Free Republic

PETA plans to acquire one or more drones to be used to harass deer and dove hunters. They are looking at the CineStar Octocopter, which can carry a camera for up to five minutes. This likely will be a one-shot operation because the first group of hunters they try to use it on will blow it out of the air!

Raymond Jefferson, one of Obama's political appointees to the Department of Labor has resigned after an internal investigation found that he improperly steered federal contracts to friends and former colleagues.

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged a group of seven individuals who perpetrated a fraudulent pump-and-dump scheme in the stock of a sham company that purported to provide products and services to fight global warming.

Rick Glen Strandlof, a former mental patient who posed as a wounded Marine captain to found a statewide veterans group and campaign for political candidates, is being prosecuted under the Stolen Valor Act for making claims he received a Purple Heart.

This just in: The Los Angeles Daily Journal is reporting that President Obama has tapped Thomas Saenz to head the civil rights division at the Department of Justice. Saenz, 42, the former vice president of litigation for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund in Los Angeles, is currently serving as counsel to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. ... Civil rights attorneys and academics in southern California praised the choice. “I don’t think the president or attorney general could make a better selection,” said Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the ACLU of Southern California. “He’s a throwback to the...

One of the darker periods of modern American history was J. Edgar Hoover's long reign over the FBI, as we have learned since he died in 1972. So it is more than a historical footnote to discover new records showing that prominent public television broadcaster Bill Moyers participated in Hoover's exploits. ...

Barack Obama has only four years to save the world. That is the stark assessment of Nasa scientist and leading climate expert Jim Hansen who last week warned only urgent action by the new president could halt the devastating climate change that now threatens Earth. Crucially, that action will have to be taken within Obama's first administration, he added. ...

This is an email I received yesterday from Senator Martinez in reply to an email I had sent requesting his support to ensure that Senator Obama provided proof of his eligibility, as a natural-born US citizen, to take the office of President of the United States. Dear (Omitted): Thank you for contacting me regarding President-Elect Obama's citizenship. I appreciate hearing from you and would like to respond to your concerns. Like you, I believe that our federal government has the responsibility to make certain that the Constitution of the United States is not compromised. We must fight to uphold our...

For the foreseeable future, New Orleans federal judge G. Thomas Porteous Jr. will have a much lighter load. The Judicial Council of the Fifth Circuit issued a reprimand on Wednesday suspending the judge for two years for alleged infractions, including failing to report gifts from lawyers who appeared before him and concealing debts while in personal bankruptcy. The judge may next have to face impeachment proceedings in Congress. Lewis Unglesby, counsel to Porteous, a 62-year-old Clinton appointee, says the suspension is unwarranted. “I don’t think you’ll find a single person who says judge Porteous wasn’t fair in any single case...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Researchers from Spain have found a strong and independent link between cannabis use and the onset of psychosis at a younger age. The association, they say, cannot be explained by chance, and is not related to gender or the use of other drugs. It is, however, related to the amount of cannabis used.

Rapper turned fashion mogul P. Diddy, aka Sean Combs, is apoplectic that Republican presidential nominee John McCain chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate. Diddy has decided to film a series of "Diddy-Obama Blogs" where he performs a soliloquy of sorts to Senator John McCain. The latest thing that has set off the rapper is Alaska. Diddy doesn't think there are any blacks in Alaska, and calls his decision to sign on Gov. Sarah Palin as "buggin' the f*** out." "She's a heart beat away...what in the HELL, Alaska?" he says. ...

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — A federal judge has overturned a decision by the U.S. Forest Service to allow oil and gas drilling near a forest and a river in Michigan's northern Lower Peninsula. U.S. District Judge David Lawson of Detroit ruled Thursday the agency had acted "arbitrarily and capriciously" in 2005 by giving Savoy Energy LP of Traverse City a permit to drill an exploratory well near the Au Sable River's south branch.

Climate change is occurring far more rapidly than even the worst predictions of the UN's Nobel Prize-winning scientific panel on climate change, Al Gore said on Thursday. yada yada yada ...

Say what you will about the looming catastrophe facing the world as the pace of global heating and polar melting accelerates. There is a silver lining. Look at a map of the US. The area that will by completely inundated by the rising ocean—and not in a century but in the lifetime of my two cats—are the American southeast, including the most populated area of Texas, almost all of Florida, most of Louisiana, and half of Alabama and Mississippi, as well as goodly portions of eastern Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. While the northeast will also see some coastal...

OSLO (Reuters) - Former Vice President Al Gore and other campaigners against climate change lead experts' choices for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, an award once reserved for statesmen, peacemakers and human rights activists. If a campaigner against global warming carries off the high world accolade later this month, it will accentuate a shift to reward work outside traditional peacekeeping and reinforce the link between peace and the environment. The winner, who will take $1.5 million in prize money, will be announced in the Norwegian capital on October 12 from a field of 181 nominees. Gore, who has raised awareness...

Former Sen. Lincoln Chafee said he has left the Republican Party because the national GOP has drifted too far from him on critical issues, including the war in Iraq, the economy and the environment. "It's not my party anymore," Chafee, who represented Rhode Island from 1999 until 2007, told The Providence Journal in an article published Saturday. Chafee said he is now an unaffiliated voter after leaving the GOP "in June or July." He said he made the move because "I want my affiliation to accurately reflect my status." Chafee was appointed in 1999 after his father, Sen. John Chafee,...