Free Republic

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.), known for his cantankerous ways and for not speaking to media unless it’s his idea, was overheard at the Delta Crown lounge at Reagan National Airport today talking on his cellphone about an incident he said occurred three weeks ago while at an Episcopal church auction. Please note, a church auction. Our source, a Democratic operative who heard the whole thing, said he was “very loud”. Sensenbrenner was overheard saying that after buying all their “crap” (his word) a woman approached him and praised first lady Michelle Obama. He told the woman that Michelle should practice...

When federal agents with Operation Fast and Furious told Andre Howard to sell weapons to illegal purchasers, he complied, but he feared someone would get hurt. Then a border agent was shot. Reporting from Glendale and Rio Rico, Ariz.— In the fall of 2009, ATF agents installed a secret phone line and hidden cameras in a ceiling panel and wall at Andre Howard's Lone Wolf gun store. They gave him one basic instruction: Sell guns to every illegal purchaser who walks through the door. For 15 months, Howard did as he was told. To customers with phony IDs or wads...

Who would have ever thought that the youth would revolt over bringing their own lunches to school? But while young communists march against austerity in Britain, young people at one Chicago school are fighting their administrators for the opportunity to pack their own meals. All because the school wants to promote healthy choices. “Who thinks the lunch is not good enough?” the Chicago Tribune recently observed seventh-grader Fernando Dominguez shouting to his lunch mates in Spanish and English at Little Village Academy. It‘s a public school on Chicago’s West Side. As numerous hands reached for the ceiling, Dominguez led a...

Hero died today

I have a problem that I haven't seen asked about before. On my microsoft laser mouse, I have a 'thumb' button that I use when I want the magnifier to come up. It would always take a while to 'work' after first booting up but I suspect that was due to all the other programs loading. The problem Now is that .. The Only way to get it to work is to go to my Control Panel, click on the mouse icon, wait for the mouse page to come up and then click OK! All of the other functions of...

EADS North America will pursue the tanker bid on its own, acting as prime and bringing in some 200 suppliers when it bids on the tanker. Board Chairman Ralph Crosby made it official at the National Press Club, saying the tone of debate about the program needed to calm down, but also taking a combative tone, saying: “It’s unambiguous we have the better tanker.” And Crosby reiterated the familiar war cry that only EADS has a working flying tanker ready to sell.. Then CEO Sean O’Keefe introduced representatives of the major partners in the program: GE; Eaton Aerospace; GKN; Westland...

Snips: At least six people on the no-fly list were denied boarding in a 48-hour period between Saturday and Monday this week, according to the officials. Two of the six were stopped at London's Heathrow Airport.M. On Saturday, an Egyptian man on the no-fly list was stopped from flying on American Airlines flight 113 from London to Miami. The next day, Sunday, a Saudi Arabian passenger was stopped from boarding United Airlines flight 929 to Chicago. Officials said the man was sent back to Saudi Arabia by the British. In two other overseas cases involving people on the no-fly list,...

Martha Coakley ballyhoos the fact that she earned an “A+” from ACORN. Ironically, this perfect grade was awarded for “responding to the foreclosure crisis.” No single non-governmental entity is more responsible for the real estate meltdown than ACORN. Coakley’s press release goes on to detail various prosecutions of shady subprime operators but, of course, there is not a word about any investigation or prosecution of ACORN. ACORN’s role in the residential mortgage crisis, much of it driven by subprime lending, is no mystery. Starting in the Seventies, ACORN saw the big banks as shakedown targets. ACORN screamed “racism.” It accused...

Under fire for backing away from a campaign promise to open up health care negotiations to C-SPAN cameras, the White House on Monday highlighted a report from a coalition of watchdog groups awarding the Obama administration an “A” for its openness. The report — released by the nonprofit groups Common Cause, Democracy 21, the League of Women Voters and U.S. PIRG — gave the administration high marks across the board for its various initiatives to increase transparency and reduce the power of lobbyists, both of which were key elements in candidate Barack Obama’s campaign pledge to change the way Washington...

Even though the DC protest was much, much, bigger every little bit still helps. I did not see any SRM coverage so all the more reason to cover the one that happened in Phoenix today! Lots of flags and love of country on display . It happened in front of the State Senate. If they continue to ignore us using the first they will eventually see us use the 2nd amendment.

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon presented a grim portrait of the Afghanistan war Thursday, offering no assurances about how long Americans will be fighting there or how many U.S. combat troops it will take to win. Defeating the Taliban and al-Qaida will take "a few years," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, with success on a larger scale in the desperately poor country a much longer proposition. He acknowledged that the Taliban has a firm hold on parts of the country President Barack Obama has called vital to U.S. security.

TALLAHASSEE -- State Sen. Jim King, a Jacksonville Republican and 22-year veteran of the Legislature, has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, the lawmaker's longtime spokeswoman said Saturday. “During a recent routine post-legislative session checkup, Senator Jim King was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. While Senator King plans to seek additional medical counsel and aggressive treatment, he is aware that this particular type of cancer is difficult to treat and manage, and that the outcomes are, at best, guarded," said Sarah Bascom, a political consultant and longtime spokeswoman for King, in a statement.

Note: The following text is a quote: Two Missouri Brothers Among Those Indicted in $4 Million Nationwide Spamming Conspiracy Millions of E-Mail Addresses Illegally Harvested from Computers at 2,000 Schools KANSAS CITY, MO—Two Missouri men and their company are among those indicted by a federal grand jury in a nationwide e-mail spamming case that victimized more than 2,000 colleges and universities in a scheme that sold more than $4 million worth of products to students, announced Matt J. Whitworth, Acting United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri. Amir Ahmad Shah, 28, of St. Louis., his brother, Osmaan Ahmad...

Fish Studies Answer Flood Question by Brian Thomas, M.S.* According to the Bible, the world before Noah’s Flood, including the oceans, must have been idyllic. That was destroyed by the year-long global deluge, during which the earth’s land mass broke into continents, massive amounts of sediment were deposited and then partially eroded, and new and perhaps deeper oceans became more salty from continental runoff. If this historical picture is accurate, then at least one area of confusion needs to be addressed: How did “saltwater fish” live through all that?...

The traditional understanding of DNA has recently been transformed beyond recognition. DNA does not, as we thought, carry a linear, one-dimensional, one-way, sequential code—like the lines of letters and words on this page. And the 97% in humans that does not carry protein-coding genes is not, as many people thought, fossilized ‘junk’ left over from our evolutionary ancestors. DNA information is overlapping-multi-layered and multi-dimensional; it reads both backwards and forwards; and the ‘junk’ is far more functional than the protein code, so there is no fossilized history of evolution. No human engineer has ever even imagined, let alone designed an...

Scientists at MIT have recorded a nearly simultaneous world-wide increase in methane levels. This is the first increase in ten years, and what baffles science is that this data contradicts theories stating man is the primary source of increase for this greenhouse gas. It takes about one full year for gases generated in the highly industrial northern hemisphere to cycle through and reach the southern hemisphere. However, since all worldwide levels rose simultaneously throughout the same year, it is now believed this may be part of a natural cycle in mother nature - and not the direct result of man's...

BAGHDAD (AP) - U.S. and Iraqi forces detained a suspect linked to networks bringing sophisticated roadside bombs into Iraq during a raid Friday in the main Shiite district in Baghdad. Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr meanwhile issued a statement, his first since his call for peaceful resistance earlier this month. In it he blamed the United States for Iraq's problems. The suspect, who was detained by U.S. and Iraqi forces during a raid in the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City, was believed to be tied to networks bringing the weapons known as explosively formed projectiles, or EFPs, into Iraq,...

Team expected to announce plan next week to get rights to land for a baseball-only stadium -- Cisco likely to be big sponsor - The Oakland A's are set to announce a major step forward next week in their plans to move down the Nimitz Freeway and build a 36,000-seat ballpark in Fremont. After months of negotiations, A's officials are ready to declare their intention to acquire the rights to a 143-acre site near the former Baylands racetrack, city-owned land that is now leased to Cisco Systems, sources close to the negotiations said Monday. The A's plan to announce...

Last Friday, we posted Mark Kennedy's new television ad, which takes the Iraq war head-on. We expected it to be effective, and it has been. The Kennedy campaign has just finished its latest round of polling, and the new ad, combined with Kennedy's matchless work ethic and the Republican resurgence that we are seeing over most of the country, has sliced Democrat Amy Klobuchar's lead in half. Mark is now within single digits and closing fast. One more thought: yesterday was the fourth anniversary of the Wellstone plane crash that, together with his subsequent funeral, was one of the decisive...

HOT DANG--IT'S FRIDAY!!! This thread is dedicated to your employers and co-workers. It's dedicated to the people you love and the people you hate. This thread is dedicated to all the office games and pranks. This thread is dedicated to the office flirts and the office tards. We salute the fond memory of the office snitch and the promoted kiss-@ss. We dedicate this thread to those that frequent the restroom and those caught in the janitor's closet. We even salute you, Guy That Wears Way Too Much Cologne Here's To Office Politics: Rock On OFST!

From the desk of Paul Belien on Wed, 2006-09-20 23:11 Dr Koenraad Elst, one of Belgium’s best orientalists and an occasional contributor to this website (if I had time I would translate more of his Dutch-language contributions into English), told me last week that he thinks “Islam is in decline, despite its impressive demographic and military surge” – which according to Dr Elst is merely a “last upheaval.” He acknowledges, however, that this decline can take some time (at least in terms of the individual human life span) and that it is possible that Islam will succeed in becoming the...

(Sept. 19) - Adopted two days after her first birthday, Sarah Culberson grew up the youngest daughter in a close-knit family from Morgantown, W.Va. She was surrounded by love in her home, but always wondered about her roots. Searching to unlock the secrets of her past, at age 22, Culberson began searching for her birth parents. She quickly learned that her mom had died a dozen years earlier from cancer. Culberson was crushed. A few years later, a private investigator helped her locate her birth father, along with an unbelievable surprise. Culberson wasn't an average suburban girl -- she was...

NEW DELHI (AFP) - Pope Benedict XVI's attack on Islam has stirred anger in India with the head of the National Commission for Minorities saying he sounded like a medieval crusader. Pope Benedict provoked worldwide outcry with comments Tuesday during a visit to his native Germany in which he talked about the "issue of jihad, holy war", a term used by Islamic extremists to justify acts of terror. "The language used by the pope sounds like that of his 12th-century counterpart who ordered the crusades," said Hamid Ansari, chairman of the influential National Commission for Minorities. The commission's role includes...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 /Christian Newswire/ -- The Foundation for Biomedical Research today applauds the stiff sentencing imposed against three members of a radical animal-rights activist group, known as SHAC USA. Federal District Court Judge Anne E. Thompson delivered the sentencing against the group and three of its six members – who were convicted last March on all charged counts for their roles in a campaign to terrorize an animal research company and its employees. Judge Thompson stopped short of delivering the maximum punishment available, though she did sentence the SHAC entity to five years of probation plus restitution and assessments...

Fat is not a feminist issue, as Susie Orbach once claimed. Fat is a class issue. Rich, educated people are not fat; you see almost no children in private schools who are overweight. Fatness and obesity are directly related to lower education and lower incomes. What is sad is that at a time when this country is richer than ever and ought to have better schools than ever, we have far more fat people than ever — a dangerous explosion of flab. Last week the Department of Health issued a report grimly called Forecasting Obesity to 2010 and its findings...

52 REASONS NOT TO MOW 37 WAYS TO HELP TREES Please download with 100% cotton, rice, recycled, or scrap paper Ron Howard, director of A Beautiful Mind and many other films,made his first film at age 8.. an anti mowing film which showed the nature of mowers' attacks on lawns. Art Buchwald: People shouldn't be judged by the length of their grass. In 2003 through now, the world has seen floods, famine, fire, mudslides, hurricanes, tornados and other disasters created by the unprecedented destruction of trees around the world. Trees are nature's weather stabilizers. We need trillions of trees.. new...

PLYMOUTH, Mass. (July 2) - In this village settled by thrifty Pilgrims, you can still buy penny candy for a penny, but tourist Alan Ferguson doubts he'll be able to dig any 1-cent pieces out of his pockets. He rarely carries pennies because "they take up a lot of room for how much value they have." Instead, like so many other Americans, he dumps his pennies into a bucket back home in Sarasota, Fla. Pity the poor penny! It packs so little value that merry kids chuck pennies into the fountain near the candy store, just to watch them splash...

Marijuana users can be arrested for drugged driving weeks after they toast a joint, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in a Jackson County appeal. A veteran prosecutor hailed the ruling as a correct interpretation of the zero-tolerance law that will make enforcement easier. A longtime defense attorney said the high court has opened the floodgates on overreaching government. "This goes to show the Supreme Court does not seem to care about individual rights," Jackson attorney Jerry Engle said. At issue were cases from Jackson and Grand Traverse counties. The local case involved the prosecution of Dennis Kurts for driving...

BOISE, Idaho - Most days, 6-year-old Aubrey Matthews spends her energy fighting a brain tumor growing behind her eyes. But the first-grader managed to foil crimes and chase an arch-nemesis through Boise on Friday, serving the city as the superhero "Star" with assistance from the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Idaho, The Idaho Statesman reported. When she donned her blue and metallic superhero costume, Star took on the super-powers of X-ray vision, superhuman strength, speed and blowing power _ and a mission: To capture the villain who had stolen a golden star from the Idaho Historical Museum. After Star was alerted by...

THESE ARE THE SENATORS WHO VOTED TO GIVE SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS TO ILLEGAL ALIENS REGARDLESS OF POLITICAL PARTY, THESE POLITICIANS NEED TO BE DEFEATED IN 2006, 2008 OR 2010, WHENEVER THEY NEXT COME UP FOR OFFICE. SEND THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW; THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES NEEDS TO KNOW THIS INFORMATION -- THAT IS, UNLESS THEY DO NOT MIND SHARING THEIR SOCIAL SECURITY WITH FOREIGN WORKERS WHO NEVER PAID INTO IT AND AMERICAN CITIZENS ARE BEING LEFT OUT. Grouped by Home State Alabama: Alaska: Stevens (R-AK), Yea Arizona: McCain (R-AZ), Yea Arkansas: Lincoln (D-AR), Yea Pryor (D-AR),...

June 7, 2006 — A federal judge ordered two attorneys to settle their dispute by using the children's playground game "rock, paper, scissors." The ruling yesterday by Judge Gregory Presnell of the U.S. District Court in Orlando, Fla., stated that he was so dissatisfied with the case's "latest in a series of Gordian knots" that he is fashioning "a new form of alternative dispute resolution." In the dispute at hand, the two attorneys could not agree about where to take the sworn statement of a witness in a case concerning payment of insurance claims. The judge's order states that the...

Senate Voted to End U. S. as a NationSurrender to Latin Invasion Now Clear Lou Dobbs Tonight - CNN - June 1Dobbs: The issue, as you said, that the nation would cease to exist, what do you mean by that? West: Well, the kind of provisions that are in the Senate... and it will be mainly Hispanic. It will be mainly Mexican. -- And so, what the question becomes is, do we want to become a northern section of Latin America? Do we cease to become literally an English- speaking people, become bilingual, and / or Spanish- speaking? And...

I am curious why none of the media covers the most important aspect of the Malvo shootings. If you look at Newspapers on the dates when the shootings are underway you discover something I find quite interesting. The shootings begin to dominate the news the day before the debate on the Iraq war starts and they catch them the day after the declaration of war??? If you ask most people "do you remember the debate about starting the second Iraq war", they will all answer "yes of course". But if you followup with the question "name one point in the...

I recently received a reply to a post that stated: "This should be beneath a "freeper". Sad." So I asked.. what is it that makes a FReeper? My reply (and I will admit was tasteless) was also questioning. It stirred controversy and was removed? Why Moderators? Can you not tell me? Did it not meet with your "FReeper" mentality? According to all posted guidelines it should be listed but no, you chose to delete it. Yes.. I'm the first one IBTZ, I'm sure you'll nick me for speaking up..

Since we all work for a living, I am thinking that Saturday is a good day to stage a demonstration at the Capitol Building. 10am to 12pm, signs, people, protests. Lets show the media that it is not just a bunch of out-of-work illegals that are upset about the situation.

Time to dust off the whoopee cushions and hand buzzers. April Fools' Day is here and there's no better place for wisecracks and shenanigans than at work. In its annual April Fools' Day survey, CareerBuilder.com found 33 percent of workers have played a practical joke on a co-worker and 17 percent are planning office tricks for this year's holiday. Although it might be thrilling to finally one-up the office funnyman, pranks also help beat something that's no laughing matter: workplace stress. More than half of workers reported working under stress in another CareerBuilder.com survey. Stress and worry on the job...

HARRISBURG -- Cash with far higher-than-normal trace levels of cocaine can be seized as contraband from speeding drivers, a divided state appeals court ruled today. The 5-2 Commonwealth Court decision concerned the seizure of $451,000 from two separate vehicle stops by state police on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in 2002 and 2004.

How’s your 'Progenitor A?' By David Rennie, Europe Correspondent (Filed: 07/03/2006) Spain has taken another step in its journey from conservative to liberal bastion by creating new birth certificates to avoid discrimination against same-sex couples. According to an announcement in the Official Bulletin of State "The expression "father" will be replaced with "Progenitor A", and "mother" will be replaced with "Progenitor B"."The head of the national Civil Register, Pilar Blanco-Morales, told the newspaper ABC that the change took account of a new law on same-sex marriages passed by the socialist government in July. The move has prompted sharp criticism from...

PARIS AND SKOPJE, MACEDONIA – Serbia and Montenegro, already struggling to find its place in Europe, risks becoming the first state ever to be formally branded genocidal, as judges at the World Bank last week began hearing arguments in a Bosnian lawsuit over crimes committed during the war in the early 1990s. The case could make Serbia, as the successor state to Yugoslavia, liable for tens of billions of dollars in reparations. But Bosnian Muslims say the suit's importance lies elsewhere, in creating an accurate and unchallengeable account of the conflict, which continues to poison regional politics. "For our future,...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Some Florida cities would like to throw a dog a bone _ or maybe a burger and some fries. Dogs would be able to sit with humans at outdoor restaurant tables in some communities under a measure advancing in the Florida Legislature. The bill, approved by a House committee Wednesday, would create a three-year test program to allow cities to grant restaurants that want to host dogs special permission to do so under certain conditions. Rep. Sheri McInvale, an Orlando Republican, filed the bill after some restaurant owners complained because they were threatened with fines for allowing...

Graffiti scribbled on a mosque in the village of Bnai Elias, calling Mohammed “a pig,” sparked Arab riots in Samaria Sunday afternoon. An Israeli motorist was wounded and evacuated to the hospital. The motorist was lightly wounded when her car was stoned on the Azoun bypass road. After being struck in the head by a rock, she continued driving to the community of Karnei Shomron where she received first aid before being evacuated to the hospital. Four other Israelis were treated for shock after their vehicles were attacked by stone throwing mobs. Hundreds of Arabs rioted in the towns of...

WASHINGTON - They are the Pentagon's new "rules of engagement" _ the diamond ring kind. U.S. Army chaplains are trying to teach troops how to pick the right spouse, through a program called "How To Avoid Marrying a Jerk." The matchmaking advice comes as military family life is being stressed by two tough wars. Defense Department records show more than 56,000 in the Army _ active, National Guard and Reserve _ have divorced since the campaign in Afghanistan started in 2001. Officials partly blame long and repeated deployments which started after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and stretched the...

The National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association has announced the appointment of Dave Ehrig as chairman of the Longhunter Committee and the NMLRA Longhunter Muzzleloading Big Game Records Program. Since 1988, the NMLRA Longhunter Committee and staff have maintained a trophy measuring, scoring, and record-keeping program for North American big game animals taken with muzzleloading firearms. The fourth edition of The Longhunter Muzzleloading Big Game Record Book, which includes all qualifying animals taken since the program’s inception, was recently released. Mr. Ehrig is well known among muzzleloading enthusiasts and others in the black powder shooting industry. Known as "Pennsylvania’s Mr. Black...

Dear Friends, As most of you have probably heard, I was arrested before the State of the Union Address tonight. I am speechless with fury at what happened and with grief over what we have lost in our country. There have been lies from the police and distortions by the press. (Shocker) So this is what really happened: This afternoon at the People's State of the Union Address in DC where I was joined by Congresspersons Lynn Woolsey and John Conyers, Ann Wright, Malik Rahim and John Cavanagh. Lynn brought me a ticket to the State of the Union Address....

Fisking Osama From todays message from Osama. I Hereby Commit "A Fisking". The Transcript taken from the BBC Translation page. My comments are in Bold... My message to you is about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the way to end it. Well now, that’s interesting. Saying “way to end it” is significantly different that pounding on your chest and talking about victory. I had not intended to speak to you about this issue, because, for us, this issue is already decided on: diamonds cut diamonds. Diamonds cut diamonds? What the hell does that mean? Either A) We (Bush...

MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (Jan. 17, 2006) -- Six-year Navy veteran, Petty Officer 3rd Class Christopher D. Baird, was presented the Thomas A. Christensen Jr. Award Dec. 16, for “going above and beyond the call of duty,” according to the award citation. The Cordell, Okla., native, a corpsman with 2nd Dental Battalion, 2nd Marine Logistics Group, was selected from three contestants – one from each MLG. The Thomas A. Christensen Jr. Award is presented to a dental technician in recognition of significant contributions to the Navy and the Fleet Marine Force. Baird is one of 15 Sailors to...

We often hear the claim that our nation is a democracy. That wasn't the vision of the founders. They saw democracy as another form of tyranny. If we've become a democracy, I guarantee you that the founders would be deeply disappointed by our betrayal of their vision. The founders intended, and laid out the ground rules, for our nation to be a republic.

The stroke suffered by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon could prove to be one of the great disasters in the country's nearly 60-year history. As I write this, Sharon's condition remains uncertain, but the severity of his stroke makes it unlikely that he will survive, let alone return to power. That could be disastrous because Sharon represented, indeed embodied, the emergence of a rational, farsighted national idea that seemed poised in the coming elections to create a stable governing political center for the first time in decades.

BUHL, Idaho -- You never call a Marine a Soldier and you never call a Soldier a Marine. And never confuse a Marine's "oohrah" with a Soldier’s "hooah." In fact, one of the few things a Marine and a Soldier will agree on is how much fun it is to make jokes about the Air Force. But when it comes down to the wire, they come through for each other.