Free Republic

egensburg - Again, he sat in front of the TV and looked at "Joseph". This is the name Georg Ratzinger uses for his brother, who has been called Benedict XVI for almost eight years and on Wednesday had his last major appearance as Pope. Although he can no longer see so well, the 89-year-old in Regensburg wanted to see as much of the general audience as popssible of the outgoing head of the Church in St. Peter's Square. "It was very touching," the prelate said to the news agency dpa. "There was a melancholy mood." And Georg Ratzinger added reassuringly...

Lawyers for embattled former Deming gun dealers Rick, Terri and Ryin Reese filed a motion last Wednesday in the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico “to dismiss with prejudice the four remaining counts of the indictment.” The filing, co-signed by defense attorneys Robert J. Gorence, Jason Bowles, Brad D. Hall, and Peter V. Domenici Jr. moved for dismissal on counts “the Indictment pending against [the defendants] on the grounds that the Government has willfully or was recklessly negligent in not disclosing Giglio [“material tending to impeach the character or testimony of the prosecution witness in a...

Via John Sexton of Breitbart.com, I’d sure like to know which ray of Hopeychangey sunshine shared this bit of bright good cheer with Woodward. To be clear, he doesn’t specifically say it was someone inside the White House; I’m assuming that from Politico’s description of this very short clip (“Bob Woodward pulled back the curtain on his battle with the White House over a recent column on the sequester”), but maybe it’s someone from outside the building. Jim Messina, maybe? Remember, he’s into “punching back twice as hard.” Good point from John: John Sexton @verumserum For all those who claimed...

The New York Times and Starbucks are teaming up to give coffee drinkers a way to leap over the newspaper's digital paywall -- as long as beverages are savored in stores. A partnership announced Wednesday will give Starbucks customers free digital access to 15 articles per day on NYTimes.com. Customers who are logged into the Starbucks Digital Network in its US shops will be able to access up to three articles from five separate sections per day, including top news, business and technology. The move comes with the US daily moving to tighten up its paywall...

How far we have come - 3D Printing is just as exciting today as it was in 1989. A little bit of 3D printing history: 1984 - Charles Hull developed the technology for printing physical 3D objects from digital data. 1986 - Charles Hull named the technique as Stereolithography and obtained a patent. 1986 - Charles Hull founded 3D Systems and developed the first commercial 3D Printing machine, it was called as Stereolithography Apparatus. 1988 - 3D Systems developed model SLA-250, which was the first version to the general public. 1988 - Scott Crump invented Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM). 1989...

In 2006, as a Probate and Family Court judge in Boston, I began hearing a case filed by a self-represented woman who requested an order that a sperm facility disclose the identity of the father of her two young daughters. She gave as her primary reason that the children suffered from health issues and needed a complete medical history from their father. As a secondary ground, she cited the children’s need for financial support. After multiple hearings and several trips between the Probate and Family Court and the Massachusetts Appeals Court, the complaint was dismissed in 2011. (The first decision...

Rock legend and gun-rights defender Ted Nugent says there’s “no question” President Obama should be impeached, and he’s blasting CNN anchor Piers Morgan as an “effective idiot” in the battle over the Second Amendment.

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKTV) - The Buffalo-based attorney who is spear-heading a lawsuit against Governor Andrew Cuomo's recent gun laws said that Wednesday was "monumental," as a State Supreme Court Justice issued an order requiring New York State to show good cause that the law is constitutional. New York State has until April 29 to respond or else an injunction will be issued. On Thursday, thousands are expected in Albany to rally against the Governor's gun laws. Many are looking to preserve local jobs at places such as Remington Arms, while others say they are just citizens who feel that their...

Bob Woodward called a senior White House official last week to tell him that in a piece in that weekend’s Washington Post, he was going to question President Barack Obama’s account of how sequestration came about - and got a major-league brushback. The Obama aide “yelled at me for about a half hour,” Woodward told us in an hour-long interview yesterday around the Georgetown dining room table where so many generations of Washington’s powerful have spilled their secrets. Digging into one of his famous folders, Woodward said the tirade was followed by a page-long email from the aide, one of...

A few years ago Russian president Dmitri Medvedev decided he wanted officials to be chauffeured in Russian limousines, not the German executive sedans everyone had become accustomed to (such as the Mercedes-Benz pictured above). Naturally, that meant turning to Russia's own ZiL to create a litter worthy of a plutocrat and glorious Russian history. The plan had two big problems, the first being that ZiL stopped making limos in 1991 and was only producing trucks and armored military vehicles. But that didn't stop the party. The orders to ZiL were to create something powered by a V8 that was able...

Appearing on CNN Wednesday, the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward said a “very senior person” at the White House warned him that he would “regret doing this,” referring to his outspoken criticism of President Barack Obama’s handling of the impending forced cuts known as the sequester. “I think they’re confused,” Woodward told CNN host Wolf Blitzer. Woodward apparently went on to criticize Obama further over the sequester the same day he received the warning from the White House. “It makes me very uncomfortable for the White House to be telling reporters, you are going to ‘regret’ doing something that you believe...

Bob Woodward called a senior White House official last week to tell him that in a piece in that weekend’s Washington Post, he was going to question President Barack Obama’s account of how sequestration came about - and got a major-league brushback. The Obama aide “yelled at me for about a half hour,” Woodward told us in an hour-long interview yesterday around the Georgetown dining room table where so many generations of Washington’s powerful have spilled their secrets. Digging into one of his famous folders, Woodward said the tirade was followed by a page-long email from the aide, one of...

The descriptions of the post-sequester landscape that have been coming out of the Obama Administration have been alarming, specific--and, in at least some cases, hyped. “There are literally teachers now who are getting pink slips, who are getting notices that they can’t come back this fall,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” When he was pressed in a White House briefing Wednesday to come up with an example, Duncan named a single county in West Virginia and acknowledged, “whether it’s all sequester-related, I don’t know.” And, as it turns out, it isn’t.

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Much like their human owners, animals have to deal with unwanted weight, too.

Guillermo Cochez Panamanian politician says the president of Venezuela is deceased Contact with CNN Chile's former ambassador said that since last December 30 President Chavez declared brain dead in Cuba, with which he returned to Venezuela in that state, and therefore it could not be visited by the various leaders who have visited, questioned and denied as the last picture that was published between Chavez and his daughters.

It’s Looney Toons on Capitol Hill. Everyone’s heard about the “red herring” Feinstein Gun Ban, which “red state Democrats” will vote down in order to pretend they’re “pro-gun.” But the bigger danger is that Obama will sign “non-controversial” gun control which is just as dangerous, but no one but us is talking about. Take the gun licensure bill which anti-gunners are trying to dub the “gun trafficking bill.” In the Senate, the bill is S. 54, and was introduced by Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) -- although it appears that it could have been drafted by an intern. GOOFBALL...

Imagine that a police officer, after taking it upon himself to search someone's car, is asked to explain why he thought he would find contraband there. "A little birdie told me," he replies. Most judges would react with appropriate skepticism to such a claim. But substitute "a big dog" for "a little birdie," and you've got probable cause. Or so says the U.S. Supreme Court, which last week unanimously ruled that "a court can presume" a search is valid if police say it was based on an alert by a dog trained to detect drugs. The court thereby encouraged judges...

House majority leader Eric Cantor is increasingly frustrated with a group of House Republicans who are working against the leadership, and he’s not afraid of voicing his dismay. In a closed-door conference meeting on Wednesday, Cantor told one GOP member that if they blocked the Senate-passed Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) from coming to the floor, they’d cause “civil war” in the ranks. Cantor’s comment irked some Republican aides, who told National Review Online that such strong language is inappropriate. In recent days, some conservatives have been upset about the Senate’s version of VAWA, saying that parts of the bill...