Free Republic

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health is reporting that 18 Bay Staters have died from the flu so far this season. At least four of these people were from Boston, the Boston Public Health Commission’s Nick Martin told the Herald. “We’re seeing a significant increase in sickness and severity,” Martin said.

GlobalFoundries to Establish Massive R&D Center Near Fab 8 GlobalFoundries on Tuesday said it would build its new technology development center (TDC) at its Fab 8 campus in Saratoga County, New York. The TDC will provide a collaborative space to develop end-to-end solutions covering the full spectrum of silicon technology, from new interconnect and packaging technologies that enable three-dimensional (3D) stacking of chips to leading-edge photomasks for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography and everything in between.“As the industry shifts from the PC era to a market focused on mobile devices, we have seen increasingly strong interest from customers in migrating to...

The Piers Morgan deporation petition is going to be addressed because it passed the threshold of 25,000 votes. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2975918/posts There are 13 more days to get the required number of signatures on the petition to establish a gun-free zone around the pResident and send the Secret Service home is in the final stretch. This petition illustrates the insanity of gun-free zones, and the hypocrisy of a politicians surrounding themselves with armed guards while insisting that our children be soft targets. We have to fight the gun-grabbers on every front or they are going to win. This is just another front.

Ben Shapiro was on with Sean Hannity last night to discuss his new book “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” and to list the top five progressive bullies in America today. As a final question, Hannity asked Ben how do conservatives counter the progressive bullies today. Ben answered, “We can’t be civil with them. We can’t. We’ve reached the end of bipartisanship. We’ve reached the end of civility. It’s like the Geneva Conventions. These people are out of uniform. Once they exit the realm of civility they are now fair game. And it’s enough playing...

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Remember when the left pretended they liked the Second Amendment? That’s passé. Today, Democrats around the country are preparing for a big gun grab, the likes of which the Republic has never before seen. In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has actually publicly pitched all-out gun confiscation (or alternatively, forced gun buybacks), is now preparing grandiose new legislation designed to strip New Yorkers of “assault weapons,” as well as restrict the size of magazines. In the only provision actually designed to reduce crime, Cuomo will also propose harsher penalties for using a gun in the commission of a crime....

A transgender teacher is suing the New York City Catholic school where he worked for more than 30 years, claiming he was wrongfully terminated for growing out his hair, painting his fingernails and being "worse than gay." In a lawsuit, Mark Krolikowski, 59, alleges that after 32 years of teaching at St. Francis Prep in Queens, N.Y., and receiving numerous accolades for his work including leading students in a musical performance for Pope Benedict XVI, he was fired last year after the parents of a ninth grader complained about his appearance. Krolikowski remains anatomically male and routinely wore suits and...

Gun sales and permit requests have surged across metro Atlanta since the Connecticut school massacre last month, a trend many say will continue as Congress considers tougher gun control measures.

Moe Lane highlighted a number of business in several states that are cutting their employees’ hours (when they’re not actually laying off employees), to prepare for the coming asteroid-strike that are the Obamacare taxes. The IRS, which is in charge of enforcing the bazillion-page monstrosity, recently decided 30 hours is the new “full-time” and so tens of thousands of workers will find their hours cut from a normal 32-40 down to 29, so their bosses can afford to keep them on the payroll. The whole cycle of government action/business reaction/government overreaction was as predictable as an Obama campaign speech but...

In a vault in suburban Paris sits the official kilo, the 124-year-old standard from which numerous other measurements are derived. Even in the carefully controlled and protected environment, contamination has built up on the surface of the object. The increase in mass is tiny but the effect on science is real. Unfortunately, the layman’s solution of simply washing the cylindrical item isn’t so easily done. So a pair of United Kingdom scientists has come up with an elaborate 30-hour procedure, a combination of rinsing, ultraviolet light and heating that promises to return the kilo to its true mass. Around the...

A group of Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania Quakers has discovered they have no “friends” in the union movement. The gentile folk that are called Friends or Quakers wanted to have a new meetinghouse built and foolishly thought they should engage the cheapest construction company to get the job done. Their problems arose when the word got out that the company they hired used non-union workers. This “insult” enraged the members of several unions that lost out on the work involved. The Friends Community could not afford to build their new meetinghouse if they had to knuckle under and pay union extortionist...

Those who think college offers no material relevant to the current scene might be pleasantly, or unpleasantly, surprised. At the 2013 Modern Language Association (MLA) convention in Boston, Corrie Claiborne of Morehouse College told listeners of a new computer application that enables students to obtain historical background on rap songs. “Like if you hear, ‘I’m Che Guevara with bling on,’ you can click on Che Guevara and find out who he was,” she explained. One wonders whether this is an ambition to be pursued. Guevara was the military advisor to Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, who overthrew the Batista regime on...

On the Shooting USA website, Scoutten has created and is sharing business cards and fliers (see below) that allow conceal carry owners to show their support for pro-conceal carry businesses. The site also offers a card that informs gun-free zone businesses that as a conceal carry owner you won’t be risking your life without your legal conceal firearm in their “killing zones”.

<p>On the night of Sept. 11, 2012 -- before former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed by a terrorist mortar strike -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton released a public statement linking the attack against the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, with an anti-Muslim video, which she referred to as "inflammatory material posted on the Internet."</p>

Will Barack Obama go down in history as our least merciful president? With less than two weeks to go in his first term, this reputedly progressive and enlightened man has a strong shot at winning that dubious distinction. December, a traditional season for presidential clemency, has come and gone, and still Obama has granted just one commutation (which shortens a prisoner's sentence) and 22 pardons (which clear people's records, typically after they've completed their sentences). Barring a last-minute flurry of clemency actions, his first-term record looks weaker than those of all but a few previous presidents. Which of Obama's predecessors...

<p>America has always been a country of self-invention. Yet there used to be some correlation between the life that one lived and the life that one professed. It was hard to be a phony in the grimy reality of the coal mine, the steel mill, the south 40 acres, or atop a girder over Manhattan.</p>

CIA director-designate John Brennan’s stated views on the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah at times has appeared to be out of step with others in the Obama administration, which he has served as White House counterterrorism adviser since 2009. Even before President Obama’s election, Brennan—who was Obama’s chief intelligence adviser during the 2008 presidential campaign—was promoting a shift in the U.S. approach to Hezbollah. The Iranian- and Syrian-sponsored Shi’ite group, which also participates in Lebanese parliamentary politics, is blamed for attacks included a series of suicide bombings in Beirut in 1983 which killed more than 300 people, including 241 U.S. servicemen...

In its latest Short-Term Energy Outlook, issued Jan. 8, the US Energy Information Administration forecasts a fairly loose oil market in the next 2 years, as higher global consumption will be more than offset by increasing global supply. Also, this STEO is the first to include monthly forecasts for 2014, EIA reported. Worldwide oil supply is expected to increase by 1 million b/d in 2013 and by 1.7 million b/d in 2014 with most of the growth coming from producers outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, EIA reported. EIA also forecasts that non-OPEC production will rise by 1.4 million...

Less than a month after suspending Rob Parker for 30 days, ESPN announced on Tuesday that it was not going to renew the controversial analyst's contract.

During his appearance on NBC’s Tonight Show Monday, guest Bill Maher told the audience, “The Bible only makes sense if you're really high.” … When audience reaction to the remark was muted, Maher continued, “Touchy group tonight.” …