Free Republic

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) said no progress has been made with the White House in talks to avert the so-called fiscal cliff: across-the-board tax-rate hikes and automatic spending cuts (sequestration) at the beginning of the new year. “This isn’t a progress report because there’s no progress to report,” Boehner said during a Capitol Hill press conference on Friday. “When it comes to the fiscal cliff that is threatening our economy and threatening jobs, the White House has wasted another week.” …

An American doctor abducted by the Taliban five days ago was rescued Sunday in eastern Afghanistan, the U.S.-led military coalition said. Dr. Dilip Joseph was captured by Taliban insurgents Wednesday outside the Afghan capital, in the Sarobi district of Kabul province. He was rescued in an early morning operation ordered after intelligence showed that the doctor was in imminent danger of injury or possible death, according to a statement. …

The chief medical ambition of those who study stem cells has always been that the cells would be used to repair and regenerate damaged tissue. That's still a long way off, despite rapid progress exemplified by the presentation of the Nobel Prize next week to Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University for a key stem-cell breakthrough. But there's another, less well known application of stem cells that is already delivering results: disease modeling. Dr. Yamanaka used a retrovirus to insert four genes into a mouse cell to return it to a "pluripotent" state—capable of turning into almost any kind of cell....

PONTIAC, Mich. — Even the great and powerful Oz could not save the film studio that was supposed to save this town. The studio, a state-of-the-art facility fit for Hollywood blockbusters, had risen from the ruins of a General Motors complex here. It was the brainchild of a small group of investors with big plans: the studio would attract prestigious filmmakers, and the movie productions would create jobs and pump money into the local economy. A glamorous sheen would rub off on this down-on-its-luck town. But in Pontiac, happy endings do not usually come Hollywood-style. The tale behind the studio,...

Video 25:46 First half: discussion about Governor Jennifer Granholm and her connection to tax funded Hollywood film studio scam in Pontiac MI Second half: Matt Taibbi

A good number of you responded to a vanity that I posted a week ago consisting of an email I sent to my father in law who was threatening to disown me for switching "sides" and voting "R" in the last election. He wrote back, and although I'll save you from having to read the extensive drivel that is his email to me, I'm posting my response back to him. Excerpts from his email are in italics. This is even longer than the first one, so if you're not interested in reading all that, I more than understand. I did...

University of North Dakota scientist Mark Hoffmann's version of Star Search goes a long way -- a very long way -- out into the universe. Hoffmann, a computational chemist, and his colleagues Tryve Helgaker, a well-known Norwegian scientist, and co-authors E.I. Tellgren and K. Lange, also working in Norway, have discovered a molecular-level interaction that science had puzzled over for decades but had never seen. That discovery, it turns out, may redefine how science views chemical compound formation. It also answers questions about what goes on in places like white dwarfs, the super dense cores of stars nearing the end...

In a recent column titled The National Popular Vote Fallacy, I attempted to demonstrate how the progressives who are behind the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) may, in fact, be shooting themselves in the foot.As the NPVIC rule is designed, when enough states have joined the Compact to bring at least 270 electoral votes (a simple majority in the Electoral College) to the table, then and only then will the combined electoral votes of all the Compact states automatically go to the candidate with a majority of the national popular vote, thereby eliminating any possibility of electing a president...

Al-Masry Al-Youm spent three hours in total in the torture chambers established by the Muslim Brotherhood at the gates of the Ittihadiya Palace in the suburb of Heliopolis. The central torture chamber, which is located in front of the gate facing the Omar Ibn Abdel Aziz Mosque on al-Merghany Street, is secured with a cordon and iron barriers, where the Central Security Forces (CSF) prevent the access of any persons without the authorization of the Brotherhood. We entered the chamber with a great difficulty, after a fellow journalist from the Misr 25 TV channel facilitated. The channel is owned by...

(Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Saturday he would undergo another cancer operation in coming days after doctors found malignant cells during tests in Cuba. "It is necessary for me to have a new intervention in the coming days," Chavez said in a televised broadcast, adding he would return to Havana on Sunday. The socialist leader had flown back to Venezuela on Friday after the tests in Cuba.

Just when you thought yesterday’s dismal jobs numbers couldn’t get any worse -- they did. According to CNSNews.com, nearly seventy-five percent of all civilian jobs created since the beginning of last summer are in the public sector: Seventy-three percent of the new civilian jobs created in the United States over the last five months are in government, according to official data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In June, a total of 142,415,000 people were employed in the U.S, according to the BLS, including 19,938,000 who were employed by federal, state and local governments. By November, according to data...

The posting of tanks outside the presidential palace yesterday morning raises an uncomfortable question for the future of Egypt: is the result of last year's revolution going to be just more military rule, under a light frosting of Islamist politics? The new president, Mohammed Morsi, a senior figure in the Muslim Brotherhood, is the first Egyptian leader in modern times not to have come from the military. At the time of his slim victory in the presidential election - 51.7 per cent against 48.3 per cent for Ahmed Shafiq, a holdover from the Mubarak era - he seemed to...

The Elizabeth Warren campaign sent out an email to contributors on Tuesday announcing that it's broke after spending all the $42 million it raised in its successful effort to unseat Republican Senator Scott Brown. In her email, Senator-elect Warren placed the blame on her campaign's failure to properly budget for the massive amounts of coffee and pizza consumed by her get-out-the-vote volunteers. She also added that her campaign had underestimated the number of vans needed on election day:

The Romney campaign spent an estimated $356 million between January 1, 2011 and October 17, 2012 in its unsuccessful effort to defeat incumbent President Barack Obama. According to Federal Election Commission documents, as reported by OpenSecrets.org, $33 million of this amount was paid to two consulting firms with ties to key staffers at both the Romney campaign and the RNC. Targeted Victory LLC, a Minnesota company with executive offices in Virginia, was paid $17 million for digital communications by the Romney campaign. FLS Connect LLC, an Arizona corporation with headquarters in Minnesota, was paid $16 million for voter contact and...

I was wondering how strong the FreeRepublic presence is on Twitter. I've been on there since October, and I've noticed that a lot of conservatives on Twitter end up getting temporarily suspended due to a spam-report bug that liberals are able to exploit? So far, I've been suspended 6 times in the last 2 months, mostly over my opinions regarding Benghazi. Conservatives on Twitter refer to the temporary suspension as Twitter Gulag. Many have attempted to bring up the spam-report exploit to Twitter, but they deny it exists. Have the Freepers on Twitter found a way to negate or lessen...

With a glacier-white smile and rapid-fire laugh, Mark Cole greets visitors to his Guns and Ammo Garage, a shooting range where they can travel back to a world of Prohibition-era weapons by firing classic models like the murderous Tommy gun, known, too, as the "Chicago Typewriter." Guns and Ammo Garage, 5155 S. Dean Martin Drive, has partnered with the Mob Museum in downtown Las Vegas to provide a full mob-related experience. From gunshot to mugshot, the partnership pulls from decades of mob history in Las Vegas and beyond. “The Vegas Mob Tour,” Guns and Ammo's package with the museum, is...

Cairo (CNN) -- Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy early Sunday canceled most of a controversial decree that gave him sweeping powers, but vowed to press forward with a planned referendum next weekend on a draft constitution, an adviser said. The move is an apparent attempt to end a political crisis that has spilled into the streets, pitting the president's supporters and opponents against one another and raising questions about Morsy's ability to lead the fragile democracy. It was not immediately clear whether the offer, as announced by adviser Mohamed Selim el-Awwa, would be enough to mollify the opposition. The development came...

Scientists in the US and China have come up with a low-risk treatment for bacterial infections in a deep wound.Treating infections has long been a challenge for healthcare professionals, and infections caused by drug resistant bacteria have made this task even more difficult to manage. Recently, the genome of an MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) outbreak in a hospital was sequenced to identify the source of infection, track its spread and avoid an outbreak.1 Such extreme measures of tracing infection need an equally tough bactericide. X-ray irradiation is known to have bactericidal properties; however, the high doses needed and the associated...

WEST JORDAN — What appeared to be a fight between a couple turned into a much more serious shooting after an armed neighbor apparently tried to intervene. Police say a they were called to the shooting at about 1 a.m. A man was arguing with his girlfriend in a car just outside the Woodgate apartment complex at 3581 W. Cobble Ridge Drive. As the argument got more heated, a man walking his dog passed by, saw the argument, and asked the female if she needed help, according to West Jordan officer J.C. Holt. An ensuing argument between the two men...

        THE REAL MEANING OF PEACE There once was a King who offered a prize to the artist who would paint the best picture of peace. Many artists tried. The King looked at all the pictures, but there were only two he really liked and he had to choose between them. One picture was of a calm lake. The lake was a perfect mirror for the peaceful towering mountains all around. Overhead was a blue sky with fluffy white clouds. All who saw this picture thought that it was a perfect picture of peace. The other...