Free Republic

MOUNT DOOM—Governor Gretchen Whitmer is refusing to throw the Ring of Power back into Mount Doom, despite the Michigan Supreme Court ordering her to return it into the fires whence it came. "Throw it into the fire! Destroy it!" shouted a judge sitting on the court, after leading Whitmer to the Cracks of Doom. "We can end this all right now!" "Nooo! Not my precious!" Whitmer screamed as the state Supreme Court handed down the order to destroy the Ring. "Nasty, nasty Constitution! We don't likes it! Nasty, fat Founding Fathers!" She turned and left.

The Creek Fire – now one of the largest wildfires burning in California – had just ignited at the start of Labor Day weekend as many departed into the Sierra Nevada, expecting three days of mountain bliss. Instead, unaware backpackers without cell service faced an exploding wildfire that has grown by thousands of acres daily in eastern Fresno and Madera counties since Friday night. Some are still unaccounted for. Fresno County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Tony Botti said he thought approximately 10 hikers still hadn’t been located, but weren’t officially considered missing as of Thursday afternoon. Hiker Heather Craig, reported missing...

IN the summer of 1916, a young Oxford academic embarked for France as a second lieutenant in the British Expeditionary Force. The Great War, as World War I was known, was only half-done, but already its industrial carnage had no parallel in European history. “Junior officers were being killed off, a dozen a minute,” recalled J. R. R. Tolkien. “Parting from my wife,” he wrote, doubting that he would survive the trenches, “was like a death.”

Google has fixed a bug in an online tool after it began translating "Russian Federation" to "Mordor". Mordor is the name of a fictional region nicknamed "Land of Shadow" in JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings books. In addition, "Russians" was translated to "occupiers" and the surname of Sergey Lavrov, the country's Foreign Minister, to "sad little horse". The errors had been introduced to Google Translate's Ukrainian to Russian service automatically, Google said.

We are semi-officially a lawless, soft (but hardening) tyranny. How else does one explain Lois Lerner not being charged with the numerous crimes she has most certainly committed? As many others have noted, the fix was in as surely as the fix is in on the countless crimes committed by Hillary Clinton and her grubby Clinton Foundation that sells influence at very high prices. Like Lerner, Clinton likely will be deemed above the law. General Petraeus and several others were charged, jailed and/or fined for crimes so minimal compared to Hillary's because they did not toe the Obama line: no...

The artifact provides an amazing insight into Tolkien's mind - including his observation that Hobbiton is on the same latitude as the city of Oxford. It also suggests that Ravenna in Italy is the inspiration behind Minas Tirith, a fictional city that became the heavily fortified capital of Gondor. And it references Cyprus, Belgrade and Jerusalem.

Sen. John McCain is talking with Democrats about a joint effort to require outside groups that have spent millions of dollars on this year’s elections to disclose their donors. McCain (R-Ariz.), once Congress’s leading champion of campaign finance reform, has kept a low profile on the issue in recent years. He raised the ire of many Republicans a decade ago for pushing comprehensive reform, and many Republicans still held it against him during his 2008 presidential campaign.

Sen. John McCain said Sunday that the potentially powerful Hispanic vote in the upcoming presidential election remains "up for grabs" because neither President Barack Obama nor Republicans have convinced these voters that they are on their side. The one-time GOP presidential hopeful, whose own 2008 candidacy was shaped in part by immigration, said that large Hispanic populations in his home state of Arizona and elsewhere are listening carefully to what Republican candidates have to say on immigration and could become a "major factor" in 2012. "I think that the Republican Party has to discuss this issue in as humane way...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senator John McCain predicted on Tuesday a third political party will emerge in response to Americans' economic frustrations and said it might as well be called "the Fed-Up Party." The Republican Party's presidential nominee in 2008 raised the possibility of a third party about a year ago, but his comments on Tuesday suggest he has hardened his views as polls show Americans increasingly disillusioned with Washington politics. The 75-year-old McCain may now be the most prominent politician forecasting Americans will look to another party to compete with Democrats and Republicans. "Unless both parties change, then I think...

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - U.S. Senator John McCain said on Thursday the fall of Muammar Gaddafi was inspiring people all over world, including citizens of Syria, Iran, China and Russia, but he twinned his praise with caution about Libya's many revolutionary armed groups, saying they had to be brought under control. Leading the first visit to Tripoli by members of the U.S. Congress since Gaddafi's fall last month, McCain added at a media conference that U.S. investors were eager to do business in the oil-exporting country but this would be difficult as long as fighting continued. Many residents of the capital...

It has been quite a while since I read any of the four major books (among Tolkien's other books) that dealt with this saga. It has been quite a while since I have read any of Tolkien's books for that matter. But... I do remember Mordor being a geographical location in Middle Earth, not a being or person that Hobbits "defeated," as McCain put it. I knew this the moment that I heard McCain utter his strange attack on the Tea Party. Hobbits never defeated Mordor... I know that it doesn't matter much, geography of this and all, but if...

The brave things in the old tales and songs…I used to think that they were things that the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for…. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have just landed in them, usually….I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those who just went on...J.R.R. Tolkien“The Two Towers”

Watching the first episode of the Lord of the Rings with some friends in Baghdad the other night, I was struck by its uncanny resemblance to the situation in Iraq. It is deeply unfortunate that the New York Slimes and the Lame Stream Media had no presence in Middle Earth, for if their reporters had been embedded with Orks we would have a much more realistic picture of the neo-imperialist offensive against Mordor than that presented to us by Tolkien. Is it not clear that Gandalf was something of a cowboy who was looking for any excuse to attack Mordor...

As war with Mordor looms on the edge of the horizon, peace protestors gathered today before the Black Gate in a demonstration against the actions of Gandalf the Wizard and the Fellowship of the Willing. “We’re here because we believe that war is wrong,” said Eldohil, president of Elves for Peace. Pointing to the Dagorlad before him, he said, “This very place is a testimony to the uselessness and destruction of war.” Protestors carried signs that said “Peace for Middle-Earth” and “Who would Iluvatar kill?” Elsewhere Gondorians paraded through the streets of Minas Tirith in opposition to the Lord Denethor’s...

Peace in Middle Earth in our time MINAS TIRITH (Gondor News Network) - Thousands of peace activists took to the streets of Minas Tirith and other cities of Middle Earth today to protest what they termed a rush to war with Mordor. ?We need more time for diplomacy,? said a key member of the Middle-Earth Security Council, Saruman the White. ?I am not convinced by the evidence presented by my esteemed colleague, Gandalf the Grey, or that the Dark Lord Sauron presents an imminent danger to the peoples of the West.? Many of the people protesting war in Mordor agreed...