Free Republic

My wife Beth and I went to vote yesterday at our usual polling place on the University of Virginia campus. I went with no enthusiasm, more out of a sense of duty, I suppose, and of bearing witness. Outside the polling place were two pavilions for last minute canvassing. The Republican tent was, characteristically, empty, while the Democrat team, with blue and green McAuliffe banners flying, looked cool and smug. For good reason. They had waged a ruthless, vicious, dishonest and brilliant campaign-- not just to elect Terry McAuliffe governor but to discredit and destroy the Virginia Republican Party, and...

Amid torrent of revelations that the NSA finds mass surveillance easy, the IETF ponders how to harden the Internet. Will the usually obscure Internet Engineering Task Force – that open-to-anyone group of engineers who design and keep the ‘net functioning – step up and fight back against mass surveillance? That possibility is now in the air, following a talk in Vancouver today by cryptographer Bruce Schneier (see “Bruce Schneier: NSA Spying is Making us Less Safe”). He laid partial responsibility of the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance on the IETF’s doorstep. “Fundamentally, surveillance is a business model of the Internet....

Some of the more hilarious ones: -Here's a quarter, call someone who (can actually get you health)care -"If I Said You Could Keep Your Health Plan, Would You Hold It Against Me?" -God is great,beer is good, and Obamacare is crazy. -If Obama were a country song & you played him backwards you'd get your car back, your house back and your Doctor Back" -"I Walk The Lie" -because your mine, I impose a fine -Man, I Throw Like A Woman -Payin' Double for a Single Plan -I Took Your Job and Shoved It -He Stopped Treating Her Today -You...

Carlo Rubbia, a former director of the CERN laboratory who shared the 1984 Nobel Prize in Physics, described thorium as having “absolute pre-eminence” over all other fuels including fossil fuels and uranium, the metallic element that has driven reactors since nuclear first started powering public grids in 1956. “In order to be vigorously continued, nuclear power must be profoundly modified,” Rubbia said at the Thorium Energy Conference 2013, held on the CERN campus here last week. Rubbia pointed out that thorium leaves less long-lived waste than uranium, is far more plentiful and is resistant to weapons proliferation, as I reported...

<p>When Sarah Palin and Donald Trump join 800 other guests in celebrating Billy Graham’s 95th birthday Thursday in Asheville, North Carolina, they will be heckled by anti-Tea Party protesters.</p>

... David Eckert, a resident of Deming, NM, was pulled over by police officers after failing to come to a complete stop at a stop sign. For whatever reason, the officers decided Eckert was hiding something, or perhaps they were unsatisfied that a routine stop hadn't blown up into something bigger. ... 1. Eckert's abdominal area was x-rayed; no narcotics were found. 2. Doctors then performed an exam of Eckert's anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found. 3. Doctors performed a second exam of Eckert's anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found. 4. Doctors penetrated Eckert's anus to...

The Labor Department on Friday is expected to report the economy added 120,000 jobs in October, below the 148,000 recorded in September and the trend for months prior. … Adding discouraged adults, who have quit looking for work altogether, and part-timers who want full-time employment, the unemployment rate is 13.6 percent. Even with more full-time positions, the pace of jobs creation is well short of the estimated 360,000 needed each month to lower unemployment to 6 percent over three years. That pace would require GDP growth in the range of 4 percent to 5 percent. … The increased cost and...

I read a story tonight about a homeless man who wandered into a Five Star Hotel, found a comfortable bed and did the logical thing; he went to sleep. The guests who reported him and security cops that got him out also did the logical thing from their points of view. I laughed a little at the picture; a disheveled man, with butter coloured teeth, a swirl of medusa hair all a-tangled. Then I saw the dead look in his eye, and I was reminded of someone I used to know. A good friend of mine was a math teacher...

So now it turns out Obama knew that 93 million Americans would have their health insurance canceled the whole time he was claiming, "If you like your insurance, you can keep it. Period." Obama lied. Period. "Hope and Change" was actually "A Sucker Is Born Every Minute." Even without the 2010 Health and Human Services (HHS) report admitting that 93 million Americans would lose their health insurance, anyone with half a brain (which is a pre-existing condition) knew that millions of Americans would be thrown off their insurance plans under Obamacare. Under the law, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is to...

BALTIMORE (WJZ)—It’s a horrific story of man’s best friend becoming a woman’s worst nightmare. A Northeast Baltimore woman was attacked and killed by her own dog. Rochelle Ritchie reports the pit bull had attacked before but was back in the owner’s custody. Advocates say the attack should not have happened. The woman had a huge gash on her face from a previous attack from her dog. Terry Douglass, 56, is the latest victim in Baltimore City to be killed by a pit bull, a dog she’s raised since it was a puppy.

Guns & Ammo Official Response to Metcalf Article I just received the official response from Guns & Ammo regarding the Dick Metcalf article in the December 2013 issue. This is an exclusive breaking story.

OK, if you play along nicely, I'll tabulate the results later. So let's assume for the sake of argument that the next electable Republican president will come from the ranks of governors or from a handful of Senators or from an ex-office-holders like Jim DeMint or Mitch Daniels or Jeb Bush or Rick Santorum. PICK YOUR TOP FIVE (electability has to be your first consideration): Republican Governors here: http://www.rga.org/homepage/governors/

A married undercover cop in Arizona began an affair with the drug dealer she was investigating only to out herself and two other colleagues while the pair lay in bed according to a police report. Tempe Police Detective Jessica Dever-Jakusz, 38, met her drug-dealer lover in June of 2013 after buying narcotics from him undercover and by August she was having regular sex with him at his home. But on October 10th, after one of their trysts, Dever-Jakusz - who is married to a police officer - revealed that she was working undercover to arrest him at the same time...

The center of gravity in American politics moved left in Tuesday’s off-year elections. Republicans took a big step back from the tea party. An ebullient progressive was elected mayor of New York City. And a Democrat was elected governor of Virginia after campaigning unapologetically as a supporter of gun control and a liberal on social issues. The one bright spot for Republicans, Chris Christie’s landslide reelection in New Jersey, was won precisely because Christie ran briskly away from the party’s right wing and developed a civil relationship with President Obama. His victory speech spoke of the need for politicians to...

The Green Bay Packers' loss to the Chicago Bears was particularly painful for one Packers fan who was tasered by her husband, who is a Bears fan, to settle a bet after Monday's game. John Grant, 42, of Tinley Park, Ill., told police that he and his wife made the wager as they watched the game at a bar in Mayville, Wis., but his wife told police that she didn't think her husband would follow through with it. After the Bears beat the Packers 27-20, Grant and his wife, who police say had both been drinking, went outside to an...

Jeffrey Watson pulled off his shoes and slept Tuesday in a hotel presidential suite with crystal chandeliers, a grand piano and a wet bar. He spent much of Wednesday inside a cell at the Allegheny County Jail after he was charged with trespassing and stealing services at the Omni William Penn Hotel on William Penn Place, Downtown. Hotel staff called 911 after guests told them they tried to check into their room on the hotel's 16th floor about 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and opened the door to find Mr. Watson sleeping on a sofa in the 1,300-square-foot parlor. Police and hotel...

Scenes from a "moderate" "Palestinian" university Hitler-style saluting peace partners Campus scenes yesterday at Al-Quds University. The Western-funded university authorities regularly tolerate such Fascist-style displays by students, some of whom have then gone on to attack Jewish civilians. Scroll down below for more photos. Scenes yesterday afternoon from a “moderate” "Palestinian" university WHAT ARE THE CHANCES FOR PEACE SO LONG AS THE PALESTINIAN PRESIDENT ENCOURAGES THIS AND WESTERN GOVERNMENTS CONTINUE TO FUND HIM WITHOUT CRITICISM?[Note by Tom Gross]During his press conference in Jerusalem today on the “peace process,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry criticized Israel again, but did...

That’s right, hosts Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood had a special segment and even song mocking the failed health care rollout that featured the pair pretending to sign up for Obamacare and then crooning about the failure. It all started while the pair was singing a new version of “Why Can’t We Be Friends” that faked feuds between some of country music’s biggest stars (including Kenny Rogers) and Paisley stopping abruptly to complain about back pain. That’s when Underwood suggested trying to sign up for Obamacare. “I started signing up last Thursday and I’m almost done,” she said with a...

November 7, 2013 Thursday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time    Reading 1 Rom 14:7-12 Brothers and sisters:None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself.For if we live, we live for the Lord,and if we die, we die for the Lord;so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.For this is why Christ died and came to life,that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.Why then do you judge your brother or sister?Or you, why do you look down on your brother or sister?For we shall all stand before...

Explanation: Timing was critical to catch this image of November 3rd's solar eclipse. But flying at 44,000 feet, intrepid eclipse chasers on a chartered jet traveling 500 miles per hour managed to intercept the the Moon's shadow. The remarkable flight made a perpendicular crossing of the central shadow track. Darkening the skies beyond the wing tip at that moment, the Moon's shadow was moving at some 8,000 miles per hour across the Atlantic Ocean, 600 miles southeast of Bermuda. After only an instant of totality, this snapshot captured the lunar disk in silhouette. Rays of sunlight shining past peaks and...