Free Republic

<p>A New Jersey dad got the scare of his life when his 5-year-old son almost ran off a steep embankment,and though the man saved the boy from falling,he couldn't stop his Jeep from going over the precipice and into a river below.</p>

For many people, a camping trip is enough to get them sweating before they've even put up a tent pole. But for these daredevil explorers, scaling cliffs and pitching tents at the height of more than 300 double decker buses is just a normal day at the office. Hanging precariously in tents off a 4,000ft shear cliff face, these climbers are chasing the most dangerous big wall climbs ever attempted. As these stunning images show, the climbs can last for weeks and the explorers must set up tents on the edge of monstrous cliff faces to grab some much needed...

The multi-millionaire owner of the Segway company died in a freak accident yesterday when he rode one of the high-tech two-wheel machines off a cliff and into a river. Former miner Jimi Heselden, 62, plunged into the River Wharfe while riding around his West Yorkshire estate in Boston Spa on a rugged country version of the Segway. He bought the firm last December and was using one of the machines - which use gyroscopes to remain upright and are controlled by the direction in which the rider leans - to inspect the grounds of his property. Big heart: Jimi Heselden...

Last week, President Obama's job approval rating sank to 46 percent in a Gallup poll, matching the lowest weekly job approval rating of his presidency. Few Americans were surprised. Obama's bumbling response to the BP oil spill drove the latest decline in his popularity almost equally among Democrats, Republicans and independents. But another Gallup poll taken about the same time contained even worse news for the president. After a year and a half of "hope and change," 49 percent of Americans consider the Democratic Party "too liberal" -- compared with 39 percent in 2008, when Obama was elected. This is...

Tooling around Panoramio, I found the Creux-du-Van in Switzerland, near Lac de Neuchatel. My first thought when looking at this was: "I'll bet they lost a lot of sheep on this thing." What's the Creux-du-Van? From Magic Places of Switzerland: Creux-du-Van And from Wikipedia: Creux-du-Van It's a cirque. And an impressive one. You can find it with "Creux-du-Van, Switzerland" on Google Maps. This is a good area for Swiss cheese, I believe. Click for full size. Click for full size. Click for full size. Click for full size.

NEW YORK (AFP) – Voters in Massachusetts decide on a new senator Tuesday -- and possibly the fate of President Barack Obama's ambitious reform agenda. The special election to fill the seat of the late Democratic veteran Edward Kennedy could see Republican Scott Brown score a stunning upset against Democrat Martha Coakley in what was believed to be one of her party's safest seats. The latest Public Policy Polling survey conducted over the weekend gives Brown 51 percent to Coakley's 46 percent. One published by left-leaning website The Daily Kos showed them equal, but with Coakley sharply down from a...

... Those who enjoy genuine success in life, built upon lots of hard work, understand this. Those who don't get it, keep on slipping and sliding around. What holds true for individuals also can be true for presidential administrations, Congress and the nation. While the nation was aghast that an Islamic fanatic underwear bomber nearly blew up a planeload of people over U.S. soil on Christmas, the President continued to sun himself on a Hawaiian vacation for three days before addressing the nation. Then, when it became apparent the public didn't think he was taking it seriously enough, the president...

WOODLAND HILLS - As he launched a radio ad campaign Tuesday for his budget measures on the May 19 ballot, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said failure to approve the package would worsen the state's already-dire fiscal crisis. "If they don't pass, we will be facing a $50 billion problem," Schwarzenegger said at a meeting with Daily News editors and reporters. "It will mean massive cuts in education, hospitals, prisons. These are things people don't want to see cut." Schwarzenegger's campaign committee, Budget Reform Now, began its advertising campaign Tuesday for the six ballot measures - Propositions 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D, 1E...

A driver has blamed his sat nav for leaving his car teetering on the edge of a cliff after he followed its instructions. Robert Jones said he trusted his navigational system and continued to follow it when it told him the steep, narrow footpath he was driving on was a road. Mr Jones, from Doncaster, South Yorkshire, now faces court action for driving without due care and attention. His BMW nearly plunged down a 100ft cliff in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, on Sunday. He was only stopped from falling after the vehicle rammed into a wire fence. Police and rescue teams...

As promised, a picture or two of the Troll Wall in Norway. Tallest section is 1100 meters (that's over 3400 feet). Impressive! I guess this place is somewhat prone to rock falls. That might be impressive too. Checking the map, this place is close to a lot of good-looking fjords. It'd be a nice part of a trip there. Pretty big picture here, shown quarter-size. Click for full-size. This place even has it's own Web site, featuring this small but striking picture. I linked to this site as the Source link above. Here's an artistic black-and-white shot.

Sorry I'm a day late. This is reputedly (see link in first comment) the highest cliff in Europe. To which I ask: none higher in the Alps? (Maybe the highest SEA cliff.)

TRANSCRIPT By Keith Morrison Correspondent NBC News updated 9:09 p.m. CT, Mon., June. 11, 2007 This report aired on Dateline Monday, June 11 HOMER, ALASKA - It was the question that wouldn’t go away. The question that haunts many people even now. Lary Kuhns: People would ask, ‘Hey, whatever happened to that case with the lady on the cliff?’ Her name was Wanda — “the lady on the cliff.” Jay Darling: Everybody asked what happened. And everybody seemed to scratch their head when I said, ‘I don’t know’. Farrah Tittle: I dreamed about Wanda every single night. And in several...

Reportedly built to make it easier to drive along the scenic southern coast without the significant possibility of a rock crashing through your windshield.

SAO PAULO, Brazil - A packed school bus plunged into the ocean after crashing into a car on a seaside road in southern Brazil Friday, injuring all 26 children aboard, authorities said. Three of the children were hospitalized in serious condition after the morning accident near Florianopolis, some 435 miles south of Sao Paulo, the Brazilian federal highway police said. The children, aged between 8 and 14, were on their way to school when the accident happened, police said. The cause of the crash was under investigation, but authorities said it appeared the bus driver lost control after being cut...

Over 4,200 Cliff Tombs Found in W. China City 2006-1-10 1:06:53 CRIENGLISH.com More than 4,220 cliff tombs have been spotted at 680 sites in Shangluo, a city in western China's Shaanxi Province, local archaeologists said Monday. The cliff tombs have large spaces and various conformations and are scattered at a 160-km-long belt joining DanJiang Valley in the east and the Qianyou River in the west, said scientists with the provincial archeological research institute. According to Yang Yachang, a researcher with the institute, most of the single-room tombs are erect stone caves in rectangle shapes and are three meters deep, while...

We recently got a call from Don Wycliff of the Chicago Tribune, who we later found out is the "public editor" of that paper. That is supposed to mean that he objectively analyzes complaints about the paper's coverage. He was calling us because we were critical of the media's misreporting of the Iraq War, and we contend that the coverage is a major factor in the military recruiting problem. His bias was apparent in his approach. In his column he did mention a couple examples we cited, but he conveyed his prejudice in how he wrote his piece. Don't take...

Stripping Senate Democrats of their right to filibuster judicial nominees is a prelude to a broader assault on the judiciary known as “court stripping.” What Shelby and his backers are really after is gay marriage. If the Constitution Restoration Act of 2004 were law, the Massachusetts Supreme Court could not have ruled that two people of the same sex can marry. “They’re doing in a sense what Iraq is trying to do,” says Lichtman, “make religious law supreme and not reviewable by any court, least of all the Supreme Court.” She adds that while Jews have to speak up, along...

I am all for whaling, but against killing the wolves. In Norway we have a very small population of wolves. More sheeps die from falling down cliffs and other natural things than being killed by wolves. Actually more sheeps are killed by another wild animal. Whales on the other hand there are many of in the sea.

Woo hoo! I've made the big time. Last month, the website Free Republic featured a thread about my Nov. 18 column, "Queers Who Don't Act Right." You probably don't know much about Free Republic unless you are a right-wing lunatic. Free Republic is so far right that wing-nut gay muckraker Matt Drudge and Lucianne Goldberg, one of the architects of the Clinton-Monica Lewinsky brouhaha, both left the site in 1999 because it was too extreme, even for them. In the years since, the site has become the contemporary version of a marathon meeting of the old John Birch Society and...

Link post: access the images and thread (for discussion and commentary) in the Chat section. Special appeal to Arizona residents to examine the Grand Canyon image to see if they can identify a strange feature noted there! Geology Pictures of the Week, Nov 28 - Dec 4, 2004: Southwest U.S. Geology from Space

Yes, this will save you all the time of reading Bill's mega-page memoir...It's Bill Clinton: My Life, cliff notes!click here or on cartoon to super-size it!

"Uncover the stories and secrets behind some of America's best-known and -loved products. With John Ratzenberger as your guide, you know he won't leave any factoid unrevealed!"

Prehistoric oriental 'Venus' carved on cliff discovered in Ningxia A figure of a pregnant woman carved into a cliff, known as a prehistoric oriental "Venus", the Goddess of love, has been discovered by Chinese archaeologists in Zhongwei county, northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. The "Venus" has a plump figure, full breasts and a bulbous belly. The woman, standing straight with her legs together, has slender fingers but no facial features. The image was a typical reproduction of figures of naked women carved on stone by ancients in the late Paleolithic period, said Zhou Xinhua, curator of the museum of...

Not the Un-Clinton After All The notion of George W. Bush as bipartisan is a myth. In fact, the president is guilty of crass duplicity NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE Oct. 28 — As a one-term governor with a thin résumé, George W. Bush ran on character, not experience. He promised to restore honor to the Oval Office, a not-so-veiled reference to Bill Clinton’s indiscretions. Other than a tax cut, he offered little in the way of concrete proposals. But he had pedigree. click here for rest

Iranian murderer to be thrown off cliff in a sack An Iranian murderer is to be executed by being thrown off a cliff in a sack. An Iranian newspaper says if the man from the north-western city of Mashhad survives, he will be hanged. The carpenter was convicted of raping and killing his 16-year-old nephew. The Daily Express says his nephew worked as an assistant at his shop. The man has 20 days to appeal against his sentence. Story filed: 07:27 Friday 19th July 2002