Free Republic

For the last eight years, baseball fan-turned-writer Becca Schultz has presented herself online as Ryan Schultz, a false identity she assumed when she was 13 years old, duping and harassing women on Twitter along the way. On Wednesday night, a woman named Erin tweeted a series of screenshots announcing that Schultz is not actually Ryan, a married father of two studying to become a pharmacist. Instead, Schultz is a 21-year-old college student in the Midwest, whose entire career as an aspiring baseball writer has been under a fraudulent byline. Schultz began contributing to Baseball Prospectus’s local White Sox blog at...

Don’t worry, they aren’t suffering. As shown by the rise of pickup trucks as daily drivers and family haulers in North America, Europe’s burgeoning love affair with versatile light trucks isn’t hurting the owners. It’s traditional passengers car makers who must worry. Sales stats arriving from the Continent show a marketplace that’s increasingly different from years gone by. The increasing popularity of SUVs and crossovers in the land of diesels, manual transmissions, and small displacements is nothing new, but the exploding popularity of honest-to-God pickups is. According to JATO Dynamics data published by Automotive News Europe, midsize pickup sales in...

It's understood that 100 people were trapped in underground tunnels, and a further collapse occurred during the rescue operation, suggesting that a total of 200 people may have been killed At least 200 people have been killed at Kim Jong-un's nuclear test site in North Korea after a tunnel collapsed. A news agency quoted a North Korean official as saying that a collapse occurred during the construction of an underground tunnel at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in the northeast of North Korea on October 10. According to the report, 100 people were trapped in underground tunnels, and a further...

Tebow said there have been 'a lot of learning moments' in his first season as a baseball player Early next week, the 2017 minor-league regular season will come to an end, which means Tim Tebow's first year as a full-time baseball player with the Mets is nearly complete. Tebow, who turned 30 in August, is currently hitting .222/.306/.344 with 23 doubles and eight home runs in 123 games split between two Class A levels. Considering he hadn't play baseball regularly since high school a decade ago, that is pretty impressive. What's next for Tebow now that his season is nearly...

DES MOINES, Iowa — Iowa farmers received a major boost Thursday after a Chinese delegation in Des Moines signed commitments to purchase nearly all of Iowa’s soybeans. The $4.5 billion deal to buy 460 million bushels of soybeans comes a week before Gov. Kim Reynolds is expected to lead an agricultural trade mission to China and brings tremendous value to the Iowa economy. Advertisement “As an Iowa farmer, this is huge,” said April Hemmes, a farmer who owns a 1,000-acre farm near Hampton in rural Franklin County. “They basically bought the entire production that we have in the state of...

TEL AVIV – The Trump administration is gearing up for major cuts in U.S. foreign aid across the world with the notable exception of the Palestinian territories, which will receive increased funding, State Department documents obtained by Foreign Policy magazine show. The documents, part of an internal budget proposal for 2018, seem to confirm the State Department and USAID’s 28 percent budget cut announced in March. While many countries will suffer from major cutbacks or else have aid cancelled entirely, funds to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip will see an increase of 4.6 percent for the 2018 fiscal...

...It took a few games, but the inevitable happened: Tim Tebow recorded a hit... ...All in all, Tebow has been very aggressive at the plate. Most of his at-bats have been two- or three-pitch affairs, with only a handful going on for any more length. His eye at the plate is coming along, and he hasn’t really swung at too many pitches that were clearly balls, but his baseball skills are still at a point where when he does get pitches to hit, he has trouble squaring up on them, rolling over more than one fastball right down Broadway. He...

Electric cars are showing up all over the place, but hydrogen fuel-cell cars have lagged behind, with only three Asian makers committed to offering them in the U.S. That's partly because setting up a network of hydrogen stations to fuel them is slow and expensive. Now Nissan has a better idea. Rather than pumping hydrogen into the cars at very high pressure, the company proposes to offer a different kind of fuel-cell car — one that is filled with ethanol instead. That fuel, or an ethanol-and-water blend, is "reformed" to produce a supply of hydrogen on board the car itself....

Auto giant Ford is planning a new assembly plant south of the U.S. border, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday, and will sharply increase factory output from Mexico just months after signing a labor deal. Citing people familiar with the matter, The Journal reported that Ford will add half a million units of annual capacity from Mexico starting in 2018, which is double the amount it built in 2015. The new assembly complex will be based in San Luis Potosi, and Ford will expand an existing facility near Mexico City, the publication added. The move may heighten the debate over...

Border Patrol officials are bracing for another influx of unaccompanied children coming through the border this summer, a crisis that could diminish border security and would certainly affect the 2016 presidential elections. The number of children who arrive this summer "may exceed" the thousands who made the trip from Central America in 2014. "And it makes it more likely that security risks can take advantage of that situation and penetrate our border, simply riding the tide of the high volume of processing that has to occur," Jan Ting, a Temple University Law professor who testified Wednesday before a House hearing...

As we approach the 2016 Presidential Election members of the Republican Party find ourselves in the middle of what will certainly be the most unique, yet pivotal, nomination process in the entire history of the party. With an unprecedented field of uniquely qualified candidates and an equally unprecedented number of wealthy individuals willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in the nomination process, the Republican political industry is fully mobilized in the most lucrative Presidential nomination chase in history. Given these circumstances, now is the time to study the nomination process, especially the Rules of the Republican Party...

DES MOINES, Iowa -- The smell of bacon filled the air downtown Des Moines on Saturday. Hundreds of people flocked to the Iowa Events Center for the 9th Annual Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival. Bacon lovers could try all sorts of bacon, and attend bacon lectures, bacon competitions, and the annual Bacon Queen contest. This year's theme is "Body By Bacon," and guests were encouraged to dress up in 1980's attire. "This is our fourth time to bacon fest," Adam Boge said. "We've been here when it was hard to buy tickets, now it's not so hard to buy tickets but...

[Excerpt and link] ...Live-cattle futures for December fell 3 cents, or 2.3%, to $1.27675 a pound, after declining 3.1% over the past week on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Cattle futures for February were also limit-down, dropping 2.3% to $1.2965 a pound. Feeder-cattle futures for November fell 2.775 cents to $1.7230 a pound. Other feeder-cattle futures were limit-down... ...December lean hogs fell 3 cents, or 5.5%, to 51.80 cents a pound, a fresh six-year low...

Back in Donald Trump's booming heyday, a car couldn't get much flashier, much more outlandish, much more... Trump than a Lamborghini Diablo. Turns out he actually owned one – a 1997 Lamborghini Diablo VT roadster, to be specific, like the one pictured above. And now it's up for sale. Donald Trump Lamborghini DiabloThis VT roadster is one of just 200 or so that were made before the 1999 facelift. It featured the Viscous Traction (viscous-fluid coupling) all-wheel drive system that debuted on the Diablo VT, and the carbon-fiber roof panel could be removed and stowed over the engine cover. Short...

The 2015 Family Leadership Summit [Saturday] July 18, 2015 Stephens Auditorium, Ames, Iowa The FAMiLY LEADER is thrilled to partner with Frank Luntz and his team at Luntz Global Partners. At the Summit, Frank will be hosting interactive discussions with Iowans along with potential focus groups giving a unique opportunity for Iowans to gain insight about issues that affect the family. The purpose of The Family Leadership Summit is to inspire, motivate, and educate conservatives regarding worldview application and the most pressing issues facing America’s families. The Summit will provide Iowans the opportunity to engage with national conservative leaders and...

Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Tom Cotton (R-AR), Governor Scott Walker (R-WI), former Governor Rick Perry (R-TX), Dr. Ben Carson, and Carly Fiorina spoke at Senator Joni Ernst’s first annual Roast and Ride in Boone, Iowa.

Global corn production in 2015/16 is projected down from last year’s record, with lower forecasts for the United States, EU, Brazil, and Ukraine. Global corn consumption is expected to climb slightly above production for the first time in 5 years. Global ending stocks are forecast mostly unchanged, with growth in China nearly offsetting stocks declines in the United States and other foreign countries. World corn import demand is expected higher, led by the EU and Saudi Arabia. Wheat production is forecast down from last year’s record, but still above consumption for the third straight year. Global consumption is projected up...

The political action committee of freshman Sen. Joni Ernst, Iowa Republican, announced Monday that a handful of 2016 Republican presidential contenders are slated to attend the senator’s inaugural “Roast and Ride” event on June 6. Confirmed speakers include the following announced presidential candidates: retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. Other Republicans weighing presidential bids who are also scheduled to speak include Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker... Before the roast, Ms. Ernst is going to lead...

The ever-increasing number of Republican candidates running for president is posing a serious challenge for the party as it plans 2016 debates. The conundrum itself isn't complicated. Too many candidates risks making the debates circus-like, where the stage is crowded with candidates and each gets mere minutes to speak. On the other hand, excluding candidates inevitably enrages their supporters and creates controversy for the GOP and its television network partners. "One Republican involved in the process said a 90-minute forum with 10 candidates would offer each candidate only four to five minutes, after subtracting commercials and moderator time," The New...

It’s time to acknowledge a milestone in the 2016 GOP primary. No, it’s not that Jeb Bush has broken his paleo diet. Rather, it’s that the leader in the Iowa polls is no longer the weakest frontrunner in caucus history! Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is now polling ahead of where Mitt Romney was at this point in the 2012 cycle. Walker is up to 18.4 percent in an average of Iowa polls conducted in 2015; Romney was at 18 percent in surveys conducted through the first half of 2011. Looking at just the last five surveys, Walker is now up...