Free Republic

Pakistan's Taliban insurgency faces a spate of bad press in mainstream Pakistani outlets related to the jihadists' failed assassination attempt of Malala Yousafzai, a young blogger who dared protest the Taliban's ban on educating girls. Now the Taliban are plotting terror strikes on TV stations and other media organizations, but local newspapers refuse to stay silent. The first report of these plots were surfaced by an urdu-language reporter on Saturday, who uncovered a special directive by the chief of the banned Tahreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Hakimullah Mehsud. As local newspaper Dawn reported, "Mehsud directed his subordinate to target the offices of...

ANDERSON, Ind. — Three Highland Middle School students were expelled Tuesday after viewing a topless photo of one of their female teachers on the teacher’s school-issued iPad, according to Nicole Troutt, the mother of one of the boys. Contacted today, Nancy Farley, principal of Highland High School, and Beth Clark, assistant superintendent at Anderson Community Schools, would not discuss the issue. Clark said the incident was a personnel and student matter, and that ACS officals would not comment.

When President Barack Obama stepped off the stage in Denver last week the 60 million Americans watching the debate against Mitt Romney already knew it had been a disaster for him. But what nobody knew, until now, was that Obama believed he had actually won. In an extraordinary insight into the events leading up to the 90 minute showdown which changed the face of the election, a Democrat close to the Obama campaign today reveals that the President also did not take his debate preparation seriously, ignored the advice of senior aides and ignored one-liners that had been prepared to...

Mitt Romney won the first presidential debate by a whopping 52-point margin according to Gallup - the most resounding margin since the polling giant began tracking debates 20 years ago. The stunning judgement on the debate came as a bombshell Pew national poll put Romney four points ahead of President Barack Obama by 49 to 45 points - a huge swing of 12 points from mid-September, when Pew found Obama leading by 51 to 43 points. In Gallup debate results published today, three times more people thought Romney did a better job than Obama in last week's so-called Duel in...

A Pennsylvania high school marching band has caused outrage by commemorating the Russian Revolution in a halftime performance - brandishing red flags, military uniforms, hammers and sickles. Historians and parents of students at New Oxford High School have lambasted the choice of entertainment which remembers an event that gave way to Communism and the deaths of millions. Even though the school's colours are red, white and blue, they have adopted the theme of 'St Petersburg: 1917' for their halftime shows, including one last Friday, Fox News reported. 'It was Glee meets the Russian Revolution,' a concerned parent told Fox. 'They...

In honor of the beginning of the NFL season and because I have a bizarre need to compare things that are in no way similar to each other. I give you a list of Christian denominations and their corresponding NFL team. Roman Catholic – Chicago Bears They've been around since the beginning and their history is filled with both conquests and venerated saints like George Halas, Dick Butkus and Gale Sayers. However, in recent years they've often been on the defensive leading to middle of the road status. Finally, Mike Ditka is Pope John Paul II and Walter Payton is...

The battery in my wife's crv is losing its pep, it seems. It takes just a moment longer for the engine to crank over. The boys at Honda have been on me to change it for about a year now. It seems easy enough to switch a battery knowing I have to reset the clock and radio but would there be any other electronic issues involved?

(CBS/AP) U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens was among four Americans killed in an attack by Muslim protesters on the U.S. consulate compound in Benghazi the previous evening, the U.S. government confirmed Wednesday. "I strongly condemn the outrageous attack on our diplomatic facility in Benghazi, which took the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens," President Obama said in a written statement released Wednesday morning. The U.S. government had confirmed one American death on Tuesday. President Obama said he had ordered heightened security at all U.S. diplomatic offices around the world in the wake of the attack in...

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Sept. 4, 2012 /Christian Newswire/ -- The California Senate voted last week to pass a bill allowing non-physicians to perform aspiration abortions. Senate Bill 623, introduced by Christine Kehoe (D-San Diego), extends a program run by the University of California, San Francisco, in which nurse practitioners, midwives and physicians assistants are trained to perform abortions. "This bill was originally created to regulate boat paint," said Dana Cody, Executive Director of the Life Legal Defense Foundation. "Now it's regulating and destroying human lives." Ms. Kehoe claimed that the bill was necessary to fill gaps in the availability of abortion...

It was a moment to hail a great hero - a chance to remember a man who placed America at the forefront of space exploration and in the history books forever. And yet President Obama saw the passing of Neil Armstrong, the first man to step on the moon, as a chance for a picture opportunity - of himself. After the death of the 82-year-old on Saturday, Obama's team chose to mark the loss by posting an image of the president gazing up at the moon on his Tumblr account. ...And, if the self-promotion at a time of tragedy was...

State funerals, held in the US capital Washington DC, are steeped in tradition and usually only held for former presidents, the last being Gerald Ford in 2006. The last non-president to be granted one was Gen Douglas MacArthur, the Second World War and Korean War soldier, in 1964, five years before Armstrong landed on the moon. Such an event typically involves pall-bearers from five branches of the US Armed Forces, a series of artillery salutes, a fly-past and a number of bands and choirs. The flag-draped coffin is taken in a horse-drawn gun-carriage and placed in the Capitol rotunda for...

Question 1 of 11: "His mom lived in Long Island for ten years or so. God rest her soul. And—although, she's...wait...your mom's still...your mom's still alive. Your dad passed." Joe Biden Michael Scott

While I gave NBC News credit for breaking the news of astronaut Neil Armstrong’s death, someone at NBCNews.com screwed up big time with this headline, confusing Neil Armstrong and Neil Young: No, Neil Young was not an astronaut, and is not dead. The current version of the story has the following correction: “Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story included the wrong name in the headline.”

The news last Friday of the death of the ramen noodle guy surprised those of us who had never suspected that there was such an individual. It was easy to assume that instant noodle soup was a team invention, one of those depersonalized corporate miracles, like the Honda Civic, the Sony Walkman and Hello Kitty, that sprang from that ingenious consumer-product collective known as postwar Japan. But no. Momofuku Ando, who died in Ikeda, near Osaka, at 96, was looking for cheap, decent food for the working class when he invented ramen noodles all by himself in 1958. His product...

Barack Obama cancelled three operations to kill Osama bin Laden before finally going ahead with the mission at the insistence of Hillary Clinton, according to a new book. The explosive allegation is contained in an expose by journalist Rich Miniter, who argues that the White House’s carefully-crafted narrative of Obama as a decisive leader who dispatched the al-Qaeda leader despite the doubts of advisers is a myth. Leading from Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors Who Decide for Him will be published on Tuesday. Excerpts have been viewed by Mail Online. Miniter, a former ‘Wall Street Journal’, ‘Washington Times’...

Soccer fans help team find goal

The Indian-American author called The Washington Post’s charge “totally bogus” Indian-American journalist and author Fareed Zakaria, who has been suspended by CNN and Time magazine after he admitted to plagiarism, is now accused of publishing without attribution a passage from a 2005 book, a charge he vehemently denied as “totally bogus.” The new allegation against the 48-year-old Zakaria, levelled by The Washington Post, was, however, refuted by The Daily Beast, which said the author’s book did contain a citation to what he quoted in his 2008 book The Post-American World. Mr. Zakaria’s book contained a quote from the former Intel...