Free Republic

MADISON — The numbers don’t add up, and Wisconsin’s elections watchdog can’t explain it. A third-party analysis of petition signatures in recall campaigns lodged against four Republicansenators found large disparities between the number of signatures claimed by recall committees and the signature count scanned and made public by the Government Accountability Board, or GAB. That means one of two things, said Mark Antill, executive director of TruetheVote.org, a nonprofit aligned with the tea party that advocates for election integrity. Either the campaigns inflated the number of signatures or the GAB, which oversees the state’s campaign finance, elections, ethics and lobbying...

On Wednesday a Pakistani court ordered Facebook to be blocked because of a page inviting people to draw caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. Some Wikipedia pages are also now being restricted, latest reports say. Correspondents say it remains to be seen how successful the new bans will be in Pakistan and whether citizens find a way round them. YouTube says it is "looking into the matter and working to ensure that the service is restored as soon as possible". The site was briefly blocked in Pakistan in 2008 - ostensibly for carrying material deemed offensive to Muslims. Facebook said on...

Anyone else having difficulty displaying foxnew.com/politics articles using Firefox,Safari or Camino? All of these browsers use the Google tool to block reported attack sites and web forgeries. Turning off that "feature" allows me to display the text of the article after relaunching the browser. Turning that "feature" on prevents the text from being displayed. Only the header is displayed. This has been happening for 3 weeks and I'm slowly testing other browsers. It would help if others would do the same. It would be great to record the browser name, version, and web page link so we can try to...

BOSTON (AP) -- When Shanghai blogger Isaac Mao tried to watch a YouTube clip of Chinese police beating Tibetans, all he got was an error message... ...Mao thought the error -- just after the one-year anniversary of a crackdown on Tibetan protesters in China -- was too suspicious to be coincidental, so he reported it on a new Harvard-based Web site that tracks online censorship... ...Zittrain started Herdict in February -- a month before China's block began -- to aggregate reports of online inaccessibility and help users detect government censorship on the Web as soon as it happens. Having tracked...

OK - so I wanted to post a Mitch Albom hit piece - but realized upon trying to post that the Detroit (not so)Free Press is blocked. Now - I at least think I have a clue about the FR problems with materials being posted (although it seems that the sources would be glad to be quoted to increase hits to their own site, and to float the name about... but that is another argument)...And I understand that legal agreements have been reached with several media sources that require only excerpts, while there are apparently some that are completely banned/blocked....

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) -- Barrick Gold Corp., the Canadian mining company, has abandoned its plan to sponsor a seminar here on global warming in May that will have former Vice President Al Gore and Chilean President Michelle Bachelet as the main speakers. It wasn't clear how the decision was made. A representative for Gore said his office requested that Barrick Gold not be included among the sponsors of the event "Global Warming and Climate Change, the Time to Act has Come." A Barrick Gold spokesman, Vince Borg, told The Associated Presss by telephone from Toronto that the company had decided...

CAIRO, Egypt - Egypt's top civilian court on Saturday overruled an order to release a leading Islamic militant who spent more than 20 years behind bars in connection to the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. The court also referred to a security court the case of another man who is the alleged leader of Egypt's Islamic Jihad and was also convicted in Sadat's assassination. Tarek el-Zomor, 47, was ordered released in July 2005, but he was never set free because of an Interior Ministry discretion to hold a prisoner for up to five more years on security grounds. El-Zomor was...

Supermosque for 70,000 'will be blocked' By Ben Leapman and Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 12:25am GMT 18/02/2007 Controversial plans to build a "supermosque" on the doorstep of the London Olympics will be blocked by the Government. Alan Craig is concerned about the security impact Ruth Kelly's Whitehall department is expected to refuse planning permission for the London Markaz, which would be the biggest religious building in Britain with room for 70,000 worshippers. Backers want the £300 million mosque, in east London, to serve as a reception centre for athletes and fans from Islamic countries during the 2012 games....

MIAMI - A federal judge on Monday struck down a Florida law that imposes hefty fines on third parties that take too long to submit voter registration forms, saying it threatens free speech rights and unfairly exempts political parties. The law took effect Jan. 1 and has been blamed by critics for blocking voter registration drives because of huge financial risk. The law imposes a fine of $250 for each form submitted to election officials more than 10 days after it is collected from an individual. Penalties can reach $5,000 for each form that is collected but never submitted. "If...

This morning Democrat obstruction dealt a serious blow to America’s border security and to America’s national security. Several weeks ago, I introduced an “enforcement first” border security bill – the Secure America’s Borders Act – that would have greatly increased the number of border security agents, that would have built physical barriers in high traffic areas and utilized remote sensors and UAVs elsewhere, that would have provided for real workplace enforcement. But I knew that 44 Democrat Senators would use every means at their disposal to obstruct an “enforcement first” approach. And I recognized that we must deal with the...

I'm not one to normally complain on FR about freedoms that have been lost since the 9/11 attacks.But...We talk about the communist country of China and how they don't have free internet access.Last night I was reading through some threads and started doing some Jihad research and came up with one of Al-Qaeda's web site's called Jihad Media Battalion.I typed the url www.k-j-i.tk and it said "could not be found"So I Googled Jihad Media Battalion and came up with katiba.100free.com/default.htmlWhen I went to this site it started to bring up there site but I was then immediately sent to the...

SEATTLE - A federal judge struck down a move by the Bush administration to ease logging restrictions in the Northwest, saying the government failed to consider the effect on rare plants and animals. U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman said in her ruling Monday that under federal law, authorities had an obligation to show why the logging restrictions should be changed. The rule change, which took effect in the spring of 2004, said forest managers no longer had to look for rare species before logging. Instead, the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management were to use information provided...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- British authorities denied a U.S. request to apprehend a man believed to have ties to the July 7 London bombings weeks before the deadly attacks, sources familiar with the investigation said Thursday.Haroon Rashid Aswat, 30, a British-born citizen of Indian heritage, is in custody in Zambia, U.S. and Zambian officials told CNN. U.S. authorities wanted to capture Aswat, who was then in South Africa, and question him about a 1999 plot to establish a "jihad training camp" in Bly, Oregon. According to the sources, U.S. officials had Aswat under surveillance in South Africa weeks before the July...

President Bush faces a politically thorny situation _ and stark choices _ now that Senate Democrats twice have blocked John Bolton's confirmation as U.N. ambassador The president could withdraw the nomination, authorize further concessions to Democrats over access to information they seek or bypass lawmakers altogether by appointing the former State Department official to the job temporarily without the Senate's OK. But any of those options could leave the president appearing weak as he confronts sagging poll numbers and fights to stave off a lame-duck label just six months into his final term. "It's time for the Senate to give...

The Epoch Times is a popular newspaper in the Chinese global community and with those seeking more in-depth and insightful reporting on Chinese issues than what is available in mass media. When the newspaper began printing its scathing "Nine Commentaries" on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), printers in Hong Kong could not print them fast enough to satisfy eager readers. After an initial run of 30,000 copies, addition printings were ordered. Soon they ran out of paper before printing almost a million copies. Visitors from China carried the copies of the commentaries back into the mainland. As previously reported by...

Author blocked from Clinton's office Seeking apology for alleged rape of Juanita Broaddrick Posted: June 3, 2005 9:15 p.m. Eastern © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com An author seeking an apology from Bill Clinton for his alleged rape of Juanita Broaddrick was blocked from entering the former president's Harlem offices today. Candice E. Jackson, author of "Their Lives: The Women Targeted by the Clinton Machine," said she wanted to give Clinton or his scheduler a letter of apology for him to sign. The incident occurred in the presence of the crew of a New York City WB-affiliate station. Spokesmen for both Bill and...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The movement to sell a portion of IMF gold reserves to finance debt relief for poor nations hit a roadblock as a key US lawmaker said Congress and the Bush administration would block any such move. Jim Saxton, chairman of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, said the move to sell off gold of the International Monetary Fund is opposed by US lawmakers as well as the administration of President George W. Bush. "The potential profits on IMF gold sales rightfully belong to the original donor countries and their taxpayers," Saxton said in a statement. "Thus, these...

I have been trying to track this information down for Months with no real success. The Democracts like to throw out numbers like 215 Bush nominees apointed to courts, and only 10 blocked, but I know that number encompasses multiple courts, and is not complete. Does anyone have the real accurate count of the Number of peple Bush has nominated for the Federal Appeals Court, versus the number which the Senate has allowed a Vote on. I remember I tried to look for this around the election, and it was something like 39 nomees, and 21 voted on. But even...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger suffered a major potential setback Thursday when a judge tentatively ruled that he illegally blocked a law boosting the number of nurses needed to staff California's hospitals. Sacramento County Judge Judy Holzer Hersher ruled tentatively in favor of a preliminary injunction to lift emergency state regulations that stopped the law from taking effect Jan. 1. Hersher's ruling represents a possible victory for the 60,000-member California Nurses Association, which has protested the governor's decision in numerous public settings for months. The union nurses have marched on the Capitol, flown message-trailing planes over the governor's home...

How peculiar, then, that a single Republican Congressman Ohio Rep. David Hobson and the chairman of the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, has received no comparable notoriety for a far more consequential act of obstructionism last fall. All by himself, Mr. Hobson managed to scuttle three critical aspects of the Bush plan to preserve the nation's nuclear deterrent. In so doing, he defied not only the will of the majority of the House but the Senate as well, as expressed in a number of hotly contested votes. In fact, far from being denounced for singlehandedly blocking the centerpieces of...

Head of U.N. Program in Iraq Accused of Improperly Accepting Purchasing Rights. UNITED NATIONS -- Benon Sevan, the official accused of improperly receiving lucrative rights to purchase oil from Saddam Hussein's government while he was running the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq, discouraged his staff from probing allegations of corruption and helped block efforts by the U.N. anti-corruption unit to assess where the program was vulnerable to abuse, according to senior U.N. officials. Sevan said that such an assessment would prove too costly and that U.N. member governments bore primary responsibility for policing the program, according to senior U.N. officials...

Bush campaign site blocks traffic from abroad By Alorie Gilbert, CNET News.com Thursday, October 28 2004 10:22 AM The folks in charge of the U.S. president's re-election campaign seem to have forgotten that the first two letters of WWW stand for "world wide." Just days before the presidential election, the Bush campaign's official Web site, GeorgeWBush.com, is turning away Web traffic from abroad. The virtual blockade began Monday, according to Internet traffic analysis company Netcraft. The site appears to be rejecting visitors from most points outside the United States, while allowing access from most U.S. locations and Canada, according to...

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - French President Jacques Chirac has crossed swords with Washington at a NATO summit that ended today, demonstrating that Franco-U.S. relations are at best still lukewarm after last year's bust-up over Iraq. The French leader denied any personal animosity against U.S. President George W. Bush, who he said had recently shown "much, much more openness...than at anytime in the past". But he missed no opportunity to needle the United States during the alliance's summit in Istanbul, souring a mood of rediscovered amity more than a year after bitter divisions over the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein. Gustav...

For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary May 22, 2004 President's Radio Address      Audio THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. This week brought further evidence that across America, more citizens are finding jobs. The Department of Labor reported state-by-state job results, and these figures show that America's jobs engine is running strong. Nationally, we gained 288,000 new jobs in April, and the nation has added more than 1.1 million new jobs since last August. The unemployment rate has fallen steadily, and now stands at 5.6 percent, down from 6.3 percent last June, and lower than the average unemployment rate of...

Sharecropper's daughter threatened with Dem filibuster for being 'arch-conservative' "Of the many unworthy judicial nominees President Bush has put forward, Janice Rogers Brown is among the very worst." That's how the New York Times began its editorial Saturday in a campaign Republicans, libertarians, conservatives and Christians see as increasingly familiar. They say they've seen this script before – first with Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, again with the Clarence Thomas nomination and more recently with federal bench nominee Miguel Estrada. But proponents of the nomination to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals think Senate Democrats may have overplayed their hand...

Canadian regulators ruled Friday that it is illegal to put broadcast TV signals onto the Internet without permission, dashing the hopes of entrepreneurs hoping to create new Net TV businesses. The long-awaited decision helped close what some had seen as a loophole in international copyright law, potentially allowing American and Canadian TV signals to be streamed on-line without the TV stations' or copyright holders' permission. However, regulators said they were wary of undermining traditional producers and distributors of TV content by allowing it to be distributed on the Net without regional restrictions. "At present, there is no completely workable method...

Does anybody know how many bills the Democrat controlled Senate has blocked? Does anybody know if that is the most bills blocked in US history? The world? I wonder if they hold the record on blocked judges? It would be a great way to let people know how partisan this Senate really is if they broke the world record for most bills blocked in history!