Free Republic

One day in 1967, Bob Thompson sprayed foam on a hunk of metal in a cavernous factory south of Los Angeles. And then another day, not too long after, he sat at a long wood bar with a black-and-white television hanging over it, and he watched that hunk of metal land a man on the moon. On July 20, 1969 — the day of the landing — Thompson sipped his Budweiser and thought about all the people who had ever stared at that moon. Kings and queens and Jesus Christ himself. He marveled at how when it came time to...

Sen. Ted Cruz, the firebrand conservative freshman from Texas, has blown up the Senate leadership’s plans to have a peaceful weekend by forcing round-the-clock votes on President Obama’s nominees and the $1.1 trillion omnibus.Cruz took to the floor late Friday to castigate congressional leaders for trying to pass the 1,600-page spending bill after only a few hours of debate and questioned the resolve of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to fight Obama’s executive order protecting five million illegal immigrants from deportation.“Even though millions of voters rose up just one month ago to protest how...

Two men were killed and 13 other people, including a 15-year-old boy, were wounded since Friday in separate shootings on the city's Far South and West sides, said police. Around 7:03 p.m., a 28-year-old man was fatally shot while he sat in a vehicle on the 1300 block of North Springfield Avenue. The man was in the vehicle with a female child when someone came up to the vehicle and began shooting. According to WGN TV, the man had a 3-year-old girl who was possibly his daughter on his lap at the time. The man was shot in the head...

Thousands of demonstrators were expected in Washington and New York on Saturday to protest the killings of unarmed black men by U.S. police and to urge Congress to protect citizens. Organizers said the protests would be among the largest over police tactics and the killings of black males by officers in New York, Cleveland and Ferguson, Missouri. The lack of criminal charges from grand juries in the New York and Ferguson cases have galvanized protests around the United States. "We need more than just talk; we need legislative action that will shift things both on the books and in the...

Germans take to the streets to protest against 'Islamisation' Anti-immigrant protests claim to want to preserve Judeo-Christian culture as critics accuse it of harbouring neo-Nazi elements By Justin Huggler, Berlin 6:51PM GMT 08 Dec 2014 A new type of anti-immigration protest is sweeping across Germany, as thousands take to the streets against what they say is the growing “Islamisation” of the country. The new protests, which began in the city of Dresden in the former East Germany, feature no neo-Nazi slogans and have nothing to do with the traditional far right. Instead the demonstrators have adopted the old rallying call...

EXCERPT Gruber was hired by the Department of Health and Human Services for a one-year contract to provide “technical assistance in evaluating options for national healthcare reform,” as a Feb. 25, 2009, federal job posting indicates. The posting said he was uniquely qualified for the position not only because of his expertise in health economics but his “proprietary statistically sophisticated micro-simulation model” that could determine the impact of changes in health care policy. Gruber’s consultancy work wasn’t made public until it was reported in early January 2010. Fox News then reported that Gruber was paid almost $400,000 for the contract,...

Climate talks in Lima ran into extra time amid rising frustration from developing countries at the “ridiculously low” commitments from rich countries to help pay for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. The talks were designed to draft a blueprint for a global deal to fight climate change, due to be adopted in Paris late next year. But developing countries argued that before signing on they needed to see greater commitments that the industrialised countries would keep to their end of a bargain to provide the money needed to fight climate change. Countries are also divided over the initial commitments countries...

...its lowest levels against the dollar for almost a year, amid investor nervousness about emerging markets. By evening trade in Istanbul the currency had fallen beyond TL2.30 to the US dollar, more than 1 per cent down on the day and the weakest level since January, when the Turkish central bank moved to increase interest rates -- a dramatic shift in policy that at the time halted a precipitous drop in its value. ...Turkey is far from alone in being affected by strong US economic data that has heightened expectations of a US Federal Reserve interest rate rise and so...

As the vote on the Rule to bring the $1 trillion-plus funding bill to the floor of the US House of Representatives was about to start yesterday, I and many of my fellow conservatives were still burning up the phone lines to Republicans, saying “NO”! This is a paraphrase of the way one of my calls went: Congressional Office: This is Congressman Robert Wittman’s Office. Me: Hello, I’m not from your district, but I am active in Republican precinct work and have been a contributor to Republican candidates in several states. I would appreciate it if you would give my...

In small-town community centers, schools, churches and a vast city convention center, immigrant advocates are spreading the word about President Barack Obama's plan to give millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally a temporary reprieve. The November announcement promising work permits and protection from deportation made a splash, but lawyers say the events are crucial to dispel rumors about eligibility, ward off fraud, and help immigrants determine what they might need to apply. In Los Angeles, advocates are hosting an information session for as many as 10,000 people at the city's convention center Sunday. "After this big forum, we're...

The Republican Party and its leaders have undergone a transformation over the last several years, according to conservative radio talk host Rush Limbaugh, and the GOP now eschews Limbaugh and others like him because "I no longer espouse what they believe," he said Tuesday on his show. Limbaugh’s remarks were in response to a caller, John in Winter Haven, Florida, who wanted to know Limbaugh’s opinion on a theory John had, namely that the GOP establishment sits back and waits for Limbaugh and others in the conservative media to communicate their message. "Our GOP establishment just sits mute as issue...

So who's crazy now? In 2011, the MSM mercilessly mocked Michele Bachmann for saying that if she became president, gas prices would fall to under $2/gallon. Typical was Time magazine, which called her prediction "fantasy." Time mocked Bachmann's drill, baby, drill policy, sniffing that if implemented, "prices at the pump might drop a whole 3 cents a gallon." But on CBS This Morning, there was top oil analyst Tom Kloza, saying that by Christmas, gas prices would be in the range of . . . $1.99-2.29 [I saw $2.18 here in Texas yesterday]. So who's crazy now, and where does...

One of the most prominent A-list presences in the emails ripped from Sony’s servers by the hacking collective Guardians of Peace is none other than Jennifer Lawrence (who is, sadly, no stranger to hacking herself). Lawrence and her fabulous email handle (peanutbutt) make several cameos in the leak, including numerous pleasant exchanges with Amy Pascal, co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, over her dazzling turn in American Hustle, which was co-financed by Sony arm Columbia Pictures. There’s also an interesting email exchange between Pascal and Brian Helgeland, screenwriter of the planned Cleopatra biopic, with Pascal suggesting that Helgeland dump Angelina Jolie...

We all know that the American energy revolution, led by the new technologies of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, has created a flood of new shale-oil and natural-gas production that has overwhelmed world markets and driven prices down by roughly 40 percent. End-of-week crude oil closed near $57 a barrel, and the national average gasoline price finished at $2.60. No matter what the naysayers are trying to sell, the new energy reality is unambiguously good for the U.S. and global economies. There may be some dislocations among countries, sectors, or companies, but the overwhelming impact is positive. In fact, the...

Jose Manuel Marino-Najera had been walking through the desert with a bundle of marijuana on his back for three days when he ran out of water. The 31-year-old father of one had been working on a grape harvest in Caborca, a border city on the Mexican side of the Sonoran Desert, when he found out about an opportunity to get to New York. He had an uncle there and, hopefully, would find work. Crossing the border illegally, with the help of coyotes, or smugglers, is typically a very expensive endeavor. But Marino had found a group willing to help him...

Police have arrested a 22-year-old man in connection with Friday’s shooting at an Oregon high school for at-risk students. Police have been searching for a gunman who left three young people hospitalized in what investigators say appears to be a gang-related shooting outside Rosemary Anderson High School in Portland.

To the very limited extent that congressional Democrats have enjoyed the last four years of gridlock on Capitol Hill, they have derived pleasure from watching the Republican Party rupture over and over again, its divisions between the conservative Tea Party and the establishment leadership preventing just about any real legislative accomplishments. As afternoon turned to evening on Thursday, it was the Democrats who were turning on each other. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senator Elizabeth Warren, the liberal darling, railed against a White House-backed spending deal that narrowly passed the House just a couple hours before a midnight deadline...

SeattlePostIntelligencer: US embargo stalled payment to Cuban Ebola doctors 15 hours ago "HAVANA (AP) — Cuba had to cover food and lodging expenses for dozens of its doctors fighting Ebola in Sierra Leone after the U.S. embargo delayed payments from the World Health Organization, an official at the U.N.

Sarah Palin – RINO Season Opens Soon, Amnesty Juan Boehner Flipped America the Bird Rick Wells Sarah Palin, as is the case with most conservatives and others who value the Constitution and the rule of law in the United States, is not happy that the Speaker of the House and his comrades have lied and sold out the American people. John Boehner has effectively allowed Hussein Obama act as a dictator and to take actions which are illegal and which circumvent Congress through the implementation of his criminal amnesty. She had a few choice words in response to questions after...

Explanation: This remarkable synthetic color composite image was assembled from archives of visible light and infrared astronomy image data. The field of view spans the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), a massive spiral a mere 2.5 million light-years away. In fact, with over twice the diameter of our own Milky Way, Andromeda is the largest nearby galaxy. Andromeda's population of bright young blue stars lie along its sweeping spiral arms, with the telltale reddish glow of star forming regions traced in space- and ground-based visible light data. But infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope, also blended directly into the detailed composite's...