Free Republic

(CNSNews.com) - Liberal organizations reacted quickly and strongly to Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement on Friday, referring to her departure as creating "an ominous vacancy" that could lead to "terrible changes" on the U.S. Supreme Court. "The battle for the Supreme Court has begun," declared a release from NARAL Pro-Choice America that featured a picture of President George W. Bush. "Don't let his choice end yours. "Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement gives President Bush and the radical right the chance they've been waiting for to overturn Roe v. Wade," according to the group's website. "They're pulling out all the stops to...

EXPRESSING REGRET for the use of abusive language against former PM Indira Gandhi in particular and Indians in general in 1971, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger said the remarks had to be seen in the context of the Cold War prevailing at that time. He told NDTV the use of strong language was a “one-time event” and he actually held Indira in “high regard”. He was also a “strong supporter and promoter” of a close relationship between India and the US. “In any event I regret these words were used. I have extremely high regard for Mrs Gandhi...

WASHINGTON - A Supreme Court decision allowing governments to seize property for economic development purposes has prompted an angry reaction in Congress, where lawmakers in both the House and Senate promoted legislation Thursday designed to mitigate the impact of the ruling. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, proposed legislation that would bar the federal government and local and state governments who receive federal funds from taking property for economic development use. "The protection of homes, small businesses, and other property rights against government seizure and other unreasonable government interference is a fundamental principle and core commitment of our nation's founders," according to...

DURANGO, Colo. -- Authorities said someone stole about 26 pounds of dynamite and detonation cord from a Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad facility. The material disappeared Tuesday from a storage building at Rockwood, said Dan Bender, spokesman for the La Plata County Sheriff's Office. "Although thefts of explosives in this area are not common, they're certainly not unheard of, and there's a variety of industrial and agricultural uses for explosives of that type," he said. "There are any number of legitimate uses for it other than making a bomb." The explosives included one-third of a pound and 4-pound sticks,...

Two down… Filed under: Sweden Iraq- Billy (Stockholm, Sweden)@ 8:24 pm Yesterday we noted that Ulf Hjertström, the sexagenarian Swede who survived a 67-day kidnapping ordeal in Baghdad, reportedly was paying professional bounty hunters a handsome fee to track down his erstwhile captors. Expressen, a Swedish tabloid, picked up the story and got in touch with Hjertström to get the lowdown. Hjertström, an oil broker whose career took him to Iraq 25 years ago, makes no bones about the decision to exact revenge on his abductors. “I’ve lived [in Iraq] for a long time. This is how things are done...

MEXICO CITY (AP) - U.S. activists called on the Mexican government to withdraw a postage stamp depicting an exaggerated black cartoon character known as Memin Pinguin, saying the offense was worse than recent remarks about blacks made by President Vicente Fox. Mexico defended the series of five stamps released Wednesday, which depicts a child character from a comic book started in the 1940s that is still published in Mexico. But the Rev. Jesse Jackson said President Bush should pressure Mexico to withdraw the stamps from the market, saying they "insult people around the world." "The impact of this is worse...

Calvin & Hobbes Philosophy on Liberal Left-wing Pseudo-Intellectual Academia

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. In their desperation to conclude another outsourcing-based, anti-US domestic manufacturing free trade deal, the proponents of CAFTA are advancing yet another specious argument in an attempt to win votes from national-security-minded Members of Congress. The argument is essentially that because CAFTA will allegedly help the economies of the CENTRAL American countries, it will, therefore, also help with their respective national security situations and provide political stability as well. Just as the flawed economic argument for CAFTA is that it will help American and Central American firms compete better against the Chinese...

Did Pfizer Inc, purchase The Constitution of the United States of America? ***************** Did Pfizer purchase the government of the State of Connecticut? Pfizer's connections with former Connecticut Governor John Rowland are a matter of public record: "John Rowland, Pfizer's agent in Hartford, became Connecticut's first Governor to plead guilty to taking bribes, yet persisted in referring to them as "gratuities." Pfizer drove hundreds from their homes and businesses outside its new research facility. State and local taxpayers got stuck with a massive tab." "Rowland gave Pfizer everything it wanted in New Haven, on land which many had assumed would...

Clinto said in Houston former First Lady Barbara Bush "announced us. And she said she has started to call me son. I told the Republicans there, I said don't worry, every family has one, you know, the black sheep. I told them, this just shows you the lengths the Bushes would go to get another president in the family. I wish I could get them to adopt Hillary."

A private developer has contacted the local government in Supreme Court Justice David Souter's hometown in New Hampshire asking that the property of the judge – who voted in favor of a controversial decision allowing a city to take residents' homes for private development – be seized to make room for a new hotel. Yesterday, Logan Darrow Clements faxed a request to Chip Meany, the code enforcement officer of the town of Weare, N.H., seeking to start the application process to build a hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road, the present location of Souter's home. Wrote Clements: "Although this property...

Business etiquette coach Barbara Pachter likes to tell the story of a financial executive who, dining with a potential client, licked his knife clean at the end of the meal. "It was a $30 million dollar lick," she said at a recent etiquette seminar in Goshen, New York, referring to the value of the deal the executive lost by offending the potential customer. Businesses are turning to etiquette training to boost their bottom line, according to the coaches who train employees on everything from shaking hands to buttering bread. Simply put, better-behaved employees are more valuable than brutish oafs, they...

There will be a protest of the recent Supreme Court decisions, specifically the property-seizing decision in the New London case.

Just came back from the King Tut exhibit in LA. I saw the exhibit in '76, and have seen the Tut exhibit in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and have been to the Luxor Museum / Valley of Kings / Valley of Queens / Abu Simbel / etc. My girlfriend never saw any of the Tut exhibits before, so together we represent a wide range of pre-existing knowledge about Tut and about ancient Egypt. We both thought the LA exhibit, soon touring the USA, was a waste of time. The exhibit included no closely Tut-related paraphernalia bigger than a breadbox....

It's like a bad dream...But this is real. We live under a regime that can...grab our homes...pays us what it thinks the property's worth, and then hands our property — in finely crafted "sweetheart deals" — to developers... This is not an isolated case...[t]his is happening all across the nation. Local officials looking to boost their tax take through eminent domain like a vampire looks for fresh neck arteries.... Politicians' lust for money doesn't stop with homeowners and small businesses, though. Churches don't even pay taxes. No revenue stream for politicians at all. Uh-oh.... "We don't oppose churches," Council Chairman...

Is Papillon alive and well and living in retirement in the northern Paris suburbs? The extraordinary claim surfaced after a French newspaper recently reported the 104th birthday of Charles Brunier, a former inmate of the Devil's Island penal colony, said to be seeing out his days at the Val-de-France old people's home in Domont, about 12 miles (20 kilometres) outside the French capital. According to staff, the former convict is as tough as old boots and rarely communicates. But when he does, it is often with the same message: that it was he who inspired Henri Charriere to write his...

Cooking: Colonial Cuisine Recreating the cusine of the first Jews in America. Recipes include 1600s Barley Salad, Strawberry Spinach Salad, and Corn Pudding. by Tina Wasserman If you think it's hard to find good produce in the markets today, how do you think you would have fared had you been one of the twenty-three Jewish refugees who arrived in New Amsterdam from Brazil in 1654? Imagine your group landing, penniless, in the harbor of New Amsterdam (pirates looted your ship enroute). Governor Peter Stuyvesant confiscates your few remaining possessions to pay the ship's captain, who claims that he is...

The House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment on flag burning last week, in the course of which Rep. Randy ''Duke'' Cunningham (Republican of California) made the following argument: ''Ask the men and women who stood on top of the Trade Center. Ask them and they will tell you: Pass this amendment." Unlike Congressman Cunningham, I wouldn't presume to speak for those who died atop the World Trade Center. For one thing, citizens of more than 50 foreign countries, from Argentina to Zimbabwe, were killed on 9/11. Of the remainder, maybe some would be in favor of a flag-burning amendment;...

Prophet of Decline An interview with Oriana Fallaci. BY TUNKU VARADARAJAN Thursday, June 23, 2005 NEW YORK--Oriana Fallaci faces jail. In her mid-70s, stricken with a cancer that, for the moment, permits only the consumption of liquids--so yes, we drank champagne in the course of a three-hour interview--one of the most renowned journalists of the modern era has been indicted by a judge in her native Italy under provisions of the Italian Penal Code which proscribe the "vilipendio," or "vilification," of "any religion admitted by the state." In her case, the religion deemed vilified is Islam, and the vilification was...

Jewish World Review June 24, 2005 / 17 Sivan, 5765 And now for the important news .... By Argus Hamilton The Truth about Hillary by Ed Klein made the best-seller list this week. It calls her a cheater and a liar and a backstabber and a late sleeper who barely bathed during law school at Yale. It's the first book to make the case that she married up.