Free Republic

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, is launching a $26 million program to help military personnel with psychiatric disorders using electronic devices implanted in the brain. The goal of the five-year program is to develop new ways of treating problems including depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, all of which are common among service members who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan."We've seen far too many times where military personnel have neuropsychiatric disorders and there's very few options," says Justin Sanchez, a program manager at DARPA.DARPA is known for taking on big technological challenges, from missile defense to creating...

A Republican challenging Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-Ariz.) apologized Monday for saying a vast majority of the perpetrators of mass shootings are Democrats. At a candidate forum on Saturday, rancher Gary Kiehne said, "If you look at all the fiascos that have occurred, 99 percent of them have been by Democrats pulling their guns out and shooting people," The Arizona Daily Star reported. "So I don't think you have a problem with the Republicans," Kiehne added, according to the paper.

One Nigerian official's wish for Boko Haram: "Find them, kill them." ....... "I love this about America," he said with a tone of, if not love, then certainly reverence. "Find them, kill them. Don't wait for judicial manipulation." As the parents of the kidnapped schoolgirls become more desperate, and their protests in Abuja grow larger, he may be repeating those four words to himself like a mantra.

A Saint John, N.B. man has reached local hero status after a blown tire led to a blowout with the city because the auto body shop owner decided to fix potholes on his street, only to be told to undo the work or face a fine. Three weeks ago, Mike Defazio blew out a tire after hitting a foot-deep pothole on Broadway Avenue at Simpson Drive, where he owns an auto body shop. The next day, while working outside his shop, he watched a hearse try to navigate around the pothole on the way to a funeral and the 60-year-old...

HOUSTON (CBSDFW.COM) – Deputies with the Harris County Precinct One Constable’s Office say a man has been terrorizing a neighborhood in the Woodland Heights area of Houston by going to the bathroom in several yards at night. “We’ve had reports from six to eight neighbors out there that someone is actually coming into their yard and defecating — generally on their driveways,” said Sgt. J.C. Mosier. Authorities believe the unknown man is committing the act between 1:00 and 4:00 a.m., but a motive for crimes has not yet been established. “I think the neighbors are laughing about it, but that’s...

“It just comes down to love. I mean, if you love your child then you should do anything in the world for your child. And it’s as simple and as pure as that.” This is not parental love. This is misguided, tragic indulgence. It’s as simple and pure as that. Parental love prepares a child for adulthood–momentary happiness has little to do with it.Parental love sees beyond what a child currently wants, or thinks he wants, and gives him what he needs. What this child needs is unconditional love and a chance for his brain to mature and his...

The vast arid wasteland known as liberal radio is becoming even more barren. Loose-cannon lefty Randi Rhodes is pulling the plug on her show. News of Rhodes' impending departure came in a terse statement from Premiere Networks, which broadcasts her show through 35 affiliates -- "[We] can confirm that Randi Rhodes has decided to end her national radio program. We've had a successful partnership with Randi for several years and we wish her all the best for the future. Premiere Networks will conclude syndication and production of Randi Rhodes on May 16, 2014." (Audio clips after the jump) Rhodes spent...

(Snip) At long last, it appears that Rush Limbaugh has run out of steam. I have to acknowledge that I have sensed Rush getting by on fumes for some time now (yes, I tune into his show from time to time to enjoy his broadcasting skills if not his message). However, it was only recently that the world of Limbaugh crossed that thin red line from partially serious to total self-parody and audience deception—a line crossed from which there is often no return. It happened on the occasion of Stephen Colbert’s appointment to fill David Letterman’s soon to be vacated...

A prominent advocate for transgender and women’s rights in the tech world has been charged with raping her wife, The San Francisco Examiner has learned. Dana McCallum, a senior engineer at Twitter who speaks and writes about women’s and transgender rights and technology issues, was arrested Jan. 26 and booked into County Jail on suspicion of five felonies, according to the Sheriff’s Department.

And, I do have a sensitivity toward people in the military as well as civilians who have developed some sort of "nervous condition." I was medevaced out of Vietnam after 16 months there while serving  in the Marine Corps. At that time, if an enlistee even looked cross-eyed at a superior officer, or showed any sort of deviance - they would be "quickly and efficiently" jailed, hospitalized, or just booted out of the military. IOW soldiers like the most recent Fort Hood killer Ivan Lopez would have stuck out like a sore thumb in yesterday's military, but not in...

The story of the Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev shocked the American public consciousness and made many ask: how could a person with a good education from a well-off family turn out to be a terrorist?

If tracking and describing internet wildlife like something out of National Geographic then liberals would probably be classified in the following way.

Chrissie Hynde's daughter 'superglued herself to fellow fracking protester' Natalie Hynde, whose father is musician Ray Davies, is on trial for the incident at the main gate of energy firm Cuadrilla's test drilling plant near Balcombe, West Sussex By Hayley Dixon, and agencies 2:26PM GMT 11 Feb 2014 Natalie Hynde, the daughter of The Kinks singer Ray Davies and The Pretenders' star Chrissie Hynde, superglued herself to a fellow anti-fracking protester outside the main gate of an exploratory oil drilling site, a court has heard. Miss Hynde, 31, and Simon Medhurst, 55, are jointly charged over the incident at the...

Returning to The View seven years after departing in an angry, liberal tirade, Rosie O'Donnell sat down with Barbara Walters and some of her former colleagues on Friday. Updating everyone on life since the show, she revealed that Parker, her now 18-year-old son, will be attending the Citadel. The 9/11 truther snapped, "...How do you annoy your left-wing liberal pacifist mother? You become a big military man." [See video below. MP3 audio here.] O'Donnell admitted she interrogated her son as to why he made such a decision and he responded, "Only in America, mom, could somebody like you who came from...

For most Americans, toilet paper is an absolutely necessary grocery list item, but some women are opting out for both economic and environmental purposes. In a HuffPost Live discussion, bloggers Angela Davis, Kathleen Quiring and Makala Earley explain why they've decided to go paperless, revealing that it's not as messy or unhygienic as it may sound. 'It is definitely possible,' insists Mikala, who says she and her husband stopped using toilet paper about a year ago. 'It is almost seen as a necessity [and] it doesn't have to be, and it's been a lot of fun to learn how to...

“Mental disorder” is the leading “diagnostic group” for disabled people receiving federal disability insurance benefits, with 35.5 percent of all disabled beneficiaries having such a disorder, according to the latest Annual Statistical Report on the Social Security Disability Insurance Program. The report provides a statistical profile of the 10,088,739 disabled beneficiaries who were receiving federal disability benefits as of December 2012. Those 10,088,739 disabled beneficiaries were almost double the 5,044,388 disabled beneficiaries who had been in the program as of December 1995. In Washington, D.C., according to the report, 43.2 percent of disabled beneficiaries as of December 2012 had been...

TOURE: "...... I’m sorry, I can only do so many fun, awe-struck stories about the weather and the extraordinary weather events without saying this is because of climate change. That's why we're having all of these extraordinary weather events and we don’t talk about it enough. When a quarter of America thinks these are not caused by human activities. When we act like all this is fun, you know what we are doing? We’re dancing on the deck of the Titanic."

Animal Exceptionalism Morally Irrelevant The attack on human exceptionalism these days is unremitting–and highly ideological. The latest assault on our uniqueness comes from Edge.org, which asked the world’s supposedly most “brilliant minds” to come up with ideas that should be retired in science. Harvard professor (of course!) Irene Pepperberg–oh, so predictably–argues that the time has come to reject human uniqueness. Based on what? Pepperberg makes the obvious point that different animals also have remarkable capacities. From her essay (republished in the Guardian): Yes, humans do some things that other species do not – we are indeed the only species to...

"The day after that conversation, my 12-year-old daughter took her toddler brother to a playground, only to return very soon and very shaken. This park is Harlem in miniature. There are two playgrounds, less than 300 yards apart, an old basic one and a new shiny one. In the new playground, well-dressed toddlers of different races, most of them minded by dark-skinned nannies, played together. At the old one, a few black kids played while their older siblings kept reluctant watch. A couple of drunken men loitered nearby. Apparently, one of them had lashed out at my daughter, calling her...

Among the thousands of documents Connecticut police released December 27 related to the heinous crime at Sandy Hook Elementary, the contents and files of Adam Lanza's computer include files on mass shootings, mass murders, pedophiles' rights, and a man/boy love story. According to police reports contained within the documents, Lanza's laptop computer contained "hundreds of bookmarks," a number of which were for "mass murder killing spree" and "mass murders." His desktop had a "document written showing the prerequisites for mass murder spreadsheet." Lanza's desktop also had a "document written advocating pedophiles' rights" and a "screenplay or script describing a relationship...