Free Republic

You’ve probably heard that Big Guy needs a new secretary. So why did Steve Kroft invite him to come on the 60 Minutes show with his old secretary – and not even ask him if he’s posted the opening yet?     60 Minutes? 60 Minutes the premier “investigative journalism” program? What are they investigating? The role of the U.S. in the rise of the Arab Spring? The U.S. role in the resurgence of al Qaeda in the Middle East?  The State Department’s complicity in Fast and Furious, the failed plan to get guns out of the hands of bitter...

Bear walks in on a camera crew filming a commercial....(samsung)

DENVER — Colorado’s two Democratic senators are pushing back at a Denver Post story Thursday that reported they are waffling on supporting legislation to ban assault weapons due to political concerns. In December, roughly a week after the Newtown shooting that killed 20 first-graders, Sen. Mark Udall and Sen. Michael Bennettold FOX31 Denver that they wanted to see a new ban on assault weapons. “I’ve come to the conclusion that military style weapons really don’t have any place in our society,” Udall said. “We ought to reinstate the assault weapons ban that served us well for 10 years from 1994...

Hacktivist group Anonymous took control of the U.S. Sentencing Commission website Friday, January 25 in a new campaign called "Operation Last Resort." The first attack on the website was early Friday morning. The second - successful - attack came around 9pm PST that evening. anonymous By 3am PST ussc.gov was down (it has since been dropped from the DNS), yet as of this writing the IP address (66.153.19.162) still returns the defaced site's contents. It appears that via the U.S. government website, Anonymous had distributed encrypted government files and left a statement on the website that de-encryption keys would be...

WASHINGTON — When Mark Takano ran unsuccessfully for Congress twice in the early 1990s, his opponents tried to smear him as a “homosexual liberal” and a “nutzoid.” One of them even had pink fliers printed that asked, “A Congressman for Riverside ... Or San Francisco?” When he ran again last year, he won by almost 20 points. “Flash forward 18 years,” Mr. Takano said recently, “and the very macho building tradesmen are behind me. I’m getting pictures with them in their hard hats.” For decades, the words “gay” and “Congress” were usually seen together only in stories of scandal and...

A federal court delivered a serious blow to the Environmental Protection Agency’s renewable fuel agenda, ruling that the agency exceeded its authority by mandating refiners use cellulosic biofuels, which isn’t commercially available. The court sided with the country’s chief oil and gas lobby, the American Petroleum Institute, in striking down the 2012 EPA mandate that would have forced refineries to purchase more than $8 million in credits for 8.65 million of gallons of the cellulosic biofuel. However, none of the biofuel is commercially available. “[W]e agree with API that EPA’s 2012 projection of cellulosic biofuel production was in excess of...

Bears re-reading as Obama begins his Second Assault upon the United States. ==================================================== Yeah, that's what NASA should be all about. "Charlie Bolden: Stealth Middle East Diplomat?," by Keith Cowing at NASA Watch, July 2 (thanks to Weasel Zippers): Bolden: I am here in the region - its sort of the first anniversary of President Barack Obama's visit to Cairo - and his speech there when he gave what has now become known as Obama's "Cairo Initiative" where he announced that he wanted this to become a new beginning of the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world....

Do you remember how I sang the praises of (and gave near-constant recommendations for) Father Robert Barron’s book, Catholicism; A Journey to the Heart of the Faith, and his Catholicism Series?Do you remember how much you loved the book, and then the DVD series, which was so beautifully shot and so richly informative that PBS eventually picked it up?Do you remember how much you wished the project would keep going, because it fed the faith intelligently and brightly, but in an accessible and easygoing fashion?Do you remember how, once you’d seen and/or read Catholicism, you thought to yourself, well, now...

An abortion bill introduced in the state House of Representatives by a Carlsbad Republican caused a political uproar in New Mexico and got some national notoriety Thursday — though the bill’s sponsor says it’s all a misunderstanding. Rep. Cathrynn Brown’s House Bill 206, as written, would subject a victim of rape or incest to possible felony prosecution for obtaining an abortion. It equated termination of a pregnancy in these situations with “tampering with evidence.” Her bill says, “Tampering with evidence shall include procuring or facilitating an abortion, or compelling or coercing another to obtain an abortion, of a fetus that...

An animated video that details in quite a ridiculous way the American banking system and how your being screwed over

<p>"One only wishes Wayne LaPierre and his NRA board of directors could be drafted to some of these [violent] scenes, where they would be required to put on booties and rubber gloves and help clean up the blood, the brains, and the chunks of intestine still containing the poor wads of half-digested food that were some innocent bystander’s last meal."</p>

This is Big. At its very least, they’re talking of 3.5 billion barrels of oil, which is a Very Nice Discovery, thank you. At its largest, they are saying 233 billion barrels — Saudi Arabia, here we come.Near Coober Pedy, Linc Energy has confirmed the Arckaringa Basin has lots of shale oil, so much that it could possibly shift us back to being an oil exporter. (We were self sufficient until 2000, but our oil production has been declining since then.)Any discovery that comes with discussions about “national energy security” is one worth paying attention to. The news stories...

Last week was a bleak one at Thomson Reuters, the financial news and wire service giant. According to sources, as many as 3,000 people were let go, out of approximately 50,000 employees around the globe. Most of the layoffs came from the financial sector—the sales, training and analysts’ divisions—but some were on the editorial side. “Yes, I can confirm there have been layoffs across Thomson Reuters today, including editorial,” Barb Burg, vice president and global head of communications at Reuters, told Talking Biz News last week. “Similar to efforts across the company, the Reuters organization is focusing attention on our...

........................ The trucker pulled over and Cuccinelli helped the driver out of the cab. He then assisted her in putting out the fire with an extinguisher .......................

Washington, DC Saturday, January 26, 2013 The National Review Institute Summit continues Saturday with speeches by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R) and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan (R). PayPal Co-Founder Peter Thiel spoke in the morning, followed by Rep. Ryan. A discussion on energy with Continental Resources, Inc. CEO Harold Hamm follows, led by the National Review's Kevin Williamson. Next, a panel discussion titled "What is Wrong with the Right?" with Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard, Yuval Levin of National Affairs, John Podhoretz of Commentary Magazine and Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s Morning Joe. A luncheon...

The Federal Reserve wants to avoid runaway inflation (or hyperinflation) while generating increased economic growth. So what is the cure for inflation? Slow down bank lending. But the cure might be worse than the problem itself. The Federal government has been commandeering private lending for a couple of decades and now has a virtual monopoly of certain types of lending. Examples include the mortgage market where (depending on the source) the government (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHA) control 86-90% of the market. Student loans is another example where the government stepped in to guarantee loans at taxpayer expense....

IT’S WORTH CONSIDERING What follows is a condensed version of a piece recently sent to me. Those who blame the Jews for the world’s problems should read this: A short time ago, Iran ‘s Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khomeini urged the Muslim World to boycott anything and everything that originates with the Jewish people. In response, Meyer M. Treinkman, a pharmacist, out of the kindness of his heart, offered to assist them in their boycott as follows: “Any Muslim who has Syphilis must not be cured by Salvarsan discovered by a Jew, Dr. Ehrlich. He should not even try...

Following up on my original post, I've scanned and virtualized my Pickett N4-ES Vector Type LOG LOG DUAL BASE SPEED RULE. That's the most complicated rule that Picket produced. It has 34 scales, which is good, because in the world of slide rule collecting, bigger is better. ().

Illinois’ credit rating has taken another hit. Standard & Poor’s Ratings Service downgraded the state from an “A” rating to “A-minus”, making it the worst in the country.

Karl Marx summed up Communism as “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” This is a good, pithy saying, which, in practice, has succeeded in bringing, upon those under its sway, misery, poverty, rape, torture, slavery, and death. For the saying implies but does not name the effective agency of its supposed utopia. The agency is called “The State,” and the motto, fleshed out, for the benefit of the easily confused must read “The State will take from each according to his ability: the State will give to each according to his needs.” “Needs and...