Free Republic

Joe Biden must step down as Vice President of the United States. That is the rule, isn’t it, whenever a public figure makes a bone-headed, addle-brained, one-drink-too-many-at-a-wedding comment regarding race? Actually, no that isn’t the rule. Unless of course Joe Biden was a Republican. Anybody in polite company who still wonders why so many Republican-minded Americans are drawn to alternative media outlets like Fox News or Glenn Beck as their information source need only look at the current episode with the vice president for an answer. What is certain to unfold in this case is a prime example of the...

A group of former US intelligence and Special Force operatives is to launch a campaign criticising Barack Obama for taking credit for the death of Osama bin Laden, arguing that high level leaks are hurting the country.Leaders of the group, the Special Operations OPSEC Education Fund Inc, say it is non-partisan and unconnected to any political party or presidential campaign. It is registered as a so-called social welfare group, which means its primary purpose is to further the common good and its political activities should be secondary. In the past, military exploits have been turned against presidential candidates by outside...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Gabby Douglas admitted indulging in post-Olympics fast food to the wrong person: First lady and healthy eating advocate Michelle Obama, who teased the gymnastics champion. "You're setting me back, Gabby," Obama told Douglas during a taping Monday for NBC's "Tonight Show," according to a network transcript. "Sorry!" replied the 16-year-old athlete, who confessed to chowing down on a McDonalds' breakfast sandwich after winning two gold medals at the just-ended London Olympics. Douglas became the third straight U.S. athlete and first African-American to win the all-around title. She and her teammates gave the U.S. its first Olympic...

this is nice

The Indian delegation marched into the Opening Ceremony just like the other 203 countries at the Summer Olympics. A flag bearer led the procession and was accompanied by a female sign holder and a young child ambassador. Behind them, the nation's athletes marched; India's team wore yellow saris and turbans. Someone else was there too, an unexpected intruder in the procession. She wasn't part of the lead group and wasn't an athlete. She was dressed in a red sweater and teal pants and was waving and cheering like she was supposed to be there. She wasn't. Who was she? And...

The music of AC/DC is finding a new audience, but these new fans aren’t learning about the Australian legends via social media or Youtube. In a strange twist, Iranian nuclear scientists are being subjected to the pyro-infused sounds of the band’s music as a result of what they believe is computer malware which has infected their machines. While the infection doesn’t cause AC/DC guitarist Angus Young to come stomping out of their computer speakers, it has brought the next best thing in the form of their 1990 hit ‘Thunderstruck’ blaring loudly “with the volume maxed out” on several of the...

Pull into the new parking garage in Triberg, Germany, and you'll see something strange: wide, well-lit spaces with female symbols on them, and cramped spaces near concrete pillars with male symbols on them. The logic is simple, according to Mayor Gallus Strobel: Men are better at parking. He insists the move wasn't sexist, because there are 10 spaces reserved for women, and just two for men, the Telegraph reports. What's more, Strobel seems delighted by the controversy he's kicked up. "I never expected this reaction," he said. "I've been on the phone all day, the TV will come. I am...

To uphold the Affordable Care Act, Chief Justice Roberts adopted a “saving construction” in which he deleted the “requirement” that all non-exempt Americans buy health insurance, leaving only the “penalty,” which he then recharacterized as a tax. The next day, in my Washington Examiner essay, Roberts decision didn’t open floodgates for ‘compulsion through taxation’, I contended that it was a serious misreading of the opinion to say that the individual insurance mandate had been upheld under the Tax power. Instead, the law had been rewritten to eliminate the mandate, leaving only the penalty. Some questioned the meaningfulness of this distinction....

The 0.5pc drop last month was marked by waning demand for goods ranging from furniture to electronics as Americans retrenched in the face of weak wage growth, a slowing jobs market and persistent fears over Europe’s debt crisis. For the second quarter as a whole, retail sales fell at an annual pace of 0.8pc compared with an increase of 6.7pc in the first three months of the year when the country’s jobs market showed signs of improvement. With the consumer again cutting back, the report raised fears among some economists that the US could slide back into recession. “The report...

America's leading small business association has slammed Barack Obama for showing 'an utter lack of understanding' of the country's entrepreneurs when he told them: 'If you've got a business - you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.' In a hard-hitting statement to Mail Online, the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) president Dan Danne said: 'What a disappointment to hear President Obama's revealing comments challenging the significance of America's entrepreneurs. Mr Danne added: 'His unfortunate remarks over the weekend show an utter lack of understanding and appreciation for the people who take a huge personal risk and work...

Treasury Department officials have been cited for soliciting prostitutes, breaking conflict-of-interest rules and accepting gifts from corporate executives, according to the findings of official government investigations. The revelations of unethical behavior at Treasury are detailed in little-noticed documents posted this month on governmentattic.org, which publishes agency responses to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. While it is not uncommon for departments within the executive branch to have personnel issues, it is unusual for these types of documents to become public. They provide a rare glimpse of internal probes within the Treasury Department, exposing different episodes of misconduct. Investigators at the...

Government adviser says country should still achieve 8 per cent growth this year despite troubles, rules out major stimulus measure China is bracing for a decade of slower 7-8 per cent growth by taking forward a difficult transition process from “growth” to “efficiency” for its slowing economy, a senior government economic adviser said on Thursday even as he expressed confidence that the country would grow by 8 per cent in 2012. China was putting in a range of stimulus measures this year, including spurring investments in infrastructure projects such as its high-speed rail network, to combat the slowdown in exports...

In a statement released along with an extensive report, Louis Freeh -- a former FBI director and federal judge -- blasted top officials at the school. Freeh spearheaded the probe into how the school handled allegations of child sex abuse by assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. "Our most saddening and sobering finding is the total disregard for the safety and welfare of Sandusky's child victims by the most senior leaders at Penn State," Freeh wrote. "The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized." He went on...

“US Army Preventive Maintenance Manual for the M16A1 Rifle, published by PS Magazine in a comic book form. The idea was that young, uneducated soldiers were more likely to read comics than boring military manuals. This one was illustrated by the prominent comic artist Will Eisner.”

Worldwide, 2011 was the coolest year on record since 2008, yet temperatures remained above the 30 year average, according to the 2011 State of the Climate report released online today by NOAA. The peer-reviewed report, issued in coordination with the American Meteorological Society (AMS), was compiled by 378 scientists from 48 countries around the world. It provides a detailed update on global climate indicators, notable weather events and other data collected by environmental monitoring stations and instruments on land, sea, ice and sky. “2011 will be remembered as a year of extreme events, both in the United States and around...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans' confidence in television news is at a new low by one percentage point, with 21% of adults expressing a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in it. This marks a decline from 27% last year and from 46% when Gallup started tracking confidence in television news in 1993.The findings are from Gallup's annual update on confidence in U.S. institutions, conducted June 7-10 this year. As such, the findings preceded the erroneous initial reports by cable-news networks CNN and Fox News regarding the U.S. Supreme Court's June 28 decision about the constitutionality of the U.S....

What did the black guy, the latino guy, and the asian guy all have in common? Believe it or not, they all liked cantaloupe.-------------------------------- Why is there no Aspirin in the rain forest? Because it wouldn't be financially viable to try and sell pharmaceuticals in the vastly unpopulated rain forest.------------------------------ Yo momma so fat she went on the Subway diet and is now exercising regularly to lose weight.------------------------------------- If Chuck Norris has $5 and you have $5, you both have the same amount of money---------------------------------- Knock knock. Who's there? To. To who? To whom. --------------------------------Whats green and has wheels? Grass,...

Storm clouds hovering above Europe, the U.S. debt overhang, and feeble housing market economics continued to hobble the prospect of improvement in the U.S. job market in June. Non-farm payroll employment showed tepid growth, and edged up by a mere 80,000 jobs, leaving the overall unemployment rate essentially unchanged at 8.2 per cent. This dismal monthly statistics, which is entirely in line with the U.S. Federal Reserve’s earlier decision to hold federal rates low until 2014, may dampen the spirits of the Obama administration in an election year, especially as nearly 13 million people are without work. Leaving little doubt...

Parade with soldiers in Belarus - awesome demonstration performance of soldiers

A Salafist group from Egypt appears to be trying to retract a post on Facebook that warned that eating tomatoes are "forbidden because they are Christian." However, the Muslim traditionalist group, calling themselves the Popular Egyptian Islamic Association, apparently still finds tomatoes offensive if they are cut in such a way that reveals the shape of a cross, according to the Now Lebanon website. Along with a photo of a tomato cut in half to reveal what could be viewed as a cross, the group originally posted on Facebook: "Eating tomatoes is forbidden because they are Christian. [The tomato] praises...