Free Republic

Liberals in Lexington, Mass., have taken to beating up the 7-year-old children of their political opponents. This disgusting tactic should be featured on the front pages of every newspaper across the nation, yet you've heard nary a word about it. Here are the specs: A number of months ago, as first reported by yours truly, Superintendent Paul Ash decided to have his second-grade teachers begin reading a "fairy tale" about two princes getting it on homosexual style to be read in the classrooms under his direction. The book was called "King and King." In reaction, parents from the Estabrook School...

U.S. TV Ad Targets Consequences of Unilateral Withdrawal Plan 16:57 May 22, '06 / 24 Iyar 5766 by Hana Levi Julian A television advertising campaign in the United States is reminding viewers of the costs of returning territory to the Palestinian Authority. The Center for Security Policy is sponsoring the campaign, which targets Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s unilateral withdrawal plan. The ad, which is being broadcast on national television in the U.S. beginning, is timed to coincide with Olmert’s visit to Washington. Olmert is slated to meet with President George W. Bush on Tuesday and is expected to promote his...

If I, as a doctor, offered you a pill that had just been linked to the deaths of two women, do you think you could trust my medical judgment? Or would you go shopping for a different doctor -- one who didn't prescribe potentially lethal drugs? As a practicing ob/gyn, I am deeply troubled by those who would continue to defend RU-486 -- after the Food and Drug Administration announced recently that two more women had died after taking the drug. How many more women have to die before this dangerous pill is pulled from the market? It appears that...

Now that smokers have to light up outside Austin restaurants and bars, a new problem is piling up. More smokers are flicking their cigarette butts on the ground and littering downtown streets. “I’ve heard from bar owners and bartenders that the problem has gotten significantly worse after the smoking ordinance,” Brian Block of Keep Austin Beautiful said. That could be causing an environmental problem for the city. It's what happens after the cigarette butts are thrown down that has environmentalists worried. Environmentalists want the city and bars to supply ashtrays to keep cigarette butts from polluting Town Lake. "Those cigarette...

So Google is cooperating with the Chinese, and there's been a firestorm of criticism. The Times of London observes: “Until now, Chinese net users who were blocked from accessing a site knew that the information was there and was being kept from them by their own government. From now on it is Google which will be keeping data from them, in direct contradiction of its own declared mission ‘to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful’. “The reaction to Google's move has been highly critical. The watchdog organisation Reporters Without Borders called it ‘a black day...

Doctors could face death penalty for illegal abortions, some say By Tommy Witherspoon Tribune-Herald staff writer Saturday, August 27, 2005 Doctors who perform illegal abortions in Texas could be prosecuted for capital murder and face a death sentence under recent changes in Texas law that have resulted in apparent unintended consequences. While officials familiar with the new legislation say such prosecutions are unlikely, the possibility of a doctor on death row, whether intentional or not, puts a sharp focus on the importance of analyzing legislative activity every two years, officials say. That's what Lindsey Roberts, director of training for the...

In Kelo v. New London, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that that Takings Clause of the U.S. Constitution did not bar the city of New London, CT, from using its eminent domain power to transfer ownership of land from homeowners to economic developers so long as the transfer furthered a valid “public purpose.” The Court accepted the argument of New London that transferring the property from the current homeowners to private developers would increase the number of jobs in New London and increase the tax revenues available to the city. This, in the Court’s mind, was enough to satisfy the...

Engaging in philosophical economics can be very exciting for those with the right charts and graphs, which is why it can be vexing for those who only care about bottom lines. Your ability to explain the superiority of supply-side whatever will only go so far with a businessman whose eye is fixated on his ledger. Moral arguments, let alone nationalistic ones, won't register. Which is why China's attempt to purchase UNOCAL, an American oil company, is such an interesting story. Who for a moment could believe that our good friend China (good enough to have high trade status with, anyway)...

NEW YORK - Billionaire investor Warren Buffett said on Thursday in an interview on CNBC he maintains a long-term bearish view on the dollar due to the size of the U.S. trade deficit, despite the currency's recent strength. . . . The latest available data show that the U.S. current account deficit widened to $195 billion in the first quarter of this year, or 6.4 percent of gross domestic product — a record by both measures. This means the U.S. economy must attract around $2 billion of foreign capital every day just to balance its books, alleviate the downward pressure...

In Iraq, they say, failure is not an option. But it is a possibility. From the start of the intervention, two critical questions have awaited answers: Is there a critical mass of Iraqis who are willing to fight for freedom rather than submit to tyranny? And can the American military -- designed to confront the Soviet Union, a lumbering giant - learn to effectively fight an elusive enemy who plays by no rules and need not win a single battle? All that the enemy has to do is erode our will to fight. Video tapes of beheadings and suicide bombings...

I have posted a few times before; my son is a Marine stationed at a primitive firebase in eastern Afghanistan. They conduct constant missions rooting out insurgents along the Pakistani border; he has been there for about 8 months, due to leave there mid-June for a break, then possibly to Iraq. Today I got a call from him at my work; never had him do that. Satellite phone, big time delay............."Just wanted to see how everyone is......." he says. Some more pleasantries, and then my son, who has never been too vocal about current events or politics, says that the...

When the feds quickly announce they won't press charges against runaway-bride Jennifer Wilbanks, 32, when the Albuquerque police chief discusses the "stress that she's been through" and law enforcement in Georgia is still noodling over whether to prosecute her for staging a kidnapping that didn't happen, you know you live in a country where actions mean nothing. Don't get me wrong: There have been serious consequences to Wilbanks' apparently premeditated hoax -- she bought her bus ticket a week before running off, and left behind her keys, wallet and ring, which made her disappearance look like a kidnapping, or worse....

Once again, the political right and the political left are united by one common objective: the suppression of unorthodox speech that threatens their two-party duopoly. Sneaking in quietly, on little bureaucrat feet, lawyers and other agents of the Incumbent-ocracy are enacting rules that will threaten the economic livelihoods, and possibly even the personal freedoms, of those who express heterodox opinions. On the right, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wants criminal penalties for "indecent" speech over the airwaves. Fines weren't good enough. Sensenbrenner & Co. think the likes of Howard Stern should go to jail. Some...

The intelligence agency overhaul given final approval on Wednesday by the Senate also reorganizes the way the states grant driver's licenses, a change that civil liberties advocates and some security experts say could have far-reaching consequences. Issuing driver's licenses has always been mostly a state function, but the new law requires the federal Department of Homeland Security to issue regulations on what documentation a state must require before it can grant a license. It also requires that the licenses be "machine readable," which will probably be accomplished through a magnetic stripe or a bar code or both. The printed format...

After listening to pundits reflect upon yesterday's extremely inaccurate early exit polls, it becomes clear that either the AP simply threw science to the wind by sending all women pollers to interview all women voters, or that they tried to affect the election and depress the R vote. Personally, I think the latter. After CBS's forged documents and the timing of trumped up "stories" by the NYTimes in the last ten days, I admit that I am cynical enough to believe that early exit poll data was manipulated in order to simulate a Kerry lead. As I said yesterday, however,...

Can Moore mean less? Utah Valley State College donors - who vote with their pocketbook and are upset the Bush-bashing filmmaker is coming to the Orem campus - are saying yes. Hal Wing, a businessman and former Springville mayor, has yanked a $1.4 million art collection and nearly that much in cash promised for the school. Others are threatening to withhold millions more due to the Michael Moore invitation. One resident refuses to attend his grandson's spring graduation from UVSC, a school spokesman says, and parents are threatening to send their kids elsewhere. "They've kicked over a beehive," said Wing,...

McGee admits to jamming phones He could face up to 5 years in prison By SARAH C. VOS Monitor staff ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --------- July 29. 2004 8:11AM C harles McGee, the former executive director of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee, admitted yesterday to jamming Democratic party phone lines on election day in November 2002. McGee, 34, was the second person to plead guilty to a felony for the more than 800 hang-up phone calls that an Idaho company made to five state Democratic party offices and the Manchester Professional Firefighters Association, a group that was offering rides to the...

Antibiotic-resistant strain of syphilis is spreading A fast-spreading mutant strain of syphilis has proved resistant to the antibiotic pills that are offered to some patients as an alternative to painful penicillin shots. Since the late 1990s, doctors and public health clinics have been giving azithromycin to some syphilis patients because the long-acting antibiotic pill was highly effective and easy to use. Four pills taken at once were usually enough to cure syphilis. But now researchers at University of Washington in Seattle have found at least 10 percent of syphilis samples from patients at sexually transmitted disease clinics in four cities...

Margaret Christie, 51, was asked to model the dress in court after refusing to wear it on her wedding day, and said she felt humiliated by the sheriff's "sexist" observations on her figure. She wanted to win back the £250 she had spent on materials, but instead was ordered at Dundee Sheriff Court to pay the dressmaker £200. In a written judgment, Sheriff Richard Davidson said she suited the disputed dress but was not able to achieve the "degree of voluptuousness" she was hoping for. He added: "Unfortunately, she did not have the necessary basic ingredients for having voluptuousness. The...

Gloria Bailey and Linda Davies laugh when they recall singing The Beatles' ``When I'm 64'' to one another when they fell in love as closeted social workers in Massachusetts. Looking back, they say their younger selves could never have imagined they'd one day be openly gay, let alone one of the seven high-profile couples who persuaded Massachusetts' top court to rule they can marry beginning May 17. But just as unfathomable, the couple of 32 years says, is that they'd ever be 64. Growing old seemed to Linda and Gloria like something other people did. Or, more specifically, something older...