Free Republic

Of all weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, the ICBM is the one most likely to cause accidental nuclear war, arms-control specialists say. It is for this reason that a growing number of former defense officials, scholars of military strategy and some members of Congress have begun calling for the elimination of ICBMs.

“Star Wars: The Last Jedi” is heading for a massive launch in the $200 million range during its Dec. 15-17 opening weekend in North America, according to first estimates released by tracking services on Wednesday. Directed by Rian Johnson, the movie picks up where 2015’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” left off. It stars returning cast members Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, and Andy Serkis. New cast members include Kelly Marie Tran, Laura Dern, and Benicio del Toro. It’s the final film role for Fisher, who died last December. “Star Wars: The...

The Democratic Party is trying to figure out how it feels about sexual misconduct when the accused party is an elected or prominent Democrat.  After many years of reflexive excuse-making, victim-mocking and wagon-circling on Bill Clinton's behalf, a number of Democrats and liberals are belatedly coming around to the stance that perhaps he should have been run out of office in the late 1990's after all.  Others are forcefully pushing back in his defense, while still others are contorting themselves in order to blame for their own moral confusion and inconsistency on Republican partisanship, or whatever.  Presented with 'The Bill...

A hunt saboteur claims he was whipped 17 times with a riding crop by a woman on a horse while she was monitoring a hunt event. Footage shows the rider shouting ‘get off my horse’ as she lashed out at the masked man as she continues to shout ‘get back to the road’. Can you get a 26 to 30 railcard if you're already 30? It was filmed during a ride by the East Sussex and Romney Marsh Hunt Club on Saturday in Pevensey, East Sussex. The saboteurs claim she then used her horse to push them back while another...

President Trump escalated his Twitter war with basketball patriarch LaVar Ball, calling him "a poor man's Don King" and an "ungrateful fool." The Wednesday morning tweet blitz came as the two continued to feud over Trump's role in securing the release of one of Ball's three sons after he was detained in China, where the UCLA basketball player was held for shoplifting while on a tour of the nation. Ball has rebuffed Trump's demands for credit, saying it was Chinese President Xi Jinping who freed his son. It wasn’t the White House, it wasn’t the State Department, it wasn’t father...

COLUMBUS (WCMH) – A Central Ohio family had an up-close encounter during their first hunting trip out in the woods in Franklin County. Gary Simons says he was squirrel hunting with his two boys in the Little Pennsylvania Cemetery last week when a curious young buck meandered by. Video recorded by Simons shows the deer licking the boys’ guns, Simons’ pants, and even the phone before wandering back into the woods. Simons said “words can’t explain” how excited his boys were after the close encounter with the deer. video

PARIS/NANTERRE (Reuters) - French far-right leader Marine Le Pen accused two banks on Wednesday of launching a "banking fatwa" to silence her National Front party by closing bank accounts of hers and her party's.

COMMERCE CITY, Colo. -- A 31-year-old Colorado man says Walmart fired him for doing his job. Ramon asked his last name and hometown not be used, not because he fears retaliation from Walmart, but because he's worried about the countless shoplifters he helped the Commerce City Police Department arrest as an asset protection associate for the nation's largest retailer. Ramon was fired Nov. 10 after subduing a store burglary suspect four days earlier. "All I was trying to do was do my job, the best I could," Ramon said. Surveillance video shows Ramon getting sucker punched in the eye by...

Americans readily accept two opposing ideas about the first Thanksgiving — one bright and highly idealized, the other gray and somber, but closer to the truth. Jean Leon Gerome Ferris captured the first idea in a painting completed in 1915, some three centuries after the actual event. In his First Thanksgiving 1621, we see prosperous, black-clad Pilgrims in the company of new-found friends — bare-chested Indians in feathered war bonnets (one of several historical inaccuracies). The “thanks” here are for a bountiful harvest and the early realization of America as a land of milk and honey.But how could it have...

Many species, including humans, struggle to survive when temperatures rise too high. But even small increases can affect animals, causing subtle changes in physiology or behavior that alter how they fare. For some lizards, the effects of heat may, somewhat literally, be a no-brainer. A new study published in Royal Society Open Science has found that a temperature increase on the scale expected from climate change can make bearded dragons dumber. Bearded dragons are Australian lizards that have become popular as pets, and like other reptiles, they’re not as dumb as they might seem. “Reptiles were long considered to be...

The U.S. Constitution lists six goals. The intent to form a more perfect union is undermined by our current political divisiveness. The other five are crippled by our failure to address global warming: 1. Establish justice: Ethnic minorities and the poor suffer most from pollution caused by mining, refining and burning carbon fuels, and are most hurt by global warming they increasingly cause. 2. Ensure domestic tranquility: Multiple studies show that heat increases violence by both individuals and quarreling groups. 3. Provide for the common defense: As early as 2003, the military recognized the dangers climate change poses to world...

Three military members working for the White House have been reassigned after having alleged inappropriate contact with foreign women during President Donald Trump’s recent trip to Asia, a senior U.S. defense official has confirmed to Fox News. The service members, who worked as part of the White House Communications Agency (WHCA), are being investigated for allegedly breaking curfew in Vietnam, The Washington Post reported Tuesday... In August, four Army soldiers working with the WHCA were reassigned after bringing women back to their hotel room on a trip to Panama with Vice President Mike Pence.

Sometimes legends are true. Sunken cities are typically the stuff of legend, but now archaeologists have found the real thing hiding deep within Lake Van in Turkey. After a decade of searching the Middle East's second largest lake, the home of a lost kingdom has been found hundreds of metres beneath the surface. Archaeologists from the Van Yüzüncü Yıl University announced the incredible discovery - a vast 3,000-year-old castle preserved deep within the lake in amazing condition. The researchers worked closely with an independent team of divers to find their prize. Lost underwater cities and castles are a popular motif...

The Trump administration is making it harder to find government information about climate change on the web. If you searched Google for the words “climate change” a little over six months ago, one of the first hits would have been the Environmental Protection Agency’s website. But that was before April 28, when the agency began systematically dismantling its climate change website, which had survived Democratic and Republican administrations and was a leading source of information on a global problem that the president, as a candidate, labeled “a hoax.” If you search those words today, a link to the E.P.A. site...

Texas A&M coach Kevin Sumlin will be fired following the Aggies' regular-season finale at LSU on Saturday night, multiple people with knowledge of the situation said. Sumlin is expected to be dismissed in the day or days following the A&M game against the Tigers. The Aggies are a double-digit underdog to the Tigers, and an A&M victory wouldn't save his job at this point, the sources said.

A college student in California who stole a “Make America Great Again” hat off of another student’s head faces up to a year in jail, according to a Tuesday report.

With a mandate to transfer the Army’s stockpile of vintage M1911 pistols to the Civilian Marksmanship Program looming, what should those interested in picking one up expect? The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act approved by Congress last week consists of hundreds of sections ranging from reports on the U.S. strategy in Syria to programs authorizing new icebreakers. One of these sections outlines a two-year pilot program for moving the Army’s surplus .45ACP GI longslides to the federally chartered non-profit corporation tasked with promoting firearms safety training and rifle practice. Here’s what to expect. What’s up for grabs?In 2015, U.S....

It’s not a university anymore. It’s just an Antifa recruitment center. I spoke at Stanford University last week, and Stanford administrators and Leftist students made sure that as few people as possible heard me. In The Coming of the Third Reich, historian Richard J. Evans explains how, in the early days of National Socialist Germany, Stormtroopers (Brownshirts) “organized campaigns against unwanted professors in the local newspapers [and] staged mass disruptions of their lectures.” And here we are again. In the days before I arrived on campus, the student-run Stanford Daily and Stanford Review published article after article denouncing me in...

Marine Le Pen's political awakening came at the age of eight, when she survived a bombing at her family's Paris home. Five kilograms of dynamite had been placed on the landing outside the apartment at 9 Villa Poirier. The explosion ripped open the entire front of the building. A baby in the next-door flat fell five floors and was saved by the branches of a tree. In her autobiography, the woman who took over the leadership of France's National Front (FN) from her father describes the chaos, the smoke and debris. She and her two sisters “were on our knees...

Corruption: Shortly after the Uranium One story broke, various news reports claimed that it was much ado about nothing. But a review of a huge cache of newly available documents shows that, if anything, it was worse than previously thought. The Hill broke the bombshell story last month, which summed up goes like this: While the Obama administration was approving the controversial 2010 sale of Uranium One to a state-owned Russian energy giant — which gave it control of one-fifth of U.S. uranium supplies — the FBI was actively investigating that company for extensive criminal activity designed to expand Russia's...