Free Republic

Sammiches! With Summer coming, I'm looking forward to nice tomatoes, and one of our favorite sandwiches is the classic BLT, for which nobody needs a recipe. (Before he died, my father-in-law would ship us boxes of his first eating tomatoes from PA, and we always looked forward to that - and to the sore gums that were a measure of our delighted excess :-) But when I was growing up, my favorite Summer sandwich was just thick tomato slices on white-bread toast, with lots of mayonnaise and salt and pepper. Due to this love of fresh tomatoes on bread, I...

David Vitter, the only conservative up in 2016 is running for Governor in 2015. Grassley is good for his state's leanings and he needs no help to win big. Harry Reid's seat is going to be contested by 1 of the pro-amnesty or pro-driver-card Nevada Republicans Sandoval, Heck, Amodei, Cresent or Hutchison. Portman is a conservative because Ben Carson endorsed him apparently. John McCain (R) Johnny Isakson (R) Mark Kirk (R) Chuck Grassley (R) Roy Blunt (R) (Harry Reid) (D) Kelly Ayotte (R) Richard Burr (R) Rob Portman (R) Pat Toomey (R) Ron Johnson (R)

U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was scheduled to speak Thursday night at a dinner in downtown Little Rock honoring former U.S. Sen. David Pryor and his wife, Barbara, for their service to the state Democratic Party. The dinner marks Wasserman-Schultz's first trip to the state as DNC chairwoman. http://www.arkansasbusiness.com/article/104603/dnc-chairwoman-speaking-at-arkansas-dinner

Rebel_Ace is bored again, and that can only mean that it's time for some more Photoshop fun! Last time it was Hillary's van. Today, we focus on the Apple Watch, the subject of quite a few FR threads of late. Killer Applications for the Apple Watch Here is a BLANK TEMPLATE for you creative types to download, manipulate and post back here for everyone's amusement (but mostly for my amusement, as I am the one that is bored)

Officers no billed in fatal shooting of man holding a screwdriverA Dallas County grand jury has declined to indict two Dallas police officers who fatally shot a mentally ill man holding a screwdriver, NBC 5 has confirmed. The grand jury no billed the officers during a hearing Thursday. In March the attorney for the family of 39-year-old Jason Harrison released video of the June 2014 shooting to the media and said it raised questions about the use of force by Dallas police officers John Rodgers and Andrew Hutchins. The video shows an officer knocking on the front door of a...

With America fixated on all things Bruce Jenner and the anticipation around his Diane Sawyer interview Friday night on ABC, it seemed an interesting moment to revisit another time when he captured this country’s attention. In 1978, Jenner snagged one of the sports world’s biggest honors: appearing on the Wheaties cereal box. While this might not sound impressive in today’s era of multi-million dollar endorsement deals, back then it was one of the ultimate prizes for a top athlete. A lot of people know Jenner today from his relationship to the Kardashian clan. But decades ago, he became a national...

Four burly Swedish cops put their New York City vacation on hold to answer the call of duty on a Manhattan subway train last night. The friends were on their way to see Les Misérables on Broadway, DNA Info reports, and rushed in to stop a brutal assault on a crowded rush-hour 6 train. 'We came here for vacation. We’ve been here one day. We’re no heroes, just tourists,' Makrus Åsberg, a 25-year-old officer with the police Uppsala, Sweden, told the New York Post. Mr Asberg, along with Erik Naslund, Samuel Kvarzell and Eric Jansberger, subdued an enraged homeless man...

Please pray for my Mom. She was just admitted to the hospital with a heart rate of 33 bpm, and she is having trouble breathing. I really hope this is not the end. I want to see her home again.

In a Fox News preview of “The Tangled Clinton Web,” a New York Times reporter accused the Clinton Foundation of lying to her about a meeting Bill Clinton had with Kazatomprom officials regarding the sale of uranium to Russia. “Frank Giustra arranged for officials to go to Bill Clinton’s house in Chappaqua,” reporter Jo Becker said. “When I first contacted the Clinton Foundation, they denied any such meeting ever took place. And when we told them we have already talked to the head, who not only told us all about the meeting but actually has a picture of him and...

The nationwide scandal last spring over manipulated wait times at Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals led to the ouster of the secretary of veterans affairs and vows from the new leadership that people would be held accountable. Then in February, the new secretary, Robert A. McDonald, asserted in a nationally televised interview that the department had fired 60 people involved in manipulating wait times to make it appear that veterans were receiving care faster than they were. In fact, the department quickly clarified after that interview, only 14 people had been removed from their jobs, while about 60 others had...

The director of the White House Correspondents' Association makes more than the association pays out in scholarships. The association, which runs the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner, paid its executive director more in 2013 than it gave out to aspiring journalists that year — continuing a pattern noted in a recent documentary on the WHCA. The association represents White House reporters, awarding annual scholarships to students seeking careers in journalism. In addition it puts on the controversial annual dinner, during which the capital's ruling politicians and reporters are entertained by a comedian. The gathering of Washington insiders, in the presence...

MADISON, WI (WTAQ) - Wisconsin Democrats say they'll keep trying to require criminal background checks for virtually all gun sales -- including those at gun shows, and private sales outside of gun shops. Republicans struck down the idea at both the state and federal levels over the last two years. On Tuesday, Milwaukee Senate Democrat Nikiya Harris Dodd tried but failed to add the expanded background checks to a Republican bill which ends the 48-hour waiting period to buy guns. That measure was okayed by the Senate without amendments, and was sent to the Assembly.

Pope Francis made history when he said, of being gay: “Who am I to judge?” Now close Vatican-watchers say the pope is in a complex diplomatic spot in the case of a gay man France has nominated to be ambassador to the Holy See. France nominated Laurent Stefanini in January, but so far the Vatican hasn’t accepted the appointment. European media has speculated that this is because Stefanini, a Catholic who worked for years in the French Embassy at the Vatican, is gay, though the French government officially is denying any problems. This week a French government spokesperson confirmed that...

Bronies can be summed up in one sentence: they’re grown-ass men who love a little girl’s cartoon show about the adventures of a group of magical ponies. It’s Easter weekend, and I’m in an airport hotel in San Francisco attending the second annual Bay Area Brony Spectacular Convention, aka BABSCON. I have absolutely no idea what to expect. I just really want to see this scene for myself. I gotta know: What the hell have Bronies found in My Little Pony that the rest of us dudes missed?

A group of Native American actors quit an Adam Sandler movie because they feel it's insulting and racist ... but Netflix says the outraged actors are missing the whole point of the film. The movie is called "The Ridiculous Six" and is being produced for Netflix. It's described as a spoof on "The Magnificent Seven" ... starring Sandler, Nick Nolte, Steve Buscemi, Dan Aykroyd, Jon Lovitz and Vanilla Ice. But the spoofing went too far Wednesday, in the eyes of a dozen actors and actresses who walked off the set. Some of the offending jokes included female characters named Beaver’s...

When Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) postponed the vote to confirm Loretta Lynch as attorney general in order to break the filibuster of a human trafficking bill, Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) punished him by suggesting that the delay was motivated by racism. “Loretta Lynch, the first African-American woman nominated to be attorney general, is asked to sit in the back of the bus when it comes to the Senate calendar,” Durbin said on the Senate floor in March. McConnell didn’t flinch during the human trafficking fight, which Republicans ultimately won, but such accusations stung. In public, Republican...

The battle lines of the 2016 Republican primaries are being formed more quickly than many of the establishment media pundits seem to realize and one of the first issues to form a fissure in the field and to, surprisingly, put two candidates with different bases in the Party apparently on the same side are immigration and amnesty for illegal aliens. That Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio should end up as the leading pro-amnesty and pro-expanding legal immigration is unsurprising. During a stop in New Hampshire “gringo aplatanado” Jeb Bush arrogantly referred to his plan to grant amnesty to illegal aliens...

NEW PORT RICHEY — Pasco County sheriff's Deputy Kerry Kempink left his patrol car outside the gate at a home on Bellamy Bros. Boulevard in Darby last Friday afternoon and climbed the fence. Kempink walked the quarter-mile up the driveway toward the house, where an alarm company had alerted the Sheriff's Office of a possible intrusion through the back door. But before Kempink could case the house, he was charged at by two 80-pound Rottweilers. Feeling threatened, Kempink unholstered his gun and shot one of the dogs, named Cowboy, when it got too close. The entire incident was captured on...

A massive chamber holding enough magma to fill the Grand Canyon more than 11 times over is hiding beneath the steaming volcanic system of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. We knew of a smaller magma chamber closer to surface, holding some 10,000 cubic kilometres of magma and feeding heat upwards. The newly discovered reservoir sits under it and has a volume of 46,000 cubic kilometres. Together, the two form the largest known magma reservoir in the world. "We can't say definitively that this is the biggest magma reservoir in the world, but we currently don't know of any other that...

With ingenuity, capital and creative chemistry, billionaire C. Dean Metropoulos and Apollo Global’s Andy Jhawar rescued Hostess Brands–and set themselves up to feast on a $2 billion gain. Walk in the door of Hostess Brands’ flagship bakery in Emporia, Kansas and your first thought is: What a dump. The former front office for the bakery that pumps out classic American treats like golden Twinkies and swirl-topped Cup Cakes is a series of dank, near-empty rooms with scuffed, oatmeal-color linoleum floors, water-stained ceiling panels and a jumble of mismatched office furniture that looks like it was picked up off the curb....