Free Republic

Missing tsunami boy's body found The body of twelve-year old Kristian Walker, who was rumoured to have been kidnapped in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami, has been found in Thailand. A number of witnesses reported directly after the Boxing Day catastrophe that they had seen Kristian in the company of a man, leading to speculation that he might have been kidnapped. But now a child's body that had been kept with the bodies of other tsunami victims in cold storage in Thailand has been identified as that of Kristian. Kristian had been on holiday in Thailand with his mother...

NEW YORK, April 20 (Reuters) - The New York Stock Exchange said on Wednesday it will merge with electronic market operator Archipelago Holdings Inc. (AX.P: Quote, Profile, Research) as a publicly traded, for-profit company. The Big Board will own 70 percent of the new company, NYSE chairman John Thain, said in a press conference.

beautiful

Beautiful!

I'd planned on sitting on this information until tomorrow to do more research, but developments are moving fast, so I think it's time to shine some light on one of the most likely suspects behind the CBS memo forgery. Marty Heldt (or someone known to him) Why? Three recent developments. Development #1 The previous article at Wizbang notes that USA Today independently obtained copies of the memo's that CBS had six weeks ago. Interestingly enough they had six memos (as opposed to CBS's four), and it's the first of those that is the first plank in identifying the forger. The...

The President of the United States holds the most demanding job in the world. The physical and mental fitness of a candidate are matters of legitimate concern for voters. The refusal of John F. Kerry to release his complete medical records should be disconcerting to the press and public. All the more so, given disturbing indications that there may be serious questions about Kerry’s health and his ability to perform in office, questions which could be resolved only by the full release of his medical records. For ordinary jobs, everyone is entitled to the presumption of physical and mental fitness....

A "mock beheading" video located at radical Sheikh Abu Hamza's website (www.shareeah.org ), which featured three young Muslim boys who pretended to behead a fourth 1, has elicited the appropriate public revulsion. But little fanfare, let alone outrage, has accompanied the release of a detailed study of Egyptian children's textbooks, whose inculcation of anti-infidel hatred is potentially far more damaging. 2 For example, explicit sanctioning for jihad-related beheadings is provided in a seemingly pedestrian manner, "Studies in Theology: Tradition and Morals, Grade 11, (2001) pp. 291-92 ...This noble [Qur'anic] Surah [Surat Muhammad]... deals with questions of which the most important...

There's a statement posted on capitolfax from Borling's campaign manager who says he seen Ryan's divorce records. I'm not going to post the details, there's a PDF of the statement there if you want to look at it and some other posts about it at illinoisleader.com. Pretty scandalous stuff. If its true he's definately toast but for the life of me I can't imagine how someone could run for office knowing they had skeletons like this in their closet that were detailed in court records.

WASHINGTON, March 8 (UPI) -- Is Karl Rove the new Joe Trippi of U.S. politics: a supposed genius who turns out to be just a disastrously unrealistic dreamer when the real campaign starts? It's starting to look that way. Even Democratic Party insiders and Kerry campaign strategists have been bewildered at the passive silence and blundering slowness of the massive Republican Attack Machine to crank up and start countering their own powerful and highly effective blasts. Through late January and all of February, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts rapidly closed enormous credibility and popularity gaps with President George W. Bush...

NEW YORK -- George Soros, one of the world's richest men, has given away nearly $5 billion to promote democracy in the former Soviet bloc, Africa and Asia. Now he has a new project: defeating President Bush. "It is the central focus of my life," Soros said, his blue eyes settled on an unseen target. The 2004 presidential race, he said in an interview, is "a matter of life and death." Soros, who has financed efforts to promote open societies in more than 50 countries around the world, is bringing the fight home, he said. On Monday, he and a...

Tracey McCarthy is puzzled by the generosity of her cell phone company. When a batch of its new, color phones was about to hit the market, Cingular Wireless made sure McCarthy got one at a deeply discounted price. When Cingular discovered that her husband's phone plan included many more monthly minutes than he needed, it contacted her to help chop the bill in half. And when her 14-year-old daughter got hooked on text-messaging, Cingular added the service to McCarthy's family plan for just a few dollars a month. "I can't figure it out," said McCarthy, 38, a real estate settlement...

<p>DIXON, Ill — A man attending a parade faces charges for tossing a water balloon at U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert.</p> <p>John Allen, 33, is accused of throwing the balloon during the Dixon Petunia Festival parade. The balloon broke on an antique fire truck driven by Hastert, who got wet but was not injured.</p>

The FBI made secret plans to capture and arrest Osama bin Laden five years ago, long before the terror leader's deadliest plan came to fruition. Jack Cloonan, a former FBI agent who is now an ABCNEWS consultant, said that federal agents seeking bin Laden had developed a plan to have a plane fly in and attack a compound in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where the terror leader was believed to have been holed up back in 1998 — three years before the devastating attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But when the plan went up the chain of command for approval, it was...

Did the Communist Chinese military create the SARS virus as a bioweapon – only to see a horrific accident unleash this killer on innocent citizens worldwide? A wise man with strong connections to U.S. intelligence recently opined that the SARS outbreak may in fact not be a naturally forming virus. Instead, it may be a "Chinese biowar disaster" along the lines of the anthrax release years ago in the Soviet city of Sverdlosk. Indeed, there are tantalizing clues that lead to Beijing's secretive military establishment: In a Wall Street Journal article from Beijing just days ago, reporters Peter Wonacott and...

George W. Bush, properly understood, represents the third and most powerful wave in the right's long-running assault on the governing order created by twentieth-century liberalism. The first wave was Ronald Reagan, whose election in 1980 allowed movement conservatives finally to attain governing power (their flame was first lit by Barry Goldwater back in 1964). Reagan unfurled many bold ideological banners for right-wing reform and established the political viability of enacting regressive tax cuts, but he accomplished very little reordering of government, much less shrinking of it. The second wave was Newt Gingrich, whose capture of the House majority in 1994...

EIGHTEEN Kuwaitis held since the 1991 Gulf War were among prisoners in an underground shelter in Baghdad, Abu Dhabi satellite television reported today, quoting a former Iraqi colonel. The men "are alive ... and in an underground shelter near the military tribunal in the Al-Khadra district," the channel said without naming its source. Kuwait says 605 people disappeared during Baghdad's occupation of the emirate in 1990-1991 and believes many were kept in Iraqi jails. The emirate on Saturday offered a reward to anyone who helps determine the fate of the missing people. "We have no information on the whereabouts of...

BERLIN, March 24 (AFP) - A US flag was ripped off its pole at the central Berlin memorial museum at the former Checkpoint Charlie border crossing point between East and West Berlin, its owners said Monday. It is the second time since the US-led war on Iraq broke out last Thursday that the flag has been ripped down. Until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 Checkpoint Charlie was arguably the most famous Cold War crossing point between the American sector of Allied-controlled West Berlin and the communist East. Meanwhile an American Jew was attacked on the street in...

— U.S. officials were aware of the new taped message allegedly from Osama bin Laden before it was first broadcast on the Arabic channel al Jazeera on Tuesday and had no doubts about its authenticity, ABCNEWS has learned. The 16-minute audiotape calling on Muslims to conduct suicide attacks against Americans was broadcast by al Jazeera hours after Secretary of State Colin Powell stunned members of a Senate committee by revealing that a new message from the terror mastermind had emerged and would be aired by the Qatar-based satellite channel later on Tuesday. The transcript of the audiotape, Powell told members...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 11 (UPI) -- The Federal Bureau of Investigation has discovered a list of the top financial backers of al Qaida during a raid of a Muslim charity in Sarajevo, according to court documents obtained by United Press International. The reference to the list is the first public indication that U.S. authorities have specific information as to the identities of the financiers of Osama bin Laden's terror network, but it is unclear what, if any, action has been taken against the persons named in the document. The handwritten list -- referred to within al Qaida as "The Golden Chain"...

BERLIN (Reuters) - A majority of Germans believe the United States is a nation of warmongers and only six percent think President Bush (news - web sites) is interested in keeping the peace, according to a survey published Monday. The poll by the respected Forsa institute, published in the Financial Times Deutschland newspaper, also found 97 percent of those questioned believed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was ready to go to war. The survey found 57 percent agreed with the statement: "The United States is a nation of warmongers." German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has angered the Bush...