Free Republic

“When she's with the music, she's got it!” A truly motivational story. A young California woman has fulfilled her dream of becoming America’s first ever Zumba instructor with Down syndrome. The inspirational 24-year-old from San Francisco became an official Zumba teacher in March of 2012, after memorising and practising the routines for six hours a day. Yulissa Arescurenaga took part in her first class in 2008, and was immediately besotted by the way the joyful routines and Latin music made her feel.

During the second official debate in the Conservative Party’s leadership race Tuesday night, candidates found themselves straining to separate themselves from the pack. And of course, nothing brought the candidates together like their common hatred of the Liberals. Scheer, for one, said he “can’t let Justin Trudeau do to my kids what his father did to our generation, and that’s leave us with a legacy of debt and deficits.” Trudeau’s “sunshine and unicorns and Care Bear economics” aren’t working, he said.

Superficially at least, there may be a rich irony to Justin Pemberton’s intriguing interactive documentary I Spy With My 5 Eyes. The Canadian-New Zealand coproduction is a chilling cautionary tale about the changing nature of surveillance, making a convincing case that our daily actions are leaving glaring digital footprints that government spy agencies can easily access. I Spy With My 5 Eyes is also interactive — visitors are encouraged to share their views on this controversial topic. So, in essence, aren’t people being asked to go online and share their views about the dangers of sharing too much online?

Before grabbing the Moose, moms Robinson and the kids to fly away for their final lavish taxpayer funded vacation as first family, Barky took time off from trying to delegitimize Trump's presidency to sit down for an interview with National Public Radio. He touched on a lot of subjects like Russian hacking and “fake news” but those complaints are old news. His biggest new revelation is that he doesn't want Trump running the country the same way he did. If there were an award for lack of self-awareness, not only would Obama win it this year, he'd be inducted into...

http://www.pga.com/news/golf-buzz/when-hitting-golf-ball-off-frozen-pond-goes-wrong

audio podcast 19:08 For more than six years, FDD’s Long War Journal has warned that official estimates of al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan were too low and inconsistent with publicly available evidence. Officials finally conceded earlier this year that the number of al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan exceeds the US government’s longstanding claim. Longstanding lowball estimate at odds with evidence. An analysis of the raids conducted between 2007 and 2013 indicated that al Qaeda and its closest allies maintained a far deeper and broader presence. Bill Roggio, Thomas Jocelyn of the Long War Journal

Kellyanne Elizabeth Conway (née Fitzpatrick; born January 20, 1967) is an American Republican campaign manager, strategist, and pollster. She is president and CEO of The Polling Company Inc./Woman Trend, and has been a political commentator on CNN, Fox News, Fox Business, and more. She has been a guest...

“To all the little girls watching this,” Clinton said. “Never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.”

President-elect Donald Trump taunted former President Bill Clinton on Tuesday, chiding his political acumen and attempting to correct the record on who reached out first with a recent phone call. “Bill Clinton stated that I called him after the election. Wrong, he called me (with a very nice congratulations). He ‘doesn’t know much’ …,” Mr. Trump tweeted, “especially how to get people, even with an unlimited budget, out to vote in the vital swing states ( and more). They focused on wrong states.” The remarks were an apparent response to a recent editorial published by the Record-Review, a local newspaper...

The Interior Ministry has launched a crackdown to combat the trend toward shrinking hemlines witnessed among Russia's female police officers, Izvestia reported Monday. The ministry imposed a ban against all uniform modifications in response to the growing number of shortened skirts worn by women, and the tendency of their male counterparts to hack off their shirt sleeves. ... As for the problem of female officers shortening their skirts, Pashkin said he did not see any reason to complain. "Perhaps the girls want to get married. Incidentally, they are thinking about the demographic situation," Pashkin said.

December 20, 2016 Tuesday of the Fourth Week in Advent Reading 1 Is 7:10-14 The LORD spoke to Ahaz:Ask for a sign from the LORD, your God;let it be deep as the nether world, or high as the sky!But Ahaz answered,“I will not ask! I will not tempt the LORD!” Then Isaiah said:Listen, O house of David! Is it not enough for you to weary men,must you also weary my God? Therefore the Lord himself will give you this sign:the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,and shall name him Emmanuel. Responsorial Psalm Ps 24:1-2, 3-4ab, 5-6 R. (see...

Tiger snake found in a woman's Christmas tree in Australia. (Provided by Barry Goldsmith of Snake Catcher Victoria Australia.) It probably wasn’t what she asked Santa for, but a woman in Australia got an early Christmas surprise in her tree this year. According to professional snake catcher Barry Goldsmith, a woman in Melbourne found a tiger snake intertwined with the tinsel on her Christmas tree on Sunday morning. “She’s didn’t panic, she just took a photo and sent it to the snake catcher, me, and 20 minutes later I had the little bugger in a bag,” Goldsmith wrote on...

The interior minister of the German state of Saarland said on Tuesday Germany is in a state of war after a man drove a truck into a crowd at a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 people and injuring 48, in a suspected terrorist attack.

According to an unsubstantiated article by the Washington Post, anonymous CIA officials have confirmed that the Russian government hacked the United States election to favor Donald Trump. Though it’s entirely possible the Russian government attempted to influence the election, the Post has been widely criticized — for the second time in a month — for its failure to follow basic journalistic practices. Nevertheless, the narrative is sticking. But the outlet’s behind-the-scenes relationship with the CIA is nothing new. In 2013, a conflict of interest arose shortly after Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, purchased the newspaper. As the Nation...

Over the 40-some years that I have been working or closely observing the political campaign business, the rules of the game haven't changed much. Technology has changed the business somewhat, but the people who ran campaigns in the 1970s could have (and in some cases actually have) run them four decades later. But suddenly this year, the rules seemed to change. Let me try to count the ways. 1) Money doesn't seem to matter so much anymore. "Money is the mother's milk of politics," the legendary California Assembly Speaker Jesse Unruh said a half-century ago. But some winning campaigns...

After decades of offshoring, established bicycle brands and entrepreneurs are bringing bicycle manufacturing back to the United States as overseas costs rise and companies realize the value of "local for local" production. Kent International will roll out approximately 350,000 bikes at its Manning, S.C. factory, but expects to produce about 500,000 bikes in the U.S. in 2017, and has set a target to ramp up to more than 1 million bicycles by 2020. From hand-crafted boutique brands to high-volume manufacturing and assembly, dedicated U.S. bicycle makers are reshoring bike production to the U.S. A confluence of factors including rising offshore...

Via the Blaze, a clip that raises an important question: Can one be properly “woke” without having killed a baby? Skip to 13:30 below. Someone whose cultural cachet doesn’t depend on being a young feminist and provocateur would have turned this into a more thoughtful bit of commentary. She’s a loud and proud abortion warrior, she says, but she’s uncomfortable (or used to be uncomfortable) with people thinking that she might have had an abortion herself. How come? Had she unconsciously adopted an unjust social stigma against abortion, as she assumes, or was she experiencing a moral intuition about abortion...

Trump has called for international cooperation in fighting terror. The Kremlin has praised U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s response to Monday’s attacks in Berlin and Ankara, claiming that his words are “in tune” with those of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump accused a “radical Islamic terrorist” of shooting dead the Russian Ambassador to Turkey on Monday before also commenting on an attack on a Christmas market in Berlin, Germany’s capital. In response to the latter, he declared “terrorists and their regional and worldwide networks must be eradicated from the face of the Earth,” and called for international support to do so.

NFL Live Thread Week 16 Thursday, Dec. 22 8:25 p.m. ET Giants at Eagles Saturday, Dec. 24 1 p.m. ET Dolphins at Bills 1 p.m. ET Buccaneers at Saints 1 p.m. ET Jets at Patriots 1 p.m. ET Titans at Jaguars 1 p.m. ET Vikings at Packers 1 p.m. ET Chargers at Browns 1 p.m. ET Redskins at Bears 1 p.m. ET Falcons at Panthers 4:05 p.m. ET Colts at Raiders 4:25 p.m. ET Cardinals at Seahawks 4:25 p.m. ET 49ers at Rams 8:25 p.m. ET Bengals at Texans Sunday, Dec. 25 4:30 p.m. ET Ravens at Steelers 8:30 p.m....

A conservative professor decrying the corrosive effects of political correctness on the larger society wrote a recent Letter to the Editor in our local paper. In the letter, the professor compared young people to butter sticks who melt at the slightest rise in temperature. The professor’s brief letter suggested that parents are raising their kids to be hypersensitive and that the universities are making the situation worse, not better. I agree with everything the professor wrote but I believe the situation is much more ominous than that. So I am writing to supplement, rather than contradict, the professor’s astute observations....