Free Republic

Jaroslav Flegr is no kook. And yet, for years, he suspected his mind had been taken over by parasites that had invaded his brain. So the prolific biologist took his science-fiction hunch into the lab. What he’s now discovering will startle you. Could tiny organisms carried by house cats be creeping into our brains, causing everything from car wrecks to schizophrenia? A biologist’s science- fiction hunch is gaining credence and shaping the emerging science of mind- controlling parasites.

Mitt Romney, asked if there were any lessons learned in the wake of losing all three Republican voting contests Tuesday night, said that he simply “wasn’t there to respond” to former Sen. Rick Santorum’s attacks in the days leading up to voting. But today, speaking to reporters on a tarmac in Atlanta, where he flew from Colorado after losses in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado Tuesday night, he did not hesitate to go on offense, accusing two chief GOP rivals of behaving “like Democrats.”

President Obama, I oppose your appointment of Michael Taylor, a former VP and Lobbyist for Monsanto, the widely criticized Genetically Modified (GM) food multinational, as Senior Advisor to the Commissioner at the FDA. Taylor is the same person who was Food Safety Czar at the FDA when Genetically Modified Organisms were allowed into the US food supply without undergoing a single test to determine their safety or risks. This is a travesty. Taylor was in charge of policy for Monsanto's now-discredited GM Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) which is directly linked to cancer and opposed by many medical and hospital organizations.

Military training is an intense business, involving discipline, precision, and reserves of courage that can be called upon in the midst of battle. But for soldiers undergoing training in the People’s Liberation Army of China that’s taken to a whole different level — as one of their exercises involves a life-and-death game of ‘hot potato’ with a live grenade. WATCH: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=57FG5vBLKvc

Students in California public schools may not be leading the nation in their knowledge of the “three R’s,” but they are well on their way to being experts in deviant lifestyles. Under a law signed last year by Gov. Jerry Brown (D), all public schools in the state are now required to promote homosexuality, bisexuality, transsexuality, and same-sex “marriage” at every grade level, including kindergarten — and to do so without parental consent or even notification. Known as the Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful (FAIR) Education Act, the law adds “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender [LGBT] Americans” to the list...

Incensed by the negative ads that have spoiled his campaign, Newt Gingrich recently complained he’d been “Romneyboated,” an allusion to the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, whose ads helped derail Sen. John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004. John O’Neill, the swift-boat captain who led the anti-Kerry movement, is none too pleased with the comparison. “To me, it reflects Gingrich’s very cynical hypocrisy, which he shares with Kerry,” O’Neill tells National Review Online. That hypocrisy “is the reason why he can appear with [Nancy] Pelosi in climate-change ads and why he can take money from Freddie Mac: If you’re part...

GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul is notorious for his zany followers, which makes sense, given that the man is slightly eccentric bat-sh!t crazy himself. I mean, you have to be a little off-balanced in order to support someone that believes a U.S. border fence would be built to keep Americans from leaving, or that that saving the Jews in World War II was a bad idea. The conspiracy theorists love Ron Paul. Do you think that the Bilderbergers are plotting to take over the world? How about that Israel created Hamas? That the CIA perpetrates coups over the United States?...

December 1944 World War Two was in overdrive. The major powers were slugging it out about the world - in Europe, Africa, and in the Pacific for 5 long years already- since 1939. The United States had entered the fray when the US Congress had declared war on Japan (December 8, 1941) for attacking Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941). Then on December 11, 1941, Germany and Italy had declared war on the United States. We were in the war for the long haul. Early December 1944, we had thought the war, at least in Europe, would be over in a...

A day after a GOP presidential debate, White House hopeful Ron Paul upbraided rival candidate Michele Bachmann for disliking Muslims. "She hates Muslims," Paul said on NBC's "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" on Friday. "She wants to go get 'em."

Vladimir Putin has launched an extraordinary attack on US Senator John McCain in which he also implicated Washington in the killing of Libyan dictator Col Muammar Gaddafi. The Russian prime minister called the former presidential candidate “nuts” in response to Twitter comment about Russia’s parliamentary elections that drew allegations of fraud and triggered large protests. Mr McCain’s tweet read: "Dear Vlad, The Arab Spring is coming to a neighbourhood near you." Mr Putin turned stony faced when asked about the tweet on his annual televised phone-in. "Mr McCain fought in Vietnam. I think that he has enough blood of peaceful...

ABC’s Christiane Amanpour just can’t comprehend why Jon Huntsman, with his “eminently sensible” anti-conservative positions, could be losing to Newt Gingrich who is full of “bombast” and “does say some pretty alarming things, some might say outrageous things.” More upsetting, Hunstman is supposedly “reversing” himself on those “eminently sensible positions.” Interviewing Huntsman, who appeared from the Granite State, Amanpour noted on Sunday’s This Week that “you are at the bottom of the pack despite the fact that some independents, for instance, in New Hampshire call you the sanest one running,” yet “ what you’re offering does not seem to be...

The mayor of Richmond, Calif. plans to skip her city’s Veterans Day memorial events to attend an Occupy rally, a choice that’s prompting anger and criticism. Mayor Gayle McLaughlin will miss a Veterans Day salute Friday in favor of an Occupy Richmond “public speak out,” the San Jose Mercury News reported. McLaughlin defended her decision, telling the newspaper that the city is not sponsoring the Veterans Day event, and the rally she will attend will honor Scott Olsen, the Iraq war veteran injured at an Occupy Oakland rally last month. Richmond and Oakland, both in the San Francisco Bay Area,...

For the first time, scientists report a link between eating nuts and higher levels of serotonin in the bodies of patients with metabolic syndrome (MetS), who are at high risk for heart disease. Serotonin is a substance that helps transmit nerve signals and decreases feelings of hunger, makes people feel happier and improves heart health. It took only one ounce of mixed nuts (raw unpeeled walnuts, almonds and hazelnuts) a day to produce the good effects. The report appears in ACS' Journal of Proteome Research. Cristina Andrés-Lacueva and colleagues from the Biomarkers & NutriMetabolomics Research Group of the University of...

People see the strangest things in clouds and burnt toast, but this latest sighting can't be topped -- a face on a testicular tumor. Canadian doctors at Queen's University were shocked when they found the image in an ultrasound from December 2009, the Toronto Star reported. “It was very ghoulish, like a man screaming in pain. His mouth was open and it looked like one eye was gouged out,” said Dr. Naji Touma, a professor at Queen’s University Medical School and urologist at Kingston General Hospital. The image was sent to the journal Urology and recently published under the tongue-in-cheek...

On the 6/26/11 edition of Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace inquired if Representative Michelle Bachman was a flake. As justification for this line of interrogation, Wallace pointed out an instance where Bachman insinuated that certain members of Congress were anti-American. So apparently in the eyes of those considering Bachman a flake on the grounds it is now allegedly a sign of instability to expose those facts that a number of elites would rather gloss over in the hopes that the American people won’t find out about such personalities and instances. For example, Cynthia McKinney cannot be described in any...

Ingrid Newkirk — the queen PETA moonbat best known for her morally depraved declaration that “a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy” — may be even more disturbed than we knew. Here’s what she wants done with her body after the Devil has dragged her twisted soul down to hell: a. That the “meat” of my body, or a portion thereof, be used for a human barbecue, to remind the world that the meat of a corpse is all flesh, regardless of whether it comes from a human being or another animal, and that flesh foods...

OCTOBER 19--A well-known “Occupy Wall Street” protester who was arrested last Friday for kneeling down in prayer and blocking traffic in lower Manhattan is wanted in Indiana for failing to appear in court in connection with criminal charges filed after cops found him naked, intoxicated, and covered in olive oil in a public park. The bizarre nature of the charges against Michael Donte Booth, 27, were the subject of a previous TSG story after police discovered Booth sunbathing in the altogether in a Mishawaka park on May 24. Cops found Booth laying face up on a blanket “with his entire...

Panetta: Additional military cuts 'nuts'By John T. Bennett - 10/12/11 09:52 AM ET The Army must maintain its counterterrorism expertise and rebuild its ability to go toe to toe with another large ground force — all while facing deep budget cuts, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Wednesday. For a second day in a row, Panetta took a hard line against deeper military budget cuts than the $350 billion called for under the August debt deal. He called it "nuts" if $600 billion more in cuts were to be triggered if the congressional supercommittee fails to reach a deal on at...

September 1, 2011 Billings, Mont. – During his presentation on the status of the nation’s new country-of-origin labeling (COOL) law, and on behalf of the R-CALF USA COOL Committee, R-CALF USA member and Kansas cattle feeder Mike Callicrate was asked a non-COOL question that set convention goers on their heels during the 12th Annual R-CALF USA Convention held August 26-27 in Rapid City, S.D. “Has the Environmental Protection Agency declared hay a pollutant?” an audience member asked. Callicrate responded affirmatively and explained that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently initiated a formal enforcement action against his Kansas feedlot for, among...

Allen West, who is one of our very favorite Tea Party Congressmen, had a General Anthony McAuliffe moment yesterday, when he gave a pithy one-word response to the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ request that he stop associating with Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, Joe Kaufman, and Joyce Kaufman, and others whom the Hamas-linked group considers to be anti-Islamic extremists (which, entre nous, they are not). Rep. West’s response evidently baffled Nezar Hamze of CAIR, who said: “When I first saw that, I wasn’t sure if he was calling me nuts, or he was calling my concerns nuts.”...

Rep. West’s Response To CAIR Letter: “NUTS!”August 15, 2011 10:28 PM FORT LAUDERDALE (CBS4) – A South Florida Muslim group sent Congressman Allen West a letter asking him to disassociate himself from activists the group considers anti-Islamic. Congressman West did respond and the letter he sent back is raising some eyebrows. If it looks like the shortest letter you’ve ever seen from a member of congress, it probably is. How short? Try one word, in capital letters: “NUTS!” “I was shocked at first. I didn’t expect this from a congressman,” said Nezar Hamze, the executive director of CAIR Florida —...

After yesterday's spurt in talk radio about Ron Paul, I've been thinking about his positions. I oppose Ron Paul on Foreign Policy (especially his position ignoring the threat of Islam taking over our policy), but have to seriously wonder about supporting some of the other candidates who have not faced opposition. Ron Paul gets a lot of flak, but why do the others get away with cheating us for doing far worse than what Ron Paul promises to do to Israel? Many candidates like Rick Santorum, George Allen and Joe Barton have hijacked the label of conservative, but are less...

Submitted for entertainment value only, any resemblance to squirrels living or dead is purely coincidental.

A key witness in the beating case of Giants fan Bryan Stow at Dodger Stadium died suddenly, apparently of an allergic food reaction. According to law enforcement sources familiar with the case, Matthew Lee died Sunday after eating a salad that apparently contained nuts, which caused the allergic reaction. The coroner has not determined a cause of death, however.

Seen any walnuts in your medicine cabinet lately? According to the Food and Drug Administration, that is precisely where you should find them. Because Diamond Foods made truthful claims about the health benefits of consuming walnuts that the FDA didn’t approve, it sent the company a letter declaring, “Your walnut products are drugs” — and “new drugs” at that — and, therefore, “they may not legally be marketed … in the United States without an approved new drug application.” The agency even threatened Diamond with “seizure” if it failed to comply. Diamond’s transgression was to make “financial investments to educate...

A Delray Beach man was arrested Wednesday after police say they found him aimlessly firing a gun in front of his home. Officers responded at about 6:30 p.m. to Brian Garrahan's residence in the 900 block of Northwest Second Street, a neighborhood of single-family homes north of Atlantic Avenue and east of Pompey Park. An officer saw Garrahan, 37, indiscriminately firing off shots in front of his home, Delray Beach police Sgt. Nicole Guerriero said. No one was struck or injured by the gunfire, Guerriero said. When the officer arrived, Garrahan went into the house, opened a window and continued...

Democrats in the Senate on Wednesday called on Vice President Joe Biden to include new economic stimulus spending in deficit-reduction talks as a way of lowering the 9.1 percent jobless rate that is hobbling the economic recovery. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made the proposal to the White House, Richard Durbin, the No. 2 Democratic senator, told reporters. "The Republicans are fixating on the budget deficit and it's a serious problem," Durbin said. But citing the conclusions of a presidential deficit-cutting commission that he served on last year, Durbin added, "Get the recovery right before you get in this deficit...

Warning: The video below may cause you never to want to leave your house again. A School of Visual Arts thesis project by artist Ron Gabriel, named "3-Way Street," tracks a camera at the Manhattan intersection of 28th Street and Park Avenue. The New York mayhem known as street traffic ensues.

The IDF killed some 100 terrorists along the border fence with Gaza since early 2010, a senior security source told Arutz Sheva's Haggai Huberman. In 2010, 62 terrorists met their Maker near the fence, and 37 more have been killed in 2011. The terrorists were killed in the process of attempting a variety of terror acts, including infiltrating Israel in order to carry out terror attacks, placing explosive charges, and firing at IDF soldiers or civilians. The past month, said the source, has been the quietest one in many years, but the lull is a fragile one. The last terror...

We Need Higher Taxes, and Not Just for the RichBy Derek Thompson Apr 14 2011, 3:40 PM ET President Obama is going to have to break his campaign promise and raise taxes on Americans making under $250,000. There's really no way around it. The president's deficit plan would raise taxes by $2 trillion in the next decade. The first trillion would come from letting the Bush tax cuts expire for families making more than $250,000 a year, or 3.2% of the country. The second trillion would come from reducing "spending in the tax code," like the mortgage interest deduction. The...

So far, over 30,000 people are participating in a rolling fast to protest the immoral budget cuts Republicans are pushing in Washington. With some help from Grammy-nominated recording artist Moby, MoveOn.org Political Action has put together a short, powerful video about this fast. Please check it out and then help spread the message by passing it on:

A batty Brooklyn mom who admitted to inducing the abortion of her two-timing husband's love child was sentenced Tuesday to four years in prison. Kisha Jones, 40, who has already been jailed for 17 months following her diabolical deed, has about two more years to spend in the clink when factoring time off for good behavior. The mother-of-five tricked her hubby's mistress Monique Hunter, 26, to take cytotec, causing early labor on October 2009. When the baby was born alive, she tried to deceive hospital workers into taking the premature newborn off the respirator. Both Hunter and her child are...

ANAHEIM, March 27, 2011 — A new scientific study positions walnuts in the No. 1 slot among a family of foods that lay claim to being among Mother Nature's most nearly perfect packaged foods: Tree and ground nuts. In a report here today at the 241st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, scientists presented an analysis showing that walnuts have a combination of more healthful antioxidants and higher quality antioxidants than any other nut. "Walnuts rank above peanuts, almonds, pecans, pistachios and other nuts," said Joe Vinson, Ph.D., who did the analysis. "A handful of walnuts contains...

Holder announces safety initiative after rise in officer deathsBy Carol Cratty, CNN March 22, 2011 7:15 p.m. EDT Washington (CNN) -- Attorney General Eric Holder announced a Law Enforcement Safety Initiative Tuesday, calling the number of law enforcement officers killed in the United States so far this year "simply unacceptable." Holder's comments came as he met with a group of police chiefs and the heads of several federal law enforcement agencies to talk about the problem. He said the initiative will involve all U.S. attorneys around the country meeting with their local police and others to discuss the issue and...

Congressman who donned tiger costume files for re-electionBy Daniel Strauss - 02/25/11 07:11 PM ET Despite recent news reports of bizarre behavior and calls for his resignation, Rep. David Wu (D-Ore.) has filed for reelection. Wu filed a statement of organization with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday to be able to run for his seat in 2012. Two major Oregon newspapers and Oregon Republicans have been calling for Wu's resignation after revelations, originally reported by The Oregonian, that Wu had been exhibiting strange behavior, including dressing in a tiger costume and sending emails to his staff in the voice...

Seven-term Democratic representative David Wu is being asked to step down, after sending a picture of himself in a tiger costume to his staff. But it's not just the tiger pic - seven staff members resigned after the 2010 election season, in which Wu exhibited some bizarre office behavior. On Tuesday, Wu appeared on Good Morning America to address it all. First off, the tiger costume: It was just ......posted using frpa

AP - Two studies in the journal Nature link global warming to extreme rainstorms and snowfalls and find these weather events are getting substantially worse....posted using frpa

This week, state Sen. Michael Rubio will introduce legislation that would prohibit food stamps from being used to purchase "junk food" or prepared meals at fast-food restaurants. "The question is what should we be using taxpayer funds to purchase," the Bakersfield Democrat said Tuesday. "In my opinion, we should be focusing on what people need, not what they want." Those needs include foods found in the traditional food pyramid, he said, including breads and cereals, meats, beans, nuts, dairy products and other protein sources, and lots of fruits and vegetables. Rubio's idea is not yet an official Senate bill. But...

For the second time in eight days, a prominent liberal has blamed the developing crisis in Egypt on global warming. Following in the footsteps of climate alarmist extraordinaire Joe Romm Monday was New York Times columnist Paul Krugman: We’re in the midst of a global food crisis — the second in three years. World food prices hit a record in January, driven by huge increases in the prices of wheat, corn, sugar and oils. These soaring prices have had only a modest effect on U.S. inflation, which is still low by historical standards, but they’re having a brutal impact on...

More proof liberal Democrats and their enviro-nazi allies are seriously off the rails. Here is what I got in the mail today from Sen. Robert F. Kennedy Jr and the Natural Resources Defense Council (scanned a couple of pages for your viewing pleasure)

A man wielding a metal pipe attacked a truckload of beer being delivered to a west side grocery store Friday afternoon, destroying about $2,000 worth of suds, police and witnesses said. While whacking at the cases of canned beer, the attacker scolded the deliverymen for bringing what he called poison into his neighborhood. Not everyone walking past Mid-Town Groceries at the time agreed with the man's characterization of the beer. Several passers-by helped themselves to some of the cases of beer as a deliveryman tried to talk the man into putting the pipe down. "He beat on the beer for...

In the Arab world, there is an age-old tradition of blaming Israel for almost everything that goes wrong. Some Arabs do it out of a genuine conviction that Israel is capable of spoiling or destroying anything it wants. Others blame Israel as a way of diverting attention from real problems at home. The Israel Effect Egyptians believe that Mossad, Israel’s secret intelligence service, had dispatched a shark to Sharm el-Sheikh with the aim of damaging the country’s tourism industry A female candidate who ran in the Egyptian parliamentary poll is believed to have lost simply because her father’s name is...

<p>YOUR **** RELIGION IS B****T AND YOUR GOD IS *%*&*% MAKE BELIEVE! I have exactly ZERO FEAR of what exists only in your rasist narrow simpleton mind. Your god is NOT AN OBJECTIVE REALITY and yet you keep pushing him on us. You are nothing but a bunch of stupid retarded bigots and hypicrites, PLEASE **$# OFF AND DIE. I am sick you your STUPID JEEEEEEESUS *%*&%* hijacking the legacy of the founding fathers to promote your controlling agenda. $&*^* YOUR STUPID &$&$* OF A GOD [long screed of swearing and curing and liberal slogans] ON YOUR IDIOT BI-BULL, IT BELONGETH IN DA TOILET! Are you so STUPID that you think quoting from theidiot BI-BULL will do anythimng besides make me LAUGH HYSTERICoLLY. The bi-BULL is a [more screaming and gibberish] that is good for nothing except wiping %&*^#. It is fiulled with STUPID, RIDICULOS errors and silly moronic fairy tales. It is the product of hateful rasist people. Its god is exclusive, racist, genocidal cunt of a monster whop loves only those who willingly ignore rational thought and become his sheeple. HE DOESN'T EXIST!</p>

And you thought Betty McCollum couldn’t do any worse than deliberately leaving out “under God” while leading the Pledge of Allegiance in the House in April 2002. No, my friends, this is Minnesota we’re talking about here. We’ve put Jesse Ventura in charge of the state and sent Al Franken to Washington. As Jack Nicholson once said in As Good As It Gets, “Sell crazy someplace else — we’re all stocked up here.” The Representative from MN-04 declared during her midterm election debate with Teresa Collett that al-Qaeda no longer poses a threat to the United States. No … seriously:

One of the most embarrassing environmental facts of the 1930s was that between 60% and 70% of the German greens were Nazi Party members, compared to only 10% of the population at large. In fact, German greens outperformed even medical doctors and teachers, with Nazi foresters and veterinarians leading the charge. Somehow, the so-called independent German wandervogels (German word for "wandering free spirits") found themselves at the footstool of Der Führer. Their wandervogel attitudes about civilization and the wild forestlands found a political niche in the isolationist biology of the Nazi Party. Furthermore, their strong beliefs in holism found a...

OLD BRIDGE, N.J. — Determined to turn New Jersey’s education system on its head, Gov. Chris Christie on Tuesday unveiled a tough-love reform package that will make classroom achievement — not seniority or tenure — the basis for pay hikes and career advancement in Garden State public schools. Christie is turning his take-no-prisoner’s style to the classroom, demanding a top to bottom overhaul of how New Jersey students learn and teachers teach. And that means undoing tenure, seniority and other union work rules. “We cannot wait. Your children are sitting in these classrooms today. We cannot wait to make it...

Update:Police released information Tuesday afternoon saying Rafael Garcia may have fired at least one round from a weapon during this morning’s harrowing domestic incident. Police also said that Garcia is a deputy U.S. Marshal, assigned to New Jersey. The victim today is described as Garcia’s 44-year-old girlfriend. Her injuries are “non life-threatening.” Garcia has been charged with first-degree assault, first-degree criminal attempt to commit assault and criminal attempt to commit assault on a police officer. Garcia is being held on a $1 million bond and is scheduled to appear in court Wednesday. The original post follows: One person is in...

White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen thinks Asian players are given privileges in the United States that Latinos are not afforded. In his latest rant, the outspoken Guillen also said he's the "only one" in baseball teaching young players from Latin America to stay away from performance-enhancing drugs and that Major League Baseball doesn't care about that. He said MLB only cares about how often he argues with umpires and what he says to the media. Guillen said it's unfair that Japanese players are assigned translators when they come to the U.S. to play pro ball, but Latinos are not. "Very...

AMMAN, Jordan -- An animal rights activist has caused a stir in Jordan's capital by covering herself in lettuce in a quirky attempt to persuade Middle Eastern meat lovers to go vegetarian. Crowds quickly gathered to gawk at the lettuce lady, but police were not amused. Officers briefly arrested the Jordanian activist, Amina Tarek, and a colleague from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The pair stood in a square along one of Amman's trendiest streets and held a placard reading "Let vegetarianism grow on you." Tarek says she wanted Jordanians "to turn over a new leaf."

Local residents, government officials and representatives of advocacy groups provided overwhelming support for the proposed Southeast High Speed Rail Corridor passenger train system linking Richmond and Raleigh, N.C. Proponents said at a public hearing tonight that a high-speed passenger rail system would reduce traffic congestion on the highways, cut down on pollution and help contribute to tourism and business in the region. "We are not going to be able to pave our way out of congestion," said Danny Plaugher, executive director of Virginians for High-Speed Rail, during the hearing at the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles office on West Broad...