Free Republic

Rarely in our 87-year history have we turned to USAA members to weigh in with elected representatives on an issue of great importance. But, we are now. The U.S. Senate currently is considering legislation (S.3217) that would impose new rules on the nation's financial services industry, including USAA. As the leading provider of financial services to America's military community, USAA supports financial services reform. However, the current Senate bill would disproportionally impact USAA because we are a unique and fully integrated association. USAA is not like the banks and other companies that helped bring down our economy, and we never...

Fan of TheForce.net Helen H. writes in with this great info. "Just got back from this presentation at the Directors Guild of America. George Lucas was tonight’s guest speaker. Here, very briefly, are the highlights: Quote: “the future is in television.” That’s why he’s concentrating on an animated series and live action series, not features. Indy Jones Chronicles are currently being cleaned up, are having documentaries added to them and will be shopped as “films for a modern day high school history class.” He’s hoping they’re released on DVDs very soon. He’s very excited about the animated 3D Clone Wars...

(snip) "Phoenix," the fifth book in author J. K. Rowlings's series, is by far the most ideological, and seems allusive to post-9/11 politics. Harry knows that the evil Lord Voldemort has been reborn and is building an army, but the wizarding government, the Ministry of Magic, refuses to believe him. .... "There's a really interesting principle at the heart of this story," says Yates, in an exclusive NEWSWEEK interview. "The ministry is this bureaucratic authoritarian regime trying to impose a fundamental doctrine on this liberal wacky school. The ministry isn't very good at accepting the beauty of differences. Everything has...

TEMPE, Ariz. — The Heart Attack Grill -- a theme restaurant whose specialties include the Quadruple Bypass Burger and Flatliner Fries, cooked in pure lard -- is making health-care professionals' blood pressure rise, and not because of the menu. It is because of the waitresses' naughty nurse uniforms. The waitresses wear skimpy, cleavage-baring outfits, high heels and thigh-high stockings -- a male fantasy that some nursing organizations say is an insult to the profession. Several nurses have complained to the Arizona attorney general's office, and a national nursing group has repeatedly asked Heart Attack Grill owner Jon Basso to stop...

I finally had a chance to revisit Parallels today, after my brief dive into the new beta last week. At that point, I’d complained that I couldn’t get the coherence mode to work, and I had a handful of other little gripes. One of my astute readers asked if I’d installed the Parallels Tools. I thought I had, given that I’d installed them on Boot Camp before launching Parallels, but it turns out that there are two separate sets of Parallels Tools, the second of which are installed from inside Parallels Desktop (Actions -> Install Parallels Tools…). So this afternoon,...

Dymphna wrote earlier this month about the honor killing of Ghazala Khan in Denmark. In a precendent-setting move, the Danish authorities put nine family members on trial, and not just the actual killer. Now the verdict is in: Guilty. Reader kepiblanc, translating from Danish sources, has kindly provided the following summary: The trial of an entire family of nine for the September “honor” execution of Ghazala Khan (18) ended today… The trial marks a turning point in Danish judicial history. It sets a precedent and there will be no turning back. Until now contemporary jurisprudence would imply that the killer...

WHAT ARE YOU DOING MAY 19TH? May 19th is the date the Da Vinci Code movie opens. A movie based on a book that wears its heresy and blasphemy as a badge of honor. What can we as Christians do in response to the release of this movie? I'm going to offer you the usual choices -- and a new one. Here are the usual suspects: A) We can ignore the movie. ........ The problem with this option: The box office is a ballot box. The only people whose votes are counted are those who buy tickets. And the ballot...

Over the past few days, Infinite Loop has been following developments which seemed to indicate that a workable solution for installing Windows XP on Apple's Intel-based computers had been developed. Reactions were, at first, mixed. Most people, jaded by months of fakery on just about every hot Apple rumor imaginable, dismissed the solution out of hand, but those who had been following the progress of the author of this particular hack were fairly confident that he had sealed the deal. For those unaware, a website titled Windows XP on Mac has been collecting a pool of donations for anyone who...

Clink in the URL above for the new Tim Burton "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" trailer. The song will worm its way into your brain. Depp, on the other hand, looks disturbingly like Michael Jackson.

Every Sunday, it seems, there was Kerry, honkin' big Bible in hand, worshipping with a new black congregation. It wasn't, you see, that he was pandering. That was his natural habitat, I'm sure, on a Sunday morning. So, knowing that he would never pander to his African-American followers, what black church will we see him in this week?

Gene Roddenberry had always used the original "Star Trek" to help produce commentary on social issues of the time like the Vietnam War, the Cold War and the like. It's something that has been done for many years with other science fiction writers both before and after Roddenberry as well ... but it's something that has been mostly absent from most science-fiction of today. That could change, however, with the new "Battlestar Galactica" series set to debut this week on United Kingdom's Sky One, and in January in the United States. "For those of us who take our sci-fi with...

LOW DOWN The U.S. Air Force's top leaders say the service will buy several wings of the short takeoff/vertical landing F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, following the news from Lockheed Martin's engineers that the aircraft is shedding more than a ton of weight and gaining thrust. The service's vision includes changes to the basic short takeoff/vertical landing (Stovl) configuration that could be so extensive as to represent a fourth Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) version--in addition to the design for the U.S. Marine Corps F-35B, the USAF F-35A and the U.S. Navy F-35C. But program managers have adamantly rejected the notion, so...

Imagine I were to give you a computer and turn you loose on the internet. You could read text, see pictures, watch movies and animations, play music and enjoy interactive games. You can save these things to view them later, and share them with your friends. You can print them, burn them on CDs, edit them and modify them and create new things from pieces of old things. Most of it is free, too. You can publish things, and remain anonymous if you wish. You can indulge your curiosity in embarrassing ways and visit porn sites, pictures-of-dead-bodies sites, radical revolutionary...

And now for something completely different, a depiction of a ping pong match taking place in ... the Matrix: http://www.astercity.net/~tobik/pingpong.html

This is an excerpt from a Q&A given at the Gen Con Game Fair that just wrapped up. John Rhys-Davies, who played Gimli in Lord of the Rings, and also Sallah in the Indiana Jones films, is taking questions from the audience. Here's one of them, taken from a longer intereview:Question: But my question. those of us who spend way too much time on the internet noticed that you get asked, or all the actors, get asked a lot of the same questions over and over again and so I just wondered what you wished fans or journalists would ask...