Free Republic

LONDON (Reuters) - Unhappy clowns from around the world say a study that reported that children didn't like them has wiped the big smile from their faces, and have been falling over their large shoes to put their case. A poll by researchers looking at what decor to put in hospital children's wards found that youngsters do not like clowns on the walls and even older ones think they are scary. "We found that clowns are universally disliked by children. Some found them quite frightening and unknowable," said Penny Curtis, senior researcher at the University of Sheffield which questioned 250...

LONDON (Reuters) - Bad news for Coco and Blinko -- children don't like clowns and even older kids are scared of them. The news that will no doubt have clowns shedding tears was revealed in a poll of youngsters by researchers from the University of Sheffield who were examining how to improve the decor of hospital children's wards. The study, reported in the Nursing Standard magazine, found all the 250 patients aged between four and 16 they quizzed disliked the use of clowns, with even the older ones finding them scary. "As adults we make assumptions about what works for...

Don't send in the clowns Hospitals are being urged not to decorate children's wards with paintings of clowns in case they upset young patients. State-funded research has found that in a survey of more than 250 children aged four to 16, all disliked the use of clowns in hospital decor, with even the teenagers seeing them as "scary". "Given that children and young people do not find hospitals frightening per se - and only express fear about those spaces associated with needles - this finding is somewhat ironic," said Dr Penny Curtis of Sheffield University. The aim of the Space...

Amid new polling that points to a shift in momentum in this crucial state, Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama made arguments Monday that electing the other would prove a costly mistake.

<snip>Paul's electoral success has befuddled Democrats. They say he routinely opposes bills that would help his sprawling 14th Congressional District, a mostly rural swath of coast that stretches from the northern outskirts of Corpus Christi to Galveston.Last year, Republican appropriators zeroed out millions of dollars in funding for several dredging and port improvement projects in the district - a casualty, Democrats say, of Paul's opposition to government pork even if it benefits his own constituents.Democrat Shane Sklar, a rancher who lost to Paul last year, said the congressman's supporters either didn't believe or didn't care that his votes had made...

Waukesha, WI - Troubles keep adding up for Ronald E. Schroeder, who performed professionally as Silly the Clown but has been sitting in the Waukesha County Jail since May on charges of sexual assault, domestic violence and possession of child pornography. On Aug. 10, he was granted work-release privileges and was supposed to be transferred to the county's Huber facility so he could leave for work. It never happened. Here's why: Schroeder is $4,000 behind on his child support payments resulting from a 1995 divorce in Milwaukee County. Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Mary Kuhnmuench found him in contempt in June...

For the first time in the history of Canterbury Cathedral, the Holy Fools UK will be holding a special service to cerebrate their 25th Silver Anniversary. The Service will take place on Saturday, 15 September at 6pm and will have up to 30 Christian clowns (Holy Fools) in the service, all colourfully made up and in costume ready to present this special service with all the energy and fun that clowns give. The public is warmly invited to the service to join them in this special celebration The Holy Fools is a national Christian organization with members throughout the UK....

McALLEN — A man wanted in connection with the fatal shooting of a Reynosa police officer may have crossed into the United States dressed as a clown, Mexican state police said Thursday. Tamaulipas investigators alerted U.S. authorities Wednesday that the suspect may have crossed the Rio Grande illegally while wearing a costume as a disguise. On Monday, accomplices sneaked the man through the Reynosa in a garbage cart to help him get out of town, said Fernando Miranda Guerrero, chief of homicide investigations for the state police. “We went to the river and searched along it with the help of...

Twenty years ago, a few clowns decided to change from making people laugh to making them cry. With the help of a transitional deacon who had been nurturing the idea of a clown ministry, "The Way of the Cross in the Company of Clowns" was born.They perform around the Albany Diocese only during Lent, with a poignant look at the passion, death and Resurrection of Jesus, and during Advent, when they celebrate the birth of Jesus.First tries"People loved it," Jack Ablett said of the early performances. He and his wife Rita are among the original founders of the ministry at...

Four members of the anti-war group Code Pink were arrested outside the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) Thursday afternoon, following an announcement that they would seek to take over the office. The group’s members had planned to hold a symbolic “Pin the war on the Donkey” demonstration at Pelosi’s office to show their frustration with the Democratic leadership’s inaction on ending the war in Iraq. However, Capitol Police prevented the taping of a drawn donkey to the wall. Code Pink members were crying outside Pelosi’s office. When asked why, Rae Abileah, 24, said she was crying out of...

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA (Feb 24, 2007) Police said they arrested a man yesterday in connection with the killing of two clowns in front of dozens of children during a performance, in a case that has convulsed the violence-hardened South American country. Walter Bautista, 21, who goes by the alias "My Fish," was being held on charges of murder and trafficking in arms, a police statement said. Clowns Willington Villamizar, 18, known as "Rony," and Nelson Nunez, 24, known as "Andres," were gunned down Tuesday night in the middle of their circus act in the town Cucuta, about 650 kilometres northeast of...

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) -- Two clowns were shot and killed by an unidentified gunman during their performance at a traveling circus in the eastern Colombian town of Cucuta, police said Wednesday. The gunman burst into the Circo del Sol de Cali on Monday night and shot the clowns in front of an audience of 20 to 50 people, local police chief Jose Humberto Henao told Reuters. One of the clowns was killed instantly, and the second died the next day in hospital. "The killings had nothing to do with the show the victims were performing at the time of the...

MESA - Hundreds of people who believe the government has lied about the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States plan to gather in Chandler later this week to strategize about how to find out the truth. The 9/11 Accountability: Strategies and Solutions Conference will be held Friday through Sunday at the Crowne Plaza San Marcos Golf Resort in Chandler. The conference will include keynote speakers, panel discussions, strategy workshops and a documentary film marathon. Theories on what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, include one that the government planted bombs to bring down the World Trade Center towers...

Two anti-whaling activists, one an Australian, were feared missing in Antarctic waters after a clash with a Japanese whaling fleet. A search for the two men was under way after the anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd confronted Japanese whaling vessels in the Ross Sea. International director of Sea Shepherd, Jonny Vasic, said anti-whaling activists from two ships had used high speed inflatables to try to disrupt the operations of the whaling fleet. But a mayday message was issued after radio contact was lost with two activists in an inflatable. One of the men was an Australian from Perth and the other...

"That is not a hair question." "That is also not a hair question." These guys are kind of funny.

Customs inspectors discover 500 pounds; additional 600 pounds found on another tour bus entering U.S. HIDALGO - Clowns are not usually a party to large drug investigations. But on Sunday, customs inspectors at the Hidalgo-Reynosa International Bridge found more than 500 pounds of cocaine on a private tour bus in which a Latin Grammy-nominated musical group of clowns was riding. About 40 minutes later, an additional 600 pounds of cocaine was seized from another tour bus entering the United States Officials said the two drug seizures were not related. Customs and Border Protection estimates the street value of the drugs...

It is amazing how the United States deals with its history by either hiding its head in the sand or attempting to rewrite the accounts of its shameful behavior. What is even more disturbing is that the much vaunted “free press” in the U.S. is complicit in this intellectual rape of the general populace. The collaboration between the delusional political prostitutes that act as the government and the intellectual eunuchs who make up the communications media has left the American public deaf, dumb and blind to the truth. Americans need to know that both President Mahmud Ahmadinejad of Iran and...

Five years after it burst onto the scene with the grandiose attacks of September 11, the terror group is a shadow of its former self. Its chief architects, Messrs. bin Laden and Zawahiri, and their so-called consultative council are on the run; its top field commanders are decimated, and its hundreds of foot soldiers are in jail, being hounded or singing like canaries under torture, or bribery. To be sure, copycats are popping up here and there, but the West can certainly claim it has demolished the infrastructure of the original group.

SADDAM HUSSEIN ended his 19-day hunger strike last Wednesday with a meal of beef, rice and Coca-Cola, but he had little to show for his starvation. Iraqis in particular, living day-to-day with brutal sectarian violence, viewed Mr. Hussein’s self-sacrifice as an insult. “Saddam’s hunger strike didn’t work because it came from someone who is finished in Iraq and has no political or personal value for the Iraqi people,” said Fauwzya al-Attiya, a sociologist at Baghdad University. “Most of us wish he was executed just to end this problem so we can face our other problems.” But if Mr. Hussein tarnished...

The American Left as "crisis cult" Clinical psychologist Robert Godwin proposes an interesting framework for understanding the increasingly bizarre behavior of the American Left at his very interesting website One Cosmos. Drawing on the work of psychoanalytic anthropologist Weston LaBarre, he posits that the left has become a “crisis cult” such as are found in societies whose bedrock assumptions break down in the face of the superior strength of foreign cultures impinging on their territory. Probably the most famous of the crisis cults are the cargo cults which developed in Melanesia. The Cargo Cults believe that manufactured western goods (‘cargo’)...