Free Republic

The Man Once Called Inventor of the Republican Internet Wants Help.Political campaigns are notoriously opaque. They're also typically pretty top-down affairs despite staffers' insistence that "It's all about the grassroots." So it was a bit surprising to see Vincent Harris, the young entrepreneur heading digital for GOP presidential hopeful Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, asking supporters on Twitter for ideas. Specifically, he asked followers of his @VincentHarris account on Wednesday what the candidate might do better in digital media. In a related post he wrote, "I am around always to listen. Have had folks as young as 14 send in...

MacKeeper, a utility and security program for Apple computers, celebrated its fifth birthday in April. But its gift to U.S. consumers who bought the application may be a slice of a $2 million class-action settlement. Released in 2010, MacKeeper has been dogged by accusations that it exaggerates security threats in order to convince customers to buy. Its aggressive marketing has splashed MacKeeper pop-up ads all over the web. The program was originally created by a company called ZeoBIT in Kiev, Ukraine. The country—full of young, smart programmers—has long been a hub for lower-cost software development and outsourcing.

A man who smirked as he was sentenced in the savage beating of a San Francisco Giants fan outside Dodger Stadium wants a federal judge to spare him from another lengthy prison sentence for an unrelated gun crime. Louie Sanchez’s handwritten letter prays for mercy in the crime discovered as police investigated the 2011 attack on baseball’s opening day that left Bryan Stow with permanent brain damage. “The outcome of the situation I don’t wish upon nobody,” Sanchez wrote in his letter to Judge Fernando Olguin. “Unfortunately, Mr. Stow got hurt and I send my deepest sympathy to Mr. Stow...

McDonald’s may be developing a taste for a new ingredient as it fights to reinvent itself: Kale. The world’s biggest burger chain says it’s testing two breakfast bowls in Southern California, one of which includes the leafy green as an ingredient. The test comes as McDonald’s Corp. works to shake its junk food image, with sales at established U.S. locations declining for six straight quarters. CEO Steve Easterbrook, who stepped into the top spot March 1, has said he want to turn the chain into a “modern, progressive burger company.”

Nine days after its launch to the International Space Station went awry, Russia's robotic Progress 59 cargo ship is due to take a fiery plunge through Earth's atmosphere within hours. Predictions from a variety of expert analysts — at places ranging from Russia's Roscosmos space agency to the U.S. Strategic Command — call for the Progress to break up in the atmosphere around 10 p.m. to midnight (02:00 to 04:00 UTC), with a margin of uncertainty that extends a couple of hours before or after that time. "We can exclude any time after early Friday morning," the European Space Agency's...

A computer virus that tries to avoid detection by making the machine it infects unusable has been found. If Rombertik's evasion techniques are triggered, it deletes key files on a computer, making it constantly restart. Analysts said Rombertik was "unique" among malware samples for resisting capture so aggressively. On Windows machines where it goes unnoticed, the malware steals login data and other confidential information. Endless loop Rombertik typically infected a vulnerable machine after a booby-trapped attachment on a phishing message had been opened, security researchers Ben Baker and Alex Chiu, from Cisco, said in a blogpost. Some of the messages...

She's just like us? While Bill and Chelsea hold secret closed-door foundation meeting at lavish Morocco hotel, Hillary poses for selfie with JetBlue airport workersHillary Clinton is just another everyday American. That's the message her campaign tried to send on Tuesday when she posed for a photo on an airport tarmac with a gaggle of JetBlue ramp workers – and an MSNBC morning show producer tweeted it out. Half a world away, meanwhile, Bill and Chelsea Clinton were wining and dining the Clinton Foundation's now-controversial foreign donors at northern Africa's poshest hotel – and journalists weren't allowed in. JetBlue is...

A new study suggests the measles shot comes with a bonus: By preventing that disease, the vaccine may also help your body fight off other illnesses for years. It's long been known that contracting measles weakens the immune system for weeks or months, putting people, especially children, at increased risk for potentially fatal infection by a host of germs. Now, scientists find that this vulnerable period goes on much longer than thought, up to three years. So the benefit of avoiding measles also extends longer than was appreciated. Researchers also found that measles vaccination campaigns were followed by a drop...

While federal agents with a warrant were knocking on a door to a luxury Honolulu apartment on a December morning in 2012, agents watching from the ground saw men tossing bags of crystal meth over the 15th floor balcony. “The bags burst upon making contact with the walkway in the lobby of the building, causing a large quantity of a whitish crystalline substance to disperse all over the sidewalk area,” a Homeland Security Investigations agent described in an affidavit filed in the case. About 3 pounds of meth blanketed the sidewalk, the court document said.

Lindsey Graham is telling donors that June 1 is the likely date for his presidential announcement, according to several sources familiar with the conversations. The announcement would likely take place in South Carolina, possibly near his home base of Seneca, according to the sources, which would enable the GOP senator to highlight a compelling personal story not widely known outside his home state.

New Jersey has established a broad range of crimes in its 228 years as a state, from making it illegal to wear a bulletproof vest while committing murder to outlawing human cloning. But somehow having sex with animals slipped under the lawmaking radar. Many people – legislators included – might have assumed, given the Garden State’s comprehensive set of laws and its reputation for being fairly progressive on social issues, that an almost universally rejected fetish like bestiality must be a crime. “It’s crazy,” said Sen. Christopher “Kip” Bateman. “It’s a flaw in the statute.” On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary...

While we love Outside Lands, and the Folsom Street Fair, and maybe even the Ramen Festival for the sheer horror of watching famished people wait three hours for soup, the best fests are the unique ones that only happen once. (Before anybody bristles about how Folsom is totes unique, there’s also Up Your Alley and Folsom East.) Castroville Artichoke Festival The last weekend in May — which is not Memorial Day weekend, but the one after — Castroville throws its Artichoke Food & Wine Festival, which has been running for well over half a century to showcase the Pajaro Valley’s...

BRAZIL (WRIC) – Most expectant mothers get a glimpse at their baby during ultrasounds, but if you’re pregnant and can’t see, the experience of an ultrasound may be less profound. However, a video posted by the Brazilian branch of Huggies, called “Meeting Murilo,” is showing the world how one blind woman was able to bask in the incredible first ultrasound moment — even if she doesn’t have sight. Tatiana Guerra, 30, has been blind for almost half of her life. She now primarily experiences the world through touch. “If you could touch him, would that let you know what he’s...

If you live in a state like South Dakota, you’ve become used to “Republicans” selling out the Constitution, the rule of law, and the American people on ObamaCare. We’ve seen our former governor and newly minted U.S. Senator RINO Mike Rounds, our current governor RINO Dennis Daugaard, and a host of other “Republican” leaders in state government sell us out on ObamaCare. And we’ve seen “Republicans” in Washington D.C. sell us out on ObamaCare, with one of the biggest surrenders a couple of years ago when they had a chance to defund this unconstitutional monstrosity before it ever got...

Not Without My Daughter Trailer - Directed by Brian Gilbert and starring Sally Field, Alfred Molina, Sheila Rosenthal, Roshan Seth, Sarah Badel. An American woman, trapped in Islamic Iran by her brutish husband, must find a way to escape with her daughter.

Mark Ronson’s hit ‘Uptown Funk!’ has itself another five songwriters, which is quite an achievement given it already had six. The new co-credits go to the writers of The Gap Band’s 1979 hit ‘Oops Upside Your Head’, which, well, let’s say it was a big influence on Ronson’s record. Ronson, the track’s singer Bruno Mars, and his co-producers Jeffrey Bhasker and Phillip Lawrence were already sharing songwriting credits on (and royalties from) the track with Nicholas Williams (aka Trinidad James) and producer Devon Gallaspy as a result of the hit sampling the latter duo’s song ‘All Gold Everything’. Added to...

CONFRONTING THE ‘CALIPHATE’|This is part of an occasional series about the rise of the Islamic State militant group, its implications for the Middle East, and efforts by the U.S. government and others to undermine it.She was a redheaded rebel, the singer in the family, a trash-talking, tattooed 21-year-old wrapped up in a hip-hop dream of becoming Holland’s Eminem. Then Betsy found Allah. After her sudden conversion to Islam last summer, Betsy — a name given by her family to protect her identity — began dressing in full Muslim robes. By January, the once-agnostic Dutch woman, raised in a home where...

“My favorite drawings at the Muhammad cartoon festival in Texas were the two chalk outlines out front.”

David Axelrod: UK Media Most Partisan I Have Seen – Even More Than Fox News Ben Jacobs 7 May 2015 David Axelrod, the top aide to Barack Obama who travelled across the pond to advise Ed Miliband in the British election, has said he has never seen a media environment as partisan as the one in the UK. Asked in an interview with Politico Europe whether he knew what he was getting into when he signed up to advise the British Labour leader, Axelrod replied: “We discussed this when I signed on … I’ve worked in aggressive media environments before...

Powerful winds are blowing through St. Peter’s Square, setting up the perfect storm. Indeed, the climate is drastically changing in Vatican City as the world awaits Pope Francis’ environment encyclical. Behind the scenes of St. Peter’s, forces are at play to create a very problematic document influenced, and partly written, by rabid opponents of Catholic moral teaching.. As the keynote speaker at the final Pontifical environmental conference, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said climate change is the “defining issue of our times” and that it is “important faith groups are in harmony with this issue.” Moon said he was...