Free Republic

In their barracks at the military academy an hour north of New York City, cadets huddled around radios each night to learn if Armageddon was at hand. On Oct. 22, they listened intently as President John F. Kennedy delivered a stern address on the rapidly spiraling crisis. “It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union,” Kennedy warned. Among the cadets at the academy in that fraught,...

In Australia, there are few limitations on the hunting of non-native species.Rabbits, cats, feral dogs, feral horses, feral donkeys, feral pigs, feral goats, foxes, camels, wild cattle, and water buffalo can be taken with few regulatory limitations.Deer have some limitations on the calibers that may be used. Game can be shot with spotlights and from vehicles.The shooting of Kangaroos, on the other hand, is highly regulated, and requires numerous different types of permits and licenses.Kangaroos maintain high populations and are agricultural pests in large areas of Australia. In New South Wales, near Quirindi, road killed Eastern Grey Kangaroos are...

Thirty Democrats disillusioned with their party’s struggles in Middle America have unveiled a new group aimed at expanding its base beyond just the two coasts. The initiative, which comprises current and former mayors, governors, cabinet members and lawmakers, comes complete with a catchy new title, “New Democracy.” If that name sounds familiar, it’s because it was the same as that given by Mao Zedong to his theory of democracy in Communist China. “In a word, new-democratic culture is the proletarian-led, anti-imperialist and anti-feudal culture of the broad masses,” Mao wrote on New Democracy in 1940, nine years before coming to...

Residents on the peninsula have begun comparing repair bills and horror stories about mice and rats devouring car wiring and insulation. In recent days, social media forums have reignited an issue that worsens with temperature shifts. One Tiburon driver said she racked up thousands in costs after her BMW i3 had wires eaten on every side of the car and underneath it. Many vehicles are built now with organic materials using soy, rice husks, wood, sugars and sweet-smelling substances such as vanilla and peanut oil. Marcel Etcheverry, owner of Marin Auto Works in Mill Valley, said chewed car parts have...

Take one round-trip flight between New York and California, and you’ve generated about 20 percent of the greenhouse gases that your car emits over an entire year. If you’re flying, you’re adding a significant amount of planet-warming gases to the atmosphere — there’s no way around it. But there are some ways to make your airplane travel a little bit greener. The most effective way to reduce your carbon footprint is to fly less often. If everyone took fewer flights, airline companies wouldn’t burn as much jet fuel. ...according to some calculations, a round-trip flight from New York to San...

AUSTIN, Texas—Democrats haven't won a Texas governor's race in nearly three decades, but a booming Hispanic population and the party's dominance of the state's largest cities have made them willing to invest in the contest to keep hopes of an eventual resurgence alive. After high-profile candidates lost decisively in the last two elections, though, the party now finds itself in unprecedented territory for the 2018 ballot: with no major candidate to run. Democratic leaders haven't yet lined up a substantial name to represent the party and its message despite months of trying. Any continued faith in a Democratic turnaround in...

A Los Angeles food services director who was invited to the White House by former First Lady Michelle Obama to share his tips for getting kids to eat healthy has been indicted for stealing $65,000 in public funds. David Binkle, a chef who served as the director of food services for Los Angeles Unified School District until he was fired in 2015, was charged last week with multiple counts of embezzlement, misappropriation of public funds, conflict of interest, forgery, and perjury. In 2014, Binkle traveled to the White House for a nutrition roundtable with Mrs. Obama. Binkle bragged that he...

A United Methodist minister is publishing a book of daily Bible devotionals inspired by the verses regularly sent to Hillary Rodham Clinton when she was running for president. The Rev. Bill Shillady, executive director of the New York-based United Methodist City Society, will be releasing the book on Aug. 15. Titled Strong for a Moment Like This: The Daily Devotions of Hillary Rodham Clinton, the book will include 365 of the over 600 devotions as well as a forward by Clinton herself. "Over the course of those 20 months, Shillady — a pastoral friend of Clinton's — and a small...

SEOUL/TORONTO — North Korea freed a Canadian pastor serving a life sentence on humanitarian grounds, the official KCNA news agency said on Wednesday, just hours after the United States warned it would counter any threat from the North with "fire and fury." There was no clear connection between the release of Hyeon Soo Lim and the heightened rhetoric between Washington and Pyongyang. Canadian officials said on Tuesday a delegation led by the country's national security adviser had gone to North Korea to discuss Lim's case. Lim, who served in one of the largest churches in Canada, had been sentenced to...

Smitty just had Clinton's Secretary of Defense on to critique President Trump's reaction to North Korea. Wasn't he involved in insuring that the Norks would not attain nuclear weapons?

The US defense secretary, James Mattis, has warned the North Korean regime that it risked the “end of its regime and the destruction of its people” if it attacked Washington or its allies, as an eruption of brinksmanship from both sides rattled the region. Mattis’s Wednesday reminder to Pyongyang that the allied militaries “possess the most precise, rehearsed and robust defensive and offensive capabilities on Earth”, capped an unprecedented 24 hours of sabre-rattling sparked by Donald Trump’s surprise threat to rain “fire and fury” down on the Pyongyang regime. The defense secretary, however, couched his remarks in the language of...

Evolutionary Biologist Now Wants Doctors to Kill Suicidal Depressed People Michael Egnor August 9, 2017, 10:48 AM Darwinist Jerry Coyne, who has recently advocated the medical killing of handicapped babies so they won’t “suffer,” has added another class of people to his kill list: people who are depressed. In response to a doctor’s suggestion in an article that a patient who was not physically suffering but who was depressed should be offered euthanasia, Coyne writes: My answer, as was that of another expert discussed in the piece, is “yes”, but I’d offer them antidepressants first… Goodness gracious. Coyne is now...

Hungry rodents are apparently menacing parents, nannies and babies on the Upper West Side. There are about 2 million rats in New York City, and some have settled in Central Park and Riverside Park.

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-WI, suggested Tuesday that Sen. John McCain's brain tumor, coupled with the timing of the healthcare vote in the Senate, may have played a role in McCain's vote against the bill to repeal provisions of Obamacare.

The Nebraska Board of Education is debating whether to include climate change in public school science classes and you can probably guess who is weighing in on its behalf. "Climate change is happening," David Harwood, a geology professor with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, told the board. "It is caused by human activity." What's he going to do when his next global warming protest gets cancelled because of a snow storm, in the middle of April?

oogle has fired an employee who authored an internal memo, which leaked online, criticizing the tech giant’s diversity policies, Bloomberg reports. James Damore attacked Google’s “politically correct monoculture” in the memo titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber.” It has been published online in full by Motherboard, which first reported on the document, and by Gizmodo. “We are unequivocal in our belief that diversity and inclusion are critical to our success as a company,” Danielle Brown, Google’s Vice President of Diversity, Integrity & Governance, wrote in a memo responding to Damore’s document, Motherboard reports. “Part of building an open, inclusive environment means...

If she finds success, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., won't be content with only impeaching President Trump. The California Democrat revealed on The Breakfast Club Monday morning that in the unlikely scenario Democrats managed to impeach Trump, she would go after Vice President Mike Pence next. Waters, perhaps the most visible proponent of impeachment in Congress, told the hosts of the popular radio program, "Bit by bit, drip by drip, it's coming home to roost." Citing the infamous Trump dossier that reputable liberal journalists declined to publish because at least some of its information was inaccurate, Waters predicted Trump would be...

A former QVC executive filed a lawsuit on Thursday, against the matchmaking company she paid $150,000 to help her find a mate. In the lawsuit, divorced mother-of-four Darlene Daggett said Kelleher International promised to hand pick her wealthy bachelors, with the goal of finding someone she could spend her retirement years with. Instead, the 62-year-old former president of QVC's U.S. commerce, says she forked over six figures but ended up suffering a series of disastrous dates with men who were more than just unsuitable. 'Kelleher’s "highly screened" matches for Daggett included men who were married, mentally unstable, physically ill, pathological...

Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore leads the crowded Republican primary field in the state's Senate race, according to a new poll. Moore has 30 percent support in the JMC Analytics and Polling survey. He is followed by Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.), with 22 percent, and Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), who had 19 percent. Another 17 percent are undecided. The poll found that 53 percent of respondents view Moore favorably, compared with 34 percent who have an unfavorable opinion of him. Just 35 percent have a favorable view of Strange and half of respondents see him unfavorably....

Fr. Don Miller, OFM Image: The Glory of Saint John Francis Regis | Church of Our Lady of Andance, Ardèche, France | Camillo RusconiSaint John Francis Regis Saint of the Day for June 16 (January 31, 1597 – December 30, 1640)  Saint John Francis Regis’ Story Born into a family of some wealth, John Francis was so impressed by his Jesuit educators that he himself wished to enter the Society of Jesus. He did so at age 18. Despite his rigorous academic schedule, he spent many hours in chapel, often to the dismay of fellow seminarians who were concerned...