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MINNEAPOLIS – When Meredith Aby met with members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in 2006, she asked what it would take to get them to stop fighting. Jess Sundin did the same during her trip to Colombia 11 years ago. They returned and openly wrote and spoke about their experiences, while criticizing the U.S. government’s involvement in that country. FBI documents recently found by the anti-war activists suggest the trips may have started an investigation into apparent connections between local activists and radical groups in Colombia and the Middle East. One document says the probe expanded to include...

I got myself a Twitter account just four weeks ago. It seems that my fortunes have taken a turn for the worse, having me barely edge out al-Shabaab, Islamist terrorists’ recent cause célèbre, which logged its first tweet on December 7. Al-Shabaab, or “The Youth,” is a militant Islamist group with ties to al-Qaeda that has laid siege to much of southern Somalia since 2006. The group is persistently fighting (and winning) an insurgency against the United Nations-backed Transitional Federal Government, which is contained in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. Still more pressingly, al-Shabaab has mounted attacks against African Union Mission in...

Anti-narcotics agents working for the US government have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds to see how the system works and use the information against Mexican drug cartels, The New York Times reported Sunday. Citing unnamed current and former federal law enforcement officials, the newspaper said the agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders. Some 45,000 people have been killed in Mexico since 2006, when its government launched a major military crackdown against the powerful drug cartels that have terrorized border communities as...

Activists tell The Daily Caller that The Walt Disney Company is refusing to re-air a 9/11-related docudrama, effectively burying politically inconvenient facts about the events which led to the 9/11 terror attacks, in order to protect the political future of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “The Path to 9/11,” first aired on ABC in 2006, portrayed President Bill Clinton’s administration as ignoring warnings and signs that Osama bin Laden and al Qaida were planning a major attack on the United States — a finding supported by The 9/11 Commission Report. But since 2006 Disney CEO Bob Iger has repeatedly refused...

Harry Reid 'Embarrassed' About 2006 Opposition To Raising Debt LimitApril 14, 2011 12:43 PM ABC News’ Matthew Jaffe reports: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today told ABC News that he feels “embarrassed” that four years ago he argued against raising the country’s debt limit. “Why is it right to increase our nation's dependence on foreign creditors?” Reid said on March 16, 2006. “Democrats won't be making an argument to support this legalization, which will weaken our country.” In an interview today on ABC’s “Top Line” with Jonathan Karl and Amy Walter, Reid said those comments were a mistake. “I shouldn’t...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) - A former senior executive at the National Security Agency was charged Thursday with lying and obstruction of justice in an investigation of leaks of classified information to a newspaper. Federal prosecutors said Thomas Drake, 52, served as a source for many articles about the NSA in an unidentified newspaper, including articles that contained classified information.</p>

Tim Pawlenty Praises the Individual Mandate Tim Pawlenty: - "Governor Romney is an outstanding governor, he is an unbelievably bright, and nimble, and gifted public policy leader in MA and America has been well-served by his leadership as well." "I believe we should move toward Universal coverage.." "Everybody should be in a healthplan of some sort..." "How we get there becomes important but a mandate by itself though potentially helpful is not an answer of itself." "I think we have to move in stages" "We should start by covering all kids." http://www.youtube.com/user/ThePawlentyMandate Romney was present at the conference...

ISLAMABAD — Pakistani authorities still have three of Osama bin Laden's wives and eight of his children in custody, nearly a week after the U.S. raid that killed the Saudi terrorist leader, and no countries have asked for their return, the government said Sunday. Pakistan gained custody of bin Laden's family members after the covert U.S. operation on May 2 that killed the al-Qaida chief and four others at his hide-out in the northwestern city of Abbottabad and further strained relations between the two nations. Their questioning could provide more information on the U.S. military operation and help reveal how...

NOTE The following text is a quote: Extradited Hacker Sentenced to 10 Years in Federal Prison for Masterminding First-Ever Hack Into Internet Phone Networks Defendant Also Ordered to Pay Over $1 Million in Restitution NEWARK, NJ—The first individual ever charged with hacking into the networks of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers and reselling hacked VoIP services for a profit was sentenced today to 120 months in prison, United States Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced. Edwin Andres Pena, 27, transmitted over 10 million minutes of unauthorized telephone calls over the victims' networks. Pena, a Venezuelan citizen, fled the United States...

WASHINGTON -- The health of terrorist cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman, the so-called Blind Sheik, is deteriorating _ renewing fears that his death in prison could trigger an attack on the United States, officials said Thursday. There is no credible indication that an attack on the U.S. is imminent, said several law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the situation. In a two-page bulletin, dated Dec. 8, the FBI reported to federal intelligence officials that Rahman was rushed from prison to a Missouri hospital two days earlier for a blood transfusion. There, doctors discovered...

Radical Islam, Little Rock shooting spotlighted in congressional hearingUpdated: 3/10 5:37 pm WASHINGTON D.C. - - Melvin Bledsoe is one of the people testifying in a controversial hearing on Capital Hill in Washington D.C. His son, Abdulhakim Muhammad, 25, is charged with capital murder in Pulaski County for the attack on two soldiers. "If we knew our serious his extremism had become we could have put in every effort to prevent the tragedy in Arkansas from even happening," Bledsoe says. Melvin Bledsoe offered testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee about the supposed radicalization of his son Abdulhakim Muhammad. Describing...

Man Confesses To ‘Jihad Operation' Murder In Nashvilleby Jeff Tang Posted: Apr 13, 2011 6:57 PM EDT NASHVILLE, Tenn. - A former TSU student on trial for murder in Arkansas said he killed a man in East Nashville in 2006. **SNIP** But, in a letter to an Arkansas Judge, Muhammad confesses to another murder, an East Nashville man in 2006. "The letter was sent to us immediately after it was discovered and our cold case detectives will be going to interview him to see how much he knows about the case to see if he was involved," said Metro Police...

British archaeologists are seeking to authenticate what could be a landmark discovery in the documentation of early Christianity: a trove of 70 lead codices that appear to date from the 1st century CE, which may include key clues to the last days of Jesus' life. As UK Daily Mail reporter Fiona Macrae writes, some researchers are suggesting this could be the most significant find in Christian archeology since the Dead Sea scrolls in 1947. The codices turned up five years ago in a remote cave in eastern Jordan—a region where early Christian believers may have fled after the destruction...

The joke that's going around is that the Mayans got it wrong: The world is ending this year, not 2012. Here's the lates sign of that. A superbug is spreading around America, and has hit Southern California. LA Times: A dangerous drug-resistant bacterium has spread to patients in Southern California, according to a study by Los Angeles County public health officials. More than 350 cases of the Carbapenem-Resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae, or CRKP, have been reported at healthcare facilities in Los Angeles County, mostly among elderly patients at skilled-nursing and long-term care facilities, according to a study by Dr. Dawn Terashita,...

A onetime Tony Rezko business partner, who once was a Chicago cop and chief executive of a company that won a $50 million security contract in Iraq, has pleaded guilty to federal charges in Chicago after he cooperated with authorities. Daniel T. Frawley pleaded guilty on Feb. 14 to bank fraud and structuring transactions — a plea that came about two weeks after his charges were made public.

Even in 2006, then Senator, Barack Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling stating, “the fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies.”

A rather unexpected voice just joined the chorus of the liberal media outcry over sex scandals among some Catholic clergymen: none other than Evo Morales, Bolivia’s socialist and neopagan president. A Neopagan Socialist... Indeed, Mr. Morales, leader of the Movement to Socialism, figured he should teach the Pope how things in the Church ought to be run. For those who may not know, he was inaugurated President of Bolivia in 2006 using indigenous pagan rituals.1 The Bolivian newspaper Los Tiempos, of Cochabamba (6/20/2006), described the ceremony: “Evo Morales assumed political power with a spectacular display of religious rituals alluding to...

Congressman told FBI he asked for -- and got -- free home upgrades ### Convicted political fixer Tony Rezko gave U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez free upgrades on a riverfront town house after the congressman asked for them, Gutierrez told the FBI, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned. Gutierrez's comments to federal agents in a previously undisclosed 2008 interview contradict what the congressman told the Sun-Times in 2006 about the purchase. "I walked in with my wife -- as any other consumer could have -- and purchased the unit at the listed price, with no considerations," the Northwest Side congressman said then,...

Flashback 2006: Dingy Reid Says Raising Debt Ceiling Will Weaken Country, Hurt The Economy… “If my Republican friends believe that increasing our debt by almost $800 billion today and more than $3 trillion over the last five years is the right thing to do, they should be upfront about it. They should explain why they think more debt is good for the economy.”

The Maoist government of Nepal has collapsed after a failed attempt to remove the country's right-wing army chief. The cabinet bid to sack Gen Rookmangud Katawal prompted the second largest party, the centrist UML, to resign from the ruling coalition. The Himalayan country is emerging from a 10 year civil war which ended with a ceasefire in 2006. Last year the former Maoist rebels won national elections and formed a coalition government. But the peace process is now stuck on the issue that sparked the latest crisis – the integration of former Maoist fighters into the traditionally conservative national army....

KATHMANDU: Battling for the removal of the controversial army chief, Gen Rookmangud Katawal, and his defender, President Ram Baran Yadav, Nepal's Maoist party walked into an ambush when an embarrassing video tape showed Maoist Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda boasting his guerrilla troops' number had been five-fold inflated during a UN count. In the same video, aired by Nepal's gleeful public television stations on Tuesday night, he was also shown as making scathing remarks about "reactionary" India and the US, saying that if they scented the constituent assembly election would lead to a Maoist victory, they would never allow...

So the chairman of Nepal's Maoist radicals brags that he and his fellow-travellers tricked United Nations officials and admits that the 2006 peace deal was a sham - and gets caught on videotape doing it. The video of the recently resigned Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, also known as Prachanda, was shot in January 2008 and just surfaced.

MOSCOW (AP) - A Muslim cleric formerly held at Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba said Tuesday U.S. guards there regularly desecrated the Qur'an by putting it into a toilet, although he added he never witnessed it himself. Airat Vakhitov, who described himself as a former imam of a mosque in Tatarstan, a majority Muslim republic in southern Russia, is one of seven men released from Guantanamo in 2004 and returned to Russia. He and the six others were held in Russia for three months, then released a year ago. Vakhitov said at a news conference organized by the state RIA-Novosti...

The CIA has come closer to capturing or killing Osama bin Laden’s top deputy than was previously known, during a nine-year hunt at the root of a devastating 2009 suicide bombing at an agency base in Afghanistan, The Associated Press has learned. The CIA missed a chance to nab Ayman al-Zawahiri in 2003 in the northwest Pakistani city of Peshawar, where he met with another senior al-Qaeda leader who was apprehended the next day, several current and former U.S. intelligence officials said. The fugitive Egyptian doctor may also have narrowly survived a bombing by Pakistani military planes in 2004, the...

Obama gets three-book deal worth $1.9 million December 17, 2004 — U.S. Sen.-elect Barack Obama, who saw a book he wrote a decade ago jump onto best seller lists after his keynote address to the Democratic National Convention this summer, has landed a three-book deal worth $1.9 million. Crown Publishing Group and Random House Children's Books, both divisions of Random House Inc., announced Friday that Obama will write two books for adults as well as a children's book he will work on with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters. "Writing is something that Senator Obama obviously enjoys as...

We are told by careful pollsters that half of the American people believe that American troops should be brought home from Iraq immediately. This news discourages supporters of our efforts there. Not me, though: I am relieved. Given press coverage of our efforts in Iraq, I am surprised that 90 percent of the public do not want us out right now. Between January 1 and September 30, 2005, nearly 1,400 stories appeared on the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news. More than half focused on the costs and problems of the war, four times as many as those that discussed...

Do you want Muslim Brotherhood operatives serving in the Congress? Sestak is in the pocket of Hamas-linked Muslim Brotherhood CAIR, and I have been reporting on this evil axis since 2007. He is lying about his ties to CAIR. What does that tell you? Art Moore over at WND: 2nd Sestak scandal days before election Unindicted terrorist co-conspirator leader claims to have hosted home fundraiser for Democrat Since his election to the House in 2006, Democratic Senate candidate Joe Sestak has fended off strong criticism of his relationship with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a federally designated terrorist co-conspirator shown...

Note: Photo included. PHOTO CAPTION: "Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Othman Ahmed al Ghamdi, in a tape released by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula." SNIPPET: "A videotape released by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) earlier this week says that a former Guantanamo detainee is now a commander within the terrorist organization. The former detainee, Othman Ahmed al Ghamdi, has risen to the rank of operational commander within AQAP as other senior terrorists within the organization have been killed in recent strikes. The tape, which is titled “America and the Final Trap,” confirms that three AQAP leaders were killed...

Top Al Qaeda operative taken into US custody 10 minutes ago The United States has taken into custody a top al-Qaeda operative who plotted to assassinate Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf and other officials, a Pentagon spokesman said Friday. Abd al Hadi al-Iraqi, who was taken to the US navy prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba about a week ago, was intercepted while trying to reach Iraq to take over Al-Qaeda operations and to plot attacks from there against western targets outside Iraq, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. He is "one of Al-Qaeda's highest ranking and senior operatives at the time of...

SNIPPET: "WASHINGTON — A US man has been charged after he compiled a hit list of 15 people he believed had harmed Muslim civilians and deserved to die, court documents showed Wednesday. Paul Rockwood and his wife Nadia were charged with lying to federal investigators about the compilation and content of the list, which Nadia Rockwood delivered to an unnamed individual in April at her husband's request." SNIPPET: "According to plea agreement documents obtained by AFP Wednesday, Paul Rockwood converted to Islam around late 2001 and soon "became a strict adherent to the violent jihad-promoting ideology of cleric Anwar al-Awlaki."...

(CBS/AP) NEW YORK -- The question was simple: “Would you like to die as a martyr?” The putative terrorist unhesitatingly replied yes—there was no greater way to die in Islam. The right answer put the man in the midst of a terrorist plot conceived as more devastating than the 9/11 attacks. He was soon making surveillance trips around John F. Kennedy International Airport—the “chicken farm,” as the planners dubbed their target -- and visiting the Trinidad compound of a radical Muslim group. On Saturday, the insider—a twice-convicted drug dealer—was revealed as a government informant whose surreptitious work undermined a plot...

Attacks on nuclear power stations, oil and gas terminals, Canary Wharf and Heathrow’s control tower were being considered by leaders of the plot to blow up seven transatlantic airliners in mid-flight, a court was told yesterday. Documents found on computer memory sticks at the home of an alleged terrorist ringleader contained a list of targets across Britain – including the gas pipeline between Britain and Belgium. The man, Assad Sarwar, was said to be in contact with terrorist leaders overseas and visited Pakistan a month before his arrest as preparations for the airline attacks were being finalised. Peter Wright, QC,...

Some Milestones in Israel-Palestine1834 - 1886 - 1920 - 1922 - 1929 - 1938 - 1941 - 1948 - 1950s-1960s - 1970 1972 - 1973 - 1975 - 1976 - 1982 - 1987 - 1994 - 2000 - 2001 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007 - 2008 - 2010 1834 First recorded attack on native Jews in Israel by Muslims, is the one in June 1834, Safed (the Plunder), the massacres and mass rapes went on for 33 days, (an inciter, Muhammed Damoor, a self-proclaimed prophet, ‘prophesied’ the attack for which he agitated). It was repeated in 1838. 1886 First...

Link to page with YouTube Video.(Video caption: Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) speaking at a forum on national housing policy on December 11, 2006. Three weeks after making this speech at the Treasury Department, Frank became Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Frank on Democrats taking over regulatory reform:“You will see far less difference with Democrats taking over in the Financial Services regulatory area than in virtually any other area of public policy, because we did work together on things like regulatory relief and we have more to do yet in the deregulation. One of the things we did was...

Despite a coordinated hype campaign between left-wing pro-illegal immigration activists and the mainstream media, turnout was a bust at May Day marches in two bellwether American cities where crowds were much lower than expected. In Los Angeles, the turnout was a mere tenth of the half-million that marched there four years ago.In a preview article published yestereday, Reuters said of the pending Los Angeles march:Marches across the state on Saturday will show whether Latinos are energized. The standard will be the rallies in March 2006, when some 500,000 people took over downtown Los Angeles to oppose a tough federal bill...

Obama Says U.S. Would Defend Israel Militarily Reuter, 1-Apr-2010 President Obama said yesterday the United States would defend Israel militarily if necessary against Iran, a statement that appeared to be his most explicit commitment to Israel's defense. In an interview with Reuters, Obama said he is concerned about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's "menacing talk" about Israel, such as his comments denying the Holocaust and saying Israel should be wiped off the map. "Israel is a solid ally of the United States. We will rise to Israel's defense, if need be. So this kind of menacing talk is disturbing. It's not...

It looks like president-elect Obama will name John P. Holdren as his science advisor. Holdren is a professor of environmental policy at Harvard and former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. As Ron Bailey points out, he has been an activist on the ecological left and no friend of free markets. Perhaps more striking is his activism well beyond his own academic specialty, arguing, for instance, that scientists have a responsibility to advance the cause of the elimination of all nuclear weapons and seeking controls on population growth. And he didn’t say all this in the...

Visit Pajamas. Yesterday morning, I had an encounter on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. with Julia Tarver Mason — a lawyer who represents several accused terrorists. I found that Ms. Mason is more willing to speak with terrorists then reporters. My interest in Ms. Mason began two nights ago, when I read the investigative piece by Debra Burlingame and Thomas Joscelyn in the Wall Street Journal regarding 400 American lawyers from high priced law firms who have “volunteered” their time to personally wage “lawfare” on behalf of enemy combatants held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. One of the premier...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The unemployment rate fell to the lowest level in more than five years in October, the government reported Friday, a sign of unexpected strength in the job market. The jobless rate sank to 4.4 percent from 4.6 percent in September, the Labor Department said. It was the lowest since May 2001. Economists had forecast the rate would hold steady. The department also said that employers added 92,000 jobs in October, down from a revised 148,000 in September, and short of Wall Street forecasts for a gain of 125,000. But the September reading was revised up from...

A member of a homegrown terrorist group pleaded guilty Friday to participating in a plot to set off truck bombs in front of Canada's main stock exchange and two government buildings.

This is a video of Bryant Gumbel lamenting the fact that we even have a winter olympics.

Murtha-tied Company Wins Sole-Source Vaccine Contract Michael Goldfarb January 4, 2010 Several months ago we warned that Tara O'Toole who recently became Under Secretary for the Science and Technology Directorate at the Department of Homeland Security would reward her friends resulting in millions of dollars in gifts to John Murtha cronies who supported her nomination. And it now appears the Murtha/O'Toole favor factory has begun production. In February 2008, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a request for proposal (RFP) for a second-generation Anthrax vaccine. This RFP was issued to be a re-procurement for a contract that...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

HAMMOND, Ind. -- A Federal judge refused to throw out a Purdue University student's indictment on charges alleging he urged the assassination of President George Bush and made threats against other administration officials. Friday's ruling by U.S. District Court Judge James Moody clears the way for Vikram Buddhi's trial to begin June 25 in Moody's Hammond courtroom. Buddhi, an Indian national who was attending advanced engineering classes at Purdue's West Lafayette campus, faces an 11-count complaint for alleged comments he made in an Internet chat room in 2005 and 2006. The indictment alleges that he made threats against the president,...

Last week a Department of State retiree and his wife were arrested and charged with spying for Cuba for thirty years. In this article I will sort out what we know, don't know and need to explore about this matter. Walter Kendall Myers, Jr .and his wife Gwendolyn Steingarber Myers

Wow. This story has just taken my breath away. Do you remember the State Department analyst in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (relatively obscure but one of the US government's intelligence agencies) who caused a storm in late 2006 with his disdainful remarks about the US-UK "special relationship? His name was Kendall Myers and I was one of two British journalists who reported his decidedly undiplomatic comments. He retired quietly in 2007. Well, he's just been arrested as a spy for Cuba for nearly 30 years. The Cubans apparently knew him better as their Agent 202. I'm told that...

Welcome Newcomers! This Sandbox is devoted to giving you a place to practice basic HTML, and to get some coaching. So, first things first: Go to michigander's [ HTML Bootcamp (Cyber patriot training)] and learn there how to change font color, font size, font face, and the like. THERE'S A WEALTH OF INFORMATION THERE NOT COVERED HERE (so as to avoid duplication). Learn there also how to post a link and an image, then come back here to practice. If you're having problems, folks will drop by occasionally to give you pointers and help you troubleshoot. Boring posts are...

Obama Shakes Hands With Libya's Qaddafi President Obama's gesture was his latest effort to reach out to controversial world leaders in an attempt to improve the United States' standing around the world that he says was damaged by former President Bush's unilateral diplomacy. [Pic in URL: US President Barack Obama, right,and Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi pictured during the G8/G5 summit in L'Aquila, Italy Thursday July 9, 2009. (AP) President Obama shook hands with Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi Thursday, a sign that relations have improved considerably between the U.S. and the North African nation. The two met as they posed for...

Despite denials from her soon-to-be former employers, the Albright Group, former Clinton EPA head and soon-to-be climate change czar Carol Browner served as a de facto lobbyist for Dubai Ports World, owned by the United Arab Emirate of Dubai, which arranged to buy a company operating six major U.S. ports, including New York and New Jersey. Browner told the Obama transition team that she never served as a lobbyist in her time in Washington, and her employer, the Albright Group, owned by former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, also said that the firm does not lobby. But in 2006, when...

Al Gore’s campaign against global warming is shifting into high gear. Reporters and commentators follow his every move and bombard the public with notice of his activities and opinions. But while the mainstream media promote his ideas about the state of planet Earth, they are mostly silent about the dramatic impact his economic proposals would have on America. And journalists routinely ignore evidence that he may personally benefit from his programs. Would the romance fizzle if Gore’s followers realized how much their man stands to gain? Earlier this year Gore experienced a notable public relations debacle. The Tennessee Center for...