Free Republic

Viola Davis is set to portray former First Lady Michelle Obama in First Ladies, a one-hour White House drama, which has been put on fast-track development at Showtime with a three-script commitment. Davis will executive produce the project, which hails from writer Aaron Cooley (novels Four Seats: A Thriller of the Supreme Court, The Guns of Ridgewood), Davis and Julius Tennon’s JuVee Productions, Cathy Schulman’s Welle Entertainment (Otherhood), Jeff Gaspin’s Gaspin Media (LA’s Finest) and Brad Kaplan (The Intruder). Showtime and Lionsgate TV co-produce. Viola Davis is set to portray former First Lady Michelle Obama in First Ladies, a one-hour...

Former NBA star objected to additions (Newser) – Larry Bird was surprised to see his tattoos in a mural painted on the side of a building in Indianapolis. The spider web tattoo on his left shoulder, the dagger on his right cheek, "Hoosier" on his neck—and more—don't exist on the real Larry Bird. So the retired NBA great's lawyer struck a deal with the street artist, Jules Muck, the Indianapolis Star reports. The tattoos are gone now, except for the "Indiana" on an arm and the street artist's "Muck Rock" signature, which was moved from inside a heart on Bird's...

His mom had told him not to ride on the autobahn (Newser) – An 8-year-old boy got a stern talking-to earlier this week when he took his mom's Volkswagen for a joyride on the German autobahn, but after pulling the stunt again—hitting speeds 112 mph—he's been put into psychological counselling, the AP reports. Dortmund police said Friday the grade-schooler stole the keys to the Golf around midnight and drove from his hometown Soest to Dortmund, about 30 miles away. Police say another motorist reported the child driving at high speeds in the city, saying "red lights and driving regulations did...

She fell in while doing maintenance work(Newser) – An Oregon woman almost died in an extremely unpleasant way after falling into a septic tank at her rural home, authorities say. Firefighters believe the Clackamas County woman was doing maintenance work when she fell into the tank, where she was trapped for up to three days, KPTV reports. "It looks like there was work being done on the septic tank," says Estacada Rural Fire District No. 69 division chief Richard Anderson. "There was a tractor in the area and a hole had been dug exposing the tank. And then she had...

It takes a fearless DJ to stand up for “late-night vibes” when you’ve got Bill Clinton asking you to turn the music down. But that’s what happened in the Hamptons when Bill and Hillary Clinton, Jon Bon Jovi and former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine dined at chic East Hampton hotel the Maidstone late Friday. A witness said, “Bill asked the staff to turn down the music as the late-night music scene was just beginning because there were still people having dinner [and their table was deep in political discussion]. They were told ‘no’ by the DJ. The wait staff...

This is my use case--maintaining the Wifi connection as I move around the yard (1.2 acres). I work in the yard a lot, and the fact that I'm moving (around the yard) also means that the Wifi signal can be in and out. I have an Asus RT-AC5300 as my base and it provides fine coverage over most of the house. And covers most of my yard, although there are some weak spots on the farthest extremes. The router itself is on one end of the house in a spare bedroom. The wife doesn't want it in the middle "where...

SANTA FE, N.M. — When a mutual friend of long-time Santa Fe restaurateur Murphy O’Brien and hotel entrepreneur Allan Affeldt introduced them a year ago, little did O’Brien know that he would end up re-opening the Legal Tender, Lamy’s landmark bar and restaurant. Those who know the enthusiastic Affeldt and his passion for renovating the classic American railroad hotels of Fred Harvey would not be surprised. Affeldt acquired, renovated and opened La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Arizona, several decades ago with his wife Tina Mion and, more recently, the Castañeda Hotel in Las Vegas, New Mexico – both former Harvey...

Last night’s Miami-Florida game helped ring in what was the earliest start of the college football season ever. Judging by the TV ratings, the early beginning might become tradition. The contest, which kicked off at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN, drew a 4.1 overnight rating. That’s the best for a game on the Worldwide Leader in nearly three years.

In a piece headlined "Uh-oh: Silicon Valley is building a Chinese-style social credit system," Fast Company's Mike Elgan reports on similar, albeit extralegal efforts to create something similar right here in the United States. Ever gotten out of an Uber and given your driver a low rating because his car was dirty or he drove unsafely? Well, he can rate, you too, as can other "gig" service providers. Elgan writes:

Title says it all; Isn't it time for a Nauti Nurse hurricane thread?

For tens of thousands of years, humans have reigned as our planet's only intelligent, self-aware species. But the rise of intelligent machines means that could change soon, perhaps in our own lifetimes. Not long after that, Homo sapiens could vanish from Earth entirely.That’s the jarring message of a new book by James Lovelock, the famed British environmentalist and futurist. “Our supremacy as the prime understanders of the cosmos is rapidly coming to end,” he says in the book, "Novacene." “The understanders of the future will not be humans but what I choose to call ‘cyborgs’ that will have designed and built themselves.”Lovelock describes cyborgs...

In China, scoring citizens’ behavior is official government policy. U.S. companies are increasingly doing something similar, outside the law. Have you heard about China’s social credit system? It’s a technology-enabled, surveillance-based nationwide program designed to nudge citizens toward better behavior. The ultimate goal is to “allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step,” according to the Chinese government. In place since 2014, the social credit system is a work in progress that could evolve by next year into a single, nationwide point system for all Chinese citizens, akin to...

Did U.S. Rep. Deb Haaland call leftist group antifa peaceful protesters in an interview with CNN, and should the rest of New Mexico’s congressional delegation condemn her for doing so? Republican Party Chairman Steve Pearce believes so, and called on Haaland’s Democratic colleagues to do so in a news release last week by the party. “Rep. Deb Haaland’s comments calling Antifa ‘peaceful protestors’ are reprehensible, and our Federal delegation should disavow Haaland’s irresponsible and incorrect statement that goes against our American values,” the former Congressman said. Haaland was asked about President Donald Trump’s post on Twitter about the possibility that...

Next year’s G-7 meeting is set to be held in Doral, Florida, a senior administration official told Fox News, after President Trump made a strong pitch over the weekend to world leaders to have the summit at his resort outside of Miami. Trump himself also strongly suggested Monday that next year’s meeting will be held at his Trump National Doral Golf Club, as he hyped the property’s close proximity to Miami’s airport and the facilities available for the staff of world leaders and the press. “With Doral, we have a series of magnificent buildings, we call them bungalows,” Trump said...

Aug. 22 (UPI) -- A woman fishing in upstate New York snapped photos when she reeled in a trout with a unique feature -- two mouths. Debbie Geddes said she was fishing on Lake Champlain with her husband when she reeled in the two-mouthed fish. Photos of the unusual trout went viral after a friend, Adam Facteau, posted them to Facebook. "I've had messages from all over the world, like people asking about this fish and it seems like everybody's got an opinion on what is the cause of this fish having two mouths," Facteau told WPTZ-TV. Theories from people...

In China, it's becoming common for subjects of the Communist state's growing digital apparatus to be denied air travel or business class train tickets, have their internet bandwidth throttled, have their kids denied admission to better schools, denied employment in certain sectors, or even have their dogs taken away. It's called "social credit," it's kept track of digitally and with zero transparency, and Beijing is trotting it out in stages by 2020 as a sort-of kinder, gentler totalitarianism. Think of it as a digital Stasi. Your neighbor catches you smoking in a non-smoking area, and reports on you with his...

“Middlemen" are causing a crisis in health care that's hitting everyday Americans in the wallet and preventing them from getting the care they need. They have contributed to soaring health care costs and medicine shortages. On May 11th of this year, the President held a press conference and stated "We’re very much eliminating the middlemen. The middlemen became very, very rich. Whoever those middlemen were — and a lot of people never even figured it out — they’re rich. They won’t be so rich anymore." https://www.houstoncourant.com/houston-voices/2019/7/28/middlemen-in-healthcare-creating-high-costs

“Big tech companies, especially Google, can shift a lot of votes, without people knowing and without leaving a paper trail,” said psychiatrist Dr. Robert Epstein in an interview with One America’s News Network. While there is a bipartisan interest on how to deal with these big tech companies, Dr. Epstein said that “Congress is just not gone get it together on time to protect us, the American public, from interference in the 2020 election by big tech. Google has likely been determining the outcomes of upwards of 25 percent of the national elections worldwide since at least 2015. This is...

WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors in Washington appear to be in the final stages of deciding whether to indict Andrew G. McCabe, the former deputy F.B.I. director and a frequent target of President Trump, on charges of lying to federal agents, according to interviews with people familiar with recent developments in the investigation. In two meetings last week, Mr. McCabe’s lawyers met with the deputy attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen, who is expected to be involved in the decision about whether to prosecute, and for more than an hour with the United States attorney for the District of Columbia, Jessie K....

United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has unveiled a new 60-mile stretch of completed wall along the southern border.Constructed using an 18-foot steel bollard barrier, the new section of wall is near San Luis, Arizona.The new triple-layered enforcement zone is far more effective at deterring illegal entry than the former single 10-foot barrier, CBP revealed.