Free Republic

A Mother's Day outing at a Georgia Red Lobster Restaurant turned violent when a family was attacked by another group of men entering the eatery, resulting in three people being hospitalized, according to wlox.com. The Columbus Police Department reported that as one family left the restaurant Sunday (May 10) at about 3 p.m., one man who was holding a 14-month-old child was jumped by members of the arriving group.

For sustaining evidence of a world gone nuts with the media’s steady, selective and frightened compliance, there’s Delmon Young — now with the Orioles, who spent the week here playing the Mets, then Yankees. But first the lasting legacy of John Rocker — the big, white, not too bright Braves pitcher quoted in Sports Illustrated making bigoted, ethnic and racist remarks about NYC’s inhabitants. Though he broke no laws or jaws, Rocker, at 24, became a national symbol of hate, a pariah, too. On TV, radio and in print — “Saturday Night Live” to “The CBS Evening News with Dan...

The Obama administration insisted Monday that Saudi Arabia’s King Salman isn’t snubbing President Barack Obama with his decision not to attend a Camp David meeting this week, despite widespread speculation that his absence seems to be a rebuke to Obama’s effort to reach a nuclear deal with Iran. Obama had invited King Salman to meet at the White House and Camp David on May 13 and 14, and the White House had indicated that the two would meet in private before a meeting of other Gulf Cooperation Council states. On Sunday, however, Saudi Arabia said it would instead send the...

Renowned fiddler Johnny Gimble, who gained fame for his backup work with country stars from Merle Haggard to Carrie Underwood, has died. He was 89. His daughter, Cyndy, said Gimble died Saturday morning near his home in Dripping Springs, near Austin, “finally rid of the complications from several strokes over the past few years.”

Many of the party's main pledges were in its manifesto, but some were also made later in the election campaign. The party said it would: Introduce a law guaranteeing no rise in income tax rates, VAT or national insurance before 2020 Invest an extra £8bn a year for the NHS by 2020 Hold a referendum on membership of the EU by 2017 Open 500 more free schools Extend the right-to-buy scheme to housing association tenants in England Build 200,000 starter homes Ensure all people who work 30 hours per week on the minimum wage pay no income tax Double free...

We present the first investigation of Th abundances in Solar twins and analogues to understand the possible range of this radioactive element and its effect on rocky planet interior dynamics and potential habitability. The abundances of the radioactive elements Th and U are key components of a planet's energy budget, making up 30% to 50% of the Earth's (Korenaga 2008; Allegre et al. 2001; Schubert et al. 1980; Lyubetskaya & Korenaga 2007; The KamLAND Collaboration 2011; Huang et al. 2013). Radiogenic heat drives interior mantle convection and surface plate tectonics, which sustains a deep carbon and water cycle and thereby...

Foreign policy should work to advance a constructive agenda—something that’s been largely lacking in the Obama era. Hopefully, the next president will come up with appropriate actions to fill that void. As a cornerstone of that effort, I would suggest a commitment to promoting free trade and more liberal markets worldwide. I’ve written before that the next president will need a “kick starter” agenda—one that demonstrates that the United States is back in the business of protecting its own interests. But Washington will need to go beyond that. The static defense of interests is a sterile and ultimately, unsatisfactory role...

Pobody's Nerfect. On Monday afternoon, Bloomberg Politics editor and MSNBC senior burrito correspondent Mark Halperin apologized for an interview two weeks ago in which he ham-handedly quizzed Senator and 2016 presidential hopeful Ted Cruz (R-TX) on his Cuban heritage. In the interview Halperin questioned Cruz on his Hispanic appeal, even his consumption of Cuban dishes, and offered to let Cruz welcome Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders to the race en Español. The interview flew under the radar until it was torn to shreds by San Jose Mercury-News columnist Ruben Navarrette this weekend. “As a Hispanic, I felt like I was watching...

Keep in mind that polls this early in a presidential cycle measure mostly name recognition rather than solid voter choice. Even with that caveat in mind — or perhaps because of it — the Bloomberg/St. Anselm poll released last night delivers bad news to Hillary Clinton and Democrats for 2016. Instead of a commanding lead over a field of emerging names, Hillary barely edges out most of the GOP field: There’s no clear Republican front-runner in the New Hampshire presidential nominating contest, while Hillary Clinton retains an overwhelming advantage among Democrats in the Granite State’s first-in-the-nation primary.Clinton’s advantage over...

If you are watching the news, or were listening to Mark Levin’s rant last evening, the subject du jour is the Senate passage 96-1 of the Corker-Cardin bill. Yes, that is Tennessee’s own Republican Senator Corker, who obviously has his political eye set on a future in the White House. The bill is advertised by Republican leadership as a great victory, giving Congress 30 days to review the President’s secret nuclear treaty negotiations with Iran before enactment. Under present law, the President cannot execute a treaty with a foreign nation unless it has the approval of 2/3 of the Senate....

PERUSE any basic work of European history, you will learn that about 200 years ago, a new way of thinking, secular nationalism, began to replace religion as the main focus of people's public loyalties. To judge by the landslide vote for the Scottish National Party in yesterday's general election, that process may just have been completed in Scotland, a land with a long history of religious rivalry and conflict... The number of people who identify with the national (Presbyterian) church had fallen to just over 20% in 2012 from 35% in 1999; while those who professed "no religion" had risen...

RUSH: There are rolling themes on this program. There are umbrella items under which fall a number of, oh, stories and sub-ideas, sub-topics, if you will. One of the themes of this program for its duration since we started, and actually predating this program going back to when I was in Sacramento, has been that the American left and the Democrat Party are engaged in an escalating -- and it has been escalating year after year after year -- attack on the institutions and traditions that have defined and made American greatness. Not just political institutions, but social institutions and...

According to New Jersey Watchdog, Christie reportedly spent over $82,000 of taxpayer money on concessions at MetLife Stadium. Christie paid for food and drinks at MetLife with a debit card 58 times over the 2010 and 2011 NFL seasons, accruing a bill of $82,594. That means he spent an average of nearly $1,500 on food and drinks every time he attended a football game.

The water flea has genetically adapted to climate change. Biologists from KU Leuven, Belgium, compared 'resurrected' water fleas—hatched from 40-year-old eggs—with more recent specimens. The project was coordinated by Professor Luc De Keester from the Laboratory of Aquatic Ecology, Evolution and Conservation. The water flea Daphnia is a zooplankton organism that is typically found in shallow ponds and lakes. Under normal circumstances, water fleas reproduce asexually: they clone themselves. But in difficult living conditions - during food shortages or heat waves, for instance - they switch to a different type of procreation: they mate and lay dormant eggs. As the...

As usual, the world’s media have it wrong about Israel. The Jewish State remains a forward-thinking beacon of democracy, equality and justice. Witness Ayelet Shaked, Israel’s newly appointed justice minister who at the age of 39 is likely one of the few women anywhere in the world to hold such a senior government position. She’s a secular leader of a religious party, and lives in North Tel Aviv. The extremists are on the left, holding minimal influence or power, and thankfully, with Shaked’s Jewish Home party now holding senior roles in Netanyahu’s coalition, the radical fringe of the New Israel...

  The response in many quarters to Islamists' so-called outrage to insulting the prophet Mohammed has been to cower in fear and blame those who exercise their right to free speech rather than those who would kill over it. Lost in the argument is the simple truth that Islamists kill for the sake of killing Christians- both in the Middle East and Africa. ISIS and Boko Haram share that inclination. As slandering Christianity and persecuting Christians has become largely de rigueur in the United States of America it seems not to raise many eyebrows. The left, however, claims to own...

Scott Walker has snagged a key Romney ally, attorney and foreign-policy hand Robert C. O’Brien, for his not-yet-announced presidential campaign. A spokeswoman for Walker’s 527 group, Our American Revival, confirmed that O’Brien will serve as a foreign-policy adviser. O’Brien, sources say, decided to endorse Walker after being courted by several other Republican presidential contenders, including Texas senator Ted Cruz, former Texas governor Rick Perry, Florida senator Marco Rubio, and South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham. He is a personal friend of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, a fellow Mormon who served as a key foreign-policy adviser on the governor’s 2012 presidential...

It can be exhausting trying to bring white people up to a basic racial literacy. Many don’t even know what they don’t know about privilege and history, and often either don’t take responsibility for their own education or expect you to educate them. And I wish there were a racial primer out there somewhere — mandatory reading — with five or 10 basic facts about housing, education, criminal justice and employment. Or maybe a simple overview so that before we enter into meaningful conversations around issues that are front and center before our nation, I don’t have to go person...

King Salman of Saudi Arabia has withdrawn from a carefully orchestrated summit with the US that President Barack Obama hoped would assuage Gulf anxieties about the conclusion of a nuclear agreement with Iran. Until Sunday the monarch had been expected to join other heads of state from the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries at an unprecedented meeting at the White House and a day of talks at the presidential retreat at Camp David. Now the only leaders attending will be the emirs of Qatar and Kuwait. The summit, scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, follows months of tension and intensive...

Fourteen years into waging a frustrating counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan, there is at least one thing that every military expert who has studied the country can agree on: Osama bin Laden really knew what he was doing when he picked Afghanistan as a sanctuary for his murderous band of jihadists. There are few places in the world less hospitable to Western goals and values. Geographically isolated, economically backward, politically divided and culturally insular, Afghanistan has been a hard place to stabilize, and its neighbors haven’t been much help. But despite numerous setbacks, the Bush and Obama administrations have stuck with...