Free Republic

<p>Wonder at the impressive technological prowess of the genius engineers at NASA, as brave Ares launches. Be amazed at the sheer beauty of the mighty rocket as it it breaks the sound barrier, thundering the skies of this glorious nation.</p> <p>OK, so it looks like a flying condom.</p>

Like swarms of know-it-all gnats or plagues of lecturing locusts, progressive do-gooders just can't refrain from admonishing us... Another day, another scold from the Obama White House. First they tell us to wash our hands and show us how to sneeze, now they're going to teach us about "green-house gas emissions": When it comes to greenhouse-gas emissions, Energy Secretary Steven Chu sees Americans as unruly teenagers and the Administration as the parent that will have to teach them a few lessons. The American public…just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should act,” Dr. Chu...

NASSAU, Bahamas – Miss Venezuela has been named winner of the 2009 Miss Universe pageant in the Bahamas. Stefania Fernandez was crowned Sunday night. Miss Dominican Republic, Ada Aimee de la Cruz, was the runner up.

This week, we all saw images on television screens of the solar eclipse that occurred on Wednesday. This was the longest eclipse the earth will see until 2136, which will likely be beyond most of our own lifetimes… unless my Fish Oil and CoQ10 work as I hope (!!!). I digress. When looking at the images at the NASA webpage, some are amazing, especially the one below. “Hinode is an international mission to study our nearest star, the sun. To accomplish this, the Hinode mission includes a suite of three science instruments — the Solar Optical Telescope, X-ray Telescope and...

The official blogger of the Alaskan Democratic Party, Linda Kellen Biegel, has posted a disgusting "photo-shopped" picture of Sarah and Trig. I have already sent an email to the AK Dem Party, and told them that they should be ashamed. There is a complete list of email addresses at the http://www.conservatives4palin.com/2009/06/how-celtic-diva-treats-trig-palin.html blog post. Feel free to vent your disgust! ~SC

And don't take my word for it. Speaker Barbara Buckley admits that raising the Modified Business Tax will kill jobs. Feel free to pass this photo on or use it on your blog.

Picture taken Sunday, 22 Feb 2009 on I-40 near Memphis , TN. It's got North Carolina plates. http://www.notoriouslyconservative.com/2009/03/obama-truck-picture.html

How do I post a picture on Freep?

Seconds after BART police officer Johannes Mehserle shot and killed Oscar Grant, police immediately began confiscating cell phones containing videos that have yet to see the light of day. In fact, the only videos that have been seen by the public were filmed by people who managed to leave the scene before police confronted them.In one instance, police chased after Karina Vargas after she stepped on the train, banging on the window after the doors closed and demanding her to turn over the camera. The train sped away with Vargas still holding her camera.Her video, which did not show the...

I have two pictures that I need made into one for a scrapbook I am putting together for my daughter for her 16th birthday next week. If someone could help me I would attach them to an email and send them to you if you could fix them. I am sure it is fairly simple, and so many of you are wizards...I would really appreciate it. I can do alot with a computer but this I cannot figure out!

Video here. Classic line when she refers to the flag pin, an "accessory" Obama dislikes. Anyone who has pictures of Sarah Palin, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Laura Ingraham, and other both principled and attractive conservative women, please post them all here. Who can post the most? Let the contest begin.

Ok, I hate vanities as much as the next fellow. But I need negative pictures of obama at least 640x480 resolution for a video titled "Senator Government". Please post your favorite pictures of Obama here if you have them. Preferably with no captions or edits. I need the picture where he is smoking, the picture where his nose is up in the air, the picture that makes his ears look goofy, a high rez picture of him with Joe the plumber, and anything else that makes him look goofy, angry, or otherwise undesirable. I have spent hours looking through past...

The picture is at the link, seriously, this might not be Ayers, but it looks damn close, if it is, would be very damaging, if not it is still funny.

Please post pictures of our future Vice President here.

[quote]Obama Draws Record Crowd in Oregon An estimated 75,000 gathered on the banks of the Willamette River in Portland on Sunday to see Barack Obama. “Wow! Wow! Wow!” were his first words, as he surveyed the multitude, which included people in kayaks and small pleasure craft on the river.[/quote] Two pictures were included to show Obama in a sea of people:

I just saw a picture on the front page of my local paper showing an Anti-Iraq war protestor holding a sign with a picture on it that said "President Bush, You Killed My Son", with a photo of a man in an Army Dress Uniform. As a Veteran and a Navy Retiree, it just made my blood boil. This person,(the Soldiers Mother I guess)should have realized that when her "Little Boy" joined the US Military, that he was not going to be going to a regular 9 to 5 job! The contract that every Military Recruit signs states that the...

Randy Dean Sievert drew ire from Manatee County sheriff's deputies as he aimed his cell phone camera at undercover investigators executing a search warrant in his neighborhood. A deputy confronted Sievert, demanding that he destroy any photos of investigators and their vehicles. Sievert was not a welcome observer of the drug raid. Authorities called him a "known drug dealer" based on a couple of past arrests. Taking photos of undercover officers jeopardized their lives, deputies said. Sievert refused to remove his hands from his pockets and step away from his car after he was confronted about the pictures. Deputies forced...

OTTAWA - The military command in charge of running the Afghanistan mission and all other overseas troop deployments is having difficulty providing the needed intelligence to support such operations, warns a Canadian Forces report obtained by the Ottawa Citizen. The Canadian Expeditionary Force Command "clearly suffers from a lack of intelligence capability," concludes the report prepared in January for the Chief of Defence Staff General Rick Hillier. The report, compiled by two generals and an admiral, was prepared for the Harper government this year but never released publicly. It provides a status check on the military's transformation into an efficient...

WASHINGTON, June 22, 2007 – A North Carolina group has taken a creative approach to supporting the military by promoting patriotism through the arts. “We promote love of country, respect for the American flag and projects that support the patriotic art education of children,” said Eileen Schwartz, Flags Across the Nation’s founder. Some of the projects include three annual art contests: the Flags of Freedom Patriotic Art Contest, the I Love America Day Photo Contest and the Patriot Day Photo Contest. The art submissions from the contests are used to create quilts that are displayed around the country. In...

img src="http://ak.imgfarm.com/images/ap/thumbnails//Clinton_2008.sff_NVIB102_20070530172213.jpg"

Max Mayfield, the former director of the National Hurricane Center, is under investigation by his former employer for possibly violating fishing laws. Mayfield caught a 200-pound Goliath grouper while fishing with friends in the Gulf of Mexico a few days after his retirement Jan. 1. The boat captain and crew slid the grouper into the boat through a door in the back, unhooked it, snapped a few celebratory photos and slid it back into the water. It swam away. Such photographs are common fare in fishing magazines, but since Goliath is protected species bringing one into the boat is illegal,...

This is a sure sign you're driving way too fast!

Here's the URL to the pic... http://www.internationalhockeygang.org/forum/showthread.php?p=58553#post58553 Scroll down until you see it--it's a pic of the Canadian player Parise trying to smack the ref (Josef Kompalla) with his stick. This was a Canada-USSR Summit Series game, I believe. BTW, if you like hockey, that forum is great. My screen name's Hockey Chief.

Opinions clash in initial meeting of Ark. immigration watch group Viewpoints clashed Tuesday night during the Arkansas Minuteman Civil Defense Corps organizational meeting at Lake Hamilton Fire Department. Nearly half of the packed meeting room at the station were there to voice their opposition to the organization’s mission, while the other half voiced staunch support. "It’s up to us to do what we can to protect the birthright of our children and grandchildren," meeting organizer Bill Riggins of Hot Springs told the crowd. "With every benefit and every reward comes responsibility." Riggins called the influx of illegal immigrants into the...

The Drudge Report posed an important question today: "Read or Fake?", referring to the recent photo of Castro holding a copy of a current Cuban newspaper. I decided to find out since the link to the article didn't answer the question. I saved the photo and ran it through my well-trained Photoshop eye. Upon initial review, the photo appears legitimate. However, after zooming in 400% on the photo, the truth is revealed - the photo is a fake.

VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez today said Cuban leader Fidel Castro was now able to leave his bed and hold conversations following stomach surgery that required him to temporarily hand over power to his brother. "This morning I learned that he's doing well, that he's already standing up out of bed, he's talking - more than he should, because he talks a lot," said Mr Chavez during a conversation with Bolivian President Evo Morales broadcast on television. "He has sent us regards." Venezuelan government sources yesterday said Mr Chavez does not have a trip to Cuba on his agenda despite media...

Explanation: NGC 6888, also known as the Crescent Nebula, is a cosmic bubble about 25 light-years across, blown by winds from its central, bright, massive star. Near the center of this intriguing widefield view of interstellar gas clouds and rich star fields of the constellation Cygnus, NGC 6888 is about 5,000 light-years away. The three color composite image was created by stacking exposures through narrow band filters that transmit the light from atoms in the clouds. Hydrogen is shown as green, sulfur as red, and oxygen as blue. NGC 6888's central star is classified as a Wolf-Rayet star (WR...

Mixed picture emerges of global gay rightsBy DAVID CRARY, AP National Writer Sat Jul 1, 2:24 PM ET A security officer in tights leads the annual Gay pride Rainbow Parade in downtown Vienna, on Saturday, July 1, 2006. (AP Photo/Lilli Strauss) NEW YORK - While cities around the world hosted upbeat gay pride parades in recent weeks, human-rights activists kept watch on a contrasting set of developments: gays beaten by demonstrators in Moscow, convicted on sodomy charges in Cameroon, targeted by sweeping anti-gay legislation in Nigeria. "It shows there are still dangers in just being gay — and dangers in...

June 21, 2006 This remarkable image must constitute one of the greatest collections of leading edge technology ever assembled in one place and part of an amazing photographic gallery for this story. And the sizeable chunk of war machine is just a fraction of what’s being put through its paces on and around Guam this week in Operation Valiant Shield, a U.S. Pacific Command exercise which focuses on integrated joint training and interoperability among U.S. military forces while responding to a range of mission scenarios. The exercise is designed to make sure U.S. forces have a seamlessly integrated environment...

A vision system that helps soldiers plan a route through the chaos of the battlefield will undergo tests on both sides of the Atlantic. The system, called Primordial Soldier, will provide soldiers with a real-time picture of where troops are in relation to each other and a digital rendering of the route they should follow. It is about to undergo trials with US special forces and has been bought by the UK arm of MBDA Missiles. MBDA plans to carry out conceptual research on the system to learn how using such technology affects a soldier's decision-making capability in the field....

Japanese researchers find new giant picture on Peru's Nazca Plateau The new Nazca Plateau image discovered by the research team from Yamagata University. (Photo courtesy of Yamagata University)A new giant picture on the Nazca Plateau in Peru, which is famous for giant patterns that can be seen from the air, has been discovered by a team of Japanese researchers. The image is 65 meters long, and appears to be an animal with horns. It is thought to have been drawn as a symbol of hopes for good crops, but there are no similar patterns elsewhere, and the type of the...

The idea of persistent surveillance as a transformational capability has circulated within the national intelligence community and the Department of Defense (DOD) for at least 3 years.1 Persistent surveillance, also known as persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR); persistent stare; and pervasive knowledge of the adversary, is an often-used term to describe the need for and application of future ISR capabilities to qualitatively transform intelligence support to operational and tactical commands.2 The idea surfaces in many forms, including defense program reviews and congressional testimony.3 Each expression envisions a system achieving near-perfect knowledge and removing uncertainty in war. Persistence means that...

A 16-year-old boy was arrested Wednesday after postings on the popular Web site MySpace.com allegedly showed him holding handguns, authorities said. The teen was being held at a juvenile detention center facing three misdemeanor charges of juvenile possession of a handgun, said district attorney spokeswoman Pam Russell. He is due in court Feb. 27. Police searched the boy's home after receiving a tip from Evergreen High School on Feb. 10, the same day he was suspended, officials said. School spokesman Rick Kaufman said parents were calling with concerns and some kept their children home after photographs posted on the boy's...

Explanation: Sometimes both heaven and Earth erupt. In Iceland in 1991, the volcano Hekla erupted at the same time that auroras were visible overhead. Hekla, one of the most famous volcanoes in the world, has erupted at least 20 times over the past millennium, sometimes causing great destruction. The last eruption occurred only six years ago but caused only minor damage. The green auroral band occurred fortuitously about 100 kilometers above the erupting lava. Is Earth the Solar System's only planet with both auroras and volcanos?

Human remains unearthed in Miami form picture of Tequesta Indian life By Madeline Baró Diaz Miami Bureau Posted January 19 2006 Ancient Florida history is meeting the modern building boom in downtown Miami, where archaeological excavations at two construction sites have unearthed 2,000-year-old human remains. Archaeologists said the discoveries are helping them piece together what life was like for the ancestors of the Tequesta Indians, who lived at the mouth of the Miami River in what is now the Brickell section of Miami. Archaeologists had previously found evidence of a village in the area, but not a cemetery. The remains...

Identity thieves are always looking for new ways to pry out personal information, from trolling through trash cans to phishing for bank accounts online. But here is one method they may not have tried: using fake fingers made from Play-Doh and gelatin, or taking digits from a cadaver's hand. In a study, researchers at Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y., tested 66 fake fingers to see if they could outwit biometric devices, which identify individuals based on the physiological properties of their fingerprints or other body parts. The fake fingers went undetected more than half the time. "Even if it comes...

BLURRY snaps could be a thing of the past with the development of a digital camera that refocuses photos after they have been taken. The camera could be useful for action shots taken by sports photographers or for CCTV surveillance cameras, which often produce fuzzy shots due to poor lighting. In an ordinary digital camera, a sensor behind the lens records the light level that hits each pixel on its surface. If the light rays reaching the sensor are not in focus, the image will appear blurry. Now, Pat Hanrahan and his team at Stanford University have figured out how...

One of the most famous portraits of English playwright William Shakespeare is not him after all, Britain's National Portrait Gallery announced Friday. The Grafton Portrait is one of the most iconic images of the literary giant. However, after nine months of restoration work and research, the National Portrait Gallery announced that it has no evidence to support the view that it is of Shakespeare. Scientific investigation proved that the picture, painted in oils by an anonymous artist, dates back to 1588, when the playwright would have been 24. An inscription on the painting records the date of 1588 and the...

If Hillary wins in 2008... Ya know... it'd almost be worth it...

October 7, 2005It's time for the annual HelloWeenie award! Last year's recipient was flip-flopper Sen. John Kerry. This year's recipient is cut-n-run Cindy Sheehan. (click here to see it reeeeeeeally large)

One of the terrorist captured today in England.

Shocking Photos Show Nurses Abusing Infants Korea's active netizens are outraged about shocking pictures posted on a website that show nurses treating newborn children like toys in an obstetrics and gynecology hospital. A nurse identifying herself as Lee, 24, posted on her homepage on Cyworld about 20 photos of women who look like nurses appearing to treat newborn children like objects. Pictures show a nurse squeezing a newborn's face with her fingers, putting heart-shaped paper on a newborn's cheeks, and apparently placing a newborn in a plastic bag. They also include off-color images of two newborns posed as if...

That's the man I want to protect my home. God bless President Bush.

Happy Easter! Last week the subject theme for the photography thread was Sunrise, wherein someone suggested that sunrises are better than sunsets. That sounds like a challenge to me! Let's see if we can top the sunrise thread with some beautiful sunset shots. Please post your bestest sunset photos here - your own work, please.

alt="Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao gestures as he speaks at a press conference after the closing session of China's National Peoples' Congress in Beijing Monday March 14, 2005. During the session legislators voted to approve an anti-secession law aimed at preventing any moves by self-governing Taiwan towards independence. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)"