Free Republic

The NFL has passed a few notable rule changes, including expanding the definition of a chop block and setting the extra-point distance permanently, at the owners meetings in Boca Raton, Fla.

A coalition of Arab states led by Saudi Arabia is fighting alongside al-Qaeda militants against Houthi rebels in Yemen, according to a report. A BBC documentary crew has filmed jihadists and pro-government militiamen fighting rebels near the southern city of Taiz, supported by UAE soldiers (bold emphasis mine)

Berlin police have launched a murder inquiry after car bomb exploded in a travelling vehicle, killing the driver. The explosion occurred as the car moved through the western Charlottenburg district towards the centre. It flipped the vehicle into the air, police said. They have identified the victim as a 43-year-old man of immigrant background. Officials believe the blast was linked to organised crime and say there is no evidence of any link with terrorism.

During an event in St. Louis, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked where Bernie Sanders was in the '90s when she was fighting for health care reform. Things got awkward when a member of Sanders campaign tweeted a screenshot of Sanders literally standing right behind her as she spoke at Dartmouth College about health care reform in 1993.

We all accept commercials as a necessary evil because they pay for the TV shows we watch. But, how much is commercial time is reasonable to accept? This question was answered for me while watching a 2004 episode of Star Trek Enterprise. The commercials came so often and lasted so long that is was almost impossible to maintain a sense of continuity with the show. This situation got me wondering about how much the percentage of time given to a show is lost to commercials has increased over the years.

Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh said Sunday that there's a "much bigger upside than downside" in the Republican presidential candidacy of real estate developer Donald Trump. "I think with the case of Trump, there’s a much bigger upside than downside," said Limbaugh while appearing on "Fox News Sunday."

Ted Cruz said Sunday that he's prepared to support any Republican in this year's presidential election -- even if the party nominates a candidate he believes would lose to Hillary Clinton. * snip * ...Cruz didn't balk when asked if he'd support Trump in a general election. "I will support the Republican nominee," Cruz said. "Period. The end."

Minor Muslim girls in the UK as young as 11 are being forced to marry men living abroad via the internet notwithstanding a ban on forced marriage in the country. Imams in the UK and abroad have been conducting ceremonies using Skype -- so girls can be married remotely before "being put on a plane and consummating the marriage at the earliest opportunity", according to Freedom, a charity. The marriage is often conducted with the promise of a visa to the UK for their new husband, it said.

We’ve written quite a bit about the decline of America’s once proud manufacturing industry which is now but a shadow of its former self and long ago ceded its place in the public’s heart and mind to the service industry...And if it was already bad, it's getting worse.

By alliance I mean a joint announcement that Trump and Cruz are now running as a team, or perhaps a joint announcement committing Trump to pick Cruz as a Supreme Court justice. I bring this up because the elites are starting to coalesce around Rubio (aka Romney II). And as we all know, nominating Romney II will just get us Clinton II.

The ISIS jihadist group has reportedly beheaded a teenage boy for listening to pop music and shot dead two others for missing Friday prayers, as part of a crackdown on personal freedoms in the group's Iraqi stronghold of Mosul. *snip* According to ARA News, a 15-year-old boy named Ayham Hussein was caught during a patrol by Isis fighters, listening to music in his father's grocery store. A spokesman for the Kurdish Nineveh media center was quoted by ARA News as saying the boy was listening to "Western music". "He was referred to the Sharia Court, which issued a decision to...

Turkish fighter jets repeatedly intruded Greek airspace within a short time frame, Athens said. Though no live rounds were exchanged, Greek warplanes were deployed to intercept the Turkish jets leading to a tense aerial encounter.

The President only gets to nominate Supreme Court justices. As we all know, the nominee only becomes a justice with the "Advice and Consent" of the Senate. The word Consent implies that the Senate is not supposed to just roll over here. The President and the Senate are equal partners in the process. Senate Republicans, are you listening?

I just finished watching a clip of Hillary's New Hampshire concession speech. She mentioned the terrible condition of Flint, Michigan's water supply. She was outraged, I tell you. So, seeing how the Clinton Foundation is a charity, wouln't it be great if the Foundation donated, say, $150 million to Flint? That would go a long way to solving the problem.

Her odyssey began when she fell in love against her family's wishes and ran off to marry her boyfriend. Hours after the marriage, her father and uncle sweet-talked her into their car and took her to a spot along a riverbank to murder her for her defiance — an "honor killing." First they beat Saba, then her uncle held her as her own father pointed a pistol at her head and pulled the trigger.

A former commanding officer could be dismissed from the Navy over numerous misconduct allegations after a night of heavy drinking with his crew while he was in charge of the guided missile cruiser the USS Anzio. Officials relieved Capt. Brian K. Sorenson of command in September, according to a report from the Virginian-Pilot. On Thursday, the newspaper obtained a report from the Navy on its investigation.

The Federal Reserve started raising official interest rates in December. But in the stress tests that large U.S. banks have to undergo, the central bank is hypothesizing that short-term Treasury yields could drop below zero. The European Central Bank and, since Friday, the Bank of Japan are trying it with policy benchmarks. Though negative U.S. interest rates are for now only in the Fed's worst-case scenario, they are becoming a plausible downturn assumption.

I don't care who the DC politicians endorse. But I'm a big fan of Sarah Palin, Ted Nugent, and Hank Williams, Jr. All three represent America as I want it to be. And the first two have already gone for Trump. If Bocephus makes it a hat trick, then it will be case closed for me, for sure.

A U.S. Navy commander charged with accepting paid travel, prostitutes and Lady Gaga concert tickets from a Malaysian defense contractor in exchange for classified information pleaded guilty on Thursday to federal corruption charges. Commander Michael Vannak Khem Misiewicz appeared in U.S. District Court in San Diego to answer to charges of conspiracy to commit bribery and bribery of a public official stemming from his involvement in a scandal surrounding a contractor who serviced ships in the Navy's Pacific Fleet.

I'm a big fan of the Ford Ranger truck. Back in 2011 Ford unwisely discontinued Ranger production in the United States. But recently the Internet has been filled with stories about the Ranger coming back to the US in 2016. The official Ford site is silent about this. So today I called a nearby Ford dearship. Forget about it, they said, the Ranger is not coming back to the US. Maybe that's true, maybe they just want to sell me a F150 today. So does anybody here know the inside scoop on the Ranger?