Free Republic

Dump Cheney for Condi, Bush urged Sarah Baxter, Washington REPUBLICANS are urging President George W Bush to dump Dick Cheney as vice-president and replace him with Condoleezza Rice if he is serious about presenting a new face to the jaded American public. They believe that only the sacrifice of one or more of the big beasts of the jungle, such as Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, will convince voters that Bush understands the need for a fresh start. The jittery Republicans claim Bush’s mini-White House reshuffle last week will do nothing to forestall the threat of losing control...

If you’ve ever made a contribution to a political party, political candidate or other interest group, you probably know that one donation, no matter how large or small, eventually results in an avalanche of desperate pleas for additional donations. With the 2006 midterm elections on the horizon, my mailbox has become a destination address for solicitations from a host of Republican candidates, some in-state, some from across the country, the House and Senate GOP committees and the GOP itself. (I have to give the Democrats credit, they at least recognize a dry hole when they see it. I don’t get...

No one can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill, but it probably looks a lot like Earth. Never mind what you've heard about global warming as a slow-motion emergency that would take decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us. From heat waves to storms to floods to fires to massive glacial melts, the global climate seems to be crashing around us. The problem -- as scientists suspected but few others appreciated -- is that global climate systems are booby-trapped with tipping points and feedback loops, thresholds past which the slow...

The inevitable confirmation of Samuel Alito for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court may seem to many to be one of those routine transactions between branches of government. In fact, it is part of a larger picture that ought to frighten and outrage Americans of every political stripe. President Bush has, in recent years, asserted "inherent powers" and "exclusive authority" regardless of laws passed by Congress and language in the U.S. Constitution - and has used the purported powers as a reason to withhold information and exclude Congress from decisions. On occasion, the court, with the support of outgoing...

Renowned scientist James Lovelock says he believes the world has passed the point of no return for climate change, and civilization is unlikely to survive. Thirty years ago Lovelock conceived the idea that Earth possesses a planetary-scale control system he named Gaia, which keeps our environment fit for life, The Independent reported Monday. But now he believes mankind's abuse of the environment has made climate change insoluble and life on Earth will never be the same again. In an extraordinarily pessimistic new assessment published in Monday's Independent, Lovelock suggests efforts to counter global warming cannot succeed, and that, in effect,...

It’s 2006 and the Sky is Falling ……………………NOT ! The Media has been all-a-twitter over the following “breathtaking” news items: 1. The NSA (National Security Agency) actually keeps track of who tries to access its website, and, if its doesn’t like the looks of a “visitor”, it brazenly takes a closer look ! Egad ! , the Privacy People cry . They’re going to peer into all those dark and nasty websites we frequent ! Well, maybe so. If NSA thinks you might be a foreign agent, or a terrorist – foreign or domestic – out to hack into their...

This morning, the Drudge Report--HUGE RED FONT and all--chose to aid and abet the civil liberties Chicken Littles at the N.Y. Times. That's a shame. The real headline news is not that President Bush took extraordinary measures to protect Americans in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but that the blabbermouths at the Times chose to disclose classified information in a pathetically obvious bid to move the Iraqi elections off the front pages. And to help sabotage the Patriot Act reauthorization, which went down in the Senate this afternoon. [Update: And to grease the wheels for Times reporter...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. Jewish leaders say they are increasingly worried that Christian conservatives want to turn America politically and culturally into a country that tolerates only their brand of Christianity. "There is a feeling on all sides that something is changing," said Abraham Foxman, director of the New York-based Anti-Defamation League. "The polls indicate a very serious thing -- that over 60 percent of the American people feel that religion and Christianity are under attack," he said on Thursday in an interview. "Some are saying we are attacking (Christianity). This whole movement is not anti-Semitic or motivated by anti-Semitism....

Greenhouse gasbags gather in Montreal Posted: December 3, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern By Henry Lamb © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com Once again, the global warming industry is holding its annual party, this time in Montreal. Nearly 10,000 celebrants have gathered to eat, drink and be merry – and to bash the U.S. for withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol. Less than half the crowd are official delegates from 180 nations; the rest are advocates representing hundreds of non-government organizations. The stated purpose of the meeting is to construct the regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in phase two of the Kyoto Protocol –...

For over four decades, observant and open-minded individuals have become deeply concerned about the future of our great nation. They refused to accept the rosy official and media testimony regarding our nation's fiscal and monetary integrity. Similarly, they did not believe the negative rhetoric directed towards gold. Just as these independent thinking and far-sighted people recognized that one plus one would always equal two they also knew that no one, nor no nation, could create something from nothing. Throughout this period they witnessed the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve banking system work together to create U.S. dollars from thin...

USA - Valley Boy Scouts are severing formal ties to schools, fearful the American Civil Liberties Union will sue because the boys pledge allegiance to God.

MAG: Avian Flu, On the Verge of an Epidemic Sun Feb 20 2005 11:30:41 ET The vicious avian flu that has killed dozens of people in Vietnam, Thailand, and elsewhere in the region "has caused the deaths of hundreds of millions of animals in nearly a dozen Asian countries" in the past two years and could kill millions of people if it becomes capable of spreading efficiently among humans, Michael Specter reports in "Nature's Bioterrorist" (p.50), in the February 28, 2005, issue of The New Yorker. "No such virus has ever spread so quickly over such a wide geographical area,"...

The insurgency in Iraq will last at least a decade and American troops alone will not be able to defeat it, a senior US military officer in Baghdad has predicted. Speaking on the eve of Iraq's first free election for 51 years, the officer conceded: "Iraqis are the ones who will have to defeat the insurgency, not multi-national forces. Gen John Abizaid Gen John Abizaid of US Central Command "It is not necessarily a growing insurgency but it is a resilient one," he told The Telegraph. "We're looking at a long-term insurgency, probably at a lower level of violence than...

"In terms of perception, we've already lost the war," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism analyst who heads the Washington office of RAND Corp., a think tank known for its problem-solving research..

NEW YORK In a column noting the high number of U.S. military personnel in Iraq who will be far from home on Christmas, USA Today founder Al Neuharth declared today that if he were eligible to serve in Iraq, "I would do all I could to avoid it." He also wrote in his weekly column for the paper that America's New Year's resolution should be to bring the troops home "sooner rather than later." Neuharth, 80, a World War II vet, said he would happily volunteer for that kind of "highly moral duty again." But he would avoid serving in...

Ousted Army Chief Blasts Bush Iraq Policy Tue Sep 2, 4:49 PM ET By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer WASHINGTON - Thomas E. White, forced to resign as Army secretary in May, has fired back in a book that describes the Bush administration's postwar effort in Iraq (news - web sites) as "anemic" and "totally inadequate." The book, which presents a blueprint for revitalizing Iraq, asserts that the administration underestimated the difficulty of putting that country back on its feet after the fall of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). "Clearly the view that the war to `liberate' Iraq would...

One of the most experienced and respected figures in a generation of American warfare and peacekeeping yesterday accused the US administration of 'failing to prepare for the consequences of victory' in Iraq. At the end of a week that saw a war of attrition develop against the US military, General William Nash told The Observer that the US had 'lost its window of opportunity' after felling Saddam Hussein's regime and was embarking on a long-term expenditure of people and dollars for which it had not planned. 'It is an endeavour which was not understood by the administration to begin with,'...

Let's let all the Freeper who are panicking use THIS thread so they won't be cluttering up the OTHER THREADS.

BWAAAAAAAAAAAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!

WASHINGTON-- Sen. Mark Dayton said Tuesday he is closing his Washington office because of a classified intelligence report which made him fear for the safety of his staff. Dayton, D-Minn., said the office will be closed while Congress is in recess through Election Day, with his staff working out of his Minnesota office and in Senate space off Capitol Hill. ``I take this step out of extreme, but necessary, precaution to protect the lives and safety of my Senate staff and my Minnesota constituents, who might otherwise be visiting my Senate office in the next three weeks,'' he said on...