Free Republic

A loyal dog whose owner died late last year has apparently been showing up for Mass every day for the last two months at the church where the funeral was held. Tommy, a 7-year-old German shepherd, used to accompany his owner, Maria Margherita Lochi, to services at Santa Maria Assunta church in San Donaci, Italy, according to the Daily Mail, and was allowed to sit at her feet. After Lochi died, the dog "joined mourners at her funeral service" according to locals and "followed after Maria's coffin" as it was carried into the church. Tommy, a stray who was adopted...

+ At the words "they arrived to carnage," the CNN Anderson Cooper report cuts to helicopter footage of seven police officers charging across a parking lot and toward a school. It is breaking news coverage of the Sandy Hook shooting just hours earlier. The three-minute report posted on the day of the shootings at the official CNN website is entitled "Tragedy Strikes at Elementary School." But the school is almost certainly not Sandy Hook. Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/341776#ixzz2IeFku7BJ

KALAMAZOO, MI -- What a difference four years make. In 2009, a reported 2,500 people crowded into Miller Auditorium to watch history being made as Barack Obama was sworn in as the first African-American president of the United States. On Monday, the auditorium looked very different. Just 30 people braved the blowing snow and unplowed roads to watch the inauguration ceremonies on a giant screen.

Once again the spotlight is on the Yen. Please consider Japan Learned to Love Deflation in Wage Malaise Facing BOJ

Like millions of Americans, and perhaps multiple millions around the globe, I watched the historic second presidential inauguration of Barak Hussein Obama. As I listened to his speech, which included a reference to his own version of of the greatness of America’s Civil Rights advancements, “We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall…”I was struck by the spectacle of the President of the United States, the man who...

This is absolute proof that 1)Michelle Obama is a Romulan agent and 2) she is no longer afraid of being exposed.

Today is Obama’s second swearing in, and despite what the Obama-adoring, Kool-Aid- drinking liberal mainstream media tells you, this is a day for sadness, not celebration. It's time to mourn for what Obama is doing to America....and even worse, for what he has planned for the next four years. The economy is in free-fall. Economists are suddenly all agreeing that Obama’s “solution” to the fiscal cliff—gigantic tax increases that are already taking big bites out of paychecks—will crater our projected economic growth for 2013. It’s bad out there, and getting worse every day. The fact is: We are in an...

— When would-be police enter training, they're taught to be prepared for just about anything. But it's a safe bet "naked drivers" don't show up anywhere on the academy syllabus. Sparta police say a drunken, seemingly confused and almost completely nude woman crashed into a home's stone retaining wall early Friday morning. At 12:53 a.m., a resident of Grove Terrace, in the Lake Mohawk section of the township, contacted police to say a white Volkswagen Jetta had just crashed into a stone retaining wall, then fled the scene, Sgt. John-Paul Beebe said.

During President Obama’s first term, the number of persons taking federal food stamps, formally known as the Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program (SNAP), increased by approximately 11,133 persons per day. When Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, the number of SNAP recipients was 31,939,110. By October 2012, the latest month reported, they had jumped to 47,525,329. That means the food stamp program grew by an of approximately 11,133 recipients per day from January 2009 to October 2012.

Public relations–wise, the gun-control movement could hardly have a worse champion than CNN’s Piers Morgan. He’s haughty, he’s self-righteous, and, worst of all, he’s foreign. For the Second Amendment freaks who see Barack Obama as suspiciously un-American, his government as potentially tyrannical, and themselves as heirs to the gun toters who shot their way to liberty at Lexington and Concord, what better foil than a modern-day gun confiscator who actually is English. For years, American conservatives have been calling American liberals wannabe Europeans. Now, with America witnessing its nastiest culture-war skirmish since Bill Clinton’s impeachment, the man helping to lead...

In Britain, defending your property can get you life. Celebrity news from the United Kingdom: In April, Germaine Greer, the Australian feminist and author of The Female Eunuch, was leaving her house in East Anglia, when a young woman accosted her, forced her back inside, tied her up, smashed her glasses, and then set about demolishing her ornaments with a poker. A couple of weeks before that, the 85-year-old mother of Phil Collins, the well-known rock star, was punched in the ribs, the back, and the head on a West London street, before her companion was robbed. “That’s what you...

The battle to demonize the National Rifle Association became a religious crusade when the Rev. Jim Wallis, CEO of Sojourners and “progressive” spiritual advisor to President Obama, convened some clergy for a witch trial. As a foreword, if you join the NRA, as about 250,000 folks have done in the past few weeks, you’ll be affirming your support for the Second Amendment, not the Nicene Creed. Wallis rounded up a posse of fellow progressive clergy for a press conference in Washington, DC on Jan. 15. Their heresy detector spiked after Wayne LaPierre, CEO and Executive Vice President of the NRA,...

Welfare has become a major political issue in the United Kingdom. During the 13 years when Labour was in power, it seems not to have occurred to most Britons that Labour’s open-door immigration policy, combined with the U.K.’s liberal welfare benefits, were likely to lead to abuse. Now, people are starting to notice. The Sun, a tabloid published in London, is the U.K.’s largest-selling newspaper. It focuses mainly on soccer and celebrities, but its news coverage, to the extent it exists, can be entertaining. This story sounds like something out of The Onion, but it evidently is legitimate. The Sun...

President Obama on Monday became the first American president to refer to gay rights in an inaugural address, drawing effusive praise from gay rights advocates for his strong embrace of the cause and reflecting how much his views have changed. “Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law,” the president said, “for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.” He invoked the Stonewall riots of 1969, a landmark event in the history of the gay rights...

Minority youth are more often arrested and in Washington state’s court system than their white counterparts, according to a recent study. Minority youth are arrested and in the Washington state court system more often than their white counterparts, a recent study commissioned by the state Supreme Court shows. But researchers said that counties aren’t keeping complete data on ethnicity and that the gap between minority and white youth is larger. Between 2007 and 2011, African-American youth were nearly 250 percent more likely to be referred to juvenile court for prosecution than their white counterparts. They are followed by Native-American youth,...

As President Barack Obama was sworn in ceremonially for a second term Monday, the early primary state of South Carolina hosted a man who may vie to succeed him. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is the Inauguration Day guest at the Charleston Meeting, a South Carolina-based conservative power event hosted by businessman Mallory Factor. The event is an offshoot of the Monday Meeting, a regular conservative gathering Factor helped launch in New York. A top Paul adviser confirmed his attendance at the meeting. The first-term Republican will also speak to the media this afternoon. Factor was among those who traveled with...

President Barack Obama believes, as he put it in his third debate with Republican challenger Mitt Romney, that though we have fewer ships than we did in 1916...we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater.... The question is not a game of Battleship, where we're counting ships. It's what are our capabilities.  Yes, the army's horses have been superseded by tanks and helicopters, and its bayonets rendered mainly ceremonial by armor and long-range automatic fires,...

Nobody knows how it happened: an indoor housecat who got lost on a family excursion managing, after two months and about 200 miles, to return to her hometown.Even scientists are baffled by how Holly, a 4-year-old tortoiseshell who in early November became separated from Jacob and Bonnie Richter at an R.V. rally in Daytona Beach, Fla., appeared on New Year’s Eve — staggering, weak and emaciated — in a backyard about a mile from the Richters’ house in West Palm Beach.“Are you sure it’s the same cat?” wondered John Bradshaw, director of the University of Bristol’s Anthrozoology Institute. In other...

FYI : "Twenty Justice and Peace makers stood in protest outside the main gate at the sprawling 133,000-acre military Pohakuloa Training Area (PTA) from 10 AM till noon, located in the center of Hawaii island. The main theme of the protest was to stop the bombing and ground the drones at PTA[snip]in opposition to continuing military desecration of the land. Among those who joined in protest[snip]along with retired Army Colonel and former State Department Diplomat, Ann Wright." The group has a replica of a Reaper drone from Know Drones. For more information, contact Jim Albertini ja@malu-aina.org 966-7622 at the Malu...

The Pollster Shepard was talking to said.. the polls aren't there. People don't support any type of ban on guns or ammunition. Shep: "Polls? Polls? We can't go by polls. If we did we would still have slavery!"