Free Republic

Why you shouldn't freak out about this week's scary-sounding Mac exploits Researchers document two OS X security flaws that shouldn't cause you to lose sleep, as severe as they sound. These cats aren't worried. Glenn Fleishman | @GlennF Senior Contributor, Macworld Aug 5, 2015 2:05 One set of researchers explains how a modification to your Macintosh’s boot-up firmware can persist undetectably and spread through peripherals to other computers. Another researcher’s work from a month ago is found in the wild, installing adware through a hidden escalation in user privileges. Both sound terrible, but neither is quite what it seems. De-escalate...

Breaking: Flynn Endorsed by Senator Ted Cruz "Mike Flynn is the kind of courageous conservative we need in Washington. When Andrew Breitbart launchedBigGovernment.com to expose ACORN and fight back against the institutional left and the political class, he chose Mike Flynn as his lieutenant. For 6 years, Flynn helped expose the media’s lies and led many fights against the Obama Administration and Washington’s entrenched political establishment. I’m happy to endorse his campaign for Congress. With Flynn, Central Illinois will have a strong voice to uphold the constitution, defend the 2nd Amendment and stand up to the media and political elite."...

Democratic Oppo Firm’s Fingerprints on NYT Rubio Hit All the Democratic oppo fit to print The New York Times Friday report that Republican Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and his wife Jeanette have been cited 17 times for traffic violations was written after the citations were pulled by liberal opposition research firm American Bridge, according to Miami-Dade County court records. Records show that each of the citations mentioned by the New York Times were pulled in person by American Bridge operatives on May 26, 2015. Take for example the time Rubio was pulled over in 1997. “Mr. Rubio’s troubles behind the...

EUROPEAN LEAGUE QUALIFYING AND RELEGATION The top 3 teams in the Barclay's Premiere League (BPL) qualify directly to UEFA Champions League group play. The BPL champions will be a seeded team in EUFA. The 4th place team qualifies for a UEFA play-in series against a club to be determined by draw among other qualifiers. The winner of the home-and-home series proceeds to UEFA group play. The 5th place team qualifies for Europa League play, entering the competition at the play-off stage. The Capital One Cup (League Cup) winner qualifies for Europa, entering at the third qualifying stage. Since the Capital...

Undercover video shows North Carolina poll workers offering ballots to ineligible impostor – TWENTY TIMES – putting voter ID battle back on the front burner Conservative guerrilla filmmaker James O'Keefe pretended to be a series of North Carolinians who hadn't voted in years In precinct after precinct, election officials offered him ballots without confirming his identity Only one polling place turned him away without an ID, but officials there were breaking the rules in order to do it O'Keefe famously embarrassed US Attorney General Eric Holder by obtaining the cabinet member's ballot in Washington as a protest against the lack...

It’s a predictable as the rising of the sun in the east each morning. Whenever a “BREAKING NEWS” alert happens, one can reasonably predict the following three things will happen: 1) Since everything these days is political, one or more activist groups will latch onto the story immediately and use it as illustrative of issues they want to talk about. Once politicized… 2) There is immediate public pressure to “pick a side”. This almost always falls down ideological lines, regardless of the actual facts in the case, and opinions are often based on reflexive opposition to . And speaking of...

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Reports are coming in that Republican poll inspectors have been ejected from as many as 25 polling locations in Philadelphia. Are the dirty tricks starting already? ... Reports are coming in that more than 60 Republican poll inspectors have been forced out and one woman was physically attacked. ... The GOP is in court this morning trying to get this sorted out.

Okay... election day is tomorrow, and it's time for all us to make final predictions on the record... you know, for bragging rights. This is specifically for the Presidential race, but if you want to lock in overall and/or specific Senate and House races for "bonus points", by all means go ahead!

Flashing back to 2011, I was rather unenthusiastic about the slate of candidate, and to be perfectly honest, I was hoping that Gov. Palin was going to step into the fray, but I certainly had one criterion I was not going to budge on one inch: absolutely NOT Mitt Romney. Why? Because Romney is the Republican Bill Clinton -- someone who will say or do whatever it takes to get votes. Someone for whom getting the office was important than what he'd do once he got there. Admittedly, Romney was above Clinton's alley-cat morals, but that was the only nice...

Note that the online Washington Post website shows an altered headline of "Romney seizes moment, lashes Obama"

A highly invasive form of brown kelp native to Japan has spread throughout the San Francisco waterfront since it was discovered three years ago and could threaten native species and ecosystems if money and resources aren't put into stopping its spread, researchers say.

Primary Postmortem And so another GOP primary season wraps up, all but officially, and once again, conservatives get the shaft. As usual, it is largely of our own making, as we fail to unify behind a single standard-bearer and allow the "establishment" candidates to pick us off one by one, as none can gain enough momentum to topple the McCains or Romneys of the world. So, how do we avoid this problem next time? What criteria can we use to find a "unity" candidate when we all have our own ideas as to who the "best" candidate is? I think...

Look, I’m not going to go into great detail about what I’ve been doing with Siri during my testing period, but I will tell you this — Siri says some crazy stuff. Hit the gallery below for a look at a number of bizarre items the AI-powered / voice-recognizing “intelligent assistant” lays on you on the new iPhone 4S.

A little tech request from fellow Mac users. I bought a bunch of blu-ray disks that each came with a digital download. All but one of them worked fine, but one of them errored out with an "err = -36" condition, which appears to be a disk read/write failure. Okay, fine, so just retry the download, right? Nope -- every time I try to re-do the download, it wants to resume where it left off, and after getting the spinning beachball o' doom for a minute or so, it fails again with the same error. Nothing I've tried seems to...

I'm a RINO, and proud of it. "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." - Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride I'm a Republican In Name Only (RINO). And happy to be one. Of course, I'm not referring to the same definition of RINO that is prevalent on this forum. And frankly, I'm not even sure what the current definition is, except perhaps for each person using the term meaning "someone who disagrees with me on any issue I deem even moderately important". Seems like a corruption of language to me. The...

First of all, 2012 polling at this stage is laughably pointless, as history shows that it is highly unlikely to be in line with the actual results, this far out from the election. But even more so, most of these polls are taken at a national level, e.g., "Obama leads <insert candidate's name here> 47-44, according to XYZ Survey". This means nothing. The 2012 election is going to be decided, as most Presidential contests are, by a relatively small handful of states. By my reckoning, five. How a candidate will fare in those states matters far more than anything else,...

WINNER: "Chilean CoPeepapo Mine Rescue" This year's winning diorama, which depicts the dramatic rescue of 33 mine workers in Copiapo, Chile, last October, is the work of Mary Jo Ondrejka from Reston; Bryn Metzdorf from Fairfax; and Margaret Hartka from Parkton, Md. A Peep version of miner Ariel Ticona meets his newborn daughter for the first time, while Peep Johnny Barrios Rojas is greeted by both his wife and mistress.

FDA NEWS RELEASE For Immediate Release: March 9, 2011 Media Inquiries: Erica Jefferson, 301-796-4988, erica.jefferson@fda.hhs.gov; Morgan Liscinsky, 301-796-0397, morgan.liscinsky@fda.hhs.gov Consumer Inquiries: 888-INFO-FDA FDA approves Benlysta to treat lupus First new lupus drug approved in 56 years The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved Benlysta (belimumab) to treat patients with active, autoantibody-positive lupus (systemic lupus erythematosus) who are receiving standard therapy, including corticosteroids, antimalarials, immunosuppressives, and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Benlysta is delivered directly into a vein (intravenous infusion) and is the first inhibitor designed to target B-lymphocyte stimulator (BLyS) protein, which may reduce the number of abnormal B cells thought...

The union-led school closures and demonstrations in Madison have left most ordinary Americans shaking their heads in disbelief. Months ago, I penned a message to my fellow union brothers and sisters when I found myself on the receiving end of union boss Richard Trumka’s wrath. Yesterday’s demonstrations reminded me of the full-page ads taken out against me when I put my foot down in dealing with union demands while I served as governor. My message then and now to good union brothers and sisters is that you have another option. You don’t have to kowtow to the union bosses who...