Free Republic

A boy asks President Obama why people hate him. The boy and Obama hug. "If you’re watching TV lately it seems like everybody's just getting mad all the time," President Obama told the boy. "People just, I think they’re worried about their own lives," including losing their jobs and homes due to the recession, he said. "They’re feeling frustrated, and when you're the president of the United States you've gotta deal with all that ... that’s right," he said to applause and laughter. Video at link if you can stomach it.

Bloomberg article, link only

Republicans in the House have lost a bid to block the transfer of any detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay prison to the United States. Instead, the House stood by a Democratic plan to allow suspected enemy combatants held at Guantanamo to be shipped to U.S. soil only to be prosecuted for their suspected crimes. President Obama has ordered the facility closed in January but has yet to offer a plan to accomplish that.

(CNN) -- Finland has become the first country in the world to declare broadband Internet access a legal right. Starting in July, telecommunication companies in the northern European nation will be required to provide all 5.2 million citizens with Internet connection that runs at speeds of at least 1 megabit per second. The one-megabit mandate, however, is simply an intermediary step, said Laura Vilkkonen, the legislative counselor for the Ministry of Transport and Communications. The country is aiming for speeds that are 100 times faster -- 100 megabit per second -- for all by 2015. "We think it's something you...

President Obama recently shifted authority for approving sales to China of missile and space technology from the White House to the Commerce Department -- a move critics say will loosen export controls and potentially benefit Chinese missile development. "It's as though Commerce's mishandling of missile-tech transfers to China in the 1990s never happened," said Mr. Sokolski, a former Pentagon proliferation specialist. "But it did. As a result, we are now facing much more accurate, reliable missiles from China." Mr. Sokolski said he expects the U.S. government under the new policy to again boost Chinese military modernization through "whatever renewed 'benign'...

The White House is making a profound political mistake by targeting Fox News and deliberately deciding to exclude them from interviews and access to the administration. And not only that, they are making a mistake on both a practical and a political level. Frankly, it just doesn’t make sense. On a practical level, targeting a news organization only redounds to one’s detriment. I have no doubt that Fox News will not change its coverage, nor should it, in response to statements from White House Communications Director Anita Dunn. Nonetheless, indicating that five separate Fox News programs will not have access...

You really have to read this entire piece by Jeffrey Anderson in the New York Post to get a sense of how frighteningly dishonest the gimmicks used by Senator Baucus to get the CBO to sign off on his health care bill. The first bit of rank dishonesty lies in the fact that the CBO is calculating the bill's cost in the next decade starting next year. The problem is that the bill wouldn't even take effect fully until 2015! But the CBO exposed the truth by taking the rare step of calculating what the bill would cost in its...

NEW YORK — A New York bicycle cabbie who last year used his Web site to mock the beheading of journalist Daniel Pearl posted a prayer calling for the murder of Jews and exhorting Muslims to “throw liquid drain cleaner in their faces." And there's nothing authorities can do about it. Yousef al-Khattab, who runs RevolutionMuslim.com and pedals a pedicab in New York City, insists the words he has posted on his Web site are a prayer, and not a threat — and that his hatred is protected by the First Amendment.

While it is always risky to assign too much of a trend to just a few days of Rasmussen's Daily Presidential Tracking Poll, there does seem to be a bit of an "Oslo bounce" for the President. A bounce backwards that is. Today's Presidential Approval Index by Rasmussen is -8. This index is a snapshot Rasmussen derives by balancing the strongly approve versus strongly disapprove numbers. Today the strongly approve numbers at 32% and the strongly disapproves are the highest they have been in several weeks at 40%. Rasmussen uses a three-day rolling total average formula. The index is down...

A 72-year-old grandmother had her leg amputated after being told she had cancer only to find out her leg was healthy all along. Doreen Nicholls underwent the surgery in 2007 and now needs a wheelchair to get about. According to the Sunday Telegraph, the grandmother was wrongly diagnosed with an extremely rare form of cancer and was told that without a leg amputation, she would die. Tests carried out after the operation revealed that her left leg, which had been cut off below the knee, was in fact healthy.

An Iraq war veteran died after receiving cancerous lungs from a heavy smoker in a transplant. Matthew Millington, 31, a corporal in the Queen’s Royal Lancers, had the operation to save him from an incurable respiratory condition. But the organs were from a donor who was believed to have smoked 30 to 50 roll-up cigarettes a day. A tumour was found after the transplant, and its growth was accelerated by the drugs that Mr Millington took to prevent his body rejecting the organs. Because he was a cancer patient, he was not allowed to receive a further pair of lungs,...

A friend of accused New York City terror plot suspect Najibullah Zazi and others urged authorities Saturday to stop targeting the Muslim community in their probe of the alleged Al Qaeda-linked bomb plan. Naiz Khan, whom Zazi stayed with in New York City while investigators say he was planning an attack this past Sept. 11, said he is scared. Khan, a longtime friend of Zazi's who befriended him 10 years ago at mosque, has been under 24-hour FBI surveillance. "We are so, so nervous," Khan told reporters at a press conference organized by the nonprofit group DRUM in Queens, N.Y....

Under the Democratic bills, federal tax credits to help make health insurance affordable for millions of low- and middle-income households won't start flowing until 2013 -- after the next presidential election. But Medicare cuts and a sizable chunk of the tax increases to pay for the overhaul kick in immediately. The eat-your-vegetables-first approach is causing heartburn for some Democrats. Three years is a long time to wait for dessert, and opponents could capitalize on misgivings about the complex legislation to undo what would be a signature achievement for Obama.

Hilarious video

A mysterious "police" force that has one small Montana city on edge apparently is packing its bags and heading home. The California-based security firm, run by an ex-convict with a history of fraud convictions, is dropping its purported bid to take over a Montana jail — days after state officials launched an investigation and several key participants backed away from the controversial proposal. American Police Force spokeswoman Becky Shay said Friday the deal with Hardin had "gone sour" after press revelations about the criminal past of company founder Michael Hilton.

The new missile plan from US President Barack Obama's administration raises questions and Moscow is waiting for Washington to explain its intentions, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday. "The statements that are constantly being voiced raise more questions than answers," Lavrov told reporters during a visit to the Moldovan capital for a summit of ex-Soviet countries. "We would like to receive full clarification," Lavrov added, referring to the plan presented by the Obama administration last month to replace an older plan backed by George W. Bush that would have placed missile defence facilities in eastern Europe. Moscow and...

Mathias Kiwanuka loves his former defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, but the Giants' defensive end says he will never play for Spagnuolo's Rams if Rush Limbaugh purchases the team. Kiwanuka and the Jets' Bart Scott made it clear Thursday that they would never play for the Rams or any team owned by the controversial conservative radio host. "All I know is from the last comment I heard, he said in (President) Obama's America, white kids are getting beat up on the bus while black kids are chanting 'right on,'" Kiwanuka told The Daily News. "I mean, I don't want anything to...

BEAUFORT, S.C. — A 77-year-old man has lost his lower arm after he was bitten by an alligator on a coastal South Carolina golf course. Multiple media outlets reported that the Fripp Island man was playing the Ocean Creek Golf Course about 3 p.m. Thursday when he was attacked. His name was not released. Kate Hines with the Fripp Island Property Owners Association says the man was picking up his ball when a 10-foot alligator pulled him into a nearby pond.

The pilot of an Apache gunship, who flew to the rescue of U.S. soldiers nearly overrun at a remote outpost in Afghanistan last weekend, told ABC News today that he had "never seen that large of a force" attacking coalition troops in Afghanistan. By the time Warrant Officer Ross Lewellen and Warrant Officer Chad Bardwell arrived over the embattled outpost, dubbed Camp Keating, it was in flames and dozens of insurgents could be seen on the camp's perimeter. When the battle was over and the fire extinguished, many who survived had nothing left "except the clothes off their backs and...

VATICAN CITY (AP) - African bishops attending a Vatican meeting are speaking about the election of Barack Obama in divine terms—putting them very much at odds with many of their U.S. counterparts. Archbishop Gabriel Charles Palmer-Buckle of Accra, Ghana said Wednesday that there was "a divine plan behind" Obama's election. "It's like the biblical story repeating itself," he told reporters, citing the Old Testament figure Joseph, who after being sold into slavery in Egypt ends up becoming a top official. "We believe God has his own plans. God directs history," he said of the U.S. election. "We pray that it...