Free Republic

Every one of the icky Democrat party candidates is a wannabe tyrant who is not qualified to be president but that doesn’t mean one of them can’t win. I watched the Democrat primary debate and had very mixed feelings. On the one hand, I thought that this collection of despots, whether socialists (everyone but Mike Bloomberg) or just naturally despotic (Mike Bloomberg) doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in a hot place come the general election. On the other hand, the mere fact that five of them are the ones the party faithful have winnowed down as potential presidents and that...

U.S. commanders say country has capability to make weapons small and light enough. Tokyo • North Korea has been able to make its nuclear warheads small enough to fit onto ballistic missiles, the state media claimed Wednesday in Pyongyang's latest boast about improvements in its weapons capabilities. North Korea has made the claim before and it is not known whether it is true, but the timing of the announcement is inauspicious. The United States and South Korea are conducting huge military exercises that North Korea views as a pretext for an invasion. On Tuesday, South Korea unleashed a wave of...

Ct scan negative, they want MRI, need to be admitted for that, face still numb

A top official for the Russian Orthodox Church on Tuesday proposed creating an “all-Russian dress code,” lashing out at women who leave the house “painted like a clown” and “confuse the street with striptease.”..... He argued that clothing is not a private business, and that he hoped that Russia would soon be a place where scantily-dressed women or men in track suits would not be admitted into public venues.

If you thought last week was as cold as you could bear it, brace yourself. Forecasters say the worst is yet to come, and this winter could be the harshest since the Thames froze over more than three centuries ago. Temperatures for December are the coldest on record, with the average reading close to minus 1c – almost six degrees below normal. And with forecasters warning that this winter’s ‘mini ice age’ might last until mid-March, this winter could be the worst since 1683-84 when a fair was held on the Thames.

Breaking News: Pakistan Reportedly Detains Five D.C.-Area Muslims on Suspicion of Terror IPT News December 8, 2009 **Updated December 9, 9:00 a.m. EST A Pakistani newspaper reports the arrest of five foreign nationals after a raid in a town called Sargodha. The raid took place at the home of a member of the Jaish-e-Muhammad, a Pakistani movement designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2001. According to the report, "The DPO told that these people had been living in Sargodha since Nov 30 and it was quite a possibility that they were engaged in acts of...

ISLAMABAD – A Pakistani court charged five young Americans on Wednesday with planning terrorist attacks in the South Asian country and conspiring to wage war against nations allied with Pakistan, their defense lawyer said.

* The MINI Countryman will be Mini’s biggest model while retaining the brand’s personality. * The Mini Cooper has been a hit for parent company BMW, but there are still a lot of potential customers out there who can’t quite fit their families into a tiny subcompact. * A small SUV almost 16 inches longer than the Mini Cooper. *The brand’s first four-door model, it will go on sale in the U.S. early next year.

In a further sign that full-electric drive vehicles are headed for the mainstream, BMW BMW Group will showcase a lithium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium -ion battery powered version of the MINI at next month's Los Angeles Auto Show Detroit-Auto-Show-2008 ahead of a pilot project that will see 500 of the cars evaluated on US roads in 2009. Based on the current MINI Hatch, the MINI E will initially appear in two-seater form with rear seats dropped to make way for the battery pack. Rather than an in-hub motor arrangement, an electric motor mounted under the bonnet drives the front wheels through a single-stage...

The United States is fighting two wars. The financial system is in crisis. Fewer Americans can afford to excercise their right to visit the magic kingdom. The terrorists behind the worst-ever attack on U.S. soil are regaining strength. The Pirates of the Caribbian have formed new alliances. The cost of propping up the economy will propel the federal budget deficit from the stratosphere into deep space, where not even Wall-E can save it. Mr. McCain has even attempted to prevent my fellow citizens of the Magic Kingdom from voting in this historic election. Americans badly need a leader who can...

Leggy lasses in short skirts are proving to be a biggest threat to road safety of male drivers. A new research has shown that car crashes shoot up in summers as most male drivers get distracted eyeing babes in sexy summer outfits. According to the survey by website uSwitch.com, over a quarter admit being distracted after spotting a hot woman walk past or in another car The sexy summer outfits have even made 7pct of male drivers have a crash or a near miss. The study shows accidents shoot up by 50pct on the hottest days of the year. Some...

The production version of Lifan's egregious MINI clone is set to debut this weekend at the Beijing Motor Show. The Lifan 320 as it's called has an 87-horsepower 1.3L underhood that drives the front wheels alone. We're sure that Lifan will point to the car's standard 5-door hatchback layout as evidence that its not a true MINI copy, but let's all be serious here. Droopy headlights, fat D-pillars and traditional placement of the extra doors don't temper the blatant rip-offedness of this Grade D doppelganger. Even the wheels are copies. On a more amusing note, who knew MINI's humorous...

A space telescope scheduled for launch in 2007 will be sensitive enough to detect theoretical miniature black holes lurking within our solar system, scientists say. By doing so, it could test an exotic five-dimensional theory of gravity that competes with Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. That is, of course, if the tiny black holes actually exist. The idea, recently detailed online in the journal Physical Review D, is being proposed by Charles Keeton, a physicist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and Arlie Petters of Duke University in North Carolina. Branes The Randall-Sundrum braneworld model, named after the scientists...

Channel 4 brings you the results of the 100 Greatest War Films of all time, as voted for you. 1. Saving Private Ryan, 1998 The first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan is a visual assault, acclaimed as one of cinema's most accurate realisations of warfare. Capt John Miller (Tom Hanks) is among the US troops storming Omaha Beach on D-Day. Thereafter, you follow this everyman soldier on a humanitarian military mission to rescue the surviving brother of three soldiers killed in the same week. Spielberg crafts a shocking and moving illustration of the Second World War. 2. Apocalypse Now,...

Everything from a Ford GT and an Aston Martin Vantage, to a Mitsubishi Raider pickup and a Mini. Now it's time to cull that list down to our 10 favorites. All of these cars share a common trait -- they were all fun to drive in the extreme! So return your seats to the upright position, and fasten your safety belt. Here are our personal top ten best cars of 2005. Car of the Year: Corvette Z06. The performance buy of the year -- if anyone can say such a thing about a car that will set you back about...

Ok, so this isn't news and I hope the mods will tell me if this is a mis use of the service here.... but, Freepers are such a wide variety that I'm confident SOMEONE in here has likely performed their own mechanical work on a Mini Cooper and has knowledge stored in their brain that I could put to good use. I have an 02 MC which I believe lost the pressure plate in the clutch last week. I'm just getting into the parts removal and haven't pulled the transmission yet, but the symptoms are like there is no connection...

How to wear a mini skirt- when you don’t look like a supermodel. (Okay, who does?) It doesn’t mean that you have to hide your knees forever…This season, get out there and feel the wind on your legs, it’s miniskirt season. Wearing a mini says something about you- it’s feminine, and sexy in a way black trousers will never be. It doesn’t have to scream, “Easy!” , but it does say, “Look at me.” You will get 45% more comments when you wear a mini- and this is a conservative estimate based on my research last Friday night. Tips for...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has spotted a dusty disc of material around a very small "failed star" called a brown dwarf, raising the possibility that there may be miniature solar systems in which planets orbit objects not much larger than planets, scientists said Monday. The brown dwarf named OTS 44 is only about 15 times the mass of Jupiter, much smaller than any other brown dwarf known to be surrounded by a disc of planet-building material, said Kevin Luhman, lead author of a study by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "The neat thing...

Last week, I wrote an article comparing the Mac mini to a “$399” Dell. Although I assumed it would generate some discussion, I wasn’t quite prepared for the reaction: A bunch of “letters to the editor,” scores of direct emails, and over 180 responses (and counting) in the related discussion thread in the Macworld forums. It seems people are interested in how the Mac mini stacks up against budget Windows PCs. [Before I continue, I just have to say that the article, which I thought was reasonably fair to both sides, generated a good number of less-than-friendly replies from apparent...

Trafford said small cars just mean more vehicles on the road — and thus, more pollution. She doesn’t think compacts like the Mini make sense in the U.S. “We’re not Europe, so let’s try to stop being Europe,” she said. “Let’s be proud of our heritage — we’re big and happy. Why don’t we just have big cars?”