Free Republic

In the first hour, Ian Punnett welcomes Paul Sperry, co-author of Muslim Mafia. Then, Ian is joined by historian Neil Howe to discuss his latest research on the defining generations of our time, and why those born after 1981 have vastly different relationships with their families and the workplace than those born earlier.

If a major disaster struck and you couldn't live in your home would you have a place to go? Don Kubley claims he has an answer. It's called the InterShelter™ and Kubley said it could provide safe shelter for everyone within two hours. The solar dome's President and inventor spoke before Congress and now FEMA is considering the InterShelter™ as the emergency shelter of choice across the nation. It can withstand winds up to 200 miles per hour and temperatures from 120 degress Fahrenheit down to 70 degrees below. All you need is a screwdriver, a wrench and a step...

Just as some people today believe a Maya calendar pinpoints 2012 as the end of the world as we know it, some ancient Romans saw the A.D. 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius (pictured: Pompeiians flee the city in an illustration), as a sign of a coming apocalypse. That's because Roman philosopher Seneca, who died in A.D. 65, had predicted the Earth would go up in smoke: "All we see and admire today will burn in the universal fire that ushers in a new, just, happy world," he said, according to the 1999 book Apocalypses. The end never came, but that...

Miss England Rachel Christie has given up her crown after being arrested on suspicion of a nightclub assault. Organisers of Miss England said the 21-year-old wanted to concentrate on clearing her name. She allegedly punched Miss Manchester, Sara Beverley Jones, 24, in the face in a dispute at a Manchester nightclub. Ms Christie, the first black woman to be crowned Miss England, was arrested on suspicion of assault and has been bailed until January 2010. The beauty queen, niece of former sprinter Linford Christie, is also a heptathlete hoping to compete in the 2012 Olympics. Miss Manchester was allegedly punched...

<p>LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Michael Jackson's father is seeking an allowance from his son's estate to help cover expenses that exceed $15,000 a month, according to court documents filed Friday.</p> <p>The request seeking an unspecified amount for Joe Jackson was filed by lawyer Brian Oxman, who said there was no apparent reason for the administrators of the estate to not seek an allowance for the 81-year-old Jackson family patriarch.</p>

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. – Jim Stevens said he's not particularly religious and is clueless about why an image resembling Jesus Christ keeps appearing on his pickup. Stevens, of Jonesborough, said nearly every morning, an image that looks to him like the face of Jesus Christ has appeared in the condensation on the driver's side window of his Isuzu truck.

A Brazilian man who was thought to have been killed in a car crash shocked his mourning family when he turned up alive at his funeral. Relatives of bricklayer Ademir Jorge Goncalves, 59, had identified him as the victim of a car crash on Sunday night, police said. As is customary in Brazil, the funeral was held the following day. What family members didn't know was that Goncalves had actually spent the night at a truck stop drinking a sugarcane liquor known as cachaca with friends. He did not get word about his own funeral until it was already happening...

Bears in a zoo in eastern Germany have lost their fur, but international experts cannot work out why. Three spectacled bears in Leipzig Zoo are in various states of baldness, with the worst being hairless all over.

The sudden loss of memory, called “transient global amnesia” or TGA, is caused by pressure in blood vessels in the brain, and can be triggered by strenuous activities, bowel movements, or – commonly – sex. The 59-year-old woman, known only as Alice, had the worrying experience after she and her husband Scott had sex last August. She suddenly, albeit temporarily, lost all memory of the last several years and the ability to form new memories. After sex they turned on the television, which was showing the Beijing Olympics, and she asked: "Is there an Olympics?" Scott told CNN: "I saw...

What do you get the sports fan who wants to bowl 300 without practicing? Try the RC900, a remote-control bowling ball invented by San Antonio, Texas-based 900 Global. The bowler steers the ball by adjusting the position of a weight screwed onto a threaded shaft inside the ball. The product is being marketed to young children and those unable to bowl because of physical limitations. The ball itself is surprisingly nimble, as evidenced by a user-submitted video (see below) in which one of them slaloms smoothly around four chairs set up along the lane before striking the headpin. Of...

CHICAGO - The Federal Aviation Administration said it is investigating the origin of a falling ice chunk that damaged the roof and gutters of a Chicago home. The FAA said it is looking into whether any of the planes approaching O'Hare International Airport, which is located about 10 miles from the home, Wednesday night had water leakage problems, the Chicago Tribune reported Thursday. Homeowner Paul Dowd said the large ice chunk hit the roof of the house at about 7:52 p.m. He said a police report was filed and he contacted his insurance company. The home is under a flight...

A Washington state woman said she is offering a reward for the return of a diamond ring she accidentally dropped into a trick-or-treater's bag. Joan Collins of Camus said she remembered the 2-karat diamond ring getting caught on a plastic pumpkin being carried by a young girl, one of the about 300 trick-or-treaters who visited her home Halloween evening, KPTV, Portland, Ore., reported Thursday. "It snagged, but I didn't feel it come off," she said. "The next day, I said, 'Oh, I don't have my ring on.' I started thinking back and the only thing I could think of was...

2010 Florida District 24 Congressional Race. Welcome Larry Sinclair 4 Congress is under construction. Please be patient as we get our campaign site up.

It’s no secret that the media loathe Sarah Palin, but the recent attention given to Levi Johnston proves how far they will go to smear her name. Johnston is the father of Palin’s grandson, ex-boyfriend of Palin’s daughter Bristol and future Playgirl centerfold. He penned an article for the October issue of Vanity Fair in which he accused the former vice-presidential candidate and governor of Alaska of diva-like behavior, poor parenting, hiding a troubled marriage and repeatedly calling her youngest son the “retarded baby.” To CBS, this was more grist for the anti-Palin mill. It seemingly confirmed every media-generated caricature...

NOVEMBER 3--Meet Aaron Siebers. The 27-year-old Denver man, a Blockbuster employee, was skateboarding yesterday afternoon when he fell and ripped his uniform pants. Due to work last night--and concerned about getting "written up" by Blockbuster superiors for not wearing his work-issued khakis--Siebers came up with a harebrained idea. Instead of just calling in sick, he stabbed himself in the leg and showed up at work claiming to have just been attacked by three Hispanic males. Siebers, who told cops he was assaulted as he walked toward the Blockbuster in Edgewater, had a deep stab wound in one leg and several...

OXFORD, Ohio—A man wearing a breathalyzer costume was arrested Sunday on suspicion of driving drunk. According to a police report, 18-year-old James N. P. Miller, of Cincinnati, was seen driving the wrong way out of the entrance to a one-way street at East Park Place in Oxford. Officers executed a traffic stop and found that Miller was wearing a breathalyzer costume. After investigation, police said, Miller was found to be operating a vehicle while intoxicated. Inside his car, officers allegedly found an open container of Bud Light in the center console. Officers also found what was left of a case...

TODOS SANTOS CUCHUMATAN, Guatemala (Reuters) – Despite a drinking ban mayhem erupted at a traditional Mayan horse race on Sunday with riders falling off their horses and drunken spectators stumbling through the mountain village. Hundreds of tourists and locals gathered for the annual spectacle in Todo Santos Cuchumatan on Sunday to cheer the dozens of riders charging back and forth along a 330-foot (100-meter) length of road for up to seven hours. But the macho test of stamina was marred, as it has been in the past, by the copious amount of homemade spirits the riders consume, sometimes for days...

Bricklayer Shows Up At His Own Funeral in Brazil 59-year-old shocks mourners who believed they were burying crash victim Nov. 4, 2009 RIO DE JANEIRO - A Brazilian bricklayer reportedly killed in a car crash shocked his mourning family by showing up alive at his funeral. Relatives of Ademir Jorge Goncalves, 59, had identified him as the victim of a Sunday night car crash in Parana state in southern Brazil, police said. As is customary in Brazil, the funeral was held the following day, which happened to be the holiday of Finados, when Brazilians visit cemeteries to honor the dead....

OXFORD, Ohio (AP) - An Ohio man dressed as a Breathalyzer test for Halloween found himself blowing into one after police stopped him for allegedly driving the wrong way without headlights on a one-way street ...

Best-selling author Daniel Estulin states that the key issue to be discussed this week at the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting, being held in St. Andrews, Scotland, is how to bring down the present world financial system through dumping the US dollar. Estulin first reported on this initiative as being deliberated at the most recent Bilderberg meeting held in Greece in May 2009. Estulin says that the success or failure of this callous plan hinges on the ability of the US and UK representatives to convince the Russian, the Chinese and other national governments to go along...

ORLANDO, Florida (NBC) -- A woman who said she had her pants pulled down before being spanked more than one dozen times by an Ocoee Police Department sergeant plans to attend an upcoming court hearing and hopes to speak to a judge. The 29-year-old victim said she is outraged that her accused attacker, former Ocoee police Sgt. Tom Maroney, is seeking leniency in court. Maroney made a deal in court nine months ago that reduced the charge to battery, gave up his police license and was sentenced to one year of probation. Maroney is now asking a judge to remove...

The DSi shatters and fragments, which is more effective at maiming and disabling a target. On the other hand, the N97 remains whole, for greater penetration through tough surfaces. Both, however, are fun to look at. Far from an honest ballistics test, the shoot(ing), staged by French gaming magazine Amusement, was just an opportunity to snap a few stunning photos. Which is fine! And which they did! So, where's the video? Update: Yeah, you guys are right—the black one is an N97, not a PSP. Still though!

BEDFORD, Pa. - In exchange for no jail time, a woman and her adult daughter have agreed to stand outside a Pennsylvania courthouse holding signs saying they stole a gift card from a 9-year-old girl on her birthday. Fifty-six-year-old Evelyn Border and 35-year-old Tina Griekspoor stood outside the court for 4 1/2 hours Tuesday. They held signs that read: "I stole from a 9-year-old girl on her birthday! Don't steal or this could happen to you!"

With the upcoming disaster film "2012" and the current hype about Mayan calendars and doomsday predictions, it seems like a good time to put such notions in context. Most prophets of doom come from a religious perspective, though the secular crowd has caused its share of scares as well. One thing the doomsday scenarios tend to share in common: They don't come to pass. Here are 10 that didn't pan out, so far:

PORTLAND, Ore. (CBS/AP) Hollywood actress Sandra Bullock is embroiled in a custody battle between her husband and his porn star ex-wife. Bullock is standing by her celebrity-mechanic husband, Jesse James, as he fights his ex-wife Janine Lindemulder's attempts to regain custody of their five-year-old daughter, Sunny. James has had sole guardianship of the child since Lindemulder, an adult film star

A bank robber put the cat amongst the prison yard pigeons by demanding visitation rights for a pet moggie - who he claimed was the reincarnation of his dead mother! With her green eyes and soft fur, Gisela the cat is much more than a pet to jailbird Peter K. - and she has caused a prison farce in Werl, Germany. The 46-year-old bank robber was sentenced to five years imprisonment in 2007. Behind bars, it's his cat Gisela that the devout Buddhist misses most. And the reason is that he believes the feline is the reincarnation of his dead...

A 60-year-old man was burnt alive as he tried to kill his wife at their home in Feistritz an der Drau in Carinthia’s Villach-Land district today (Tues). Police said the man had doused himself and petrol and then poured it around his house before shouting "I will burn all of you to a crisp" and setting the home ablaze. The man was killed instantly as he was turned into a human torch but his wife and another man, whom police suspect she was having an affair with, escaped. They were treated for smoke inhalation at Villach provincial hospital.

It's starting in 3 minutes..."V"...the strange remake of "V"...the series that is so evocative of Obama's "hope and change". Just starting a discussion thread as this serial opens.

Copied and pasted directly from the Democratic Underground main page.....

Shoppers in Shijiazhuang City in China’s Hebei Province got a surprise on Sunday that was quite literally ‘out of this world’. As some late-night shoppers were leaving a supermarket a UFO was seen hovering above the store’s entrance. The UFO remained above the entrance for around one minute before shooting off into the night sky. One witness who was carrying a mobile phone managed to get a number of shots of the craft (See photos below). The witness, who insists that there were other passersby who also saw the sighting, then posted the UFO photos on a popular science and...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A second attempt to sell a crypt on top of Marilyn Monroe's final resting place has failed, with not a single bid received for the burial spot in a celebrity-filled Los Angeles cemetery. Widow Elsie Poncher is trying to sell her husband's crypt to pay off the mortgage on her Beverly Hills home. On selling the crypt, Poncher had planned to move her husband, who died in 1986, to an adjacent crypt intended for her. But a $4.6 million bid submitted through online auctioneer eBay Inc in August fell through when the unidentified bidder pulled out....

The nightly attacks by two man-eating lions terrified railway workers and brought construction to a halt in one of east Africa's most notorious onslaughts more than a hundred years ago. But the death toll, scientists now say, wasn't as high as previously thought. Over nine months the two voracious hunters claimed 35 lives — no small figure, but much less than some accounts of as many as 135 victims.

(CBS) No other object is shaped quite like it. Unique yet ubiquitous, it was the tool upon which all other tools were made for centuries. It is the common anvil. "How do you feel when you're surrounded by anvils?" CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman asked anvil enthusiast Gay Wilkerson. "I'm happy," Wilkerson said. Although Wilkerson's garage in Farmington, Mo., is lined with anvils, this story is about a lot more than just a collection. "Can we call it an obsession?" Hartman asked. "I think so," Wilkerson said. "I think it is. I think it is, yeah." About 20 years ago,...

A 10-ton fishing boat has been sunk by gigantic jellyfish off eastern Japan. -snip- The crew of the fishing boat was thrown into the sea when the vessel capsized, but the three men were rescued by another trawler, according to the Mainichi newspaper. The local Coast Guard office reported that the weather was clear and the sea was calm at the time of the accident.

Having fended off Hollywood’s lascivious advances for five full decades, Barbie has finally collapsed onto its couch with her legs spread, exhausted from years of being chased around a desk by horny, pantsless studio-executive suitors promising to make her a big movie star. Variety reports that Universal is the beneficiary of the Mattel icon’s weary willingness to surrender her big-screen virtue to the highest bidder, announcing today they’ve reached a deal for a live-action film based on America’s favorite plastic bundle of unhealthy body-image issues. Reaching the deal was the easy part; with the relationship consummated (awkwardly, we’d assume, as...

A good port or Madeira. A special Sancerre or a Châteauneuf-du-Pape. For the past 15 years, the customers of Wine Ventures in Tenafly have known to count on its proprietor, Craig McManus, for a friendly chat and some wine expertise. What they may not know is that wine is just McManus' day job. By night, he chases spirits. He communicates with the dead. He looks for ghosts. He conjures up the late relatives of people he's just met. He ignores those who call this ridiculous. Instead, he took a phenomenon that initially "freaked me out" and spun it into a...

A BIKER has appealed after losing his licence when speed cameras clocked him riding at an impossible 383 mph. Motorbike mad Paolo Turina of Cernusco Lombardone, Italy - who also copped a £200 fine - claims the speed camera was clearly so defective the charge should never have been brought. The 26-year-old said: "If I could go that fast I'd enter my bike in the MotoGP world championships. What did they think they were clocking - a jet fighter?" Police claim the camera was working perfectly but bungling staff botched the charge paperwork, as reported in the Austrian Times.

BUTCHER Pan Xueping must have the world's strangest hobby. He collects hairballs from the stomachs of slaughtered pigs - just for fun. Pan, of Xiyangpan, eastern China, said: "They are very rare - I probably only find about one every three months when I'm cleaning the animals intestines. "I then wash them carefully to remove all the dirt and then I dry them with a hairdryer to make them nice and fluffy." The 42-year-old, who works in an abattoir, has amassed hundreds of furry balls over the nine years since starting his job, as reported in the Austrian Times. He...

Carrying the remains of a roughly 30-foot (9-meter) giant squid in her jaws, a female sperm whale, with a calf at her side, swims near the surface off Japan's Bonin Islands (map)in the northwestern Pacific. Taken on October 15, this and other "absolutely sensational" new pictures offer rare proof of the sperm whale's taste for giant squid, said giant squid expert Steve O'Shea of the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand. The pictures may also reveal that adult sperm whales, which grow up to 59 feet (18 meters) long, use pieces of their prizes to teach youngsters how to...

CONCORD, N.H. – The bouncing mega-meatball record has landed in the East Coast. Matthew Mitnitsky, owner of Nonni's Italian Eatery in Concord, said Sunday that a 222.5-pound meatball was authenticated as the world's largest after being weighed by state weights and measures officials. A Guinness Book of World Records official confirmed the big meatball as a record breaker and presented Mitnitsky with a plaque.

MEXICO CITY — Beetles, ants, worms and grasshoppers; roasted, fried, fricasseed or boiled. Ready to chow down on some insects? If not, maybe you should be, says Mexican nutritionist Virginia Melo. Not only could the availability of bugs help quell hunger around the world, insects are far richer per ounce than meat in both protein and essential amino acids, and add flavor and vigor to even the blandest dishes, the university professor says. “You can put them in tacos, add them to soups,” says Melo, who at 79 still teaches at Mexico City's Metropolitan Autonomous University. “There are so many...

AN Indian man claims he has been cheated by the cosmetics firm that makes popular deodorant Lynx after failing to land a girlfriend for the past seven years. Vaibhav Bev has been using Lynx deodorant since 2002, in the hope the company's promotional campaign - which features scantily clad women throwing themselves at men - had some basis in real life. Mr Bev is suing the maker of Lynx - marketed as Axe in his home country - for more than $100,000, seeking compensation for "depression and psychological damage". "I used it for seven years but no girl came to...

A German plastic surgeon has told how he built himself the perfect wife after wedding a "dowdy" woman "for her potential". Reza Vossough sculpted his 33-year-old bride Cany with eight surgeries to change her chest, thighs, eyes and face, The Sun newspaper reports. In pictures: Plastic surgery obsessions"It's almost like being God — you have the ability to change nature," the newspaper quoted him as saying. "When I first met Cany, she had physical deficiencies, but I could see there was something there ... she had big hips and big thighs, so we made corrections, then did a little bit...

No one saw the truck drive off, it left the alley between the bank and another business. You could pick up the cash and no one would see you. What should you do?

SOUTH BEND, Ind.- An ex-University of Notre Dame catering employee has agreed to pay the Indiana school back for half of a $30,000 tip mistakenly deposited in her bank account. Sara Gaspar, who received a $29,387 deposit in her bank account due to an April 17 error for a deposit that should have been $29.87, said she spent the money on bills and a new car, the South Bend (Ind.) Tribune reported Friday. Gasper agreed to pay the university back $16,859.79, about half of the original sum, in $50 monthly payments for about 28 years, court documents said. As part...

SALT LAKE CITY — A rap by four teenagers at a McDonald's has gotten them a bad rap in one Utah city. The teens were cited by American Fork police earlier this week for disorderly conduct after they rapped their order at a McDonald's drive-through.

A naked man who climbed out of a window and hid on the ledge to escape his lover's furious husband has been caught on camera. Sun Meng has been given the cold shoulder by his community after the extraordinary picture of him cowering naked outside the flat were posted on the internet. The terrified 25-year-old fled from the balcony window when he was caught in bed with the man's wife at the married couple's flat in Chengdu, central China.

Isn't this interesting.... I am on the west coast, in Oregon. And those who know me, know I have been doing a lot of writings in the last year that have been ...critical... of Obama to the say the very least. I have been investigating his British Birth, and making inquires at the Hawaiian Department of Health with UIPA requests. Last night while playing an online game (WOW) my husband noticed his latency just shoot through the roof. From 71 to about 340 ms. After resetting the modem a couple of times, he got angry enough to call Verizon and...

The Ghost Car Of West Chester Pike Newtown Square, Pa. was farm country in the 1950s. Newspaper stories involved dogs killing sheep and dairy cows getting loose, and, of course, traffic accidents. A car carrying a man, wife and teenaged son was struck by a drunk driver one Christmas shortly after midnight on West Chester Pike.