Free Republic

A hunter stumbled upon a bizarre sight on a 75,000-acre ranch north of Las Vegas, N.M., on Aug. 27: the remains of more than 100 dead elk. Livestock deaths are not unusual, but so many animals dying off, and doing so in what seems to be under 24 hours, was puzzling to scientists. Related StoriesOfficials with the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish investigated the mysterious elk deaths and ruled out several possible causes for the elk deaths, including poachers, anthrax, lightning strikes, epizootic hemorrhagic disease (an often-fatal virus known to affect deer and other ruminants), botulism, poisonous plants,...

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Greg and Lisa Nillson of East Texas started sponsoring Carlita from Honduras in June. Two months later they bought the hut next door to where Carlita lives. “This is a key relationship for us,” says Greg. “We don’t want a long-distance thing. We want to do life with this family.” The Nillsons’ new hut, which cost them a few hundred dollars, is made of wood planks and pieces of scrap tin. Greg brought his camping equipment and they are busy becoming “part of the neighborhood” with visits every couple of months. Lisa is planting a garden and...

The new ships will be built by BAE Systems at their shipyards on the Clyde in a deal that will sustain jobs in the UK’s warship-building industry, and will play a key role in counter-terrorism, counter-piracy and anti-smuggling operations. The agreement with BAE Systems provides work for the company between the completion of the Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers and the Type 26 Global Combat Ship, securing the vital skills needed to build the UK’s future warships. Defence Secretary Philip Hammond is also announcing today that more than £100 million will be invested in Her Majesty’s (HM) Naval Base Portsmouth,...

COLORADO SPRINGS — Big names and big surprises converged before a nationwide audience at the Pastors Draft this season. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this,” said Alvin DeWalt, 26, of Fuller Seminary, pacing his apartment in Pasadena and watching the draft on the Daystar network. His wife had made guacamole, and thirty friends were on hand to see which church picked DeWalt, one of this year’s top ranked prospects. In the first round, Geoff Parsons and Rick Benson, of Westminster and Calvin seminaries respectively, went first, as scouts had predicted they would. Parsons heads to a struggling mid-sized...

“Actually, there are parallels between the firearm bans and registration requirements enacted by the Weimar Republic and those proposed by President Obama,” Halbrook, a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, told The Daily Caller when asked what he would say to those who will argue making such a comparison sounds a bit hysterical. ”Only law-abiding persons obeyed those laws. Weimar authorities warned that the lists of gun owners must not fall into the hands of ‘radical elements.’ The lists fell right into the hands of the Nazis when they assumed power. Gun owner data can be misused by the government...

President Obama's narcissistic hits just keep on coming. Yesterday, we noted that in his interview with NBC's Chuck Todd, President Obama cast himself as the victim of the ObamaCare mess, complaining that "I've been burned" by the bad website. In a new clip from the interview that Todd aired during today's Daily Rundown, President Obama bragged "I can guarantee you that I have been more deeply involved in our intelligence operations on a whole set of areas where there real threats against us than just about any President." As with his victim whine, the prez caught himself and amended his...

An observant reader of John Calvin’s Institutes will have noticed that the Reformer discusses the interesting and important question of Christian liberty in two places. The first is in Chapter 19 of Book III, appropriately entitled ‘Of Christian Liberty’, where he is dealing with soteriology and is at this point concerned with the consequences of justification. One of these consequences is freedom, freedom from the keeping of any law, whatever its shape and size, for justification. The second time he discusses Christian liberty is in Chapter 10 of Book IV ‘On the Power of Making Laws’ dealing principally with the...

Washington (CNN) -- In the U.S. Capitol basement, an auditorium full of congressional staff grapples with the consequences of how their bosses upstairs wrote the Affordable Care Act. Starting Monday, they will have to choose a health care plan. "A lot of employees are planning to separate because of this," one man stood up and declared at the first-ever congressional orientation for Obamacare. By "separate," he meant quit. It was one of many sharp moments of concern at the two information sessions set up by House administrators Thursday.

We know that countries suffer when taxes get too high, in part because investors, entrepreneurs, and other successful taxpayers escape to jurisdiction with less oppressive fiscal regimes. France is a glaring example. On steroids. We know that states also suffer when the tax burden becomes to onerous, leading to an exodus of jobs and investment. California andIllinois are case studies of this self-destructive practice. But it’s especially foolish for state governments to over-tax because it’s relatively easy to move from one state to another. Escaping a high-tax nation, by contrast, is a much costlier step and some governments impose quasi-totalitarian...

Gun owners and freedom-loving Americans are often considered by anti-gunners to be conspiracy theorists when arguing that the government’s intended plan is not just gun control, but gun confiscation. However, perhaps Obama’s famous utterances about his healthcare mess over the past dozen months will bring clarity to those who want a disarmed America. Obama was recorded no less than 29 times telling the American people that “If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your healthcare plan”, a claim that has been repeatedly proven false in insurance cancellation letters sent to average Americans. Apparently, Obama is “sorry” that so...

Whole articleWhile Africa is one of the fastest growing areas of converts for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, proselyting and maintaining over 900 congregations is just part of the impact the Church has in these countries. In the last ten years alone the LDS church has: ·Distributed nearly 40,000 wheelchairs as well as trained people to construct a wheelchair from basic bicycle parts. ·Aided more than 130,000 Africans with their vision treatment program. Volunteer ophthalmologists assist medical care providers around the world with training and equipment to treat simple vision problems. · Been able to provide access...

Featured Term (selected at random:GALLICAN RITE A ritual that prevailed from the fourth to the eighth centuries in Gaul. Its origin is disputed, but the ritual was most likely introduced by the first missionaries. It differed from the Roman Rite in the arrangement of the liturgical year, the elaborate ceremonial in the offering of the bread and wine, and in the fact that all Mass prayers were variable daily. Some liturgies today at Milan and Toledo bear resemblance to the Gallican rites. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with...

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — An Agoura Hills family is raising awareness about the dangers of heroin addiction among teens. The Isaac family is opening up about the drug that brought their 19-year-old son’s life to an end on Aug. 21, when he was found dead from a drug overdose. “The face of heroin has changed,” Rick Isaac told CBS2′s Serene Branson when recalling his late son, Josh. The Agoura Hills High School graduate grew up in a loving home, involved in baseball, basketball, soccer and skateboarding. Rick and Joyce Isaac now say they’ve learned a painful truth — heroin doesn’t...

A man argued in Supreme Court this week that it is his Constitutional right to take pictures underneath the skirts of unsuspecting women on the subway. Michael Robertson, 31, from Andover, Boston, said in Massachusetts Supreme Court on Monday that his First Amendment freedom of speech rights means he was not breaking the law when he was arrested in 2010 for allegedly photographing an undercover cop and another passenger.

Google is beta-testing a program that tracks users’ purchasing habits by registering brick-and-mortar store visits via smartphones, according to a report from Digiday. Google can access user data via Android apps or their Apple iOS apps, like Google search, Gmail, Chrome, or Google Maps.If a customer is using these apps while he shops or has them still running in the background, Google’s new program pinpoints the origin of the user data and determines if the customer is in a place of business.Google gets permission to do this kind of tracking when Android users opt in to the “location services” option...

Since there is clearly no legitimate excuse for the healthcare.gov debacle, I have been wondering why the HHS sec and president want the signups to be so difficult. An idea has occurred to me: to punish the states that declined to set up their own exchanges. I believe this administration's priorities are: 1. Punish your enemies 2. Massively redistribute wealth away from earners (and to your cronies wherever possible) 3. Remake this country into a bleak, totalitarian backwater, making sure we can never go back Given that, doesn't it make sense that this exercise should be made to HURT? If...

First 3-D-Printed Metal Gun Shows Tech Maturity Jeremy Hsu / Thu, November 07, 2013 The world's first 3-D–printed metal gun aims to prove a point about the reliability of 3-D printing technology. But its makers don't plan on revolutionizing the manufacture of firearms by making the process available in every household. The metal pistol made by Solid Concepts, a 3-D printing service based in Austin, Texas, represents a working 3-D–printed version of the famed 1911 pistol originally designed by John Browning. Solid Concepts created almost all parts of the classic gun through direct metal laser sintering (DMLS), an industrial 3-D...

Cyprus, a tiny island of less than one million people, is a small scale study in “big banking out of control,” “insane spending like there is no tomorrow,” coupled with “socialism runs out of other people’s money.” While researching the bailin and bailout of early summer, I found disturbing accounts of their socialized health care. In return for a 10 billion bailout for Cyprus, the EU bureaucrats have demanded a bailin (read confiscation) of Cypriots’ savings and checking accounts. One bank offered worthless shares but another did not. Cypriots felt that they were used as “guinea pigs” to test if...

A Pentagon probe into the mishandling of hero Army Capt. William Swenson's Medal of Honor nomination found retired Army Gen. David Petraeus had sought to downgrade it, but shed no light on why the soldier's file was scrubbed from military computers and never passed up the chain of command. Swenson, who was nominated for the military's most prestigious award for helping to extract fellow soldiers from a 2009 ambush in Afghanistan's Ganjgal Valley, was given the medal last month by President Obama based on a duplicate file. He and his advocates have expressed bitterness over the fact that his nomination...

Navigator, can you help me with this site See the login don’t work and now it’s all kind of faded Obamagirl’s in LA She dropped her best ex-agent Ray A guy she said she knew well and sometimes hated But isn't that the way they say it goes Well let's forget all that And give me my old plan if you can find it So I can keep my doc, and make an appointment to go When I’ve taken a blow Or I’m not feeling well I wish I could trust his words Or just convince myself Obamacare wasn’t real...