Free Republic

Police have apprehended a man who apparently climbed the New Jersey roller coaster that was swept into the ocean during Superstorm Sandy and unfurled an American flag. The man walked from the top of the coaster and hopped into a police boat today. He was handcuffed, walked through the surf and escorted to a police car on the beach in Seaside Heights. News 12-New Jersey says Christopher Angelo told the channel he wanted to raise awareness for shore recovery. His mother says the 38-year-old lives at his grandmother's home in Lavallette. Diane Angelo says her son is a bit of...

A person familiar with the situation says Robert Griffin III will have surgery Wednesday to repair a torn ligament in his right knee. The person said Griffin has a torn lateral collateral ligament and that the surgery will also determine whether he also has damaged the ACL.

On Tuesday morning, commentary on the broadcast of the Bowl Championship Series national title game between Alabama and Notre Dame included words like “creepy,” “awkward,” “uncomfortable” and “heteronormative.” The subject was not Alabama’s 42-14 victory, but comments made during the game by the ESPN play-by-play announcer Brent Musburger regarding the girlfriend of Alabama quarterback A J McCarron. In the first quarter, ESPN showed McCarron’s girlfriend, Katherine Webb, who was sitting near his parents. Musburger called the 23-year-old Webb, a former Miss Alabama, a “lovely lady” and “beautiful,” and said to his broadcast partner, Kirk Herbstreit, a former quarterback at Ohio...

The leader of an anti-government militia in Alaska who proclaimed that "God's law" trumps "man's law" was sentenced on Tuesday to nearly 26 years in prison for a plot to kill government employees he portrayed as his enemies.

Freepers here is an opportunity to influence young minds in college. I am an adjunct professor of humanities. Later this month I will begin teaching two courses on the American Experience and Constitutional Change. Every semester I give a term paper assignment based on Wickard v. Filburn and the governmental abuse of the Commerce Clause. I am always gratified by the comments of the students afterwards who tell me they never had any idea of the vast power employed by the government in our daily lives. Well I will still use that case this semester because it is so insructive...

Explanation: The grand, winding arms are almost mesmerizing in this face-on view of NGC 7424, a spiral galaxy with a prominent central bar. About 40 million light-years distant in the headlong constellation Grus, this island universe is also about 100,000 light-years across making it remarkably similar to our own Milky Way. Following along the winding arms, many bright clusters of massive young stars can be found. The star clusters themselves are several hundred light-years in diameter. And while massive stars are born in the arms of NGC 7424, they also die there. Notably, this galaxy was home to a powerful...

U.S.-based sources confirm Hagel tried to shoot down popular USO portThe Washington Free Beacon reported last week that during his tenure as the USO’s top official Hagel attempted to cut funding for the USO Haifa Center, telling a group of Jewish leaders in a 1989 meeting that the American Jewish community should bankroll the port, according to sources present in the meeting.“He said to me, ‘Let the Jews pay for it,’” Marsha Halteman, director for military and law enforcement programs at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), told the Free Beacon last week.Halteman reiterated her recollection of that...

Shutterstock.com For once it’s the IRS — and not taxpayers — doing the procrastinating. The agency postponed the start of tax-filing season to Jan. 30, officials said Tuesday, a delay that will push back refunds issued to early filers by more than a week. The 8-day delay was necessary to give tax officials more time to update forms and test processing systems following the last-minute changes Congress rolled out to avert the fiscal cliff, the IRS said Tuesday. Alas, the April 15th filing deadline will not be pushed back as well.

Back in those quaint days when KGB-supported communist subversives planning to overthrow a republic had to meet in secret to discuss their operations, William Ayers and his chums reportedly opined that during the post-revolutionary period of normalization, approximately twenty-five million Americans (ten percent) would have to be executed. Today, however, I have good news: that number may now be reassessed at as low as ten million, which, when one factors in the increase in the overall American population since the original estimate was made, suggests as much as a seventy percent savings in the government's stockpile of ammunition. There's a...

Lt. Col Oliver North (ret.) held nothing back this morning with Brian Wilson and Breitbart News' Larry O'Connor on WMAL's Mornings on the Mall. When asked his opinion of the appointment of Sen. Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense North called Hagel a "backer of Hamas and Hezbollah" and that he was an "Israeli phobe."

ESPN has issued an apology following Monday night's BCS National Championship game where the world was introduced to Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron's girlfriend, 2012 Miss Alabama USA Katherine Webb. The problem comes from ESPN host Brent Musburger who spent a fair amount of time talking about Webb, rather than the game. (Video embedded below.) According to E! Online, ESPN has apologized for the excessive commentary stating, "We always try to capture interesting storylines and the relationship between an Auburn grad who is Miss Alabama and the current Alabama quarterback certainly met that test. However, we apologize that the commentary in...

Urooj Khan had sworn off playing the lottery after he took an Islamic pilgrimage to the Middle East in 2010, but as he stood in a 7-Eleven near his home on Chicago's Far North Side this summer, he lost his will for a moment, handing over $60 to buy two instant-game tickets. After scratching off the second ticket, he leaped in the air, shouting over and over again, "I hit a million!" When Khan, 46, accepted an oversized check from Illinois Lottery representatives days later at the same store with his wife and teenage daughter at his side, he spoke...

Welcome to Obamaland where our inalienable rights are being gradually degraded. Now that President Obama needs never to curry electoral favor again will government’s grasping overreach soon strangle a successful arts-and-crafts company? “We’re just going to have to cross that bridge when we come to it,” says attorney Kyle Duncan of the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty. Mr. Duncan represents Hobby Lobby, a family-owned retail chain risking severe penalties for putting principles before profits. Limited self-government descends into tyranny. Hobby Lobby faces looming fines of up to $1.3 million per day for refusing to abide a spurious provision of the...

ALINSKY'S RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.

Has anyone heard of a big pro gun rally in DC, the Saturday before the class clown is inaugurated for his second term? **SNIP** Rush was just talking about it. Bulge. **SNIP** It was on the CBS news early this morning. They need something going on to raise the intelligence in DC that weekend. lol

Earlier today, in an abbreviated legislative session because of the Joint Session of the Legislature for Governor Christie’s State of the State Address, liberal New Jersey Democrats managed to introduce 18 new Gun Control bills in an effort to further deprive you of your 2nd Amendment right. While the exact language of some of the bills will not be available until tomorrow at the earliest, the remainder will be available next week; the titles of them are scary enough.

~ Freeper Canteen ~ Canteen Mission StatementShowing support and boosting the morale ofour military and our allies' militaryand family members of the above.Honoring those who have served before. Today We Want To Know .... What Baseball Park Snack Are You? Click here and take the quiz! To share your results, click "Get HTML", then copy and paste the code into a "Reply" box. Have fun! Please remember that The Canteen is here to support and entertain our troops and veterans and their families, and is family friendly.

U.S. House Freshman from Oklahoma, Congressman Jim Bridenstine (R), was sworn into office on January 3, 2013. His first vote was the same day, for Speaker of the House. He cast his vote not to return the gavel to John Boehner. It takes some courage to raise your hand, swear your oath of office, and immediately vote against leadership. Bridenstine did that. After securing a seat on the House Armed Services Committee, and the Science, Space and Technology Committee, the question is, will Bridenstine be allowed to keep his Committee seats? Opposing Boehner's agenda has brought loss of committee seats for...

The Miami Herald is reporting Hugo Chávez early demise was recognized long before the rest of the world was privvy to the details of a late diagnosed and lethal cancer. With the help of Cuban brothers Fidel and Raúl, and Chávez' hand-picked successor Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan presidential election was moved from December 2012 to October 2012, two months that the report says were crucial. In October Chávez could still stand before his supporters to applaud his re-election, but there was no certainty that he could do so in December. He returned to Cuba for a fourth round of cancer treatments in early...

Crusade against carbon dioxide threatens the environmentTechnologies advanced as the solution to the purported global warming problem are catching fire — just not in the way intended. Bureaucrats are quickly learning that their regulatory offerings designed to entreat Mother Nature into bestowing cooler temperatures upon the planet have created environmental hazards of their own. It’s well-known that the fluorescent light bulbs being foisted on a reluctant public spread deadly mercury when dropped. In March, the administration will be free to enforce a federally imposed ban on the manufacturing of warm, pleasing and affordable 100-watt light bulbs. This will force more...