In 1938, some months after the initial publication of The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien and his British publisher, Stanley Unwin, opened talks with Rütten & Loening, a Berlin-based publishing house who were keen to translate the novel for the German market. All was going well until, in July, they wrote to Tolkien and asked for proof of his Aryan descent.
The longest-running comedy in America is not “The Simpsons,” “Cheers” or “M*A*S*H*” — but Congress. Take the Senate (please!), where Democrats are trying to curb the use of the filibuster...
"For people to suggest that you can break the rules to change the rules is un-American” Reid fumed in 2005. “To change a rule in the Senate rules to break a filibuster still requires 67 votes. You can’t do it with 60. You certainly cannot do it with 51. . . . It is illegal. It is wrong, you can’t do it. . . . It is very un-American.”
Yet that, hilariously, is precisely what he plans to do now.
With Christmas now over and the dates for New Year’s coming full speed ahead comes the briskness of Winter. Of course the snow sports are abound and there are so many things to be done around this time – Jingyuetan National Forest in the Jilin Province’s annual ice festival is finally here for a limited time.
15-year-old is suing the Icelandic state for the right to legally use the name given to her by her mother.
Like a handful of other countries, including Germany and Denmark, Iceland has official rules about what a baby can be named... Parents can take from the list or apply to a special committee that has the power to say yea or nay.
A federal judge says that contradictory laws permit Obama 'to proclaim as perfectly lawful' actions that seem unconstitutional 'on their face.'
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In her courtroom, The New York Times argued that the Obama Administration should be forced to release the legal justification it relies on when it engages in secret, extrajudicial killings...
So far, President Obama has refused to release that legal reasoning, as prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel. He is effectively denying us the ability to know what laws we live under, and stifling an informed debate about whether the powers he is exercising are in fact proper.You know, the federal government isn't just running a fiscal deficit; it's got a real problem with a trust deficit as well.
This is moving fast...
There will be a floor vote on these issues as early as tomorrow. HB1263 (assault weapons ban) and HB 815 (magazine ban) have been passed out of committee and will be brought to the floor for a general vote by tomorrow morning. As written, the ban will outlaw not only most rifles and shotguns used for hunting and sporting purposes, but also most handguns used for home and self defense.This doesn't just cross the line. It blows past it, doing 120 MPH, waving a beer can out the window.
The proximate, immediate cause of the first American Revolutionary War was an attempt to capture powder and shot, cannon, and community food stores that supplied not just the organized militia of their day immortalized as the “Minutemen,” but the unorganized militia of those too young, too old, and too female to be part of the organized militia of their day. These were the “alarm listers.”
The youngest of the estimated 14,000 that turned out against the Regulars that April morning and fired shots was just 13 years old. The oldest man to fight that fateful day was an alarm-lister named Samuel Whittemore, a 78-year-old veteran of three American wars in the King’s service.
While Lord Percy’s relief column attempted to link up with Regular forces under attack by colonial militias, Whittemore set up behind a low stone wall near his home and attacked the 47th Regiment of Foot by himself.
The Second Amendment of the United States was never written to protect hunting or target shooting. It was written by men who had just fought a successful armed revolution against the most advanced military of their day, and who wanted to ensure that future generations would be armed with weapons of contemporary military utility in order to stand against the day that once more, tyrants would attempt to consolidate power and lord over the people as their betters.
Carl Hughes wrote the slogan for Kennywood's Kiddieland -- the one that reads "The most beautiful music in the world is the sound of children laughing."
In the five-plus decades that he worked at Kennywood -- rising from part-time publicity assistant to president and chairman of the board -- Mr. Hughes worked tirelessly to make his words come true.
"He was the man who truly created Kennywood," said Harry Henninger, who retired as Kennywood's chief executive officer when the park was sold in 2008. "He made it his mission to make it a much greater place, and he achieved it."
"He really took Kennywood from just a little -- kind of dirty -- park into one that was envied by park owners around the world," Ms. Rosemeyer said. "That was his goal, to make it the finest traditional amusement park anywhere."It boggles my mind to think that so many wonderful memories were the result of one man's passion.
David Gregory intended to demonstrate on "Meet The Press" what he regards as the absurdity of America's lax gun laws. Instead, he's demonstrating the ever-greater absurdity of America's non-lax laws...
To Howard Kurtz & Co, it's "obvious" that Gregory didn't intend to commit a crime. But, in a land choked with laws, "obviousness" is one of the first casualties – and "obviously" innocent citizens have their "obviously" well-intentioned actions criminalized every minute of the day. Not far away from David Gregory, across the Virginia border, 11-year-old Schylar Capo made the mistake of rescuing a woodpecker from the jaws of a cat and nursing him back to health for a couple of days. For her pains, a federal Fish & Wildlife gauleiter accompanied by state troopers descended on her house, charged her with illegal transportation of a protected species, issued her a $535 fine, and made her cry. Why is it so "obvious" that David Gregory deserves to be treated more leniently than a sixth-grader? Because he's got a TV show, and she hasn't?
I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.