Free Republic

The widow of a Staten Island man who died after a police officer apparently used an unauthorized chokehold on him collapsed in tears into the arms of the Rev. Al Sharpton during a rally Saturday morning at his Harlem headquarters. Esaw Garner had to be ushered off the stage as Sharpton described how her husband, 43-year-old Eric Garner of Port Richmond, died Thursday following a confrontation with police after complaints that he was selling single untaxed cigarettes. Part of the confrontation was captured in video taken by a bystander.

In effect, that long-sought goal would reproduce the chemical reactions inside exploding nuclear bombs to create controlled and self-sustaining thermonuclear fusion. The NIF laser - the largest on Earth - is actually an array of 192 individual high-energy lasers that can be fired simultaneously and aimed with unparalleled precision to become a single laser hitting the central target. In the diamond experiments -an effort unrelated to nuclear weapons research - the scientists focused 176 of the laser beams simultaneously at a diamond contained inside a tiny gold cylinder called a hohlraum. In the hohlraum, the immensely bright laser light was...

Although there will be no religious privileges included in the order. an older executive order still applies to some groups: No further exemption for religious entities will be included in the executive order, but the update also won't repeal President George W. Bush's amendment to EO 11246, which allows religious-affiliated federal contractors to discriminate on the basis of religion, officials said. "You can use religion to only hire people who share your religion, but you can't discriminate against somebody who is of your faith who happens to be LGBT, unless they fall within the ministerial exemption," officials said. It's great...

One of the hottest strategies in corporate America right now is the use of so-called “tax-inversion” deals. A US company buys a company headquartered in a country with lower taxes and then re-incorporates the entire company in that country to reduce the corporate tax bill. A major tax inversion was announced yesterday, with Illinois-based pharmaceutical company AbbVie buying Irish-based Shire Pharmaceuticals. The entire company will be registered in Jersey, the island in the English Channel, which is famous for its low tax status.

Where will the human WMD in the White House do the most damage – the economy or national security? Since Obama became president, 27 million jobs bit the dust. The labor-force participation rate (the percentage of available workers who are actually working) is the lowest in 36 years. The National Council of La Raza's favorite gringo doesn't know or care how many thousands of "Dreamers" streaming across our border each month have communicable diseases or are criminals or terrorists traveling incognito. He's given up even the pretense of trying to control the border. It's all Congress's fault anyway for not...

Any former Girl or Boy Scout knows it’s dangerous to just pluck a berry off a bush or grab a random green and stuff it in your mouth (hello, poison ivy!) So proceed with caution and only sample something if you’re quite sure it’s safe: Brill’s app is a good starting point, but it, too features the caveat that there are some poisonous wild edibles out there! There’s also a whole world of tasty stuff. We asked Brill for his top five low-risk foraged finds (read: wild plants that don't have poisonous doppelgängers) around America, all of which are listed...

“With three work days a week, we would have more time to relax; for quality of life,” Slim said. “Having four days [off] would be very important to generate new entertainment activities and other ways of being occupied.” But there’s a catch: in exchange for working fewer days a week, we should work for more of our lives. Instead of retiring at 50 or 60, workers should work until the age of 70 or 75, the 74-year-old Slim said.

No foreign airlines dared flying to or over Afghanistan at the height of the war against Taliban insurgents following the 2001 United States-led invasion but in recent years business has boomed, with more airlines opening routes to the capital, Kabul, and numerous airliners crossing over the country every day. But security is deteriorating. Galvanised by the expected withdrawal of foreign forces this year, insurgents have been particularly active, attacking Kabul airport twice in just over a year and firing rockets at its facilities almost weekly. The Taliban were not immediately available for comment.

FULL TITLE: Duane Youngblood: Pastor Who Wrote Book About Overcoming Homosexuality Arrested For Molesting Teen Boy Duane Youngblood once wrote a book about how he was able to de-convert from homosexuality, but police say the Pittsburgh pastor was actually sexually abusing a teenage boy over the course of several years. Youngblood, who leads the Higher Call World Outreach Church, was arrested this week and charged with corrupting a minor. The boy, who has since turned 21, told police that Youngblood abused him over the course of nearly three years. The young man claimed that the sexual assaults took place inside...

Not so long ago the federal deficit was projected to destroy the country, our children’s future and just about everything else. Budget battles shut down the entire government for a couple weeks. How times change. A count by our colleague Alice Crites illustrates how the issue gained media traction – - especially after the Bush/Obama stimulus packages to mitigate Bush’s Great Recession – and how much it’s faded from the front pages. So what happened? Simple answer, of course, is that the deficit is way down and, for now, no longer a big problem.

Krauthammer’s Take: Obama ‘Practically Half Asleep’ in Airliner Speech By NRO Staff July 18, 2014 On Friday’s Special Report, Charles Krauthammer slammed Obama for the “unbelievable, passive nature” of his speech, which addressed the Malaysian airliner catastrophe in Eastern Ukraine. Reacting to yesterday’s news of the shooting down of the civilian plane – almost certainly at the hands of Russian-armed rebels – the president appeared disinterested, and ”practically half asleep.” That response makes sense only if Obama believes that the events will necessarily go badly for Russia. However, Krauthammer contended, there is no reason to think that is true in...

International AIDS Society president Francoise Barre-Sinoussi on Saturday said SIX COLLEAGUES heading for a global conference in Melbourne were on a Malaysian plane that crashed over Ukraine, NOT 100 as reports suggested.

From behind a smoking sniper rifle high atop his ivory tower peers the secular-”progressive.” He surveys his many victims, strewn across the American landscape below and mockingly sneers, “War on Christianity? What war on Christianity?” He then resumes shooting, all the while insisting that those uncooperative Christians who scatter for cover behind the word of God and the U.S. Constitution somehow suffer from a “persecution complex” (the baker, the photographer, the florist, the innkeeper, the Christian school administrator, etc.). Though there are many, it is plain for all to see that abortion and “sexual liberation” remain the two principal theaters...

Cristiano Ronaldo's Mum Claims She Tried To Abort Him While She Was Pregnant Cristiano Ronaldo's mother Dolores Aveiro released her autobiography this week and says she wanted to have an abortion when she was pregnant Doctor refused to support her decision and refused to help Real Madrid star Ronaldo found out about his mother's decision By DAVID KENT 18 July 2014 Cristiano Ronaldo’s mum has admitted she tried to abort the footballer when she was pregnant, according to reports. In an autobiography released in Portugal on Friday, Dolores Aveiro claims her doctor refused to go through with the procedure. In...

The father called 911 around 1 a.m. after he walked in on the alleged abuse, police said. When officers arrived, they found Raymond Frolander motionless on the living room floor. He had several knots on his face and was bleeding from the mouth. "He is nice and knocked out on the floor for you," the father told the 911 dispatcher. "I drug him out to the living room." The Daytona Beach News-Journal reports that the father - who was not identified by police - told investigators he walked in as Frolander was abusing the boy. When asked by the 911...

It’s possible you’ve already heard of the greatest harebrained political scheme of the year: Venture capitalist Tim Draper’s plan to break California into six states, which might actually face a statewide vote in 2016. It all depends on whether Draper managed to snag the necessary number of signatures — 807,615 according to SFGate — to get the plan on the ballot. He’s claimed to have 1.3 million signatures, which would mean the residents of California would get to vote on the biggest breakup proposal in state history.

Eating chicken is swell. But, bacon....mmm....bacon...Here is a hot picture of a bacon model... Eat More Bacon

30 Writers Other Writers Loved To Hate

Recently I was involved with a business meeting with another officer of our company with a woman seeking a contracting job with our company. We went out to lunch for a long meeting to discuss what we were looking for and what she had to offer. After our meeting, she said something like "I'm sure you guys would like to discuss this with one another if I'm a match or not. I would like to excuse myself to the restroom." She then took her purse, put it in the middle of the table and left for the restroom. We then...

A Miami cop pulled someone over last month on a routine traffic stop, but the ensuing mess resulted in an internal investigation because it turns out the man this police officer pulled over was actually a higher-ranking officer in the same police department. Officer Marcel Jackson pulled over Lieutenant David Ramras and things got intense really quickly. In a video captured on Jackson’s GoPro camera, you can see them fighting and Jackson forcing Ramras to the ground. Other officers nearby run up to....(video at link)