Free Republic

‘We Got An Ass-Chewing’ Hillary was so mad she couldn’t think straight. She was supposed to be focused on the prep session for that night’s Univision debate in Miami, but a potent mix of exhaustion and exasperation bubbled up inside. She’d been humiliated in the Michigan primary the night before, a loss that not only robbed her of a prime opportunity to put Bernie Sanders down for good but also exposed several of her weaknesses. How could she have been left so vulnerable? She knew — or at least she thought she did. The blame belonged to her campaign team,...

U.S. Sen. John McCain on Monday announced that he will support an upcoming effort by his fellow Republicans to win Senate confirmation of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court by changing the chamber's rules in order to overcome Democratic opposition. McCain, in remarks to reporters, said he had "no choice" but to go along with a change in rules ending a tradition of 60 votes in the 100-member Senate needed to advance Supreme Court nominees to a final vote. He said he would support the rule change "because we need to confirm Gorsuch." In the past, McCain has strongly...

The film that walks away with the Best Picture statue at Sunday’s Academy Awards will earn a place forever in the history books — but perhaps not on viewers’ screens. The cream of the crop of Hollywood’s golden age gained immortality. They are rerun and ritually rewatched endlessly, and remain regular pop-culture presences. But nowadays it seems like the Best Picture winner shines for one week in February and then — much like former Knick Jeremy Lin — is mostly forgotten. Anyone watched last year’s winner, “Spotlight,” lately? Plan on revisiting 2011’s “The Artist” every year? It’s pretty clear that...

One American champion is voicing her opposition to “women’s oppression” by boycotting the women’s world chess championship in Iran rather than bow to Iranian demands that she wear a hijab, or headscarf. “By participating, I would be forced to submit to forms of oppression designed specifically for women,” Nazí Paikidze insisted. “It sets the wrong example, particularly for young girls interested in chess.” Paikidze, the current U.S. chess champion, could be competing for up to $100,000 in prize money. However, she has refused to attend the event. “I will NOT wear a hijab and support women’s oppression,” she said. “Even...

Marine Le Pen is on course to be the next president of France, according to one fund manager's big-data analysis. Arun Kant, chief executive and chief investment officer at Singapore-based investing firm Leonie Hill Capital, told CNBC he expected the right-wing populist to prevail thanks to his firm's proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) system's analysis of troves of data. His analysis — which he said incorporates inputs such as social and traditional media discussions, polling, economics and demographics — predicts that Le Pen will "walk over" her opponents in the first electoral test and then prove most forecasters wrong and steal...

(Snip) Jung’s propositions was that whatever a person values most highly is their god. If people think they are atheistic, it means is they are unconscious of their gods. In a sophisticated religious system, there is a positive and negative polarity. Ideologies simplify that polarity and, in doing so, demonize and oversimplify. I got interested in ideology, in a large part, because I got interested in what happened in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, the Cultural Revolution in China, and equivalent occurrences in other places in the world. Mostly I concentrated on Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. I was...

Lisa Cozzolino started to panic as Allegiant Air Flight 844 circled over Pinellas County, burning off fuel for an emergency landing. “All the bad things I’ve done in my life,” she said to her sister, “and now I’m going to die.” Matt Jones fumbled with his cellphone, trying to call his wife to say goodbye, as crew members on Allegiant Flight 822 ordered him to tuck into crash position over Baltimore. “I said to myself, ‘I’m never going to see my wife or my kids or my grandkids again,’” he recalled. Jessica Stoffel was so afraid on Allegiant Flight 175...

There was something poetic about the events that bookended the past week of diplomacy. This week began with French President François Hollande’s “peace” conference and ended with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s state visit to Moscow. From the perspective of both substance and style, the contrast between the two events couldn’t have been more striking. France hosted yet another anti-Israel diplomatic pile-on. Hollande had hoped to show that France was stepping into the void left by the US’s abandonment of its position as world leader. But all the confab served to do was show how irrational and self-destructive France – and...

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From: Rich Danker, Lone Star Committee founder Date: April 24, 2016 Re: The 2016 Republican race For those of you who have supported the Lone Star Committee's independent expenditures and operations, I want to give you an overview of what we did, how it contrasted with other organizations' efforts, and most importantly, how and why I believe the race has run its course with Donald Trump besting Ted Cruz as the presumptive GOP nominee. This includes an analysis of Cruz and Trump's respective strategies, especially in the critical early voting states where we played a role.

Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight” is a box-office disaster, and the police officers who boycotted the movie are taking credit for its disappointing ticket sales. The violent Western was released on Christmas Day and has grossed $42.9 million so far. At this rate, it’s set to barely pass its production budget of $50 million — meaning big losses for the Weinstein Co., which spent another $25 million to $35 million on prints and promotion. Police Benevolent Association President Patrick J. Lynch, the first union official to call for a boycott of the film, said, “With nearly 1 million law enforcement...

DES MOINES, Iowa — The allegations read like a movie plot: a lottery industry insider installs undetectable software giving him advance knowledge of winning numbers, then enlists accomplices to play those numbers and collect the jackpots. And they secretly enrich themselves for years — until a misstep exposes them. Eddie Tipton, former security director of the Multi-State Lottery Association, has been convicted of fraud for fixing one jackpot in Des Moines, but prosecutors say his high-tech scheme extended far beyond Iowa. He’s accused of tampering with lottery drawings in four states over six years, and investigators are expanding their inquiry...

The United Auto Workers (UAW), one of the largest unions in the United States, has struck down a vote by a local chapter to join the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. UAW Local 2865, which represents student workers on University of California campuses, had voted last year to join the BDS movement. The UAW International Executive Board reversed that on Tuesday, stating its “unanimous belief” that BDS “espouses discrimination and vilification against Israelis and UAW members who are of Jewish lineage.” Informed Grads, a University of California student group whose appeal of the boycott resolution was...

SYRACUSE, N.Y. – The number of state-taxed cigarette packs sold in New York has plummeted by 54 percent in the past decade. That's far outpacing the 19 percent decline in New Yorkers who have quit smoking over the same time. Instead, more smokers are buying cigarettes in ways that avoid New York's $4.35 per pack tax, the highest in the nation. They cross state lines, shop from black market vendors and travel to Native American outlets to save $6 per pack or more, experts say. New York is losing big. In the past five years, the state's cigarette tax collections...

Syracuse, N.Y. -- A company that has enrolled more Onondaga County residents in private Obamacare health plans than any other insurer is going out of business. The state has ordered Health Republic of New York to stop writing new insurance policies because regulators expect the company to become financially insolvent. Existing individual Health Republic policies will remain in effect through Dec. 31, according to the state Department of Financial Services. Health Republic customers will be able to sign up with another insurer for 2016 coverage when open enrollment begins Nov. 1. Health Republic enrolled 4,066 Central New Yorkers in its...

The father of a 20-year-old woman let her drown in Dubai rather than let lifeguards rescue her. The father preferred she drown rather than be dishonored by getting touched by male rescuers, reports Emirates 24 News. Lt. Col. Ahmed Burqibah, deputy director of the Dubai police's search and rescue team, confirmed the incident happened. The dad had taken his wife and children "to the beach when suddenly, the 20-year-old girl started drowning and screaming for help," Burqibah said. "Two rescue men were at the beach and they rushed to help the girl. However," said Burqibah, the man "considered that if...

Over the weekend, Singapore Airlines Flight 836, flying from Singapore to Shanghai, lost power mid-flight on both of its Rolls-Royce engines. According to Flightradar 24, the Airbus A330-343 experienced the problem while cruising at 39,000 feet. The incident, which took place just south of Hong Kong, caused the airliner to descend 13,000 feet before the crew was able to restart the engines. The Airbus jet — registration number 9V-SSF — landed safely in Shanghai an hour and a half later. There were 182 passengers and 12 crew members on board the airliner. No injuries were reported. According to The Aviation...

The American Civil Liberties Union this week laid off 23 employees, about 7 percent of the organization’s national staff. The cuts affected employees in New York, D.C., California and Wyoming. ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero announced the impending reductions internally in a March 26 email to employees, and the affected staffers were notified Monday. In the email, which was obtained by The Washington Post, Romero cited the need for the ACLU to cut costs. In addition to the layoffs, the organization during the fiscal year ending March 31, eliminated ten national staff positions, postponed its nationwide staff conference to 2016...

The New York Times has been accused of bias by conservative US media after cropping George W Bush and his wife Laura out of its front-page image of the Selma anniversary march. The former Republican president took part in Saturday's march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama to mark 50 years since one of the bloodiest episodes in America's civil rights movement. But the photograph on the front page of Sunday's New York Times, which showed Barack and Michelle Obama leading the anniversary march, appeared to cut the Bushes from the right-hand side of the image.