Free Republic

Donald Trump's expected pick of Wilbur Ross for commerce secretary would add another billionaire and investing voice to the president-elect's administration. Trump could name Ross to the post as early as Wednesday, a transition source told NBC News. Ross, 78, is chairman of W.L. Ross & Co and has a decades-long history as a distressed debt investor. He advised Trump on economic policy during the campaign, along with other wealthy businessmen and investors Harold Hamm, John Paulson and Tom Barrack. If approved, Ross would take over a Commerce department set to take a major pivot on trade and job creation....

Actor-comedian Alan Young, who played the amiable straight man to a talking horse in the 1960s sitcom “Mister Ed,” has died, a spokeswoman for the Motion Picture and Television Home said Friday. He was 96. The English-born, Canadian-educated Young died Thursday, according to Jaime Larkin, spokeswoman for the retirement community where Young had lived for four years. His children were with him when he died peacefully of natural causes, she said. Young was already a well-known radio and TV comedian, having starred in his own Emmy-winning variety show, when “Mister Ed” was being readied at comedian George Burns’ production company....

No one wanted to be president less than Mitt Romney, his son said in an interview out Sunday that raises new questions about the candidacy of the losing Republican nominee. In an interview with the Boston Globe examining what went wrong with the Romney campaign, his eldest son Tagg explains that his father had been a reluctant candidate from the start.

Are they righting a wrong or wronging the Wrights? The Connecticut Senate passed a bill Tuesday evening that would delete the Wright brothers from history, explicitly stripping recognition for the first powered flight from Orville and Wilbur and assigning it to someone else. “The Governor shall proclaim a date certain in each year as Powered Flight Day to honor the first powered flight by [the Wright brothers] Gustave Whitehead and to commemorate the Connecticut aviation and aerospace industry,” reads House Bill No. 6671, which now sits on the governor’s desk awaiting passage into law. "There’s no question that the Wright...

Animal bordellos draw Norwegians Denmark's animal bordellos reportedly draw Norwegian clients, but both countries have loopholes that make such establishments legal. Here a Danish animal owner offers his horse to a Danish journalist claiming to be interested in animal sex. Related stories: Former cop busted in pig pen - Neither Denmark nor Norway has a prohibition on sex with animals, as long as the animals do not suffer. On the Internet Danish animal owners advertise openly that they offer sex with animals, without intervention from police or other authorities, Danish newspaper 24timer reports. In correspondence with the animal owners, the...

Just Reported! I-912 has turned in a total of approx. 420,000 signatures to the Sec. of State. That's more then 12,000 signatures a day since it got started with NO paied signature gatherers!

A report on the latest of the weekly "Military Monday" afternoon rallies initiated by (local & ought to be national) 570 AM KVI radio talk show host Kirby Wilbur.

At least two Washington members of FreeRepublic (http://www.FreeRepublic.com) joined other Pacific Northwesterners in the latest of ongoing rallies to Support Our Troops. The third or fourth such held in the central traffic point of the bucolic town of Duvall, Washington (east of Woodinville, in turn east of Seattle), turnout was reduced from the 200+ who showed up in previous weeks by the return of the drizzle for which Seattle is so justly famous. But the weather didn't dampen spirits any, as the photos here will show.