Free Republic

I just completed this fantastic new "prescription thriller" novel, called "Carmen Piper and the Protest". It was released earlier this year after the Vioxx scandal. I wonder if a person could be sued for the claims made in this book, names are actually named! It's mystery suspense fiction, but it centers around fact-based events surrounding the Food and Drug Administration's financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies. I don't wanna give any spoilers, but you can expect to find a few surprises about Big Pharma. This book is very intelligent, full of cliffhangers, really fresh and witty, and very entertaining and...

I pick up a copy of the NY Times yesterday, and read an arts brief with the headline "Diversity Still a Problem For Hollywood Writers." ... A few minutes after reading this story, I get a call from my TV agent at ICM, telling me that the new management of Lifetime is not very interested in The Dirty Girls Social Club TV show. That, in fact, they wanted to "kill" it immediately, but that they are willing to listen to a re-pitch. That means that even though Lifetime owns the option for now (meaning I can't do anything with it)...

SAN DIEGO – A man who was shot by a Border Patrol agent in Otay Mesa early Sunday as he grappled for the officer's gun has died at a hospital, authorities said. The shooting in the 2300 block of Roll Drive happened about 2:15 a.m., as the officer tried to get a motorist out of an SUV, San Diego police homicide Lt. Kevin Rooney said. The officer had spotted the Chevy Suburban driving in the area of Roll and Siempre Viva Road and became suspicious because of reports that a Suburban had been seen in the area picking up suspected...

Tehran, Iran, Aug. 27 – An agent of Iran’s State Security Forces was killed in the town of Tonekabon, northern Iran, early Thursday morning, Iran’s press reported on Saturday. The incident occurred at one in the morning when two SSF agents attempted to detain a young man, the hard-line daily Kayhan wrote. It quoted Hojjatoleslam Najafi, head of the ideological-politico branch of the SSF in Tonekabon as saying that the SSF officer, identified as Mehdi Fahimi, was stabbed several times by a man called as Mehrdad Susan. The paper did not mention on what grounds Susan was being arrest or...

Who is Air America? Vanity A summary of some of the key persons involved in the Air-A scandals, and their friends, August 19, 2005 Some of you out there probably have located most of this information before. The following is based on a series of emails I sent to Michelle Malkin and Radio Equalizer over the last few days. I am sure others have sent them similar items, as well as posting them at FR. [My comments are in brackets; some key names, dates, places, organizations and links are highlighted in bold letters] [Michelle Malkin and Radio Equalizer (Brian Maloney)...

A Mexican man who used a fake U.S. birth certificate to get into the Border Patrol was helping to smuggle illegal immigrants, authorities said yesterday. Oscar Antonio Ortiz, 28, an El Cajon-based Border Patrol agent on administrative leave, was arrested yesterday and charged in San Diego federal court with falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen. He also is charged with conspiring with another Border Patrol agent to smuggle immigrants and is scheduled to be arraigned in U.S. District Court this morning. There is no indication in court records that the other agent, who was not identified, has been arrested....

NEW YORK (AP) - The burly FBI agent in the pinstriped suit stepped to the front of the mosque and looked out over a sea of Pakistani men in white kufi caps and women in brightly colored headscarves. "A-salaam aleikum," said Charles Frahm, special agent-in-charge of the FBI's New York counterterrorism division. "It's a great honor to be here today in the capacity of a friend." Frahm has become a frequent presence in the mosques and social clubs of New York's Arab and Muslim neighborhoods, trying to ease tensions where law-enforcement scrutiny has spawned some anger and much anxiety. On...

Wednesday July 13, 11:28 PM LEAD: N. Korean agent on wanted list taught Korean to Japanese abductees(Kyodo) _ (EDS: CLARIFYING 6TH GRAF, ADDING INFO IN 7TH GRAF) A former North Korean agent, who is on an international wanted list, taught the Korean language and North Korean philosophy to two Japanese citizens including Megumi Yokota who were abducted to the North in the late 1970s, sources familiar with the issue said Wednesday. Sin Guang Su, the 76-year-old North Korean agent, was in charge of providing education to Yokota and Hitomi Soga at a guesthouse in Pyongyang where the two Japanese were...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A retired FBI agent who pleaded guilty to lying about his affair with a suspected Chinese double agent was sentenced Monday to probation and fined $10,000 after apologizing for his behavior. "I have nobody but myself to blame for being here today," James J. Smith said. "I stand before you ashamed and humiliated by my actions, and all I can do is apologize." Standing before Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, Smith added, "I apologize to your honor, to the court and to the citizens of the United States." Smith, 61, at one time faced up to five years...

Karl Rove? Please. I couldn't care less. This week finds me thousands of miles from the Beltway in what I believe the ABC World News Tonight map designates as the Rest Of The Planet, an obscure beat the media can't seem to spare a correspondent for. But even if I was with the rest of the navel-gazers inside the Beltway I wouldn't be interested in who ''leaked'' the name of CIA employee Valerie Plame to the press. As her weirdly self-obsesssed husband Joseph C. Wilson IV conceded on CNN the other day, she wasn't a ''clandestine officer'' and, indeed, hadn't...

Why is special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald pursuing so zealously the outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame, since it is all but impossible to prove that the leaker or leakers committed a crime? So why is Fitzgerald acting like Inspector Javert in "Les Miserables"? The answer may lie in a sentence Walter Pincus of The Washington Post wrote on June 12, 2003. President Bush mentioned the British findings in his State of the Union address in January 2003. In his leaks to Pincus, and earlier to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, Wilson claimed Bush knew this was false. The key...

In journalism, the definition of “leak” suggests that it is applied to government officials who purposely give reporters secret or confidential information in order to publicize something they do not like so that it can be defeated before being voted upon. “Outing” a CIA agent is only a crime if the agent is under cover overseas or has been during the past five years. This law was created to prevent the assassinations of CIA agents on foreign shores as had been caused by Philip Agee in 1978 who listed CIA agents undercover in foreign cities, causing the murder of some....

As presidential adviser Karl Rove has been under fire for his role in the alleged outing of a CIA employee, a liberal blog is now suggesting people leave a special care package on Rove's lawn -- the gift of excrement. "If you just happen to be passing through, do the considerate thing and bring a small gift. We suggest a special bouquet for our esteemed latter-day Wormtongue," says A Liberal Dose. It then shows a photo of a suggested donation, followed by the observation, "Now wouldn't it be so nice to see Herr Rove's lawn carpeted with such lovely lawn...

The Left isn't obsessed with destroying Karl Rove simply because they want to taint President Bush by taking out one of his closest confidants. When they're not focused on their fantasy that Vice President Cheney is the de facto president, they sometimes think Rove is. To destroy Rove is to neuter the Bush presidency. As resolute, effective and visionary as President Bush has been in office, the Left obviously still doesn't consider him the man in charge. Only a superhuman Machiavellian strategist could have engineered this bumbler's unlikely ascension to the presidency. And, anyone capable of facilitating a lightweight's rise...

If speculation about Supreme Court nominees isn't the biggest story in the Nation's Capitol, allegations that Karl Rove leaked the name of a covert CIA officer is. The ultra-liberal MoveOn.org argues Rove must be fired and investigated. Representative Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y) said Rove "should be thoroughly investigated and prosecuted." Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) called for the immediate cancellation of Rove's security clearances. Representative Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said that Rove should be subjected to a full congressional inquiry. It all sounds pretty serious. That's how political gamesmanship is played - making something of nothing. The game is played by claiming there...

Now, two years later, it's been revealed that, despite his earlier denials, Rove did in fact disclose to at least one journalist, Time magazine's Matt Cooper, that Wilson's wife (whom he did not cite by name) worked for the CIA. That's all the wolves were waiting for: Now they want Rove indicted, convicted, flayed and filleted — and then locked up on Devil's Island. And fired, too. For starters. But what really happened? Did Karl Rove commit a crime? We'll reserve final judgment, pending the outcome of the probe. But it appears not. Every news media organization that filed briefs...

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) - A former Canadian spymaster has backed claims by a Chinese defector that China maintains an extensive spy network in Australia. The former chief of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service's Asia-Pacific Bureau, Michel Juneau-Katsuya, backed the claims of Chen Yonglin, a former employee of the Chinese consulate in Sydney, Australia, in an interview with Australian television late Wednesday. Chen, 37, abandoned his middle-ranking diplomatic post at China's consulate in May and asked for asylum, saying he would be persecuted if he returned home because of his sympathy for the Falun Gong movement, which China brands an evil...

Columnist Robert Novak has made a career for himself as a human flamethrower for conservative causes. Yet, even Novak appears surprised at the mounting cost of his disclosure in 2003 of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. It was classic Novak: a hatchet job directed not at Plame, but at her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. The firestorm that erupted has consumed millions of dollars in investigation and litigation costs and has wreaked havoc with the career not just of Plame (who had to leave the CIA) but of two reporters who were hauled into court and...

A lawyer for presidential adviser Karl Rove has disclosed that his client spoke with a Time magazine reporter just days before the name of a CIA operative was leaked to the media, but he did not leak the confidential information. Rove attorney Robert Luskin said that Rove did not reveal any secrets, and, furthermore, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has assured him that the adviser is not a target of his investigation. According to Luskin, Rove spoke to Time reporter Matthew Cooper in July 2003 - a week before media reports revealed the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, the wife...

Overview: According to the document released by the Iranian government, a polling station for the presidential elections in Iran was located near me in Tucson, Arizona at the Southern Arizona Association for Visually Impaired (SAAVI). I drove there around 9am and the receptionist confirmed that, indeed, voting would be from 3pm-7pm. I arrived back on the scene around 4pm with my camera and notepad in hand and entered the polling station. After a brief look around, I asked the man in charge, the “poll monitor,” if I could interview him about the polling process, telling him that I am a...