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GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Looking dazed, a thin and pale Gilad Schalit emerged from a pickup truck Tuesday under the escort of his Hamas captors and the Egyptian mediators who helped arrange the Israeli tank crewman's release after more than five years in captivity.Click here for article

ATLANTA (AP) — Bolstered by support from his loyal radio talk-show audience and tea party backers, businessman Herman Cain has revved up mainstream conservatives, rising recently to third place in a poll of voters in Iowa, the leadoff caucus state. In his pursuit of the Republican presidential nomination, Cain's views on the economy and his fiery delivery have resonated with some in the GOP. His campaign has also been marked by controversy, including his comment that he would not want a Muslim bent on killing Americans in his administration. Just this week, Cain accused comedian Jon Stewart of disliking him...

A landlord has blocked off his plush £1m home with ten skips to stop his tenants from leaving without paying the £15,000 he claims they owe him. Businessman Simon Everingham says he has been in a constant battle for £3,000-a-month rent since the occupants of his four-bedroom 18th century farmhouse in Markington, near Harrogate, North Yorkshire, fell behind with the payments last November. He barricaded the American tenants Dan and Christina Herring in by blocking the drive on Monday and the fight to stop them leaving continued today. They work at the controversial Menwith Hill U.S. spy base nearby but...

FLORIDA CARRY, INC. LEGISLATIVE ALERT FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – April 26, 2011 SB 234 – Sen. Bogdanoff files OC crippling amendment AGAIN! Members and friends, If you have been keeping track of SB 234, you’ll remember that Senator Ellyn Bogdanoff (R-Fort Lauderdale) introduced an amendment to the Senate Judiciary Committee that would have stripped out the open carry provision of the bill in favor of subjective language that would exempt inadvertent exposure of one’s firearm as punishable under law. Realizing she didn’t have the votes necessary to get the amendment adopted, Sen. Bogdanoff withdrew the amendment. On the eve of...

TAMPA, Fla. -- The bitter race between candidates to replace Charlie Crist as governor remained too close to call early Wednesday. The closely watched contest matched Republican businessman Rick Scott against Democrat Alex Sink, Florida's chief financial officer. With 99 percent of the expected vote counted -- all but 40 precincts -- Scott lead by 52,924 votes. At 6:45 a.m., Scott had 48.94 percent, while Sink had 47.65 percent. An automatic machine recount is triggered if the final margin is within one-half of 1 percent. Among the votes yet to be counted are absentee and provisional ballots, of which thousands...

MAKHACHKALA, Russia – Two powerful explosions derailed a cargo train Sunday in the violence-plagued Russian province of Dagestan but no one was injured, officials said. The blasts capped a week of daily attacks that have killed at least 55 people. A blast equivalent to five kilograms of TNT exploded early Sunday near the town of Izberbash, derailing the locomotive and eight cars, transport police spokesman Akhmed Magomayev said. Another, less powerful blast aimed at killing rescuers detonated nearby shortly after the first explosion, he said.Click for rest of Article

Azerbaijan said on Monday it had detained eight people including a Chechen man on suspicion of planning "terrorist acts" against a school and kindergarten in the capital of the oil-producing Caucasus state. Secular authorities in mainly Muslim Azerbaijan, a tightly controlled former Soviet republic, are concerned over what they say is the rising influence of radical Islam and the threat posed to the country's oil-fueled economic growth. Click for rest of article

The Muslim girl that converted to Christianity is in Florida. Turned out her daddy threatened to kill her and she fled here. link to article

Screaming constituents, protesters dragged out by the cops, congressmen fearful for their safety — welcome to the new town-hall-style meeting, the once-staid forum that is rapidly turning into a house of horrors for members of Congress. On the eve of the August recess, members are reporting meetings that have gone terribly awry, marked by angry, sign-carrying mobs and disruptive behavior. In at least one case, a congressman has stopped holding town hall events because the situation has spiraled so far out of control. “I had felt they would be pointless,” Rep. Tim Bishop (D-N.Y.) told POLITICO, referring to his recent...

I just tried to log in to the freerepublic a few minutes ago and got this message. I didn't have this problem earlier today. Access to the data has been denied! Warning: A virus or unwanted program has been found in the HTTP Data. Requested URL: http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/*/index Information: Contains recognition pattern of the HTML/Spoofing.Gen HTML script virus My Avira Antivir is blocking access to the forum page of this website. So I had to log on to the freerepublic home page and post a message from there. Anyone else having this problem?

Some of the signs presented punchy phrases like “boot the bankers.” Then there was the play on words: “Give me liberty, not debt.” Another was part revolutionary, part pop song: “Gonna party like it’s 1773.” The placards protruded from a bulky crowd gathered Wednesday at The Jacksonville Landing to shout they’d had enough with the way the government handles money.

ISTANBUL, April 10 (Compass Direct News) – Police have declared three Pakistani men innocent of raping a 13-year-old Christian girl despite eye witness accounts and medical evidence indicating their guilt. At a hearing in Nankana Sahib district court on April 3, police from the Pakistani town of Sangla Hill, 64 miles from Lahore, cleared 40-year-old Mohammed Shahbaz, 30-year-old Waqas Sadiq and 25-year-old Yousaf Sadiq of accusations of raping and threatening Ambreen Masih. Shahbaz was the only suspect to attend the hearing, which was initially called to discuss terms of his pre-arrest bail.

DALLAS – Nikolas Colton Evans had talked about how much he wanted to have a child, but the 21-year-old died after he was punched and hit his head on the ground in a fight. That would have been the end of it, if it weren't for his determined mother, a court order and a urologist. Missy Evans has harvested her dead son's sperm and hopes to find a surrogate and one day raise her son's child. It's a decision that ethicists say raises troubling questions; one called the potential offspring a "replacement child." Evans isn't concerned about what others might...

The bullnecked president of Chechnya emerged from afternoon prayers at the mosque and with chilling composure explained why seven young women who had been shot in the head deserved to die. Ramzan Kadyrov said the women, whose bodies were found dumped by the roadside, had "loose morals" and were rightfully shot by male relatives in honor killings. "If a woman runs around and if a man runs around with her, both of them are killed," Kadyrov told journalists in the capital of this Russian republic...

Washington, DC: Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders, founder and floor leader of the Freedom Party (PVV), and member of the Board of Advisors of the International Free Press Society (IFPS), recounted today before a packed audience in Washington's National Press Club the recent, alarming attacks on free speech worldwide - including legal actions and death threats to which he and other political leaders and journalists have lately been exposed. Notably, Mr Wilders is being prosecuted in his own county because of reaction to his film "Fitna," and his remarks challenging the contention that Islam is a "religion of peace."

The genuine atrocities committed by the Milosevic regime have become an all-purpose excuse for many to ignore the growing influence of the jihad doctrine and Islamic supremacism in the Balkans, and to defame those who oppose the jihad in Bosnia, Kosovo, and the surrounding regions as supporters of fascism and genocide. This includes people who have dedicated their lives to the defense of the principles of non-establishment of religion and the equality of rights of all people before the law as cornerstones of a just society...

The courageous warrior Pamela Geller has just posted at Atlas Shrugs a harrowing collection of photographs of honor killing victims. Scroll and scroll, and it just keeps going -- so many victims, and still these photographs represent only the tiniest fraction of honor killing victims worldwide. I've posted three here; there are many, many more... Pamela Geller's short list of women who are victim of islamic honor killings. Click here to go straight to Atlas Shrugs

The government has come under fire after banning a Dutch MP from entering the UK over anti-Islamic remarks. Former Conservative cabinet minister Michael Portillo said by turning away Geert Wilders, ministers had made a "populist twit and bigot" world famous. The Freedom Party MP had been invited to a House of Lords screening of his film, linking the Koran to terrorism.

The International Free Press Society has issued an open letter to the British Government regarding its decision to bar Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders from entering the country. The letter contains this paragraph (but be sure to read it all, at the link): The British Home Office has further stated that in barring Geert Wilders from the UK it is stopping “extremism, hatred and violent messages” from coming to its country. The British Home Office is wrong. These things are already there. With this crude rebuff of Mr. Wilders, the Netherlands, and freedom of speech, the British government has all but...

Free Speech Death Watch Update: dhimmitude is triumphant today in the UK. Britain's Muslim peer, Lord Nazir Ahmed, threatened to mobilize 10,000 Muslims to protest Wilders' appearance and the showing of Fitna in the British Parliament. Instead of standing up to this thuggery, telling Lord Ahmed that the public order will be protected and making it clear that the British government would protect the freedom of speech as a cornerstone of free society, the British have caved: