Free Republic

If François Hollande wins the French presidential elections on Sunday, Italy can help forge a rebalancing of the Franco-German couple, especially after Angela Merkel yesterday (3 May) said Europe needs “political courage and creativity rather than billions of euro,” reports EurActiv Italy. “It is important that we break with the idea that growth always costs a lot of money and must be the result of expensive stimulus programs,” Merkel said in an interview due to be published on Wednesday in Hamburg’s Abendblatt newspaper. She added that the eurozone’s recovery would depend on rebuilding national finances as well as structural reforms...

As I report in Friday’s Times, disposing of the waste produced by natural gas drilling will become a larger and more contentious issue if New York State gives the go-ahead to horizontal hydraulic fracturing, which uses millions of gallons of fluids per well to release gas from the Marcellus Shale. New York already deals with waste from about 6,800 active vertical and horizontal gas wells upstate. Although these wells require just a fraction of the water that would be needed for fracking in the Marcellus, they still produce waste that needs to go somewhere. Officials with the New York Department...

Colorado Lesbian Wendy Alfredsen Mom Granted Paternity in Custody Battle Wendy Alfredsen fought for custody of her child by becoming the first woman allowed to file a paternity suit in Colorado. ( By COLLEEN CURRY May 4, 2012 A lesbian mother who fought for custody of her child by becoming the first woman allowed to file a paternity suit in Colorado has finally been granted access to her daughter. The case was a custody battle ripped from the headlines: In the middle of a messy divorce, one parent took the child and fled the country, leaving the other to work...

Link only http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-05-05/planned-parenthood-arizona-ban/54762958/1

Amish children raised on rural farms in northern Indiana suffer from asthma and allergies less often even than Swiss farm kids, a group known to be relatively free from allergies, according to a new study. "The rates are very, very low," said Dr. Mark Holbreich, the study's lead author. "So there's something that we feel is even more protective in the Amish" than in European farming communities. What it is about growing up on farms -- and Amish farms in particular -- that seems to prevent allergies remains unclear. Researchers have long observed the so-called "farm effect" -- the low...

Arizona Bans Funding To Planned Parenthood In Abortion Fight Governor: 'I stand with majority of Americans who oppose taxpayer funds for abortion' By David Schwartz Arizona Governor Jan Brewer on Friday signed into law a bill banning abortion providers like Planned Parenthood from receiving money through the state, her office said in a statement. The Republican-backed Whole Woman's Health Funding Priority Act cuts off funding for family planning and health services delivered by Planned Parenthood clinics and other organizations offering abortions. "By signing this measure into law I stand with the majority of Americans who oppose the use of taxpayer...

If you’d really like to depress yourself some evening, watch “Doomsday Preppers” on the National Geographic Channel. The show details the plans of normal, well adjusted people to cope with the aftermath of fiscal collapse, nuclear holocaust, the eruption of Yellowstone, solar flares, and so on. The New York Times noted with outrage that many of these people were accumulating guns and ammunition in order to defend their 1,500 pounds of MREs and dried brown rice, but stockpiling guns is fine with me. My concern is that most of them seem pretty inexpert with guns. One prepper was counting on...

Mitt Romney’s campaign was weathering a minor controversy by week’s end related to the resignation of a foreign policy aide who was gay, forcing the campaign to deny it had caved to fringe social conservatives who’d pressured Romney to fire the aide.“We wanted him to stay with our team. He's a very accomplished spokesperson, and we select people not based upon their ethnicity or sexual preference or gender, but their capability,” Romney said Friday on Fox News of the aide, Richard Grenell, who stepped down from the Romney campaign on Tuesday. Grenell was hired to act as Romney's spokesman on...

Greenland's glaciers are not speeding up as much as previously thought, researchers have estimated. As a result, the ice rivers may be contributing "significantly less" to sea-level rise than had been thought. Previous studies had estimated that the nation's glaciers would double their flow by 2010 and continue to maintain that speed, they explained. But the team, writing in Science, said the glaciers could eventually flow faster than earlier studies estimated. The team of US researchers based their findings on data stretching back to 2000-2001, collected from more than 200 outlet glaciers. "So far, on average, we are seeing about...

LA billionaire Hints At Purchasing LA Times Saturday, May 05, 2012 LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Los Angeles' leading philanthropist, billionaire Eli Broad, who has just written a book, shares the secrets of his success and hints at possibly buying the Los Angeles Times. He visited the construction site of what could become his personal crown jewel on Grand Avenue: The Broad, a new contemporary art museum for his vast collection, and it could potentially be another architectural landmark downtown. "Grand Avenue is the new cultural and civic region of the whole district of 15 million people," he said. In "The...

Log Cabin Republicans, a gay political action group, is in "ongoing" discussions with Mitt Romney's campaign and the Republican National Committee on a variety of issues, said the group's director, which most likely includes same-sex marriage and employment discrimination policies. The group will be meeting over the summer to determine whether to endorse Romney prior to the GOP convention. "I can't confirm the details of our conversations because they are of a 'private nature,'" the group's Deputy Executive Director Christian Berle told The Christian Post. "We're in ongoing conversations with the Romney campaign and the RNC on the issues that...

More information has been revealed about the 115 immigrants found in an Edinburg Stash House on Wednesday. According to court records, “Welcome to Hell” is the greeting dozens of undocumented immigrants heard when they arrived into the U.S. Those same court records stated that the greeting wasn’t far from the truth. $500 a week is much Marcial Salas claimed he was making to smuggle in and hide dozens of illegal immigrants. Court documents show that Salas admitted to locking the immigrants in a stash house located down a dirt road off of University Drive in Edinburg, despite the rising heat,...

AURORA, Colo. (AP) - A 6-year-old boy was suspended from his suburban Denver school for three days after school officials said he told a girl "I'm sexy and I know it," a line from a popular song. D'Avonte Meadows, a first-grader at Sable Elementary School in Aurora, is accused of sexual harassment and disrupting other students, according to a letter the school district sent to his mother after he was sent home Wednesday.

Private pilots who may want to fly near Chicago on the weekend of May 19-20 have been warned they could be shot down, and a Red Cross memo suggests there could be mass evacuations of the city in the event of riots by left-leaning activists protesting the NATO summit. Less than a day’s drive away, however, near Jefferson City, Mo., at the same time there will be an event for Americans who also are worried about the nation. But instead of protests and riots, participants will focus on how to build up America, repair it and stabilize it for future...

When J. David Goldin saw the recorded interview of baseball great Babe Ruth for sale on eBay he knew something was wrong. There was only one original record of that 1937 interview of Ruth on a hunting trip, and Goldin had donated it to a government archive more than 30 years ago. Now someone was auctioning it off, the winning bid just $34.75. "I took one look at the record label and I said, 'holy smokes, that's my record,'" said the retired radio engineer. From his home in Connecticut, filled with antique radios and tape reels, Goldin launched an amateur...

The Left has accused Republicans of a “war on women,” but New York Democratic senator Kirsten Gillibrand could wind up running against a woman in the fall. The contest for who will face Democrat Gillibrand is on, and Wendy Long discusses what a Senator Long would look like with Kathryn Jean Lopez. KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: What do you have against Senator Gillibrand?WENDY LONG:  National Journal recently came out with its annual congressional rankings — the gold standard in political measuring sticks. Kirsten Gillibrand was tied for No. 1 Most Liberal Member of the United States Senate. She’s metamorphosed from...

Michigan’s welfare recipients may get up to $900 from the state in car repairs every year, but the House of Representatives is trying to cut that to $500. The car repair subsidies are part of a $6.4 million program the Department of Human Services has to help welfare recipients get a job and stay employed. Among many approved expenses, the program also includes up to $1,200 for welfare recipients to buy a car, and up to $500 for clothing allowance for job interviews and work. “You've got to be kidding me,” said Jim Chioda, a tea party activist from Holland....

Jobs: Normally, a drop in the unemployment rate would be a welcome sign of an economy on the mend. But in the upside-down world of Obamanomics, the jobless figure is increasingly useless, hiding more than it reveals. In April, the unemployment rate officially declined to 8.1% from the previous month's 8.2%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But you don't have to look very hard to see that the jobs picture actually deteriorated last month. In fact, the only reason the jobless rate didn't climb in April is because so many people have simply quit looking for jobs and...

Go to Burning Man, and you’ll find everything from a thunderdome battle between a couple in tiger-striped bodypaint to a man dressed as a gigantic blueberry muffin on wheels. But underneath it all, says the festival’s co-founder, Larry Harvey, is “old-fashioned capitalism.”

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