Free Republic

The Atlanta chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has proposed that the sculpture of Confederacy President Jefferson Davis, General Robert E. Lee, and General "Stonewall" Jackson be sand blasted off the side of Stone Mountain in Georgia. Chapter leader Richard Rose is telling local news outlets, "Those guys need to go." They can be sand-blasted off, or somebody could carefully remove a slab of that and auction it off to the highest bidder. All of this recognition of Confederate generals is upholding the white supremacy on which the Confederacy was founded and the war was...

Kim Jong-Un has climbed the highest mountain in North Korea, state-run media claims.

It looks like the US won't have to launch a mass evacuation of Iraqis trapped on a mountain after all. A small team of American military personnel who spent 24 hours on Mount Sinjar said US airstrikes seem to have done the trick—most of the trapped Yazidis who wanted to flee to safety have done so, reports the New York Times. As a result, defense chief Chuck Hagel said a rescue mission is "far less likely now," reports AP.

He was flying low and his men were taking greater risks, dropping the aid from a much lower height. Though I have to say that I was very concerned that some of the bottles of water and some of the boxes would split open or smash on impact when they hit the rocks below. The helicopter was in such a hurry, it had so many rounds to make, so many deliveries, it didn’t stop to see to check to see if the people got the aid they needed. Toward the end of our journey, we landed on a rare space...

Some classic rock songs from 'back then' have a distinctive sound in the intro, a rhythmic pattern that would probably make a good ringtone on our cell phones of today. One of those songs that could instantly set the mood was "Mississippi Queen, by the group Mountain, from 1970. The band consisted of four guys; Leslie West, Corky Laing, Felix Pappalardi and David Rea. This song, their most successful, reached #21 in the Billboard Hot 100 record chart of 1970. There are many other good songs with the everyday Cowbell in the intro including; #1. Moby Dick, by Led Zeppelin...

A Republican congressman got a step closer to naming a Nevada peak after the late President Ronald Reagan, after a House committee approved the idea on Wednesday. **SNIP** Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., said he thought DeFazio's amendment was "terrific" but wanted to take it a step further and name the planet after Reagan. ...Huffman said his reasoning was that if the planet were named after Reagan, then Republicans might be more concerned with taking up legislation dealing with global warming.

Above: The Granite Mountain Hot Shots of Prescott, Arizona. 19 of 20 crew members perished in the Yarnell Hill fire today.- Gusty, hot winds blew an Arizona blaze out of control Sunday in a forest northwest of Phoenix, overtaking and killing 19 members of an elite fire crew in the deadliest wildfire involving firefighters in the U.S. for at least 80 years - and the worst since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001/ Members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots were forced to deploy their fire shelters - tent-like structures meant to shield firefighters from flames and...

Tigers, Lions, Leopards, all cat species can catch fleas, so at Big Cat Rescue we have to treat all of our 100+ residents with flea prevention just like your domestic cat at home every single month! It's expensive and hard work to keep the cats flea free and happy at the sanctuary! Watch our volunteer vet Dr. Liz Wynn cover the 55 acres and treat all of our cats.

NEVADA CITY, Calif. - A mountain lion attacked a 63-year-old man camping northwest of Nevada City. ... the man decided to stop and sleep for the night while on the planned hiking trip, and laid a sleeping bag out on a tributary to the Yuba River. The man told officials that during the attack, the mountain lion bit and clawed him through the sleeping bag. The animal bit into the man's cap and his clothes. "The lion immediately began a ferocious attack. It bit him into his head. It bit him on the hands," said Patrick Foy, of the Department...

A German man died on Mount Everest where he was helping clear the world's highest peak of rubbish, Nepalese tourism officials announced. His death brings the season's toll to five. The 61-year-old doctor, Eberhard Schaaf, died on Saturday of extreme altitude sickness while descending the south side of the mountain, Ang Tshering Sherpa of the Kathmandu-based Asian Trekking adventure agency said. "Climbers spend their energy on the ascent and they are exhausted and fatigued on the descent," Tshering explained. Daily newspaper Bild said Schaaf, a passionate mountaineer from Aachen, North Rhine-Westphalia, was taking part in the "Eco Everest Expedition", a...

A family vacation to west Texas included a frightening encounter with a mountain lion for a Leander couple and their 6-year-old son. The 17 stitches on the right side of Rivers Hobbs' face may be out by next week, but the memory of what caused the injury will not soon fade away. “It sneaked up on me,” said Hobbs. The 6-year-old was attacked Sunday, by a mountain lion, at Big Bend National Park. He and his parents were on a walkway near the main lodge heading to their room when the mountain lion attacked. “No, not that bad,” said Hobbs,...

An Arizona sheriff said he tried today to comfort the mother of a family that perished when a small plane crashed into Superstition Mountain, a crash the sheriff said that no one could have survived. The twin-engine aircraft, which carried three adults and three children, was en route to Safford, Ariz., when it crashed Wednesday night in the jagged terrain of the Superstition Mountains.

Operation Mountain Guardian is a terrorism-based, full-scale emergency exercise scheduled to take place in numerous locations in the Denver metro area on Friday, September 23, 2011. The exercise will involve first responders from 81 different agencies**, will be conducted at ten separate locations and will include loud noises, simulated weapons, smoke, emergency vehicles and other equipment that will be audible and visible throughout the day. The purpose of this advisory is to provide information that can be disseminated to the public ahead of time to avoid confusion or concern on exercise day, as well as to invite media coverage of...

The US space agency's unmanned Curiosity rover will explore a mountain on Mars that should read like "a great novel," revealing if signs of life ever existed on the red planet, NASA said Friday. The landing site for the 2.5 billion dollar Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) was unveiled the day after the 30-year shuttle era ended with the return to Earth of Atlantis after its final mission to the International Space Station. Clues sent home from Mars are important to NASA as it aims to build a spaceship capable of toting humans there by 2030, while private companies race to...

A Japanese man paralysed from the waist down has embarked on an ambitious trip to Normandy to climb a mountain... with the help of a cutting-edge robotic suit. Father-of-two Seiji Uchida, 49, will be carried up Mont Saint Michel - a World Heritage site - by a companion clad in a cybernetic exoskeleton which can boost the wearer's strength tenfold. For Mr Uchida, who lost the ability to walk 28 years ago after a car accident, reaching the picturesque abbey at the top of the mountain on the French coast is just the beginning of his trip of a lifetime.

Rock guitarist Leslie West, who rose to fame in the '70s power trio Mountain, has had his lower right leg amputated in a life-saving operation related to his diabetes, his wife said on Monday. West, 65, underwent the emergency surgery after being admitted to a hospital in Biloxi, Mississippi, on Saturday when his leg started to swell and his foot went septic. "The doctors tried for two days to save it to no avail. The decision to amputate was one that was necessary to save his life as the infection was spreading throughout his body," his wife, Jenni West, said...

MALIBU (AP) -- A California teen who made headlines as a pioneering mountain climber could face charges for allegedly surfing up the Pacific Coast Highway on top of a car on his way to school.

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.

Tom Ballard was just six years old when his mother died while attempting to climb the world's second-highest mountain, K2. Now, Alison Hargreaves' 21-year-old son is training to scale the same 28,000ft peak. The mother-of-two, who had successfully climbed Everest just three months earlier, was swept off the mountain during her descent in 1995 aged just 32. Her body was never found.

Wildlife officials killed a mountain lion yesterday that invaded a home near Salida, attacking five dogs and trapping a mother and two children. The mountain lion entered the home nine miles northwest of Salida about 4 p.m. Thursday after it chased a small dog through a pet door. Michelle Bese, 27, and her two children, ages two and five, were inside with four of her five dogs.