Free Republic

RUSH: Now, let me suggest something here. We could all say just as easily that the Democrats, the left is responsible for Tucson. We could say it. We didn't. But we could. How? Very simple. The left -- which continues to agitate, abuse, punish, name-call, whatever -- create an environment in which the individual is smothered. They treat people, individuals, as worthless. They come up with these conspiracy theories that Bush knew about 9/11. Imagine yourself wandering aimlessly through the murk as a disturbed young man, you see one of your cities practically blown off the map and then you...

New York City’s Columbia University, which last year hosted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the name of its ”academic freedom,” now has decided that “Palestine” is a country and has opened the first U.S. Center for Palestine Studies. Calling itself “one of the world's great educational institutions and a bastion of academic freedom,” the university dedicated the center to the late Edward Said, a “Palestinian” Arab who taught comparative literature at Columbia for 40 years. During the British Mandate, from 1917 until the re-establishment of the State of Israel n 1948, the term Palestine referred to all of what now...

SOUTH BEND — If you ever wondered how much difference just one letter can make when it comes to a message, ask the thousands of people who drove by a digital billboard near the intersection of Ironwood and State Road 23 between Thursday and Monday morning. The ad urged people to go to the "southbendon.com" website for a look at the "15 best things about our pubic schools." That's right, the billboard said "pubic" instead of "public" schools. The letter "L" had been left out of the word public. Lee MacMillan of South Bend said his wife spotted the error...

SOUTH BEND — If you ever wondered how much difference just one letter can make when it comes to a message, ask the thousands of people who drove by a digital billboard near the intersection of Ironwood and State Road 23 between Thursday and Monday morning. The ad urged people to go to the "southbendon.com" website for a look at the "15 best things about our pubic schools." That's right, the billboard said "pubic" instead of "public" schools. The letter "L" had been left out of the word public. Lee MacMillan of South Bend said his wife spotted the error...

SOUTH BEND — If you ever wondered how much difference just one letter can make when it comes to a message, ask the thousands of people who drove by a digital billboard near the intersection of Ironwood and State Road 23 between Thursday and Monday morning. The ad urged people to go to the "southbendon.com" website for a look at the "15 best things about our pubic schools." That's right, the billboard said "pubic" instead of "public" schools. The letter "L" had been left out of the word public. Lee MacMillan of South Bend said his wife spotted the error...

In his recent American Spectator article "America's Ruling Class- and the Perils of Revolution" (July/ August 2010), Professor Angelo Cordevilla observed that most of the voters who identify themselves as Democrats are reasonably satisfied that the Democratic Party represents them well, but only a fourth of the voters who call themselves Republican feel they are well represented by the Republican Party. While the Democrats may voice opposition to their elected leaders on select issues, they are more likely to overcome their stands on individual issues and vote the party line at election time. Many Democrats think their party sold out...

Chicago politics, where voting is such a revered civic duty that people do it even after they're dead, cold, stiff, stuffed, boxed and buried beneath the permafrost for years, has now come to D.C. with the Obama administration. This afternoon comes the most encouraging economic news, courtesy of our keen-eyed buddy Rick Klein over at ABC, that the Obama administration's $787-billion economic stimulus has, for example, thankfully created 30 new jobs in a little-known rural corner of Arizona at a cost to American taxpayers of only $761,420. That works out to only $25,380.67 spent to create each individual job. Seems...

Of the $1 billion in clean-energy stimulus money spent since the beginning of September, $850 million has gone to foreign wind companies. It doesn't take a bunch of experts at a hastily planned "jobs summit" to discover this isn't the way to bolster employment in America. Indeed, the 11 U.S. wind farms that received stimulus money from the Treasury have imported 695 of the 982 wind turbines to be installed, creating 4,500 jobs overseas. That's far more overseas work than the stimulus money has created in the United States.

A jet of gas spewing from a huge black hole has mysteriously brightened, flaring to 90 times its normal glow. For seven years the Hubble Space Telescope has been watching the jet, which pours out of the supermassive black hole in the center of the M87 galaxy. It has photographed the strange phenomenon fading and then brightening, with a peak that even outshines M87's brilliant core. Scientists have dubbed the enigmatic bright blob HST-1, and are so far at a loss to explain its weird behavior. "I did not expect the jet in M87 or any other jet powered by...

Newfound glowing spots on Jupiter seem unexpectedly to come from electron beams whipping around the giant planet's volcanic moon Io. Io is the most volcanic body in the solar system, with its entire surface likely made up of lava from the moon's hundreds of volcanoes. Io also causes glowing spots hundreds of miles across on its mother planet that are similar to the aurora borealis or northern lights in the Northern Hemisphere on Earth. As Jupiter spins, its magnetic field sweeps past Io, stripping off roughly 1 ton (about 1,000 kilograms) of matter off Io every second. This matter becomes...

A prototype of what may be the next generation of personal computers has been developed by researchers in the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering. Capable of computing speeds 100 times faster than current desktops, the technology is based on parallel processing on a single chip.Parallel processing is an approach that allows the computer to perform many different tasks simultaneously, a sharp contrast to the serial approach employed by conventional desktop computers. The prototype developed by Uzi Vishkin and his Clark School colleagues uses a circuit board about the size of a license plate on which they...

Gov. Schwarzenegger signed legislation Wednesday creating a sex-offender management board to improve the state's oversight of sex offenders and foster communication between law-enforcement officials. The bill closely resembles a bill Schwarzenegger vetoed last year. The 2005 parole of convicted rapist David Allyn Dokich to Mead Valley, an unincorporated community south of Riverside, highlighted a lack of communication between state and local agencies. The sheriff's department had little notice of Dokich's arrival. Under AB 1015, a 17-member board will oversee the management and treatment of sex offenders. The goal is to reduce recidivism and protect the public. In his veto message...

DEL RIO, Texas - Standing in a cramped federal courtroom last month, illegal immigrant Walter Oscar Portillo-Machado pleaded with a judge for mercy. But he came to the wrong place for that. The Salvadoran man was caught along a 210-mile stretch of the Texas-Mexico border that has been set up as zero-tolerance zone for illegal immigration. Instead of merely getting sent back home, immigrants here are arrested, prosecuted, and sometimes sentenced to prison before they are formally kicked out of the country. The effort began late last year along a border area that includes the Rio Grande border towns of...

University of California, Berkeley, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau is creating a top-level post to focus on keeping the campus fair and welcoming. Birgeneau said he wants to make sure there is equal opportunity for students, faculty and staff regardless of religion, sexual orientation, race, gender or whether someone has a disability or not. "I very strongly believe that every single person (should) feel that this is a place where they belong, where they are respected for their individuality, for what they represent and their background," Birgeneau said Wednesday in announcing the new position at a back-to-school briefing. A national search is...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 23, 2005 – Operations that have been ongoing in the Iraq's Anbar province since September have had a significant impact nationwide and have limited the ability of terrorists to conduct suicide attacks, a U.S. military spokesman said today in Baghdad. Since operations began, 700 terrorists have been killed and 1,500 have been detained in Anbar, said Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, Multinational Force Iraq spokesman. Also, 243 weapons caches have been found and 440 mines and improvised explosive devices have been found and cleared, he said. The U.S. and Iraqi militaries have left behind a persistent presence in...

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday created a task force charged with improving the economy and quality of life in California's San Joaquin Valley, a quickly developing region beleaguered by high unemployment, suburban sprawl and some of the nation's dirtiest air. The California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley establishes a 26-member panel that includes government representatives and those from the private sector. "I want to make this task force a model for how state governments can work together more effectively with local governments and the regional economy," the governor said. "The valley is home to the...

SACRAMENTO - Inland lawmakers acted on hundreds of bills last month, but also found time to raise hefty campaign contributions from donors with a stake in some of the legislation. Lawmakers finished their two-year legislative session in the early hours of Aug. 28, culminating four weeks of lengthy floor sessions and frenetic lobbying. They also collected about $2 million at fund-raisers near the Capitol. The money, mostly given in amounts from $1,000 to $3,200, will be used for legislators' own November races or to help other candidates. But some critics say the end-of-session quest for political cash feeds a perception...

<p>SACRAMENTO (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has quietly incorporated a private nonprofit group that can help advance his political goals without disclosing the source of its money.</p> <p>Organizers insist the new corporation, which can raise money, lobby lawmakers and conduct polls, won't be used to hide special-interest donations to Schwarzenegger. But they acknowledged it could legally avoid disclosure under a variety of circumstances.</p>

Friday, 20 December, 2002, 12:04 GMT France creates Muslim council The council will bring relations with Muslims into the openFrench officials and Muslim leaders have agreed to the creation of the first body to represent the country's five million Muslims - Europe's largest community. What we should be afraid of is Islam gone astray, garage Islam, basement Islam, underground Islam The breakthrough comes after several years of efforts to formalise relations between Muslims and the government. These efforts were spurred on by the 11 September attacks in the United States. A final round of talks began on Thursday near Paris...