Free Republic

Christopher Tolkien, son of legendary "The Lord of the Rings" author J.R.R. Tolkien, has died, the Tolkien Society reports. He was 95. "Christopher Tolkien has died at the age of 95," the organization tweeted. "The Tolkien Society sends its deepest condolences to Baillie, Simon, Adam, Rachel and the whole Tolkien family."

Democrat Cory Booker dropped out of the presidential race Monday, ending a campaign whose message of “being the black guy” failed to resonate in a Democratic party that’s clearly racist. Senator Elizabeth Warren has stated, “With Booker out, I’m the last minority in the race.” Warren, who has grabbed headlines for promising trillions of dollars in other people’s money to minorities in order to buy their votes, is ecstatic to be alone in the race against white people. “Democrats have kicked out the Latinos Beto and Castro, the Wakandan-American Kamala Harris, and now Cory Booker. It’s clear that if we...

I've taken a lot of flack here on FR for the past few weeks claiming that Buttigieg and his former employer McKinsey & Company were CIA. Mark Stein is filling in for Tucker Carlson and just spent the first ten minutes of the show talking about this.

I keep getting a call that says press '1' to talk to an Amazon rep. I've got phone blocking but haven't yet blocked this same number, 800-300-8009. I'm really tempted to answer and press '1'. Anybody else getting this possible scam? I don't think I can reveal too much of anything just by pressing '1'. I mean nearly once a day. Sorry for the vanity:<(((

NYPD fires Officer Daniel Pantaleo in chokehold death of Eric Garner NYPD cop Daniel Panatelo has been fired for causing the chokehold death of Eric Garner, Police Commissioner James O’Neill announced Monday. O’Neill’s widely expected decision to fire the embattled cop endorsed the recommendation of a deputy commissioner who presided over Pantaleo’s departmental trial earlier this year. It also came after Mayor Bill de Blasio proclaimed that Garner’s family was “going to get justice…in the next 30 days” during a Democratic presidential primary debate on July 31.

Beckwitt’s attorney, Robert Bonsib has characterized the tunnels as a do-it-yourself version of Cold War-era bomb shelters, saying Beckwitt was concerned about the nuclear threat from North Korea. Bonsib has also called his client an “unusual individual.” Beckwitt addressed a 2016 hacker conference wearing a flame-retardant suit in which he gave a presentation on destroying electronics. (Michail S. via YouTube) Prosecutors said the man behind a secret tunnel project in Bethesda that turned deadly should be convicted of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter because he disregarded public safety. Daniel Beckwitt, 27, is on trial regarding the tunnels created below the...

Yes, my precious, the preview will stoke your appetite for the upcoming adventure about the fantasy-writing author. ...

"Unsecure open borders Another radical position now very popular on the left is open borders and amnesty for illegal immigrants. The Democrats have done everything in their power to obstruct the immigration policies of President Trump, going so far as to shut the government down rather than fund the border wall and provide for effective border security. Some Democrats have even criticized the brave officials who keep our communities safe, portraying border patrol agents as monsters for simply doing their jobs. Preventing President Trump from solving the illegal immigration crisis, however, will only mean that he still has his strongest...

I am thinking of getting a cell phone to replace my beloved ENV3. What is the Best OS for Privacy, Connectivity and Reliability? Most memory? My emails are currently with time Warner with accounts that go back 30 years. I run two businesses out of email and phone currently, how do I make the switch? I am not a fan of clouds. What do you recommend? Who would I get to set it up?

Forty years after Ralph Bakshi's animated classic hit theaters, the filmmaker recalls courting Mick Jagger and Led Zeppelin and speaks candidly about the extreme pressure he was under: "I nearly died." Mick Jagger as Frodo. A Led Zeppelin soundtrack. Battles on the field and behind the scenes before a three-film saga went bust. Forty years after his animated classic The Lord of the Rings hit theaters Nov. 15, 1978, these are some of the things on director Ralph Bakshi's mind during a candid conversation about what happened, and what could have been...

It was the fantasy trilogy that garnered critical acclaim, won 17 Oscars and launched the careers of stars including Orlando Bloom and Dominic Monaghan. And Netflix UK & Ireland have announced the iconic The Lord of the Rings trilogy will come to the streaming service on November 1. The original trilogy - The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King- based on the J.R.R Tolkien books, was released between 2001-2003.

An upstate New York man has mastered the art of raccoon calling. Video posted online on September 20 by Newsflare shows the man standing on the side of a road in Brasher State Forest in St. Lawrence County playing a beautiful tune on his Native American flute. The man's skills aren't just music to viewers' ears. The raccoons seem to like it too and come out of hiding in the woods to surround the man. According to the filmmaker, at least 20 raccoons enjoyed the afternoon show before slinking back into the woods. The man, who is being dubbed the...

1. Fowards I am heavy, backwards I am not. What am I? 2. What is lighter than a feather but the strongest man in the world can not pick up? 3. A prisoner is told “if you tell a lie we will hang you, if you tell the truth we will shoot you.” What can he say to save himself? 4. (Personal favorite) What is that is too much for one, enough for two, and nothing at all for three? 5. If someone was born August 1 25 BC then died on August 1 25 AD, how are were they...

All my life I’ve had a thing for the underdog. Be it the passed over toy as a little girl or the loser boyfriend as a teenager, I guess I took the ugly duckling fairy tale to heart. Now in my adulthood, I have taken the poor, rejected, locally grown vegetables under my wing—the underutilized, the newly-trendy, the formerly beloved fallen out of modern favor, or the just plain weird. In the case of Brussels sprouts, they are a vegetable all too often cooked very wrong and, hence, tend to carry a bad rap. Who wouldn’t hate Brussels sprouts if...

Has Amazon found the Game of Thrones it’s been seeking? A Lord of the Rings TV series is in the very early development stages, according to The Hollywood Reporter, from Warner Bros. Television, whose feature-film division produced the LOTR movies. There’s no writer attached to the project yet — Warner Bros. is still looking to nail down the rights from the estate of book author J.R.R. Tolkien — but Amazon Studios has already emerged as an potential home. Rings, of course, has already been adapted into a trilogy of films directed by Peter Jackson, which grossed nearly $3 billion at...

If you have an AR-type rifle with a standard flash suppressor on it, and you store it outside of a case as in a rack, and place a plastic dust cover over the flash suppressor, what happens if, in an emergent situation, you grab it, stick a mag in it, rack it and go "hunting", and (God forbid!) fire it, forgetting to remove the dust cap? Anything bad?

I had loads of fun dealing with a liberal statue-hater the other day. I screenshot it, blocked out the names, and added some commentary. I hope y'all enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed doing it.Apparently, I can't just post the screenshots here, so here are the dropbox links. Happy clicking!https://www.dropbox.com/s/hgs6sakv0cf4bsn/Pwnage%201.png?dl=0https://www.dropbox.com/s/ytz5y4o0t63kdm7/Pwnage%202.png?dl=0https://www.dropbox.com/s/1tlmr1vxe9ou5s8/Pwnage%203.png?dl=0https://www.dropbox.com/s/utn0efqnzzk9j41/Pwnage%204.png?dl=0https://www.dropbox.com/s/nrdmji00n528ebr/Pwnage%205.png?dl=0

IN the summer of 1916, a young Oxford academic embarked for France as a second lieutenant in the British Expeditionary Force. The Great War, as World War I was known, was only half-done, but already its industrial carnage had no parallel in European history. “Junior officers were being killed off, a dozen a minute,” recalled J. R. R. Tolkien. “Parting from my wife,” he wrote, doubting that he would survive the trenches, “was like a death.”

How Will Trump Handle Losing Iowa? If you scratch any Republican pundit on the face of the earth, a comparison between Trump's 2016 campaign and Rudy Giuliani's 2008 campaign will fall out. If the point is to illustrate that being the frontrunner at this stage of the race won't necessarily translate to victory, then these pundits are on solid ground. If the point is to draw a meaningful parallel between the current Trump boom and the forces that drove Giuliani to the top, and then back down to the bottom, of the 2008 pile, then they are dead wrong. By...

Not all modern evils appear as obvious as those of Stalin and Hitler, or as blatant as that of the mechanized and inhumane fighting of the first world war. Tyranny and modernity arrive in many packages, some of them brightly colored. Understanding this, Tolkien despised the impersonal democratic capitalism of the twentieth century and especially its handmaiden, the softly oppressive democratic bureaucracies of the western world, almost as much as he hated fascism and communism. All forms of twentieth-century government-whether blatantly socialist such as fascism or communism, or just mildly socialist, such as bureaucratic democracies-involved planning, that is, putting men...