Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) — Emma and Noah were the most popular baby names in 2014. Among girls, Emma was followed by Olivia, Sophia, Isabella and Ava, according to the list released Friday by the Social Security Administration. For boys, Noah was followed by Liam, Mason, Jacob and William.

2014 Ebola Outbreak in West Africa - Cumulative Reported Cases Graphs "Graph 1: Cumulative reported cases of Ebola virus disease in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, March 25, 2014 – January 7, 2015, by date of WHO Situation Report, n=20712 "Graph 1 shows the cumulative reported cases in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone provided in WHO situation reports beginning on March 25, 2014 through the most recent situation report on January 7, 2015. Cumulative reported cases in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone[CSV - 1 page] Graph 2: Cumulative reported cases and deaths of Ebola virus disease in Guinea, March 25,...

What a difference a year makes. One year ago, most Americans had never even heard of the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL). Despite this ignorance and the Obama administration’s prohibition of criticism of Islam, denial is not an effective defense. So the jihad raged on this past year, culminating in the mass slaughter Wednesday of a magazine editor and his staff in Paris because they mocked Islam. Islamic jihadists were more active than ever in the United States in 2014. Most of the jihad plots and attacks were under-reported or misreported: in every case, law enforcement and government authorities ignored,...

Michigan’s 38 senators and 110 representatives missed a combined 1,626 votes in 2014 according to the Missed Votes Report compiled by Jack McHugh, editor of MichiganVotes.org. The 2014 Legislature held 1,747 roll call votes, 936 in the Senate and 811 in the House, not counting purely procedural votes. This is up from the combined total of 1,256 roll call votes held in 2013, when individual legislators missed 1,093 votes altogether. In contrast, there were 21,162 missed votes in the 2001-2002 legislative session, the year MichiganVotes.org began. “The days of some legislators no longer showing up for work are long past,”...

Illinois has seen the fourth coldest year on record with an average statewide temperature of 49.9 degrees in 2014. Illinois State Climatologist Jim Angel says 2014 is tied with 1912 and 1972 with an annual temperature that’s 2.9 degrees below average. The coldest year on record since 1895 was 1917 with an average temperature of 48.3 degrees.

There is an independent site that tracks homicides in Chicago.  There are not affiliated with the police, and they use public sources to determine the number of homicides.  The numbers that they give include justified homicides and homicides by police. The numbers are very similar in 2014 to what they were in 2013.                                        2013   2014 Homicides by shooting      375     388 Woundings by shooting    1810   2231 Total Homicides                455    456 It is interesting to note that ratio of wounded to killed went up form 4.82/1 to 5.75/1 in one year. The site has a lot of great graphics depicting...

The year just ended saw one leftist narrative after another collapse under the weight of reality, and the Republicans still sucking their thumbs, turning the other cheek, and failing to effectively respond. My online friend, hit and run, characterized the usual political dialogue:

The title Man of the Year, bestowed by the mass media on a gender-neutral “Person of the Year,” reflects the impact a public figure has had on world events during the year preceding. Thus it was quite understandable, even predictable, that Time, the world’s leading news magazine, and The Advocate, the world’s most prominent homosexualist publication, would both name Pope Francis “Person of the Year” for 2013.  The world understands, even if most Catholics have forgotten, that the Catholic Church is the last barrier against the terminal civilizational apostasy for which the powers that be have been laboring for almost...

Jonathan Gruber, sage of MIT and proud champion of the Affordable Care Act, may well have had the worst year in American public life. His repeated demonstrations of arrogance, contempt for the American people and smug self-satisfaction brought mortification to his party and president. His glib references to the redistributionist aspects of the Affordable Care Act gave the lie to the Democratic Party's dubious claim that the mandate was not a tax, along with the excruciating (to Democrats) acknowledgment that -- presidential oaths to the contrary notwithstanding -- Democrats regard "nontransparency" as their friend. So, all hail the verbally incontinent...

Scott Walker wins Conservative of the Year 2014, leading 19 other tremendous conservative nominees: 1 Scott Walker Brought conservative prosperity to the formerly liberal Wisconsin, and then won reelection as governor by a landslide despite predictions of a close race.[1] Will he run for president in 2016? 2 Greg Abbott In becoming the next conservative governor of Texas, Abbott fended off -- and trounced -- incredibly vile attacks by the pro-aborts which culminated in a wheelchair advertisement against him, which even some on the Left found to be appalling. He then won by a landslide of more than 20 points....

As the year 2014 comes to a close, Bondings 2.0 takes a look back at the worst and the best news in the Catholic LGBT world. If you want to keep up-to-date on the latest news about the ups and downs of the relationship between the Catholic Church and the LGBT community, please consider subscribing to this blog. To do so, enter your email address in the “Follow blog via email” box at the top of the column on the right-hand side of this page, and press “Follow.” You will then receive an email every time the blog is updated,...

AULD LANG SYNE - 2015 VERSION. I wonder how long it will last

Talk about being way ahead of the curve: 2014 has officially been named “The Year of the Butt.”Way, waaaay ahead of the curveAnd suddenly everybody is covering this phenom: there’s the PG-rated Yahoo version: From Instagram sensation Jen Selter and her “belfies” (butt + selfie), to Kim Kardashian’s bare-it-all photoshoot in Paper magazine, it’s clear backsides are taking a front seat. Not to mention Jennifer Lopez and Iggy Azalea’s “Booty,” Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda,” and Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass” bringing up the rear. And the R-rated Vogue report: Recently, Nicki Minaj remixed the original butt song by Sir Mix-A-Lot,...

Thanks to the careful work of archaeologists, we learned more in the past year about Stonehenge's hidden monuments, Richard III's gruesome death and King Tut's mummified erection. From the discovery of an ancient tomb in Greece to the first evidence of Neanderthal art, here are 10 of Live Science's favorite archaeology stories of 2014. 1. An Alexander the Great-era tomb at Amphipolis [snip] 2. Stonehenge's secret monuments [snip] 3. A shipwreck under the World Trade Center [snip] 4. Richard III's twisted spine, kingly diet and family tree [snip] 5. A teenager in a "black hole" [snip] 6. Syria by satellite...

DARPA's Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance (EXACTO) program conducted the first successful live-fire tests demonstrating in-flight guidance of .50-caliber bullets in the spring of 2014. This video shows EXACTO rounds maneuvering in flight to hit targets that are offset from where the sniper rifle is initially aimed. EXACTO's specially designed ammunition and real-time optical guidance system help track and direct projectiles to their targets by compensating for weather, wind, target movement and other factors that could impede successful aim. The EXACTO program is developing new approaches and advanced capabilities to improve the range and accuracy of sniper systems beyond the current...

[SNIP] 2 NASA released this Hubble Space Telescope image of the Monkey Head Nebula on March 17 to celebrate the 24th anniversary of the telescope's launch in 1990. The nebula is a star-forming region 6,400 light-years from Earth in the constellation Orion. This infrared view shows how the dusty cloud is being sculpted by ultraviolet light from hot stars in the center of the nebula. [SNIP] 4 Active regions on the sun resemble a jack-o'-lantern in this extreme ultraviolet image from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, captured on Oct. 8...in time for Halloween. [SNIP] 7 A star cluster in the heart...

Every single thing liberals say is a lie. No exceptions. We conservatives always knew it, but 2014 was the year when the rest of America began to understand. And 2014 was the year that Americans had to choose sides – would they stand with the liberal liars or with us conservatives? Last November, they chose us conservatives, and maybe the truth will be enough to stop Hillary Clinton and save our country in 2016. The truth is poison to liberalism, so no wonder liberals hate the idea of a free press – after all, they are the ones who argued...

It was a year of mysteries. To list some of the more baffling ones: A huge airliner simply vanished, and to this day nobody has any idea what happened to it, despite literally thousands of hours of intensive speculation on CNN. Millions of Americans suddenly decided to make videos of themselves having ice water poured on their heads. Remember? There were rumors that this had something to do with charity, but for most of us, the connection was never clear. All we knew was that, for a while there, every time we turned on the TV, there was a local...

n a year when some of the most exalted public figures in the United States distinguished themselves by advancing unjust causes or cowardly refusing to seriously resist them, a pregnant mother imprisoned in Sudan with her 18-month-old American son set a standard for saintly courage. Meriam Ibrahim is the role model of the year. When a Sudanese court told Meriam she must renounce her Catholic faith and convert to Islam or be hung by the neck until dead, she gave a non-negotiable answer: No. Meriam was born in Sudan to a Christian mother and a Muslim father — who abandoned...

William Kristol: "I hereby nominate Dick Cheney's answer to Chuck Todd's question about a United Nations official who's called for the criminal prosecution of U.S. interrogators, as the 2014 Sunday Show Answer of the Year."