Free Republic

Beer drinkers rejoice: Your favorite brew may be healthier than you think. For years, wine drinkers have indulged without guilt, reveling in the news that red wine can help protect against heart disease. Recent research shows that beer can also be good for what ails you, from reducing risk for broken bones to helping warding off diabetes and mental decline. It can even increase longevity, a large study suggests. However, the key to tapping into beer’s benefits is moderation, meaning just one 12-ounce beer per day for women and two for men. Heavy drinking ups the threat of liver damage,...

Every civil servant wants to experience his or her legacy firsthand--but not the way that onetime Arapahoe Sheriff Patrick J. Sullivan Jr. has. Sullivan, a nationally renowned law enforcement leader, was arrested on drug charges and is now being detained in the Denver area jail that bears his name. Sullivan, who in 2001 was named the National Sheriff Association's "Sheriff of the Year," was arrested on suspicion of trafficking methamphetamines. Local news station CBS4 began an investigation of Sullivan last month on a tip that he had agreed to meet a male informant, providing drugs in exchange for sex. He...

<p>The Occupy Wall Streeters are about to create chaos for 99 percent of the city.</p> <p>In one of the largest demonstrations in recent city history, the anti-greed rabble plans to swarm the subways, take over the Brooklyn Bridge and shut down the stock exchange today.</p>

The “99 percent” have got money problems -- but Jay-Z’s got none. The millionaire rap mogul is set to make a mint by hawking T-shirts based on the Occupy Wall Street anti-capitalist movement. The shirts bear the words “Occupy Wall Street,” with red graffiti spray altering the slogan to read “Occupy All Streets.” They went on sale yesterday for $22 on Jay-Z’s Rocawear Web site. The music star -- comfortably among the richest “1 percent” of Americans that is the focus of the protesters’ rage -- has not committed to giving any of his T-shirt proceeds to the drum-beating beatniks...

The Occupy Wall Street movement was flush with relief Saturday after protesters got their own potties. For the past seven weeks, demonstrators have marched to nearby fast food joints to do their business, sometimes riling customers and workers. But thanks to the help of local officials, the protesters have finally secured three Porta-Potties of their own. “It’s good because it provides a place to go so people don’t pee in the street,” said Rossi Meacham, 27, of Portland, Maine. “We can keep the park sanitary without having to rely on anybody else to use their facilities.” The portable toilets are...

TORONTO (Reuters) - For actor Nicolas Cage, making the new thriller movie "Trespass" hit close to home. Cage, at the Toronto film festival along with director Joel Schumacher promoting the film about a home invasion, said that he has actually lived through the nightmare in real life. "It was two in the morning. I was living in Orange County at the time and was asleep with my wife. My two-year old at the time was in another room. I opened my eyes and there was a naked man wearing my leather jacket eating a Fudgesicle in front of my bed,"...

The Revenge of William Tilghman of the S.J. Waring Rebel privateers in the brig Jeff Davis had captured the S.J. Waring on July 7. For the past week, they had been sailing for a Southern port.... .... William Tilghman, the black steward from the original crew of the Waring, concocted a plan to retake the ship. When the Waring was captured, the Confederates cut up the United States flag to piece together a Confederate flag. Tilghman had vowed revenge and his plan addressed such feelings. Just before midnight, with the Confederate captain and two mates asleep and the ship under...

Albany, NY - Breaking pack from the vast majority of his fellow senate Republicans, Saland’s deliberation over and eventual deciding “vote of conscience” on the Marriage Equality act June 24, has brought the media-shy legislator to national and even global attention. Saland’s vote to support gay marriage in New York did not come easy. Throughout his district and beyond, passionate constituents on both sides of the contentious issue applied overwhelming pressure in an attempt to get Saland to “do the right thing.” “It was a very difficult and anguishing process,” Saland said, estimating that he received anywhere from 100,000 to...

HUDSON, NY — A group of nine Hudson mothers, all clients of the Department of Social Services, have filed a lawsuit against the Columbia County government in an attempt to stop the county plan to move DSS two miles out of the city to the former Walmart building on Fairview Avenue in Greenport. The group, who all say they walk to the current DSS location at 25 Railroad Avenue, are bringing an Article Seven lawsuit against the county stating that the plan is moving forward without needed social, environmental or traffic impact studies. The legal action states that ignoring these...

Charleston was in ruins. The peninsula was nearly deserted, the fine houses empty, the streets littered with the debris of fighting and the ash of fires that had burned out weeks before. The Southern gentility was long gone, their cause lost. In the weeks after the Civil War ended, it was, some said, "a city of the dead." On a Monday morning that spring, nearly 10,000 former slaves marched onto the grounds of the old Washington Race Course, where wealthy Charleston planters and socialites had gathered in old times. During the final year of the war, the track had been...

ALBANY, NY -- A 37-year veteran of the state's Office of General Services who is accused of three felonies told investigators he was bored because of a lack of work and suggested he's not alone. "There's a lot of people sitting up there (in Corning Tower) doing nothing," is how the Inspector general's office quotes 53-year-old Gregory Ruth, arrested Wednesday on charges of fraud, grand larceny and false filing. His salary, at $42.00 an hour, is about $84,000 a year. His job entails designing plumbing systems, chiefly for the state's prisons. The IG began investigating after receiving an anonymous tip...

Sunday, April 21, 1861 The rumor that Federal militia troops would again march through Baltimore, was once more the talk of the town. 3,400 Federal militiamen had just arrived in Cockeysville (17 miles north of Baltimore) via rail from Philadelphia. They were given ammunition and were now waiting for a couple of Regular US Army regiments to accompany them through the city. Almost immediately, as church bells rang out the news, 4,000 men from every class joined the Baltimore militia. Before dismissing his congregation, a Universalist minister urged his flock to “beat your ploughshares into swords!” The city’s new militiamen...

Saturday, April 20, 1861 Robert E. Lee was revered by General Winfield Scott as “the best soldier I ever saw in the field.” Trusting Scott’s judgement, Lincoln... offered him command of the Union army. This offer, however, happened the day after Virginia seceded. Though Lee looked “upon secession as anarchy” and would be willing to sacrifice all the slaves in the South to save the Union, he couldn’t draw his sword “upon Virginia, my native state.” It was two day later, on this date, from his home in Arlington, across the Potomac from the capital, that Lee officially resigned his...

Friday, April 19, 1861 The Sixth Massachusetts was the first regiment raised that was fully armed and equipped for battle. They had rifled muskets, knapsacks, even a full brass band. The Sixth had been joined by some unarmed Pennsylvania militiamen in Philadelphia. As the 36-car train pulled into the President Street Station, a small crowd met them, throwing nothing but jeers and hisses in their direction.... ...the remaining cars, with about 200 of the Sixth (and their band, plus the unarmed Pennsylvanians), were left stranded at the President Street Station. The remaining men of the Sixth were ordered off the...

In March 2010, in an act of malfeasance, a cancerous tumor was grafted on to an otherwise healthy patient. Although the sedated patient did not agree to the strange and invasive procedure, he was told, upon awakening, that the action was taken for his own good. A new, large and ugly lump, visible now beneath the skin, was an important and necessary addition, and placed there, according to the administrator: “so we can see what’s in it”. The tentacles of this tumor began spreading into the patient’s body immediately and we now are seeing the effects on the surrounding tissue....

ALBANY -- Christopher Schewe, 41, a Pittstown man and a full-time UAlbany student, has chained himself to a campus fountain. He said he gave a lock key to another person and told that person to not come back until Monday. He said he will not eat, will sleep in a tent and will wear adult diapers. Campus police searched him and have since left him alone. He is trying to bring attention to the cancellation of fountain day. He also said he wants an apology from Glenn Beck. "I think this is the worst representation of our school you could...

Albany, NY Updated 06:18 p.m., Wednesday, March 16, 2011: The suspensions have started. Three University at Albany students who were involved in the destruction of property during the Kegs and Eggs riots have been suspended. All those who participated in destruction and mayhem face suspension and possible expulsion from the school. The school sent out that warning Wednesday, one day before St. Patrick's Day, to remind students that drinking heavily carries consequences beyond a mere hangover. "As students are identified to the university by the Albany Police Department as participants in the egregious behaviors of Saturday, they will be temporarily...

ALBANY, NY -- A beer-soaked Saturday morning melee described by residents as the worst in recent memory is forcing the city to again confront the fraught relationship between full-time Pine Hills residents and the college students who often treat the neighborhood as their off-campus playground. By Monday, the number of college students facing charges had topped 40 as police and prosecutors vowed to use the drunken revelers' own cellphone videos to build cases against them. "Let me deliver this message to you," Albany County District Attorney David Soares said. "Many of you who felt, or believe now, that you've gotten...

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY -- A how-to guide for better masturbation that hangs in Skidmore College bathrooms is steaming up the campus in more ways than one. The Your-Body-is-a-Wonderland edition of The Racy Reader, published by the college's Center for Sex and Gender Relations, encourages masturbation as "a great way to relieve some of the stress that comes with classes, finals and the never ending homework." The poster shows a map of the body's erotic zones and offers suggestions for heightening self-pleasure. Students created 300 copies of the "restroom reader" with the help of a college administrator. Fliers were placed in...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - General Motors Co's mostly electric Chevy Volt turned in a lackluster performance for efficiency in its first series of road tests by product raters at Consumer Reports. "We would have really liked to have loved it," David Champion, director of Consumer Reports auto test center told Reuters on Monday after announcing the organization's top picks for 2011. "It was fun to drive and the ride quality was pretty good. But when you look at the finances, for us it doesn't make any sense," Champion said. He said consumers seeking value and top fuel efficiency would be better...