Free Republic

In Medieval times, Kings and Queens interested in maintaining control over small, outlying geographical areas arranged a complex system of fiefdoms, vesting feudal lords with their imprimatur to tell the local serfs and vassals what to do, and granting them the “power” to extract taxes – a portion of which would be given to the royals. Despite Constitutional strictures created to insure the contrary, the United States federal government has followed pretty much the same template, albeit on a bureaucratic, rather than monarchical, level. Case in point, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which is showing once more that it is...

Sam Wei, a 26-year-old financial analyst in Chicago, has not had sex since her last relationship ended 18 months ago. She makes out with guys sometimes, and she likes to cuddle. “To me, there’s more intimacy with having someone there next to you that you can rely on without having to have sex,” she said. “I don’t want to do anything that would harm the relationship and be something that we can’t come back from.” Sam Wei, 26, finds “intellectual conversation more stimulating and more pleasurable than having sex sometimes.” (Courtesy of Sam Wei) It’s a less sexy time to...

Just weeks after the FBI issued an indictmentless indictment of Hillary Clinton over her “extremely careless” behavior using a private email server to both send and receive classified information, the Democratic nominee has decided it would be funny to mock Donald Trump for wanting more secure military communications. Trump argued last week during a campaign rally in Colorado that using paper wasn’t so bad since everyone is getting hacked these days. "Everybody's being hacked," Trump said on Friday. "Let's not send it over the wires so everybody's probably reading it.""I like the old days, especially for the military and things...

Planned Parenthood has hired a high-profile crisis communication firm to help it deal with fallout from a series of undercover sting videos produced by the Center for Medical Progress. Politico reports that PP has hired SKDKnickerbocker, a firm which features former Obama communications staffer Anita Dunn as a managing director. Dunn is perhaps best known for a speech she gave extolling the political philosophy of communist revolutionary Mao Zedong. On its website, SKDKnickerbocker touts its expertise in crisis communications in Washington and on Wall Street. “By working with a company’s existing corporate communications resources or creating a separate ‘war room,’...

A Prayer for the Internet from the 1946 Roman Ritual? Sure, and It’s Wonderful! By: Msgr. Charles PopeThe old Roman Ritual was (is) a magnificent collection of blessings and prayers. It had some of the most amazing little blessings of things it would never occur to you to find in such a collection. For example, among other more common blessings of statues, religious medals, and so forth are blessings, often elaborately laid out, for things like a seismograph, a typewriter, a printing press, a fishing boat, a fire engine, a stable, medicine, a well, a bridge, an archive, a lime kiln,...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- A papal astronomer won recognition for his ability to communicate accurately and clearly the discoveries of planetary science to the general public. U.S. Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, a planetary scientist and meteorite expert at the Vatican Observatory, was awarded the prestigious Carl Sagan Medal for "outstanding communication by an active planetary scientist," said the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences, which chooses the annual prize winner. In addition to significantly contributing to the public understanding of and enthusiasm for planetary science, Brother Consolmagno "occupies a unique position within our profession as a credible spokesperson...

The Rise of the Anti-Media is a profound academic examination of how the gun culture has been able to triumph in the face of overwhelming opposition from the ruling elite.   This is not a book that is light summer reading.   The issues examined, the research done, and the theory put forward to explain the phenomena, are worthy of serious study.    Information in the book is dense.  Brian Anse Patrick packs a great deal into only 282 pages.  The book captured my attention.  I devoured it in a day, but find myself repeatedly returning for more insight. It helps to...

For smartphone fans around the world, things really started to get interesting over the past couple of months. First, Samsung unveiled its new Galaxy S5 flagship smartphone in late February, revealing a smartphone that was quite impressive and touted a number of great new features, but failed to live up to the hype stirred up by dozens of rumors. Then, HTC unveiled its own flagship phone, the HTC One (M8), and launched it the very same day.

Speak, Fido: Device Promises Dog Translations A dog may be man's best friend, but if people ever figure out what dogs are really thinking, will the friendship sour? That's a risk that a few inventors in Europe are willing to take: They've received funding to develop "No More Woof," an electronic device that promises to analyze dogs' brain waves and translate a few of their thoughts into rudimentary English. It's still a work in progress, but once No More Woof is ready for the market, it will join a wide range of other scientific efforts aimed at "breaking the language...

An interesting concise analysis and admonition of speech patterns in today's America by comedian, Taylor Mali. ( Not sure of topics, so I called it an editorial)

In a Sunday evening statement, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence Public Affairs Office released this statement, meant to clear up information on the National Security Agency’s data program "The statement that a single analyst can eavesdrop on domestic communications without proper legal authorization is incorrect and was not briefed to Congress. Members have been briefed on the implementation of Section 702, that it targets foreigners located overseas for a valid foreign intelligence purpose, and that it cannot be used to target Americans anywhere in the world," the full statement reads.

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"First you win the argument -- then you win the vote," is the now well-known quote from Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. President Ronald Reagan was the last Republican president who understood and used that strategy. President Barack Obama and his team also understand the phrase and are using it to their advantage. They are making a full-court press in the public arena to lay out their argument against sequestration and for more taxes. "In a few days," Obama said this week in Virginia, "Congress might allow a series of immediate, painful, arbitrary budget cuts to take place -- known in...

A few months ago I went to an all expenses paid job interview in another city. The interview went well and I was one of the top 2-3 candidates. However I did not get the job, which is fine by me for reasons that I will mention later on in this post. I did however find the ‘rejection’ email interesting because it is one of the better examples of what passes for communication in the corporate environment today. Here is the name-redacted email..

The first time I saw Chris Christie on television, shortly after he became governor of New Jersey, my immediate reaction was, "My Gosh! A Talking Republican!" It was almost like seeing a talking giraffe or a talking salamander. Technically speaking, Republicans do talk, but talking is definitely not their strong suit. Nor do they seem to have put a lot of thought into what they say or how they say it. The net result is that articulate Democrats can get away with the biggest lies, without any serious rebuttal from most Republicans. I have not heard any Republican official or...

When Caren Berg told colleagues at a recent staff meeting, "There's new people you should meet," her boss Don Silver broke in, says Ms. Berg, a senior vice president at a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., marketing and crisis-communications company. "I cringe every time I hear" people misuse "is" for "are," Mr. Silver says. The company's chief operations officer, Mr. Silver also hammers interns to stop peppering sentences with "like." For years, he imposed a 25-cent fine on new hires for each offense. "I am losing the battle," he says. Managers are fighting an epidemic of grammar gaffes in the workplace. Many...

There have been few languages in world history that were spoken by more people as a second language than as a first. English has had that distinction for several decades already. Now, there are more people learning it in a given year than it has native speakers The second President of the United States, John Adams, predicted in 1780 that “English will be the most respectable language in the world and the most universally read and spoken in the next century, if not before the end of this one.” It is destined “in the next and succeeding centuries to be...

Neutrinos are having a moment. They’re speeding across Europe (just how fast is under review), they’re changing flavors in China and, now, they’re carrying rudimentary messages through bedrock in Illinois. A team of physicists encoded a short string of letters on a beam of neutrinos at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., and sent the message to a detector more than a kilometer away. On the journey the neutrinos passed through 240 meters of solid rock, mostly shale. What was the word they transmitted in the preliminary demonstration? “Neutrino.” The experiment is described in a paper posted to the...

.........In 1995, Gingrich, then speaker of the House, wrote a memo for GOPAC, which trains Republican candidates, citing language as "a key mechanism of control used by a majority party." In his inimitable, insufferable fashion, he went on to say that his videotaped GOPAC courses had elicited a "plaintive plea: 'I wish I could speak like Newt.' "That takes years of practice. But we believe that you could have a significant impact on your campaign and the way you communicate if we help a little. That is why we have created this list of words and phrases,".. He went on...

What usually is a treasured opportunity for cross generational chit-chat became a silent car ride as a luminescent glow eerily lighted his facial features in the back seat. My grandson has mastered a hand-held electronic thinga-ma-jig which muted what had previously been a casual forum for conversations about life-in-the-now and even life-everlasting. No knock-knock jokes. No “Hey, look, a horse trailer and it has horses inside!” No seemingly insignificant queries such as, “Justin says there is no God. Is that true?” Where once we easily conversed about hurt feelings, roadside beggars, birthdays, bullies and the like, this day the unilateral...