Free Republic

Aquatic animals that feed on lake and stream bottom sediments burp out small amounts of nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas, a new study finds. While the biological emissions from these critters pales in comparison to the nitrous oxide emitted by fossil fuel burning, their contribution could increase as more and more nitrogen-rich fertilizer runs off into lakes, streams and seas, the authors of the study said. Nitrous oxide (N2O) is more commonly known to anyone who has sat in the dentist's chair as laughing gas. In the atmosphere it is a powerful greenhouse gas, packing about 310 times the...

[video] Crotchety, caustic David Letterman had CBS News anchor Katie Couric howling with laughter when he called Rush Limbaugh a “bonehead.” The late night loser then said Limbaugh looked like an “East European gangster.” Couric joined the in the fun and delivered this rib tickler, “So much for my interview with Rush.” Can someone tell us why either of these two are still paid millions of dollars a year? Letterman was once unpredictable and inventive, but those days are long gone. Couric was once…well…we don’t really remember what her claim to fame was. It’s sad to see what happens to...

President Obama won the presidency by promising to be a different, more substantive, less gimmicky leader. He said he would not waste our time on "phony outrage," like fulminations on the meaning of "lipstick on a pig," or silly characters like "Joe The Plumber," a guy who was actually named Samuel and was not even a licensed plumber. No, Obama said he was going to solve problems instead. Now that he is in the White House, he still makes this case, almost every day. On Wednesday morning, during an address about contracting reforms, he referred dismissively to the "chatter on...

Peter Schiff: ”The US economy is broke. We borrowed trillions of dollars and we used all that money to finance consumption and we don’t have anything to show for it. We don’t have real factories. We didn’t take the money the Japanese and Saudis loaned us and build factories so we can export products to pay off that debt. We spent all the money on TV sets , on SUVs , on re-modeling our kitchens. We can’t pay it back . That’s why all these entities are collapsing. That’s why Wall street is in so much trouble because they engineered...

Arctic sea ice growth finished the year in 2008 at the same level as 1979.The oceans have been cooling since 2003.Sea ice is growing at the fastest pace on record.Greenland's glaciers are stabilizing.There are growing fears of a coming freeze worse than the ice age.Alaskan Sea Glaciers are advancing for the first time in 250 years.And, for the second straight year the Earth is, in fact, cooling... not warming.This US Climate Map October 2007-November 2008 showed that temperatures were well below normal throughout the US in 2008. It looks like Al Gore was a bit off in his prediction...

An asteroid measuring about 30m across has zipped past the Earth, just 60,000km from its surface and inside the moon's orbit.

AP MOSCOW – If you're inclined to believe Igor Panarin, and the Kremlin wouldn't mind if you did, then President Barack Obama will order martial law this year, the U.S. will split into six rump-states before 2011, and Russia and China will become the backbones of a new world order. Panarin might be easy to ignore but for the fact that he is a dean at the Foreign Ministry's school for future diplomats and a regular on Russia's state-guided TV channels. And his predictions fit into the anti-American story line of the Kremlin leadership. "There is a high probability that...

Who are the top offenders when it comes to requesting the most earmarks? You may be surprised to learn that three of the top five, and eight of the top 20, are Republicans -- including GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who ranks ninth with $51.19 million in earmark requests. Here are the top 20 earmarks solicitors in the Senate, based on dollar amount of individual earmark requests in the omnibus spending bill:

European banks face a US dollar “funding gap” of almost $2 trillion as a result of aggressive expansion around the world and may have difficulties rolling over debts, according to a report by the Bank for International Settlements. The BIS said European and British banks have relied on an “unstable” source of funding, borrowing in their local currencies to finance “long positions in US dollars”. Much of this has to be rolled over in short-term debt markets. The currency mismatch has become a potential risk for banks as the dollar continues to climb against the euro and Swiss franc, and...

As Gov. Bobby Jindal began to offer a Republican response, it became apparent that he would be no match with Barack Obama in the soaring-oratory department. The Republicans really should have tried a gimmick instead. Perhaps Jindal could have walked on and said, "Today, the president held what he called a fiscal responsibility summit." He could then afford a wide smile, knowing his audience had erupted in laughter. Honestly, now: Are we quite ready finally to declare the Era of Obama As Fiscally Conservative is over? Last year, Republicans warned that Barack Obama was ultraliberal — a socialist, in fact...

Fears of a new European energy crisis are after masked gunmen from Ukraine's intelligence agency stormed the headquarters of the state gas company in a raid that could throw relations with Russia back into crisis. The attack on the Kiev offices of Naftogaz was connected to a long-running dispute between Viktor Yushchenko, the Ukrainian president, and his prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, over the control of the country's energy industry. Government officials gave warning that it could lead to a Saturday deadline to pay Russia £284â million for gas delivered to Ukraine in February being missed. Millions of European consumers were...

Democrats may be running the House, but the National Rifle Association (NRA) can still stop a bill in its tracks. House Democratic leaders on Tuesday pulled legislation from the floor that seemingly had nothing to do with guns because the NRA disliked it. The bill in question would give the District of Columbia a voting member of Congress. The gun-rights lobby prefers a Senate version, which includes language amending the District’s gun policies, and some suggest the NRA could make life difficult for conservative Democrats if that language is not included in the House version. There was no official call...

TCM honors Ronald ReaganBy Hal BoekekerMarch 4, 2009 Before he made it big in Washington, President Ronald Reagan did pretty well in Hollywood. So well, in fact, that TCM has named Reagan its Star of the Month and will play 31 of his films on Wednesday nights in March. "I didn't remember he had done all these movies," daughter Patti Davis says. "I think it will make people say there was a whole life before politics. He was made fun of for the movie with the monkey, but he was a working actor." That movie with the monkey was Bedtime...

In his address to Congress last week, President Obama acknowledged the vital role entrepreneurs play in our economy when he said that the answers to our problems lie at least partially "in the imaginations" of these enterprising souls. Later in the speech he announced a new loan fund designed to help finance "entrepreneurs who keep this economy running." A few days later, however, the President released a new budget with sharply higher tax rates for upper-income households, which will ultimately mean higher taxes on entrepreneurial earnings, and higher taxes on the capital that finances startups. Entrepreneurs who heard what the...

We know the reason Robin Williams postponed all four performances of his one-man show in Florida: Sources say he's currently at a Miami hospital with heart issues and could be laid up for a while. Williams, 57, has been on his ''Weapons of Self Destruction'' tour since September.

During the February 27th Tea Party Protest at the state capitol, there was much sentiment and agreement for another demonstration on April 15th.That's a great day, symbolically, but would a demonstration on the weekend be better?Your opinions please. It's time to organize!

Olbermann relentlessly attacked low-level Bush administration employee Monica Goodling for not going to a name-dropping college, saying -- approximately 1 million times -- that she got her law degree "by sending 100 box tops to Religious Lunatic University." I would venture to say that the students at Goodling's law school at Regent University are far more impressive than those at the Cornell agriculture school -- the land-grant, non-Ivy League school Keith attended. I wouldn't mention it, except that Olbermann savages anyone who didn't go to an impressive college. As it happens, he didn't go to an impressive college, either. If...

China budgets record-high fiscal deficit (Xinhua) Updated: 2009-03-05 09:22 Comments(0) PrintMail China announced Thursday a fiscal deficit budget of 950 billion yuan ($139 billion) for 2009, a record high in six decades, as the country boosts spending to cushion the impact of the global financial crisis. The total deficit accounts for less than 3 percent of China's gross domestic product (GDP), according to the text of a report of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao distributed to the media before the opening of the parliament's annual session Thursday morning. Despite the deficit surge, China's constant deficit drops in previous years provide room...

A.N.S.W.E.R. will be in D.C. once again this March 21, 2009 for their march on the Pentagon. Gathering of Eagles/Eagle Up will already have Eagles watching over the various Military Monuments and recruiter stations. If you want to help in this endeavor, contact concretebob. But if you want to help protect the sanctity of Arlington Cemetery, we will be there. FreeRepublic, along with any one who will join us, will once again occupy an area on the Virginia side of the Memorial Bridge on the south side of Arlington Circle. DATE: Saturday, March 21 TIME: 11:30AM to 4PM PLACE: South...

Congress saw the terror attack on Sri Lankan cricketers in Lahore as irrefutable evidence Pakistan lapsing into a failed state and warned that unless the trends were arrested, the neighbouring country could fast become the Somalia of south Asia. Condemning the attack, the party on Tuesday said the international community should take note of the development. "It is now for everyone to see how to dismantle the terror structure in Pakistan," party spokesman Manish Tiwari said at a media briefing. Quoting former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, he said Pakistan had become a "migraine" for the international community. He...