Free Republic

This is my second Christmas season without my mother, and so far it's been harder than the first. I had known that the first year would be hard, and all I really cared about was surviving it. Activity was my friend: My sister Kathy and I spent the fall wrapping up her estate, selling her house, sharing her prized possessions with family and friends. We talked every day. Much of our connection was activity-based: Was her account closed? Were the papers signed? It was hard, but I had known that it was going to be hard -- so I accepted...

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Take nothing away from Texas and BYU, ThursdayÂ’s first semifinal at the 2014 NCAA WomenÂ’s Volleyball Championships, but the feature presentation, the Hollywood extravaganza, the matchup everyone wants to see, is scheduled to begin at 9:30 p.m. Mention Penn State and Stanford in regards to volleyball and you get a history lesson in championships. The story will continue when the 33-1 Cardinal face the 34-3 Nittany Lions with a trip to the finals on the line. The Nittany Lions won the 2013 NCAA championship and four consecutive from 2007 to 2010. Head coach Russ Rose, in his...

It's been six months since a prisoner swap led to the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. The Army's investigation into the circumstances under which the Hailey native left his Afghanistan base wrapped up in October, yet no new information has been released. Bergdahl's fellow soldiers say he deserted the base, which is a crime under military law. A military defense councilman speculated Wednesday that the delay could mean no charges will be filed. The question remains a mystery. What events led up to the disappearance of Bergdahl and his capture by the Taliban in 2009? He was held captive for...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Police in Charlotte, North Carolina, said the second man involved in a home break-in that turned deadly near the Charlotte/Mint Hill border has been arrested. Another suspected intruder was killed when a 14-year-old inside the house shot and killed him Tuesday night, police said.The two intruders, who police identified as 18-year-old Isai Delcid and his 22-year-old brother Carlos Delcid, attempted to break into the home on Rolling Fields Lane just after 5 p.m., according to investigators. Isai was shot and died at the scene while police said Carlos fled. Officers arrested Carlos late Tuesday night and charged...

Celebrity homeowner Hillary Clinton is a terrible politician, a Free Beacon analysis has found. This is one of many reasons why some observers have concluded she will never be president. [Snip] Clinton’s favorability numbers are trending down. She can’t sell books. She can’t sell magazines. She can’t draw crowds at universities. Most worrisome for the professional public speaker is the finding that 71 percent of registered voters want the next president to “take a different approach than Barack Obama has,” compared to just 23 percent who want a similar approach. ... (Context: Hillary Clinton was a member of the Obama...

A rogue nation targeted a multinational corporation and won.  North Korea has almost certainly ordered the massive cyber-attack on Sony Pictures, stealing and publicly dumping enough data to make a dent in the company’s stock price. North Korea cannot challenge the United States militarily, despite what movies have portrayed.  Regardless of their saber-rattling, and America’s reduced presence on the Korean peninsula, a real attack of any substance against our ally South Korea (or Japan for that matter) would bring a suicidal level of retribution on the North, and they know it.  But they’ve found a vein where they can draw...

American troops in Iraq had their first actual battle with ISIS troops after the Islamist militants tried to overrun a base, an encounter that left the ISIS troops decimated and in retreat. The attack took place near the Ein al-Asad base, which includes close to 100 U.S. military advisers. The U.S. troops, armed with “light and medium weapons,” and were able to inflict casualties against the ISIS fighters, forcing them to retreat, Shafaq News reported. The American troops were also aided by fighter jets, which directed air strikes against the ISIS troops that “silenced their heavy sources of fire.” “US forces intervened...

As Newt Gingrich noted yesterday, the surrender by Sony Pictures to a shadowy group of North Korean hackers has set a chilling precedent... just wait 'til they grab hold of one of our nuclear plants(like the Israelis already did  to Iran)... BIG defeat for the US and Japan here, and a terrifying incident, to be sure (that's why they call it 'terrorism')- so now this little tinpot-nothing-of-a-country has substantial unchecked power/influence right inside the United States of America? Can you imagine Ronald Reagan/Cap Weinberger letting this go down without KJU being made to seriously regret it? Of course, Obama...

Deputies shot and killed a white supremacist suspected of shooting a black man to death early Wednesday in South Tacoma...The initial fatal shooting is believed to have stemmed from a fight over a drug deal...

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Formerly the "Fans of Quinn and Rose Discussion" thread, our group been meeting here since 2008. We still hold out hope that our favorite talk show hosts will come back on the air but, whether they do or not, our friendly group will still meet to start the day. So if you are preparing to go to work, are getting home from work - or happily retired - stop in and say mornin' and share the latest news, discuss the weather, share a recipe, or whatever!

President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday Russia’s economy would rebound after the ruble’s collapse against the dollar but warned that it could take two years for the country to emerge from crisis. Under pressure to show he has a plan to pull Russia out of crisis at his end-of-year news conference, Putin supported the actions of the central bank and government in a crisis he blamed on external factors but said further measures would be required. ......................................................... Putin had been silent as the currency collapsed this week before recovering some ground. A prominent opponent, former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, said...

Families are lining up to make their son the next Michael Brown. Waiting to tell their story of how racist cops killed their child For No Reason Whatsoever. The latest example comes from Philadelphia, where, early Monday morning, police shot Brandon Tate-Brown. The details are familiar enough: the 26-year old Tate-Brown was driving at 3 a.m. without headlights when two officers stopped him. If this stop was anything like most others, then Tate-Brown convinced himself he was being pulled over for one reason only: driving while black. Soon after he got out of the car, a struggle began. That’s how...

Falling Ruble Causes Businessman to Commit Suicide in Moscow Hotel 10:22 17.12.2014(updated 10:40 17.12.2014) Yesterday’s Russian stock exchange panic caused a co-founder of a financial company to kill himself in one of Moscow’s top hotels - Hotel National. MOSCOW, December 17 (Sputnik) — A businessman, who owned a stake in an investment enterprise, committed suicide in Hotel National Moscow yesterday night, having shot himself in the head. Police are investigating the incident. The late Ivan Shervashidze left a suicide note and his last will. According to some reports, he owned a business selling musical instruments and equipment and co-owned a...

Listening to all the stories about Jeb Bush and his angst over the conservative base of the Republican Party, the question occurred: Why doesn’t Jeb ease his conscience and his donors' wallets and just switch parties? Go now, become a Democrat—and then form an alliance with the wife of the man the Bushes affectionately call their “brother from another mother.” That being the woman George W. Bush has dubbed as being “like my sister-in-law”—Hillary Clinton.After all, the Bush/Clinton alliance has already been on display, as I unknowingly noted in this column when Governor Bush presented former-Secretary Clinton with the Constitution...

BERLIN -- A closely watched survey shows that business confidence in Germany, Europe's biggest economy, has risen for the second month in a row as managers' outlook for the next six months brightens. The Ifo institute said Thursday its monthly confidence index rose to 105.5 points from 104.7 in November. The increase was in line with economists' expectations.

The world's oldest water, which is locked deep within the Earth's crust, is present at a far greater volume than was thought, scientists report. The liquid, some of which is billions of years old, is found many kilometres beneath the ground. Researchers estimate there is about 11m cubic kilometres (2.5m cu miles) of it - more water than all the world's rivers, swamps and lakes put together. The study was presented at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting. It has also been published in the journal Nature. The team found that the water was reacting with the rock to release...

MIAMI (WSVN) -- Local Cuban exiles in Little Havana Wednesday voiced their thoughts on President Barack Obama's announcement to re-establish relations with Cuba. The commander in chief's abrupt use of U.S. executive authority came after the release of American Alan Gross, who had been held in Cuba for five years, in exchange for three Cubans jailed in Florida. Wednesday afternoon, dozens gathered in front of Versailles restaurant off Southwest Eighth Street as soon as rumors of loosening restrictions surfaced. Cuban coffee was served with a side of political discourse as City of Miami Police officers were present to ensure decorum...

My cell phone has been going off for hours with messages and angry conversations with fellow Cuban-Americans and conservatives in the U.S. I hear this question over and over: what did the U.S. get out of this deal? The answer is nothing, unless you are one of those who believes that the Castro regime is about to reform the economy, allow an independent media, and hold multi-party elections. I have a unique perspective on this issue. I can address it as a Cuban-American and as a U.S. citizen. In other words, I want the best for those on the island...

In response to the total implosion of Rolling Stone's preposterous story about a fraternity gang-rape at the University of Virginia, the media have reverted to their Soviet-style reporting. They're not even saying: We're choosing not to talk about UVA because it's a side show. It's more like: UVA? That's a school? Not only did the UVA gang rape turn out to be a hoax, but then President Obama's own Department of Justice completed a six-year study on college rape, and it turns out that instead of 1-in-5 college coeds being raped, the figure is 0.03-in-5. Less than 1 percent of...