Free Republic

NASHUA, N.H. – At a rally with some 1,500 people here on Sunday afternoon, Hillary Rodham Clinton had separate comments about the current president and his predecessor. Referring to the personal appeal that Senator Barack Obama enjoys among many Democrats, Mrs. Clinton said: “I think it’s good to have a likable president. But if I remember right, many people said they wanted to have a beer with George W. Bush. Maybe they should’ve left it at that – have a beer, don’t vote him in as our president.” Minutes later, an audience member asked what Bill Clinton would be called...

Why Do People Support Underdogs And Find Them So Appealing? ScienceDaily (Dec. 19, 2007) — In a series of studies, researchers from the University of South Florida tested the scope of people's support for those who are expected to lose, seeking to understand why people are drawn to the Rocky Balboas and the Davids (versus Goliaths) of the world. Using both sports and political examples, the researchers* asked study participants to react to various scenarios presenting different competitors with an advantage or disadvantage. For instance, in one study using the Israeli and Palestinian conflict, the participants were given the same...

MINNEAPOLIS - Embattled Sen. Larry Craig asked the Minnesota Court of Appeals on Monday to overrule a county judge who refused to allow him to withdraw his guilty plea in connection with an arrest in an airport bathroom sex sting. Craig's appeal was filed at the court in St. Paul less than two weeks after Hennepin County District Court Judge Charles Porter refused to overturn the guilty plea, saying it "was accurate, voluntary and intelligent, and ... supported by the evidence." Craig, a Republican from Idaho, pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in August after he was accused of soliciting sex...

Under pressure from a newspaper investigation, Sen. Larry Craig "panicked" and pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in a Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport men's room, according to court papers filed Monday. The plea constitutes a "manifest injustice" and should be set aside, his lawyers say. The 50-page filing in Hennepin County District Court said Craig feared his arrest in the airport sting would prompt the Idaho Statesman to publish a story examining his sexual orientation. The Republican, who has represented Idaho in the U.S. Senate for 17 years, "felt compelled to grasp the lifeline offered to him by the police officer,...

11th Circuit rules school was in its power to suspend teen in light of other incidents of school violence across nation. CITING SCHOOL SCHOOTINGS from Columbine to Virginia Tech, a federal appeals court has ruled against a local student suspended in 2003 after a teacher saw a story the student had written in which the narrator dreams of shooting her math teacher. Rachel Boim, who was a ninth-grader at Roswell High School when the incident occurred, sued the Fulton County School District and school officials, asking the courts to force school officials to remove the suspension from her disciplinary record....

Two dangerous Libyan terror suspects will be freed to walk Britain's streets after the Home Office's attempts to deport them were thrown out by senior judges yesterday. John Reid is trying to send the men home to using a controversial "memorandum of understanding" - by which Colonel Gadaffi's government promised not to torture or kill them on their return. The aim was to overcome objections to their removal to Libya on human rights grounds. But yesterday the Special Immigration Appeals Commission [SIAC] in London ruled that the Libyan government could not be trusted and blocked the deportation order, despite a...

MEXICO CITY - Mexican President Felipe Calderon won't be fighting for migration reform when he meets with President Bush next week. Instead, he will be be spelling out what he intends to do to keep Mexicans at home. Calderon, who was inaugurated on Dec. 1, has pledged to take 100 actions in his first 100 days in office, many of which represent the first steps toward "curing" Mexico's long tradition of illegal migration to the U.S. If implemented, his proposals could help transform Mexico from a labor-exporting country with relatively low growth, productivity and wages into an investment-rich, job-producing economy...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - That dusty stack of records in your parents' basement? They're not as retro as you might think. Many record collectors, DJs and music junkies still consider vinyl to be the gold standard of recorded music — scratches, pops and all. That enduring appeal has helped Nashville's United Record Pressing, which cranks out 20,000 to 40,000 records a day, making it one of the largest — and last — vinyl record manufacturers in the country. "Folks thought we had disappeared," owner and CEO Cris Ashworth said. Started in 1962, the plant is as much a throwback as the...

We're not talking about Ramos and Compean. This is another agent that was railroaded out of years of his life.  But the similarities are astounding!   After the article is some of the decision to grant another trial and some information about the Asst. Atty General in the case ,R. Alexander Acosta,  who handles the "civil rights" division of the justice department.    He's bragged before congress about how many suits they've brought against small counties because they didn't have enough Spanish language poll workers!  They have quite a foreigner protection racket going in the DC 'justice' department!   At the end...

CHICAGO -- Looking around at the overwhelmingly white audience that was applauding Sen. Barack Obama's luncheon speech on Iraq at a downtown hotel recently, the Rev. B. Herbert Martin expressed both satisfaction and concern. Martin, who said he was the only black person in the crowd, was thrilled that Obama, the only African American in the Senate, could engender such enthusiasm from a white audience because it offered further proof that the Illinois Democrat would be a formidable presidential candidate. But Martin also worried that in order to run successfully Obama would have to become a different kind of politician...

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, today renewed her call for restraint by the Government of Iraq in the execution of sentences of death imposed by the Iraqi High Tribunal. On 28 December 2006, alongside the confirmation of the death sentence of Saddam Hussein, the death sentences of two other co-defendants, Awad Hamad Al-Bandar and Barzan Ibrahim Al-Hassan, were also upheld on appeal. "International law, as it currently stands, only allows the imposition of the death penalty as an exceptional measure within rigorous legal constraints. The concerns that I expressed just days ago with respect to the fairness...

Daily Herald Suspect had a murder conviction overturned Like slaying of restaurant manager he's accused of, 1982 case involved strangulation BY TONY GORDON Daily Herald Legal Affairs Writer Posted Monday, December 04, 2006 http://www.dailyherald.com/story.asp?id=256490 The man accused of killing a Lindenhurst restaurant manager last week was once convicted of killing four members of a Chicago family. But James Ealy's conviction for the 1982 murders in Chicago was thrown out by an appellate court that ruled police acted improperly in questioning him. Ealy is held without bond in the Nov. 28 strangulation murder of Mary Hutchison, 45, of Trevor, Wis., a...

CHICAGO -- Former Gov. George Ryan can remain free while he appeals his racketeering and fraud conviction, a federal appeals court has ruled. The decision by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was issued without explanation Tuesday. Ryan, 72, was convicted in April of steering lucrative state contracts and leases to lobbyists and friends and using state employees and tax dollars to operate his political campaigns. He was sentenced in September to 6 1/2 years in federal prison. U.S. District Judge Rebecca L. Pallmeyer had refused to grant bail to Ryan. But the appeals court overruled her and said...

The Supreme Court refused to intervene Tuesday in a legal fight over same-sex marriage, declining an appeal from a gay California couple who were denied a license to wed. The justices declined without comment to take the case of Arthur Smelt and Christopher Hammer of Mission Viejo, Calif. The men had sought a marriage license in Southern California's Orange County in 2004 and, after they were turned down, filed a federal lawsuit that challenged federal and state laws against same-sex marriage. A U.S. District judge said the federal Defense of Marriage Act was constitutional but declined to rule on the...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 6, 2006 -- Jeff Klare put his bicycle where his heart is Oct. 1, and set out on a 300-mile trip to raise awareness of the need for more corporations to hire workers with disabilities. Eric Madaus, 8, leads Jeff Klare, chief executive officer of Hire Disability Solutions, to the finish of a 300-mile bike ride at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C., Oct. 6. Klare began his ride at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge in New York to bring attention to the need for more corporations to hire workers with disabilities. Madaus suffers...

If seeing Arab, Pakistani, or other “ethnic” Muslims menacingly wave their hands while lambasting the West is nothing strange, seeing homegrown, non-accented Western converts doing the same thing is. Along with John Walker Lindh, Richard Reid, Jose Padilla, and Germaine Lindsay — all Western converts to Islam and all terrorists — in the spotlight today are Abu Abdullah, the native Briton turned Muslim cleric, who makes no secret of his vitriolic hatred of the West and who was just arrested for terrorist-related charges, and Azzam “the American” (formerly Adam Gadahn), who after receiving a gracious introduction by Dr. Aymin Zawahri...

BISBEE — A Minuteman-built border fence planned for a local ranch cleared its final legal hurdle this week when a 30-day waiting period expired Thursday without any appeals filed to stop it. On Friday, however, the status of the project seemed unclear, with the Minutemen and the ranch owner offering conflicting reports on the fence’s progress. “We are very much moving forward,” Minuteman spokeswoman Connie Hair said. “They’ve got the architects, the contractor and the surveyor down there, they brought bulldozers out, and I am told they are beginning to prepare the ground.” But the owner of the land said...

A federal appeals court on Thursday refused to let Texas Republicans replace Tom DeLay's name on the November congressional ballot. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling by U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks, who said in July that DeLay's name had to stay on the ballot even though he quit Congress and moved to Virginia. DeLay won a March primary before resigning from Congress on June 9. He is awaiting trial in Texas state court on money laundering and conspiracy charges alleging that illegal corporate cash helped pay for legislative campaigns in 2002.

Hamza wins go-ahead to appeal over 'unfair' trial By Duncan Gardham (Filed: 29/07/2006) The radical Islamic cleric Abu Hamza was given leave to appeal yesterday against his conviction for soliciting to murder on the grounds of the bad publicity he had received before and during the trial. Hamza's lawyers claimed he was unable to get a fair trial because he had become the most notorious person in Britain after the attacks of September 11, 2001 and July 7, 2005. Abu Hamza: ‘adverse publicity’ Edward Fitzgerald, QC, said putting Hamza on trial six years after the last of the speeches was...

Texas’ two major political parties both want a federal appeals court to quickly decide whether retired congressman Tom DeLay is or is not eligible to run again for the office from which he recently resigned. But filings with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals show lawyers for state Democrats don’t want the appeal to proceed quite as quickly as GOP lawyers do. It’s the latest development in an unlikely case that finds Texas Democrats fighting to keep longtime Sugar Land Republican congressman DeLay on the ballot, where he would face Democratic challenger Nick Lampson and Libertarian Bob Smither. The...