Free Republic

In Malcolm Gladwell’s review of Chris Anderson’s new book, “Free: The Future of a Radical Price,” he said that Apple will soon be making more money from iPhone downloads than it does from the iPhone itself. He said this to make a point that businesses can still be successful charging for content. But a quick glance at the iPhone’s numbers show that he may have been a little too hasty in his assertion. By “iPhone downloads,” Gladwell is probably referring to the software programs that people download from Apple’s App Store, which offers a selection of more than 50,000 applications,...

A class of fifth graders in California got a shocking crash course on the birds and the bees courtesy of their teacher and an X-rated home video she accidentally included in a DVD of classroom memories. The error was not caught until after the DVDs were distributed to the students and their families. Parents tell CBS 13 Sacramento that the woman is a good teacher who made an honest but embarrassing mistake. According to the station, the offending DVD starts with a menu screen that displays various school trips and functions. Click on one of them and "you see kids...

A post-launch examination of the Unha-2 By David Wright and Theodore A. Postol | 29 June 2009 Article Highlights * The launch vehicle North Korea tested on April 5, the Unha-2, represents a significant advance over North Korea's previous launchers. * In particular, it would have the capability to reach the continental United States with a payload of 1 ton or more if Pyongyang modified it for use as a ballistic missile. * However, if key Unha-2's components were acquired from Russia and elsewhere, North Korea's domestic missile development program may be much more limited than commonly assumed. North Korea...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFxvy9XyUtg&feature=channel_page How an Economy Grows and Why It Doesn't (by Irwin Schiff) It explains how the economic works in comic and easy to understand form Show this to your Socialist friends and challenge their thinking

Woman Attempts Plastic Surgery On Own Face Economy Causes More Attempts, Doctor Says Updated: 5:17 am PDT July 2, 2009 DUBLIN, Calif. -- An woman was recovering Wednesday following corrective surgery after she attempted to perform plastic surgery on her own face, KTVU-TV reported. Her doctor said the tough economy and the easy availability of supplies online has caused an uptick in the potentially disfiguring practice. The woman, who asked that her name not be used, is 54, a mother of three, with a career in the public eye. She said that after a visit to a plastic surgeon, she...

Rasmussen poll confirms Americans fear Obama gun control agenda By CCRKBA Thursday, July 2, 2009 BELLEVUE, WA – A new Rasmussen poll reveals that 57 percent of American citizens believe gun sales are up over the past several months because of widespread fears that the government will tighten restrictions on gun ownership. “The poll results confirm what we’ve been saying,” noted Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. “American citizens are fearful that the Obama administration and a Democrat-controlled Congress will pass new laws to further erode the individual right to own...

The most senior British officer to die in action since the Falklands has been killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, of the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, was commander of a Battle Group spearheading the fight against the Taliban. His command vehicle was blown up by an improvised explosives device. He is the most senior British officer to die in combat since Lieutenant Colonel 'H' Jones, commander of 2 Para, was shot dead by Argentine forces during the battle of Goose Green in the Falklands War of 1982. A soldier of the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment,...

So, it's the Fourth of July, and you're feeling a little more patriotic than usual. Sounds like a great time to buy a domestic car, right? Well, first you need to answer the question: "what is a domestic car?" Is a Chevy built in South Korea domestic, or how about a Hyundai assembled in Alabama? Since that debate is not likely to be settled anytime soon, we've decided to keep it simple and list the top 10 domestic cars based strictly on content, as compiled by the National Highway and Transportation Administration. Of course NHTSA's definition of "domestic" includes Canadian-sourced...

The largest retailer in the world made a surprise announcement this week. Wal-Mart said that that it supports the White House's proposed health care reform that would require employers to provide health insurance to their workers. Many companies including Wal-Mart—the nation's largest private employer—have long opposed a mandate in fear of the cost burden it could bring to their businesses. So why would Wal-Mart change its mind? A responsibility in my previous job was to develop the marketing strategy for our Wal-Mart efforts. The most important thing I learned about the retailer was that there isn't a manager at Wal-Mart...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Six Illinois banks and one bank in Texas were shuttered Thursday as government regulators proposed new rules for private equity firms seeking to take over failed banks. That brought the number of U.S. bank failures this year to 52. That's more than double the 25 which failed in all of 2008 and the three closed in 2007. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was appointed receiver of all seven. The total cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund from the seven closings will be $314.3 million, the FDIC said. The assets of most of the failed banks will be...

David Frum has done conservatives a great favor, and we should be thankful. The favor is not that he has written another negative piece about Gov. Palin. No, that's nothing new for Frum, who has been bashing the governor since she stepped up onto the national stage. Frum's gift to conservatives is that in the article, he clearly demonstrates why Vichy Republicans cannot be trusted to act in the GOP's best interests. Referencing Todd Purdum's VF hit piece which has caused such a stir, Frum itemizes Purdum's anti-Palin talking points from the VF smear job, and then he makes this...

Charges of rape and kidnapping have been dropped against a married father of two who got more than he bargained for during a romantic rendezvous in the mountains with a stripper. David Jansen was arrested after a pizza deliveryman stopped by his remote rented cabin in the Tennessee Smoky Mountains and saw a woman tied up on the couch mouthing, "Call 911." But Jansen claimed all along that the woman was his lover and that she was into bondage, his lawyers providing stacks of evidence that the two had been in a relationship for sometime. After news of the arrest...

Thin and seductive, that's what men find attractive in women. But the ladies are less in agreement over what makes for a hot guy, new research finds. The news is good for guys who might think they're not the hottest hunks. But it also means more competition for the hottest chicks, scientists say. "Men agree a lot more about who they find attractive and unattractive than women agree about who they find attractive and unattractive," said study researcher Dustin Wood, assistant professor of psychology at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. The study included more than 1,300 heterosexual men, about...

MANATEE — A resident of the Palmetto Point neighborhood came home Tuesday morning to find an intruder making off with his shotgun, but before the burglar could get away, the resident opened fire on him with another gun, according to the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office. Whether the intruder was hit was unknown, but deputies said the burglar got away with nothing. The incident started about 9:45 a.m. when a 61-year-old man came home to his residence in the 5200 block of Palmetto Point Drive, Palmetto. He entered through the front door and found an intruder wearing only black shorts and...

65-Year-Old Woman Faces Jail Time For Feeding Cats Amanda Peabody Published 07/02/2009 - 6:29 p.m. CST Katherine Varjian, 65, had been feeding feral cats, or felines that are not under her ownership, in her Beverly Hills neighborhood for the past 12 years. The Beverly Hills Municipal Court will now decide whether or not her actions are within the confines of the law. Varjian was feeding between 20 and 30 cats daily in the alley behind the 100-200 blocks of Palm, Maple and Oakhurst Drives. She was issued citations twice for this behavior – first in January of this year, then...

An American soldier who went missing from a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan was "sold" to a local militant group - which claims it will soon release a video of the captive and a list of demands, a U.S. military official said. "Our leaders have not decided on the fate of this soldier," said a commander with the Taliban's hard-line Haqqani faction, according to Agence-France Press. "They will decide on his fate and soon we will present video tapes of the coalition soldier and our demand to media."

YAKIMA, Wash. -- A teacher who sent a 5-year-old student home with a bag of feces in his backpack was issued a formal reprimand, according to a document released Thursday. The student at Apple Valley Elementary arrived home April 17 with a bagged up piece of human feces in his backpack and a note that read, "This little turd was on the floor in my room."

VETERAN newspaper columnist and editor Frank Devine has died. He was 77 years old. Friend and former New South Wales Opposition leader Peter Coleman, writing on The Australian website where Devine was a former columnist and editor, described him as the "laughing cavalier of Australian journalism". Devine had been editor of the Chicago Sun-Times and the New York Post, a senior editor at the American edition of Reader's Digest and editor-in-chief of the Australian Reader's Digest.

Yngwie Malmsteen - America Needs No Change An exclusive series of Living Legends Music interviews with Yngwie Malmsteen. Part 1 of 3. Recorded on November 2nd, 2008 at Burrito Boarder in St. Petersburg, FL. If you are not aware of who Yngwie is...do a Wiki or Google search. One of the most respected rock guitarists from the 1970s and 80s lays out what America really is to him coming from Europe.

I received an email today that contained these words of wisdom about our President: "Surely something must be terribly wrong with a man who seems to be far more concerned with a Jew building a house in Israel than with Muslims building a nuclear bomb in Iran." While true, the quote doesn't change the fact that the President's foreign policy priority is to ignore commitments made by the US Government and tell Israeli Jews where they can or cannot live. The evidence show that the operative part of the disagreement between Obama and the Israeli government (expansion of existing settlements)is...