Free Republic

There are those who believe we must guard and protect children from the hurts and traumas of the big bad world for as long as possible. Then there are those people who believe we should toughen kids up by exposing them to and even pummeling them with terror and depravity. Those people become children’s filmmakers. Don't believe me? Gaze upon the list below and find a hall of horrors to give Wes Craven nightmares...

Guys, our country is on the verge of failing. We CAN NOT reelect Obama. We can not. If he loses, those couple months will certainly be a thorn. A sharp one at best. If he wins, all bets are off. The occupiers won't know what his them. America is armed and ready. We're not going to be told what America should be. WE ARE AMERICA, WE LIVE FREEDOM.

I need to choose a weapon for deer or bear hunting, typcial range is 200-400 yards. Also, what is a good scope set-up to get? A few of the Remingtons (308 and 30-06) come with peep sights as a package. Thank you in advance.

Live thread of Israeli PM "Bibi" Netenyahu and the crypto-Marxist Muslim, "Hussein"

Seven deer -- including six huddled in a circle -- were found apparently killed by lightning in a southern Wisconsin farm field, neighbors and authorities said Tuesday. The deer were likely killed Sunday night, said neighbor Randy Lantz, 54. “It’s bizarre,” Lantz said. After neighbors found the deer Monday and called authorities, a Kenosha County Sheriff's deputy on Tuesday went out to the rural field located near Salem, Wis., about 5 miles from the Illinois border, and found the six dead deer lying in a circle with another one a distance away. In the center of the group of six...

US special envoy Frank Wisner has said that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak should remain in power to oversee a transition to democracy. The remarks appear to contradict previous US calls for Mr Mubarak to begin an immediate transition.

MILWAUKEE (AP) -- A former Milwaukee police officer and Playboy Club model who gained national notoriety after she was convicted of murder and then escaped from prison has died in Oregon. Laurie Bembenek was 52. Bembenek was convicted in 1982 of fatally shooting her police detective husband's ex-wife and sentenced to life in prison. She escaped in 1990 and fled to Canada.

Legendary rock star and hunting advocate Ted Nugent was fined $1,750 in Yuba County Superior Court Friday after pleading no contest to charges of baiting deer and not having a properly signed hunting tag stemming from a 2009 incident in California. California Department of Fish and Game spokesman Patrick Foy told the Appeal-Democrat that a game warden "just about fell out of his chair" when he saw Nugent kill an immature buck on an episode of "Spirit of the Wild," Nugent's hunting show on the Outdoor Channel, which aired earlier this year. Further investigation into the incident revealed that the...

Reporting from Washington - The Obama administration is releasing a major statement on nuclear weapons policy that will herald a further shrinking of the U.S. arsenal, even as it rejects some sweeping steps advocated by arms control advocates. The statement, to be released Tuesday, will announce that the arsenal will shrink by thousands of warheads, and it will further restrict when the weapons may be used, U.S. officials say. But the administration has rejected proposals to declare that the "sole purpose" of nuclear arms is deterrence, nor will it promise that the United States won't be the first to use...

Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast, President appeals for a return to "civility" in politics. "You can question my policies without questioning my faith -- or for that fact, my citizenship," he says, a reference to those who insist Obama wasn't born in Hawaii.

SYRACUSE, NY--The Chair of the Department of Environmental and Forest Biology at SUNY Syracuse says deer overpopulation is a greater threat to biodiversity in New York state than global warming. Donald Leopold explained that "climate change isn't eliminating species, only moving their ranges." Deer overpopulation, on the other hand, does eliminate other species, he noted. "No other real or perceived threat is so pervasive throughout the entire state, nor eliminates the majority, if not all, of the understory of natural communities, greatly reducing the diversity of our natural communities and the function of these communities," Leopold explained. "Ignoring what deer...

White House pay czar Kenneth Feinberg did not seek President Obama's approval to order steep pay cuts from bailed-out executives. White House pay czar Kenneth Feinberg was the driving force behind the move to order steep pay cuts from bailed-out executives, and did not even seek the president's approval before making his decision.

ABOARD THE NOBLE PAUL ROMANO — Almost 140 miles off the Louisiana coast, aboard the drill ship Noble Paul Romano, workers punch an 8-inch steel pipe four miles under the ocean in search of America's next barrel of oil. "If we don't increase our own oil production in the U.S., our dependence on foreign oil won't go down," said Marathon Oil executive Woody Pace.

Syrian President Bashar Assad is escalating his rhetoric against Israel, vowing that "the day in which we will be liberated [on the Golan] is at hand - by peace or war." Assad told the Qatari newspaper A-Sharq in an interview published on Thursday: "This enemy does not want peace. What is the alternative? The parallel route to the peace process is resistance. The Israeli will not come by his own will, so there is no alternative but for him to come from fear."

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. — An environmental specialist for a Central City engineering firm was attacked by a buck while she was studying wetlands at a game preserve in Stonycreek Township Wednesday. Jamie Detweiler, 35, of Ligonier, was flown by medical helicopter to Memorial Medical Center in Johnstown, where her condition was not immediately available. Detweiler was doing wetlands dilineation at the preserve for Musser Engineering when the buck suddenly charged her, goring her in the leg, said Roger Harmon, owner of 6 Springs Hunts on Lambertsville Road in the shadows of the Flight 93 temporary memorial. “This is the first time...

Whispers started with the first few gunshots. Neighborhood rumors had it that a cotton farmer who leases land from the Chickasaw Basin Authority near the Wolf River was shooting deer on the property. So when residents discovered nearly 40 of the animals had been killed and left to rot in the surrounding woods, they reacted with horror. "I don't like to see (deer) slaughtered, and that's what happened down there in these cotton fields," said Brenda Flanagan, a nearby resident. "To me it's inhumane. ... What's gone is gone, and I would hate to see that ever happen again." Angry...

Michael Burdick admitted in Las Vegas Municipal Court on Tuesday what all but the most gullible already knew: Paintball hunts of nude women were never really for sale in the Nevada desert. The entrepreneur who earned money and grew infamous last year making that false claim in order to promote his "Hunting for Bambi" video pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors: doing business without a license and providing false information to a public official. Judge Bert Brown fined Burdick $1,105 and gave him a six-month suspended sentence. As part of his plea, Burdick acknowledged claims of paintball hunts were part of...

REDMOND, Ore. - It's one of those stories where someone says "I wish I had my camera." Good thing someone did, or Kevin Cox would surely be accused of telling a tall tale. Cox, who attends Cascade Middle School and is on the track and field team, was warming up for a cross-country foot race when he got some unexpected competition: a young deer. Cox says he and some other students were petting the deer when it took a liking to the young athlete. Photos shot by Dennis Oliphant show the young buck closely tailing Cox as he runs...

I was out yesterday afternoon for a sort of a final tuneup with my own two HCA bows and there was one other guy at the site with a recent Mathews bow, parallel limbs, set just under 70 lbs. I let him try several shots with my 280-gr arrows, then we checked speed with his own arrows vs the HC arrows; it was 275 fps vs 324 fps. That's pretty substantial. Misjudge distance by five yards out past 25 yards and that's the difference between being an inch off and missing the deer and never finding the arrow. The bow...

David Attenborough is 80 in May, but he has been such a steady, visible presence in our lives .............................. .................................................... It is a brusqueness reflected in his views about the natural world. Attenborough refers to the "irrational romanticism" which dominates so much natural history coverage, including, he suggests, the films March of the Penguins and Born Free. "I mean, Elsa the lioness is a story which is entirely based on violence. George Adamson shot Elsa's mother in the first place; they sustained the cub by killing antelope themselves and giving her half-dead antelope so that she could toy with them...

DNR seeks input on deer hunting (But You Know The New York Slimes) Realigning deer-hunting zones and expanding otter trapping are two topics the DNR wants to discuss with hunters at this year's public-input meetings Tuesday through March 9.

The injured deer was suffering, so the Arlington County police officer shot it in the head. When that didn't kill it, the deer was run over by a cruiser. Finally, a bag was placed over its head and it suffocated.

Unlike most child actors who try to capitalize on their shining moments in the film business, Donald Dunagan left Hollywood at the ripe old age of seven and never looked back. Most remarkably, he did not talk about his acting days as an adult, keeping it a secret until recently that he was the voice of Bambi, the beloved deer in Walt Disney’s 1942 animated classic, which comes out for the first time today on DVD. But now that the secret is out, Dunagan says the opportunity to revisit the film has been a welcome reminder of the life he...

Canine war hero gets Scottish statueBamse, a Norwegian St. Bernard that symbolized national freedom and resistance during WWII, will be memorialized in a life-sized bronze statue in the Scottish city of Montrose.Bamse, which means teddy bear, sailed to Britain on the Royal Norwegian Navy (KNM) minesweeper Thorodd in 1940, part of the flotilla that carried King Haakon VII into safety, newspaper The Scotsman reports.The dog became a favorite with locals as well as Norwegian troops fighting to liberate Norway from abroad. The mascot of the Royal Norwegian Navy, Bamse regularly sailed at the front gun tower of the ship when...

There are 1.6 million deer in Pennsylvania, so many that they are eating themselves out of forests, farms and parts of their home range. The voracious herd has prevented tree regrowth in vast tracts of the commonwealth's commercially valuable hardwood forests, eats millions of dollars of farm crops and collides with thousands of cars and trucks, causing damage and death. Yet there aren't enough deer for some hunters, who aren't seeing as many through their rifle scopes as they did a couple of years ago. Those hunters now want the state to go back to rules that would put greater...

Cougars and bears are no longer hunted using hounds in Oregon, thanks to 1994’s Measure 18, but the sides disagree on the law’s success [snip] A decade after Oregon voters told Blascka and other houndsmen to stop chasing cougars and bears with their dogs, the debate still rages whether Measure 18, which went into effect Dec. 8, 1994, has caused more harm than good for Oregon’s wildlife and people. The measure’s chief backers contend that the ban did exactly what it was intended to do. It stopped the chasing and treeing of bears and cougars for sport and the use...

A little over five years ago, I was driving back to Minneapolis with my friend Dick after a May fishing trip in north central Minnesota. As we headed south on Highway 64 through a pleasing mix of swamp, forest, and farmland, a white-tailed deer appeared in the middle of the highway. It just stood there, motionless in the dusky fog. With no chance to swerve or brake, we plowed squarely into the animal. Neither Dick nor I was injured. The car--my grandmother's wheezy old Plymouth Horizon--was less fortunate. After climbing out to survey the damage, the first thing I noticed...

(North Vernon) -- You may think about bright eyes and bushy tails or even about Bambi. But a North Vernon man spent three hours in the emergency room after a 13-point-buck ran rampant. You can tell an experienced hunter lives at Jim Mick’s house where the garage wall is lined with antlers and bones. Mick has been hunting for about 45 years, but his most recent experience out in the woods was almost his last. He had his eye out for deer, but apparently one had its eye on him. "It just came out of a blind spot and hit...

An Oslo resident witnessed a rare sight in her own garden this week. When she glanced out her kitchen window while making a cup of tea on Wednesday, she spotted a deer near her family's outdoor trampoline. That's a sight in itself, but something unusual was going on...

A promoter who city officials said created a hoax about selling paintball safaris to hunt naked women is being charged with operating without a license, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said Friday. "It's a joke and a fraud,"Goodman said of the"Hunting for Bambi"enterprise that was touted by promoter Michael Burdick on a Web site and publicized nationally. "I'll do everything I can to see this man is punished for trying to embarrass Las Vegas as a result of a lie and a scam,"Goodman said. Burdick called the misdemeanor summons"bogus"and said prosecuting him was a waste of taxpayer money. "I have...

The city of Las Vegas has concluded that a local company’s claims that it was charging men up to $10,000 to “hunt” naked women with paintball guns was a hoax, it was reported Friday. “IT WOULD APPEAR from all sorts of admissions ... that the purported Hunt for Bambi was a scam, that it was all staged, that there were actors and actresses and there wasn’t even the real shooting of paintballs,” Mayor Oscar Goodman told the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Thursday. City officials told the newspaper that the mastermind of the scam, Michael Burdick, acknowledged that some hunts were...

WARNING!: If you are an attractive young woman accustomed to jogging nude through the desert outside Las Vegas, Nevada, then you may want to pay close attention to this story. Why? Because someday, when you least expect it, you may just find yourself the target of a ruthless, sex-crazed paintball hunter.Or so the press would have us believe.It's a sordid tale of guns, violence, sex and money. In other words, it has everything necessary to be the latest cause célébre among the perpetually-outraged set. So what is all the hubbub about?All you need to do is visit the website! Huntingforbambi.com...

SEVERED HEAD KICKED LIKE A FOOTBALLMar 21 2003Death trial told of `horror film' attackDonna WatsonTWO murder accused played football with their victim's decapitated head after cutting up his body with a chainsaw, a court yeard yesterday.Christopher Hutcheson, 22, and 19-year-old Andrew Ferguson acted like "something out of the Hannibal Lecter horror movie" in the attack on Daniel Hutcheson, a woman witness claimed.Amanda Bain, 23, said the pair admitted they had tied up their victim before drowning him in the bath.The High Court in Glasgow heard that they told her how they cut up his body with a chainsaw, gouged out...

<p>A red and white hand-lettered sign reading "Welcome Hunters" still hung outside the concrete block building in Hays yesterday where 400 deer carcasses lay rotting, after a seasonal deer processor abandoned the business.</p> <p>More than 100 of the dead deer could be seen staring glassy-eyed from the back of an open rental truck parked in front of the building at 271 Baldwin Road. A like number were stuffed so tightly into a trailer beside the building that heads and legs protruded from under the door. Other deer heads, hooves and assorted trimmings filled two dozen 55-gallon drums.</p>

Very few people like the idea of shooting Bambi's mother. But there may be no better way to slow the rapid expansion of deer populations that are devastating ecosystems in many areas of the country. At least 20 million white-tailed deer are ranging the nation at the moment, a huge jump from only 500,000 in 1900, according to a recent report by Andrew C. Revkin in The Times. They plunder farm crops and alter the ecology of forests by eating the low-lying vegetation and destroying the seedlings needed for new growth. In the process, they displace many smaller animals...

For 20 years, Laurie Bembenek has insisted she's not a killer. Although she's served her sentence, Bembenek remains desperate to prove her innocence and hopes technology not available at the time of the crime can help. In a motion filed Friday in Milwaukee County Circuit Court, Bembenek asked for DNA testing of several pieces of evidence in her case. The results may implicate another suspect in the death of Christine Schultz, her ex-husband's first wife. "I need to clear my name for my sake and that of my family who have suffered with me during the past 21 years," Bembenek,...