Free Republic

the Ultimate Bacon Brisket Bomb, an 8-ounce brisket infused with jalapeño cheese wrapped in bacon and smoked into a ball. It will contend with 14 other items, including deep-fried nacho balls and Golden Fried Peanut Butter and Jelly on-a-Stick, for the Iowa State Fair’s top honor...] ...In Minnesota, which hosts the largest state fair in the nation by daily attendance, new offerings include Asian flavors, as in the Kimchi ’n’ Curry Poutine and Indian Frites, as well as a vanilla ice-cream sundae drizzled with Sriracha sauce.

Missan, 29, may be the world’s oldest cat, according to its Swedish owner who says that aside from suffering from some minor back and kidney problems, there is no reason why her furry friend won't make it to the grand age of 30. Missan the Swedish farm cat is turning 30 this spring and may be the world oldest living cat. By far. “I read an article about another cat that was supposed to be the world’s oldest, and I just thought to myself: ‘mine is older!’,” Missan’s owner Åsa Wickberg, from Karlskoga, told the TT news agency. According to...

With the Federal Reserve printing trillions upon trillions of dollars to keep the economic system afloat, many investors and financial pundits have surmised that the fundamental economic problems facing the United States during the crash of 2008 have been resolved. Stocks are, after all, at historic highs. But the insiders know different. And if there’s any single person out there who understands U.S. monetary policy and its long-term effects on domestic and global affairs it’s former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. As the head of the world’s most powerful central bank for nearly two decades he’s privy to the insider...

Democrat Charlie Crist holds a sizable 53-29 percent lead over Gov. Rick Scott among Hispanic voters, according to a new poll that indicates this fastest growing segment of the electorate doesn’t like Republican positions on immigration, Medicaid and the minimum wage.

It is impossible to know exactly what is going on in North Korea, but something big has happened. The third generation Kim dynasty heir, Kim Jong-un, has been missing from public sight for a month, and may be ill, dead, or overthrown. There is much speculation, and contradictory reports are circulating, including the assertion that Pyongyang is sealed off, and no one is being permitted to enter or leave.

The largest passenger jet in the world, the Airbus A380, landed Monday at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, completing the longest currently flown nonstop route in the world.

DENVER — Tom Tancredo isn’t trashing Bob Beauprez, but he’s demanding one of his biggest benefactors, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, come clean about the Republican Governors Association’s influence on Colorado’s GOP gubernatorial primary. On Monday, the Denver Post reported that a campaign finance watchdog group discovered that the RGA, which Christie chairs, funneled money to help Beauprez through the Republican Attorney Generals Association despite its public pledge not to attempt to influence GOP primaries. (SNIP) “We already have a situation in Mississippi where grassroots Republicans feel disenfranchised by party elites. We need to avoid a repeat in Colorado. “Governor...

It hardly gets more Orwellian than this. New technology would allow cable companies to peer directly into television watchers’ homes and monitor viewing habits and reactions to product advertisements. The technology would come via the cable box, and at least one lawmaker on Capitol Hill is standing in opposition.

"This is the future if nothing is done to stop it," is the ominous way The Atlantic describes the recent Big Brother tactics used by LA County Sheriffs to "police" areas such as Compton. Residents were unaware ("A lot of people do have a problem with the eye in the sky, the Big Brother, so to mitigate those kinds of complaints we basically kept it pretty hush hush")that, as the police stated, "we literally watched all of Compton during the times that we were flying, so we could zoom in anywhere within the city of Compton and follow cars and...

n Washington, it is never too early to discuss who will next reside in the White House. But the real question is not who; it's what he will do there. Could even a President Paul, Lee, or Cruz accomplish the dramatic downsizing of government that we need? How would he push a Tea Party agenda, given what I call the Big Conundrum? The Big Conundrum is that those of us who believe in limited government abhor how much power has been appropriated to the executive branch. It would seem a type of hypocrisy to use those same powers to radically...

In 2006, Georgia Republican and Senate hopeful David Perdue said that the way to the large number of unemployed Americans needed to be dealt with at a “federal level” and could not be left to the states. At a meeting of the Retail Industry Leaders Association in 2006, Perdue, then the CEO of Dollar General, lamented the high number of uninsured people, the Dallas Morning News and Retailing Today reported at the time. “It’s a tragedy that so many people are uninsured,” Perdue said of health insurance, according to a Dallas Morning News article from Oct. 17, 2006. Read more:...

Fox News anchor Shepard Smith is leaving his 7 p.m. ET timeslot to take on a larger role heading up the network’s new breaking news division. Beginning this fall, the new division, with Smith as the main anchor and its managing editor, will have the capability to break into any Fox News programming, daytime or primetime, with the latest reporting, network spokeswoman Ashley Nerz told TheBlaze.

Many researchers believe that physics will not be complete until it can explain not just the behaviour of space and time, but where these entities come from.“Imagine waking up one day and realizing that you actually live inside a computer game,” says Mark Van Raamsdonk, describing what sounds like a pitch for a science-fiction film. But for Van Raamsdonk, a physicist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, this scenario is a way to think about reality. If it is true, he says, “everything around us — the whole three-dimensional physical world — is an illusion born from...

Japan on Tuesday unveiled its biggest warship since World War II, a huge flat-top destroyer that has raised eyebrows in China and elsewhere because it bears a strong resemblance to a conventional aircraft carrier. The ship, which has a flight deck that is nearly 820 feet long, is designed to carry up to 14 helicopters. Japanese officials say it will be used in national defense -- particularly in anti-submarine warfare and border-area surveillance missions -- and to bolster the nation's ability to transport personnel and supplies in response to large-scale natural disasters, like the devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011....

Jake Tapper's "The Lead" reports that Al-Qaeda Arabian Peninsula “may have something big going down” and may be in "final stages” of an attack on the U.S. and other Western targets...

Full Title - 'She didn't affirmatively say no': Silence means consent according to defense in Ohio high school rape trial where passed out, drunken teenage girl was 'sexually assaulted' by multiple football players' Defense lawyers in the coming trial of two high school football players charged with raping a nearly passed-out-drunk 16-year-old girl are expected to argue on the issue of consent. In the case that has shocked the nation, prosecutors state that the inebriated girl was taken to a number of parties by a group of drunk teenagers, supporting her to walk when she wasn't physically capable. The prosecution...

Inspired by FReeper Catfish1957: "Simple solution. Totally dismantle the federal government outside Defense, Treasury, and State. Delegate any other service to each individual state. Fedzilla must die." More at Reaganite Republican...

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – The biggest Burmese python ever caught in Florida — 17 feet, 7 inches long and 164½ pounds — was found in Everglades National Park, the University of Florida announced Monday. The snake was pregnant with 87 eggs, also said to be a record. Scientists said the python's stats show just how pervasive the invasive snakes, which are native to Southeast Asia, have become in South Florida. "It means these snakes are surviving a long time in the wild," said Kenneth Krysko, a snake expert at the Florida Museum of Natural History, where the euthanized snake...

(25) Millenium simulation from Volker Springel et al., from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics. “The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” -Stephen Hawking The Universe is a vast, seemingly unending marvel of existence. Over the past century, we’ve learned that the Universe stretches out beyond the billions of stars in our Milky Way, out across billions of light years, containing close to a trillion galaxies all told.Image credit: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF Team. And yet, that’s just the observable Universe! There are good reasons to believe that the...

David Axelrod, senior adviser for Barack Obama‘s re-election campaign, spoke with New York magazine reporter and frequent Morning Joe panelist John Heilemann at 92Y, telling Heilemann that he had a “big cry” over the passage of President Obama’s health care law. RELATED: Poll: Most Americans Want Health Care Law Declared Unconstitutional “I have a child with a chronic illness,” he shared. “I was one of those people who almost went bankrupt. She was seven months old and she started having seizures. I was making 35, 38 thousand dollars a year and her medications weren’t covered by her insurance and we...