Free Republic

Fishermen call the animals “thumb-splitters” — at least one man has had a finger amputated after a mantis shrimp strike — and a blow from the crustacean’s truncheon can crack a pane of stock aquarium glass... The mantis shrimp, only distantly related to the species you would find covered in tempura batter, come in two types, which marine biologists divide into “spearers” or “smashers.” The spearers impale prey with a javelin strike of a pointed claw, whereas the smashers use their fist-like appendages to pop the shells of their food. Smashers, and their shrimply hammers — technically known as dactyl...

“YES, IT is going to be like this,” Donald Trump said during a news conference Tuesday, after a reporter asked if he would be as hostile to legitimate scrutiny once elected as he is now. His honesty offered a bracing counterpoint to the pusillanimous Republican leaders who continue to insist that the reality-television star would be different once in office.

Donald Trump, the apparent Republican presidential nominee, attended the annual Rolling Thunder rally this weekend in the nation’s capital. The event, now a decades-old tradition, honors veterans and draws thousands of bikers. At this year’s event, some 5,000 bikers motored past the Pentagon to the Mall... The phenomenon of biker gangs mixing with ultranationalism, of course, is not simply an American one. In fact, perhaps the most successful convergence of bikers and power politics can be found thousands of miles away in Russia, a putative adversary... President Vladimir Putin has for many years cultivated a muscular nationalism, beginning with his...

To the casual observer, it would seem that gay rights falls neatly on the political spectrum. Democrats champion bills that aim to protect LGBT people from discrimination, and Republicans increasingly propose and pass ones aimed to protect the religiously devout. But there's growing evidence that Republicans in Congress and across the country are sidestepping the more controversial religious protection and bathroom bills and, in some cases, embracing LGBT non-discrimination laws instead.... And more broadly, Republicans in Congress, Southern-state governors and a business community that usually aligns with the GOP seem to be eschewing some of the more controversial religious freedom...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Well, that's what you've all wanted. That's what everybody's been asking for I don't know how long. That was a press conference. That was a press conference. That was the kind of press conference Republicans voters have been dying to see for who knows how many years. Greetings, my friends. Great to have you here, and great to be back. A short busy broadcast week. Rush Limbaugh back at it. It is 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program; the email address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com. Say what you will about Donald Trump -- how many years have...

In significant news that has thus far either gone under or outright unreported by the media, U.S. military advisors have “boots on the ground” in Yemen, according to a recent report in the Washington Post by Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Missy Ryan: “The Pentagon has placed a small number of U.S. advisors on the ground in Yemen to support Arab forces battling al-Qaeda, military officials said on Friday, signaling a new American role in that country’s multi-sided civil war. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said U.S. personnel had been in the country for about two weeks, supporting Yemeni and...

A federal judge has ordered the release of internal Trump University documents in an ongoing lawsuit against the company, including "playbooks" that advised sales personnel how to market high-priced courses on getting rich through real estate. The Friday ruling, in which Judge Gonzalo Curiel cited heightened public interest in presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, was issued in response to a request by The Washington Post. The ruling was a setback for Trump, whose attorneys argued that the documents contained trade secrets. [Snip] Trump, who previously questioned whether Curiel's Hispanic heritage made him biased due to Trump's support for building...

Rubio is on board, saying that he plans to attend the Republican convention in Cleveland and that he would be “honored” to help Trump however he can. “I want to be helpful. I don’t want to be harmful, because I don’t want Hillary Clinton to be president,” Rubio said in a CNN interview that will be aired Sunday. Long a star of the mainstream conservative movement, Rubio is one of the starkest symbols of the GOP’s rapid capitulation to Trump. Nearly every prominent Republican — from lawmakers to governors to former White House officials — has acquiesced as polling shows...

Applications for U.S. citizenship soared in the first three months of the year compared with 2015, appearing to confirm the predictions of several Democratic-leaning groups that the numbers would climb in response to the presidential campaign of Republican Donald Trump.

The Washington Post sure knows how to very carefully nibble around the edges when it comes to criticizing the economic system that brought disaster to a country. In this case, the Post's editorial board managed to severely criticize Venezuela for being a complete economic failure despite have the largest known oil reserves of any nation in the world. It had to be an incredibly disastrous economic system to bring such a nation so low that now it is running out of food, toilet paper, and beer. So do you think the Washington Post editorial named that system? Nope. Instead they...

There is a real chance that Hillary Clinton will have clinched a majority of delegates, and the Democratic nomination, before polls close in the California primary late in the evening of June 7. But losing one of the country's most diverse and Democratic states to Bernie Sanders would be such a damaging way to end this tumultuous primary season that Clinton is planning to spend millions there over the next two weeks. This isn't exactly what Clinton had hoped to be doing as her party's July convention in Philadelphia approaches. Clinton has deployed a massive effort to keep a once-loyal...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Now, on this Redskins business. They surveyed 504 Native American, Indians. Ninety percent of 'em said: We don't care. Washington Redskins doesn't affect us, doesn't mean diddly-squat. We don't care. So the Drive-Bys are not happy. The Sports Drive-Bys are not happy, and the sports Drive-Bys (I won't mention any names) are out there lecturing Native Americans on how they should care, and they're lecturing everybody else on how they should care. And you know what one of the latest approaches is? This is so telling. It is so... I can't remember when it was, but it's...

"The Spaniards were much impressed with the productivity of manioc in Arawak agriculture in the Greater Antilles," historian Jonathan Sauer recounts in his history of crop plants. "[A Spanish historian] calculated that 20 persons working 6 hours a day for a month could plant enough yuca to provide cassava bread for a village of 300 persons for 2 years." By all accounts, the Taíno were prosperous -- "a well-nourished population of over a million people," according to Sauer. And yet... lacked the monumental architecture of the Maya or the mathematical knowledge of the Aztec. And most importantly, they were not organized in...

Hillary Clinton says she welcomes businessman and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban's interest in potentially becoming her vice presidential running mate. In an interview that aired Sunday, Clinton opened the door wide open to Cuban and other business leaders, who could serve to counter the likely Republican nominee, real estate mogul Donald Trump. "I think we should look widely and broadly. It's not just people in elected office. It is successful businesspeople," Clinton told NBC News's Chuck Todd on "Meet the Press." "I am very interested in that." "And I appreciate his openness to it," she added of Cuban's comments....

REDMOND, Ore. — B.J. Soper took aim with his AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and fired a dozen shots at a human silhouette target. Soper’s wife and their 16-year-old daughter practiced drawing pistols. Then Soper helped his 4-year-old daughter, in pink sneakers and a ponytail, work on her marksmanship with a .22-caliber rifle. Deep in the heart of a vast U.S. military training ground, surrounded by spent shotgun shells and juniper trees blasted to shreds, the Central Oregon Constitutional Guard was conducting its weekly firearms training. “The intent is to be able to work together and defend ourselves if we need to,”...

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., was labeled by Charles Krauthammer on Friday as the pundit’s leading pick to be the running mate of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. The Washington Post, citing unnamed sources, said Corker will be meeting Monday with Trump at Trump Tower in New York City Krauthammer used a hypothetical pot of $100 in casino chips to make his point, putting $25 on Corker, $20 on former Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., $20 on Ohio Gov. John Kasich, $10 on former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and $5 on Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint. The rest went to “the field,”...

The Washington Post released a poll on Thursday, which showed that 90% of Native Americans do not take offense to the word, Redskins. The sports media responded to this poll by apologizing for decades of fear-mongering, race-baiting, and trying to make a national crisis out of something that is not even a crisis in the Indian community. Just kidding. They freaked out. On ESPN’s Around the Horn, host Tony Reali asked his panel whether or not the fact that the supposedly offended Native Americans, being not so offended, changed their views on the issue? Spoiler alert: it didn’t:

A new Washington Post poll found that 90 percent of Native Americans aren't offended by the Washington Redskins' nickname and an overwhelming majority consider it an unimportant issue.

The Republican Party’s attempt to treat Donald Trump as a normal political candidate would be laughable were it not so perilous to the republic. If only he would mouth the party’s “conservative” principles, all would be well. But of course the entire Trump phenomenon has nothing to do with policy or ideology. It has nothing to do with the Republican Party, either, except in its historic role as incubator of this singular threat to our democracy. Trump has transcended the party that produced him. His growing army of supporters no longer cares about the party. Because it did not immediately...

I don’t know Reince Priebus, the head of the Republican Party (such as it is). He may be a very nice guy, what with a wife and kids and probably a car or two. Still, after watching him on the Sunday interview shows, I have concluded that the man has no pride, no shame and, almost certainly, no future. After Donald Trump loses the presidential election, the name Priebus will, like Quisling or even Boycott, take on a separate meaning: fool. Priebus went from TV studio to TV studio, four in all, on a trudge of abasement, a ride of shame....