Free Republic

Somewhere in America right now a Religious Studies graduate in white shutter shades is sucking the Pabst Blue Ribbon from his wispy mustache while listening to a pig-tailed girl offer her position on Metamorphosis. They are hipsters. I know this because I met them. They hang out in front of a Coffee Bean. They are Aubrey and Aubrey and they live for the moments when strangers suggest that name ought to be gender exclusive. They work part-time gathering signatures for obscure causes and spend the rest of their time arguing about Sartre and Derrida and who borrowed whose pants. They...

For seven hours Wednesday, City Council members pored over Mayor Annise Parker's $4.1 billion budget, cutting programs or initiatives as varied as the use of unneeded 800 numbers and tuition reimbursement for municipal employees. One cut that was not made: City Council budgets. City Councilman Al Hoang and others backed an effort to apply the same 2 percent budget cuts required of many city departments for fiscal 2011 to council members, who have been allocated $392,222 in the coming year to pay staff and take care of other expenses. The proposal, which would have required a cut of nearly $8,000...

14-year-old girl was arrested and charged Monday in the April death of her newborn son, Houston police said Tuesday. SNIP Investigators said the 14-year-old girl was afraid her mother would find out she was pregnant, and that she would get in trouble. So police said she, her sister and two friends watched a video online about giving birth, and then she had her baby at a friend’s apartment in the 10100 block of Bissonnet on April 16. Investigators said the newborn was placed on a mattress, but his head was covered with what police believe was the amniotic sac, so...

Agricultural output in the Bric nations will grow three times as fast as in the major developed countries, the joint United Nations-OECD study said. Livestock and crop prices will stay above long-term averages, it added. And rising incomes and urbanisation in developing states will drive growth. "Developing countries will provide the main source of growth for world agricultural production, consumption and trade," the report said. "As incomes rise, diets are expected to slowly diversify away from staple foods towards increased meats and processed foods that will favour livestock and dairy products.

Franz Gayl, a civilian scientist employed by the Marine Corps, is circulating a proposal to stop the gusher of oil by using the dropping the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal on the wellhead. Call it the Mother of All Depth Charges. Gayl is proposing a modified version of the Air Force’s GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, known informally as the “mother of all bombs.” Designed as a “shock and awe” weapon to intimidate Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the Iraq war, the 21,600 pound, GPS-guided bomb was never used in combat.

Giving back the house has officially gone mainstream, which might have lenders singin’ the blues. Rapper Chamillionaire, known for his song “Ridin’,” became the latest homeowner choosing to default on his mortgage. He abandoned his Houston mansion instead of making payments on a house that’s worth less than what he paid, TMZ reports. The rapper, whose real name is Hakeem Seriki, calmly tells the gossip site, which caught up with him Thursday outside a New York hotel, that he simply “decided to let that house go because the house ended up being worth nothing.” The rapper says it was his...

Hollywood execs from several large entertainment media companies have reportedly told Apple that they’re not going to port their existing content from Flash to Apple’s iPad (iMaxi)format. The New York Post namechecks Time Warner and NBC Universal, and also implies that there are others. The names dropped are critical. Time Warner is second only to Vivendi in size among entertainment conglomerates. NBC Universal, now jointly owned by GE and Comcast, is also an entertainment giant, as parodied weekly by NBC’s sitcom 30 Rock.

AUSTIN – Texas, which has joined a lawsuit to block the new federal health care law, stands to gain by far the most federal dollars from a rush by poor adults to enroll in Medicaid, a new study shows. Estimates that the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured released Wednesday say Texas would reap nearly $53 billion in federal match money, and possibly more, between 2014, when the adults must be enrolled, and 2019. "For a relatively small investment of state dollars, states could see huge returns – with federal dollars covering the bulk of the bill," said Diane...

Over the last two decades, antitrust regulators in the U.S. and Europe have imposed fines and restrictions on Microsoft and Intel to try to prevent them from abusing their dominant position in several markets. However, they have cast a largely blind eye on Apple's iTunes -- until now. Antitrust investigators with the U.S. Department of Justice are conducting an extensive inquiry into Apple's online music business, interviewing Apple employees, internet music company employees, and music label employees according to the New York Times. At the core of the investigation is the allegation that Apple applied pressure to force music labels...

The Texas Board of Education is poised to enact a new social-studies curriculum that portrays America as a nation rooted in Biblical values and promotes the virtues of low taxes, limited regulation and free enterprise. Those standards have provoked heated debate in the state similar to the one that broke out last year when the board overhauled the science curriculum. What do you think? Are Texas' new standards appropriate? Or are they changing the curriculum in a way that is not representative of the rest of the country?

On Wednesday a Pakistani court ordered Facebook to be blocked because of a page inviting people to draw caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. Some Wikipedia pages are also now being restricted, latest reports say. Correspondents say it remains to be seen how successful the new bans will be in Pakistan and whether citizens find a way round them. YouTube says it is "looking into the matter and working to ensure that the service is restored as soon as possible". The site was briefly blocked in Pakistan in 2008 - ostensibly for carrying material deemed offensive to Muslims. Facebook said on...

The Coney Island Drive Inn, a restaurant in Brooksville, Florida, has been selling 12-inch hotdogs — the restaurant calls them “footlongs” — for more than 40 years. Its Web site is gotfootlongs.com. Last week, the restaurant got a letter from a lawyer representing Subway, which, as you may have heard, sells 12-inch sandwiches for five bucks. After explaining that Subway “has applied for the trademark FOOTLONG (TM) in association with sandwiches,” the letter says: You are hereby put on notice to cease and desist from using FOOTLONG (TM) in association with sandwiches. You must immediately remove all references to FOOTLONG...

The Democratic nominee for the Texas governor’s race, Bill White, continues his downward spiral in his campaign against Texas Governor Rick Perry, the Republican nominee. His sparsely-attended political gatherings are showing its effects on opinion polls. According to the Houston Chronicle, “a new Rasmussen Reports poll of Texans finds Texas Gov. Rick Perry with enough support to win the election for the first time this year. Former Houston Mayor Bill White in the meantime has lost ground, despite a round of television advertising.” Apparently, Mr. White is losing support in his home-base of Houston. The ‘Bill White Houston Political Machine’...

It's called YouCut. It allows anyone to vote on a project that they think Congress should cut. Republicans will suggest possible cuts each week and will try to bring the winning cut to the House floor each week for an up or down vote. 1 of 5 On the chopping block: Prohibiting taxpayer-subsidized union activities by prohibiting federal employees from being paid by the government for performing union functions. Currently some federal employees spend up to 100% of their workweek, paid by taxpayers, doing work for their union. Federal employees unions collect millions in revenue each year and spend significant...

Police in Texas have determined that a high school basketball player who led his team to the state playoffs this past season was actually a 22-year-old man who previously had played high school basketball in Florida. According to police, Guerdwich Montimere had enrolled at Permian High school in Odessa, Texas, claiming to be 16-year-old Jerry Joseph, for the 2009-10 academic year. Claiming to be homeless, he was taken in by the school's basketball coach, Danny Wright, and lived at the coach's house. However, last month, Montimere was recognized at a basketball tournament by coaches from Florida for whom he played...

Japan's base dispute with America Futenma farce There is little to cheer in a shoddily executed about-face on Okinawa May 6th 2010 | TOKYO | From The Economist print edition Hatoyama loses another future voter YUKIO HATOYAMA, Japan’s leader, does not exude political gravitas. So it was dispiritingly in-character that when he made an announcement on May 4th that could make or break his premiership, he did so on a national holiday, speaking unpersuasively to the very people most likely to disapprove of what he said. The bombshell he dropped on his first visit as prime minister to the island...

A man who sold accused Time Square bomber Faisal Shahzad fireworks said the alleged terrorist seemed like a "typical, average American guy."

The talk-show host recently ran a parody of an iPhone ad on her show — and apologized for it the next day, saying she “got in trouble” for it because “the people at Apple didn’t think it was so funny.” The ad shows Ms. Degeneres struggling to use the phone, mistakenly going to a mapping application when she tries to text. Later, when she attempts to type on the phone’s touch screen, she remarks, “My fingers are so much thicker than I remembered.”

Jonathon and Brandy Miller of Boynton Beach filed a lawsuit in April in Palm Beach County, blaming flippers, or buyers who plan to resell quickly for a profit, for the neighborhood’s downfall. They want to be reimbursed for their purchase price and closing costs. They also want a jury to determine further damages.

On the same day Newsweek magazine anointed Gov. Rick Perry on its cover as a conservative icon, his Democratic opponent, Bill White, was slogging through small-scale campaign stops here in a Republican stronghold, needling the governor, saying he paid more attention to his career than to bread-and-butter issues like schools.