Free Republic

Ever have a sudden urge for crisp-crusted, ooey-gooey, cheesy pizza? You want it STAT. Not in the time it takes to preheat the oven to 500 degrees for a frozen pizza. Not in the 20 minutes it takes for the pizza delivery guy to arrive. And certainly not in however many hours it would take to make homemade dough and marinara sauce. Get ready for Let's Pizza, a pizza vending machine that promises to deliver a piping hot pizza pie made from scratch in less than three minutes. The brainchild of Italian entrepreneur Claudio Torghel, the machine will be distributed...

The Obama “Truth Team” blames GOP donor Thomas O’Malley’s refinery company for helping to “drive gas prices up this year by curtailing gas production.” But the facts are the exact opposite. The Energy Information Administration credits PBF Energy for preventing a price spike in the Northeast this year by opening a refinery in Delaware — partially offsetting the loss of production from two other Philadelphia-area refineries that have closed. The “truth team” also claimed that one event — a March fire at the company’s Delaware refinery — “directly contributed to a spike in gas prices.” But that fire was under...

Michèle Flournoy, former U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, spoke on Tuesday at the annual conference of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv. Video ..... Finally, Flournoy addressed the Iranian nuclear issue and, while she stressed that President Obama will take no options off the table, she added, “Any military strike will only delay, not destroy, Iran’s nuclear program. American estimates suggest a delay of one to three years for an Israeli strike.” “It is something that would buy us time, but it would not by itself solve the problem in any enduring way,” said...

A five-year-old girl is thought to have become the UK's youngest victim of forced marriage. She was one of 400 children to receive assistance from the government's Forced Marriage Unit in the last year. The figures have emerged as the public consultation into criminalising forced marriage in England, Wales and Northern Ireland comes to an end. Amy Cumming, joint head of the Forced Marriage Unit, said 29% of the cases it dealt with last year involved minors. "The youngest of these was actually five years old, so there are children involved in the practice across the school age range," she...

Yesterday, filmmaker Spike Lee apparently re-tweeted the home address of George Zimmerman--the Hispanic man who allegedly shot and killed black teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida last month.

RUSH: Now, this health story. The website's called Signs of the Times, and the story here is by Dr. Dwight Lundell. "Heart Surgeon Speaks Out On What Really Causes Heart Disease." The upshot of it is that everything that we think we're doing to promote cardiovascular health is actually contributing to cardiovascular problems. This story prints out six pages. The doctor wrote it. So many times I have mentioned over the years about diet, health, food, how we are being manipulated by government goals, wrong medical ideas. Food activists with a logo and a fax machine putting out bogus information...

The House yesterday passed a new "reform" measure aimed at curtailing the practice of trading on securities with inside information amongst members of Congress and their staff. Suprise! Some members of Congress were arriving in Congress and becoming rich on the experience. Ever wonder how people go to Congress and become millionaires? The publication last year of a new academic report cleared up for us at least one way the millionaires' club known as Congress benefits.A report from four scholars, Alan J Ziobrowski; James W Boyd, Ping Cheng; and Brigitte J. Ziobrowski, titled Abnormal Returns From the Common Stock Investments...

An off-duty federal law enforcement agent who happened to be in a pharmacy during a holdup confronted the robber as he tried to leave with money and painkillers, and both were shot to death. The off-duty Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent died after being taken to a hospital with a gunshot wound Saturday, Nassau County police Lt. Kevin Smith said. Police said the gunman entered the pharmacy in Seaford about 2 p.m., looking for painkillers and money, and announced a holdup. As he tried to leave with what he came for, three people confronted him: the ATF...

In colonial times Christmas was frowned upon in New England and observed mostly as a private feast in mid-Atlantic and Southern colonies. The strait-laced New England Puritans, partially motivated by anti-Catholic sentiment, banned Christmas in 1659 under the guise that the holiday was pagan and that it encouraged decadence. Colonial Americans celebrated a Christmas that contained both religious and secular elements thus establishing a uniquely balanced American approach to faith. Christmas harkens back to the ancient Roman celebration of the Saturnalia, a day in which all Romans, Emperor and slave, addressed each other on a first name basis. Christmas was...

Does anybody else notice the HUGE push among the media elites (Rove, Krauthammer, et al) for Romney, now that Cain is showing powerful gains? I have to say, the more they say Romney's a foregone conclusion, the deeper my heels dig in against him. Not because he's a Mormon, but because he WANTS it too much - has been running since the last election, and I WON'T have "them" dictate who our nominee will be. Colonel, USAFR

"Recent satellite images of Greenland make it clear that there are in fact still numerous glaciers and permanent ice cover where the new Times Atlas shows ice-free conditions and the emergence of new lands," they say in a letter that has been sent to the Times. "We do not know why this error has occurred, but it is regrettable that the claimed drastic reduction in the extent of ice in Greenland has created headline news around the world. "There is to our knowledge no support for this claim in the published scientific literature."

An Alberta judge has let a woman who strangled her newborn son walk free by arguing that Canada’s absence of a law on abortion signals that Canadians “sympathize” with the mother. “We live in a country where there is no protection for children in the womb right up until birth and now this judge has extended the protection for the perpetrator rather than the victim, even though the child is born and as such should be protected by the court,” said Jim Hughes, national president of Campaign Life Coalition. Katrina Effert of Wetaskiwin, Alberta gave birth secretly in her parents’...

Even after an op-ed in USA Today and a strong exposition of his position in last night’s debate, Rick Perry still draws heat for his characterization of Social Security as a “monstrous lie.” A new CNN/ORC poll, for example, reveals that 72 percent of registered voters say Perry’s description of the program is “inaccurate,” while just 27 percent say it is “truthful.” More of the breakdown from WSJ’s Washington Wire: The survey also shows that 59 percent of tea party supporters disagree with Mr. Perry’s characterization.Still, 55 percent of those polled say there’s a serious problem with Social Security that...

NEW YORK (AP) — Aligning himself with a public fed up with economic uncertainty and Washington gridlock, President Barack Obama declared Thursday: "There is nothing wrong with our country. There is something wrong with our politics." His toughly worded message — he said there was frustration in his voice, in case anyone missed the point — came amid a series of polls showing that people are disgusted with political dysfunction and are dispensing blame all around, including on Obama. Obama aired his frustration with the ways of Washington at an event in Michigan before pivoting to his re-election campaign and...

A simple little graphic I whipped up... :-)

The left was so excited after Jon Stewart’s appearance on Fox News last Sunday. But the victory was short lived. First, Jon was fact-checked by Politifact. Chris Wallace pointed it out here. But there was another claim Stewart made in the interview which also fell apart this week. Here’s Stewart defending the NY Times:

CHINESE scientists have genetically modified dairy cows to produce human breast milk, and hope to be selling it in supermarkets within three years. The milk produced by the transgenic cows is identical to the human variety, with the same immune-boosting and antibacterial qualities as breast milk, scientists at China's Agricultural University in Beijing said. The transgenic herd of 300 was bred by inserting human genes into cloned cow embryos which were then implanted into surrogate cows, Sky News reported. The technology used was similar to that used to produce Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to be cloned by scientists,...

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports: The latest vote count in the state Supreme Court race in Winnebago County indicates incumbent David Prosser is leading Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg in votes. A tally compiled by The Associated Press Wednesday and used by news organizations statewide, including the Journal Sentinel, indicated Kloppenburg was leading the race by 204 votes. Figures on Winnebago County's website are now different from those collected by the AP. Winnebago County's numbers say Prosser received 20,701 votes to Kloppenburg's 18,887.

A New Jersey woman who hopes to become the fattest woman in the world got 30,000 calories closer to her 1,000lb goal with a festive feast that could have fed dozens of revellers. 46-stone Donna Simpson, sitting in a reinforced metal chair, chowed down on the world's biggest Christmas dinner as she ate for two straight hours on Saturday. The single mother-of-two tucked into two 25lb turkeys, two maple-glazed hams, 15lbs of potatoes (10lbs roast, 5lbs mashed), five loaves of bread, five pounds of herb stuffing, four pints of gravy, four pints of cranberry dressing and an astonishing 20lbs of...

Proving once again that Hollywood always gravitates to the wrong causes, Tim Cavanaugh of Reason.com reported on Dec. 14 that the California town made famous by Erin Brockovich — an activism that Hollywood embraced with a major motion picture starring Julia Roberts — has proven not to have lived up to all the anti-corporate fearmongering that brought the town to the country’s attention. For those of you that are hazy on the story, local activist Erin Brockovich successfully took Pacific Gas and Electric to court forcing it to pay a record $33 million class-action settlement