daily visits to the house and kept it tidy, authorities said Wednesday. Sheriff's deputies were investigating the suspicious death of Blanche Matilda Roth after the corpse was found in her suburban home in Wilmington, on the Atlantic coast, on Tuesday following a call to authorities.

A committed UFO hunter from Cardiff in Wales is has been able capture some truly amazing images of UFOs using recording equipment with night vision capabilities. The film below is one example, clearly showing an intriguing UFO darting across the screen. The UFO hunter, Robert, writes regarding this film that: 'Don't know what to say to this?, all i can say is that this was my first capture of the evening and just setting up when i saw this come into view on my night vision optics, i could not see it without the aid of my device or could...

Here in Kenya, not one mosque was burned down, but hundreds of churches were burned down, some with people in them, burned alive.

A Yale freshman who called himself the Dauphin is believed to have terrorized his peers with death threats, ritualistic vandalism, and a hit and run accident. Among his rumored loot: Secret society video footage, which has since surfaced on YouTube. The video, uploaded by new YouTube user Dauphinish and caught first by IvyGate, looks like it could belong the vaunted secret society that counts three generations of Bushes as its members. Unfortunately, vaunted secret societies don't really have publicists, so it's hard to confirm. (Yalies, take a stab in comments?) There are gothic