Free Republic

When he joined the separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine, Russian businessman Bondo Dorovskikh thought he would be fighting hordes of fascists bent on victimizing the local population. The reality on the ground turned out to be quite different. Instead of defending eastern Ukraine, Dorovskikh says he found himself stranded in the town of Alchevsk, where pro-Russian rebels controlling the area spent their days looting and drinking. [....] Dorovskikh says he is not an exception. Disenchanted Russian volunteers, he claims, are streaming back home. He is himself so upset that he is mulling enrolling in Ukraine's National Guard to help stamp...

Twenty-five years ago, a police officer found a baby in a California dumpster. Last week, the baby – now a grown man – got to meet the man who saved him. Robin Barton shares a bond like no other with retired Santa Ana police officer Michael Buelna. "I hoped that someday I would see him again," Buelna said. The two first met 25 years ago, though Barton was just 4 hours old, in what some would call a miracle encounter. It was Nov. 21, 1989. Buelna was on duty in Santa Ana.

The U.S. economy is slowing but thus far is avoiding a recession, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Gross Output, a broadened measure of U.S. economic activity published by the bureau, grew “much more slowly” in the fourth quarter of 2014 than the previous quarter or the same one a year ago, said Mark Skousen, PhD, a proponent of the new statistic and the editor of the Forecasts & Strategies investment newsletter. Real Gross Output (GO) advanced at an annualized rate of only 2.6% to $31.4 trillion by the end of 2014, half the rate...

CONCORD, N.H. —New Hampshire officials said the state has too many black bears and is mulling its options on how to curb the population. The New Hampshire Fish and Game Department says the state has 5,700 black bears roaming its wilderness. But officials want to trim that number to 4,700. The Concord Monitor report the state could lengthen seasons for baiting, still hunting and hunting with hounds to help reach this goal. The department introduced a draft 10-year plan that will drive management decisions for deer, black bears, wild turkeys, moose and small game. The plan will not set the...

A battle of the hawks is raging on Capitol Hill. Defense hawks say the nation’s security will be endangered if the caps imposed under the 2011 Budget Control Act aren’t lifted, allowing for more defense spending. Fiscal hawks assert with equal vehemence that the nation’s long-term economic health — the foundation for all government activities, including defense — will be permanently harmed if burgeoning deficits and debts are not addressed. Defense hawks argue for a massive investment to maintain the United States’ position as the world’s strongest power. Fiscal hawks argue for innovative improvements in efficiency to sustain U.S. leadership.

WADENA, Minn. -- A Wadena-Deer Creek social studies teacher and coach is charged with molesting a student at his Henning home last week after paying her to clean cabins. Brian Kenneth Maki, 58, of Henning, was charged with fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct -- position of authority -- on Tuesday and remained in jail. According to a complaint filed by the Otter Tail County attorney, a student said Maki was her teacher and "role model" and she arranged to meet him after he offered her a job cleaning cabins. She met the defendant last Thursday and he gave her gas money...

A hue of blue inspired by the waters of Hawaii is a prominent feature of the Obama state china service being unveiled by the White House. President Barack Obama is a Hawaii native who returns every Christmas for vacation. Michelle Obama's office says the first lady chose what's being called "Kailua Blue" to distinguish her family's china from the red, green, blue and yellow used on more recent state services.

Hillary Clinton rounded up her first campaign swing with an op-ed in a top Iowa newspaper in which she emphasized her campaign’s commitments to regular Americans and echoed the progressive platform she’s been touting on the campaign trail. “Americans have come back from tough economic times. But the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top,” she wrote in The Des Moines Register. “Americans are working harder and getting more productive, but they aren't seeing the reward in their paychecks. So it's time to reshuffle the deck and deal a better hand to the middle class.” Clinton’s...

Shocking footage has emerged of the terrifying moment two people stood in a tiny dinghy while a six metre great white shark charged them. A film crew shooting the documentary Lair of the Megashark were just off New Zealand's Steward Island when they attempted to put a camera on the dorsal fin of the massive ocean predator who decided to nudge the boat and bite at the thin rope that tethered the dinghy to the main boat. The two men that can be seen on the boat are shark experts Jeff Kurr and Andy Casagrande. They can be seen panicking...

Imagine a glass window that's tough like armor, a camera lens that doesn't get scratched in a sand storm, or a smart phone that doesn't break when dropped. Except it's not glass, it's a special ceramic called spinel {spin-ELL} that the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has been researching over the last 10 years. "Spinel is actually a mineral, it's magnesium aluminate," says Dr. Jas Sanghera, who leads the research. "The advantage is it's so much tougher, stronger, harder than glass. It provides better protection in more hostile environments—so it can withstand sand and rain erosion." As a more durable...

Can it be that students gather annually around the country to construct “Model United Nations” because the real one has failed so miserably? “What good does it do?” Judge Jeanine Pirro asked a packed, admittedly conservative audience at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington, D. C. last Monday. Judge Pirro was in town to receive the Reed Irvine award for investigative journalism from Accuracy in Media. Judge Pirro suggested a two prong approach to the UN: Get out of it and get it out of New York. She also noted that when she served as DA in Westchester County, there...

While some charities use collection bins for receiving clothing and used goods, they may also face opposition from local governments that cite public-nuisance concerns as justification for banning them. A federal appeals court has ruled in favor of one mid-Michigan charity that opposed a ban, but it could be some time before Michigan cities back down on such restrictions. “They may find another way to make it difficult, like a permit fee of $300,000 or something like that. We hope that’s not the case and we can work with them so that it is a win-win for everyone,” says Dan...

CoreOS and Joyent's SmartOS/Triton have worked to redefine, in radically different ways, what an OS needs to be to run applications at scale in the cloud.Now another candidate is set to join the ranks of maverick cloud OSes: OSv, open source, hypervisor-optimized, and "designed to run an application stack without getting in the way.">OSv runs existing Linux applications, but is not itself Linux; it's entirely new and written from the ground up in C/C++. It can run on a slew of hypervisors and virtual machine systems, or in cloud environments like Amazon EC2 or Google Compute Engine. The company claims significant...

To many classic-rock fans, it would seem a bit of unnecessary clarification to bill a Dennis DeYoung show as "Dennis DeYoung: The Music of Styx." ...the extra wording he is allowed to use after some messy legal wrangling upon his unceremonious 1999 ouster from the band.... DeYoung was the group's strongest creative force... ...despite their huge commercial popularity and sold-out shows, Styx were never critic's darlings -- both then and now -- which DeYoung feels is a big reason that the band is not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.... "Styx, Journey, Foreigner, Boston, Kansas, REO Speedwagon, Chicago,...

Alysia Thomas, a stay-at-home mother in this working-class city, tells her children to skip a bath on days when they do not play outside; that holds down the water bill. Lillian Barrera, a housekeeper who travels 25 miles to clean homes in Beverly Hills, serves dinner to her family on paper plates for much the same reason. In the fourth year of a severe drought, conservation is a fine thing, but in this Southern California community, saving water means saving money.

Just a plain and simple vanity. I have finally completed my first science fiction series. The third book of my Bright Horizons series is out and I am both incredibly relieved and a little wistful at the same time. It's been almost three years since I lost my job and decided to put out my first book to try to make ends meet. I have struggled with health issues, had to put the writing on hold to take a seasonal job as I refilled the cash tank, and had the other typical issues of life come up, but I just...

eb Bush told about 350 of the top donors to his super PAC on Sunday evening that the organization has raised more money in its first 100 days than any other Republican operation in modern history, according to several people in attendance. Bush did not say how much had been raised, but senior Republicans said they think his super PAC, Right to Rise, is on track to collect $100 million by the end of May. Those who heard Bush speak said it signals that he and his team are confident that they've amassed a sizable political fortune that will help...

Yet Southern Baptists still provide by far the most chaplains. Likely presidential candidate and former Southern Baptist pastor Mike Huckabee recently urged Christians to stay out of the military until after the next election, saying they are no longer welcome. “Why would they want to be in a military that would be openly hostile and not just simply bring some scorn to their faith, but would punish them for it?” Huckabee said in a recent interview. In recent years, enough of his fellow Southern Baptists have left active duty that atheists now outnumber the denomination among soldiers. According the latest...

While Kevin Drum is focused on getting better, we've invited some of the remarkable writers and thinkers who have traded links and ideas with him from Blogosphere 1.0 to this day to contribute posts and keep the conversation going. Today we're honored to present a post from New York magazine's Jonathan Chait, whose writing on politics has been published by the New Republic, the American Prospect, and the Los Angeles Times.Barack Obama was raised by a financially struggling single mother, and Mitt Romney was the son of an auto executive turned governor who grew up to be a gazillionaire in...

Constitutional carry is gaining momentum in the states.  Kansas recently passed legislation making it the sixth state to have constitutional carry (where people who may legally own guns have the right to carry them openly or concealed).  Mississippi passed a bill characterized as 90% constitutional carry, and a bill is pending in Maine that has majority support in the legislature, and likely support of the governor. The South Carolina bill, H3025, recently passed the second read in the South Carolina House, 90-18.   It still has to pass a third read, but amendments on the third read are required to...