Free Republic

Explanation: How does your favorite planet spin? Does it spin rapidly around a nearly vertical axis, or horizontally, or backwards? The featured video animates NASA images of all eight planets in our Solar System to show them spinning side-by-side for an easy comparison. In the time-lapse video, a day on Earth -- one Earth rotation -- takes just a few seconds. Jupiter rotates the fastest, while Venus spins not only the slowest (can you see it?), but backwards. The inner rocky planets across the top underwent dramatic spin-altering collisions during the early days of the Solar System. Why planets spin...

Hillary Clinton is trying to impress voters that she’s a true friend of Israel, which is odd given that relations with the Jewish state reached a low point while she was secretary of State. The Post reports: “Hillary Rodham Clinton cast doubt on the interim nuclear agreement with Iran, saying in a muscular policy speech [in New York] Wednesday night that she is ‘personally skeptical’ that Iran’s leaders will follow through on a comprehensive agreement to end their march toward nuclear weapons. Still, the former secretary of state and potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidate told a pro-Israel audience in New...

After having exhausted the indignant possibilities of protesting the extinction of whales, pelicans and polar bears, the left has found a new endangered species to be outraged about. Iranian nuclear scientists. It's one thing to hug a polar bear or a tree, but it's another to embrace an Iranian nuclear scientist, who may well be a jolly and colorful fellow with a family and a paint by numbers coloring kit of an atom, but also happens to be a participant in a plot to kill millions of people. The left which has all the moral sense of a squashed peanut...

On Wednesday, NPR's resident ObamaCare booster Jule Rovner spotlighted the left-leaning Kaiser Family Foundation's latest tracking poll on the law. Rovner indicated that 51% unpopularity for the legislation in October was merely a "blip," and played up how "the public is still confused about what the law does and does not do, more than 18 months after its passage." The journalist led her November 30 item for NPR's "Shots" blog, "Health Law's Popularity Rises...Ever So Slightly," with her "blip" label. After briefly noting that "the federal Affordable Care Act still remains slightly more unpopular 44 percent) than popular (37 percent),"...

A defensive Brian Williams appeared on Wednesday's Late Night With Jimmy Fallon to explain away Barack Obama's handling of the situation in Libya. He also hit the show's for having a "political 'tude" against the President, complaining, "I've never heard you go into this area before."After the comedian knocked Obama for "playing soccer in Rio," Williams labeled that "unfair." He added, "The President has scrambled phones. He's got video conferencing."Following jokes from Fallon about the President's NCAA picks, the NBC Nightly News anchor sarcastically replied, "I think we've seen a little political 'tude coming out tonight. This is interesting."

According to Politico editors Jim VandeHei and John Harris, Barack Obama is currently "playing the press like a fiddle" by "exploiting some of the most long-standing traits among reporters who cover politics and government — their favoritism for politicians perceived as ideologically centrist." VandeHei and Harris pointed out journalists such as Christiane Amanpour for lauding the President as "Reaganesque." They then oddly portrayed Obama's good press as a new thing. The co-authors of February 7 piece flatly denied a hard-left tilt in the media: "Conservatives are convinced the vast majority of reporters at mainstream news organizations are liberals who hover

Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos on Monday offered a sympathetic take on the decision of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to release potentially damaging U.S. security documents. The ABC host wondered if it was "important information for the public to have." Talking to Congressman Peter Hoekstra, Stephanopoulos read a quote to the Republican, repeating the words of Assange: "If citizens in a democracy want their governments to reflect their wishes, they should ask to see what's going on behind the scenes." Stephanopoulos then emphasized, "He says he's performing a public service."

Janine Zacharia, the Washington Post's Jerusalem correspondent, spins a fanciful, sky-is-falling doomsday scenario for Israel: if you don't hurry up and bend over backwards to get a peace deal with Mahmoud Abbas on almost any terms, then get ready for a Hamas takeover of the West Bank and a third intifada that will rock the Jewish state to its foundations. ("Warnings in Israel of need for peace deal -- West Bank Crisis Feared -- Some in military foresee Hamas rise to power" Nov. 17, page A8). Zacharia attributes her dire warning to a couple of unidentified senior Israeli military and...