Free Republic

Critics charge that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is abusing the perks of power by asking for a jumbo military jet with sleeping accommodations for her flights across the country. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Pentagon agreed to provide the speaker, who is second in the line of presidential succession, with a military plane for added security during trips back home. Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, flew in a small commuter-sized Air Force jet. Pelosi wants a larger aircraft that can fly to her San Francisco district without stopping to refuel. Some sources are claiming that Pelosi...

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- The power to create "perfect" designer babies looms over the world of prenatal testing. But what if doctors started doing the opposite? Creating made-to-order babies with genetic defects would seem to be an ethical minefield, but to some parents with disabilities -- say, deafness or dwarfism -- it just means making babies like them. And a recent survey of U.S. clinics that offer embryo screening suggests it's already happening. Three percent, or four clinics surveyed, said they have provided the costly, complicated procedure to help families create children with a disability. Some doctors have denounced the...

Spiral Galaxies’ Spurs Reveal Fine-tuning Recent work modeling structure formation in spiral galaxies provides more evidence of fine-tuning of the solar system’s location in the galaxy. As spiral galaxies (of which the Milky Way Galaxy is one) age, the amount of substructure between the spiral arms increases. While this factor clearly has implications for the timing of a habitable solar system (interactions with galactic structures usually destabilize planetary orbits), it appears that the solar system resides in a special location as well. Researchers have learned that the formation of harmful-to-life substructures occurs least in what’s called the corotation radius, a...

Project Runway has a two part conclusion for this season starting tonight. I've been wanting Laura to win since the beginning. However, I'm watching the reruns of the show where the designers have to choose a dog and design an outfit for the dog and the model. Gasp! Laura isn't a dog person and thats a point against her in my book. I can't believe it but Jeffrey (who I think is a complete a$$hole) has scored a point with me cause he choose the Corgi dog to design for and my beloved Scruffy is a Corgi mix. I'm extremely...

NEW YORK - Jaap Penraat, an architect and industrial designer who helped 406 Jews sneak out of Nazi-occupied Netherlands and withstood torture to protect fellow members of the resistance, has died. He was 88. Penraat died June 25 at his home in Catskill, N.Y., of esophageal cancer, said his daughter, Noelle Penraat. Penraat was in his 20s when he began forging identity cards for Jews. He was arrested, imprisoned for several months and tortured, but refused to tell his captors anything. After his release from prison, Penraat and other resistance members disguised Jews as construction workers hired to work on...

God by the NumbersCoincidence and random mutation are not the most likely explanations for some things.by Charles Edward White Math and theology have had a long and checkered relationship. The Babylonians and Mayans both associated numbers with God. In fact, both societies named their gods with numbers. The Mayans used 13 and the Babylonians used 60. In the Greek world, followers of Pythagoras prayed to the first 4 numbers and thought they were the creator. On the other hand, in the 18th century, the French mathematician Laplace told Napoleon he had no need of God even as a hypothesis, and...

At long last, what the media wouldn't tell you about...BILL AND HILLARY'S 11TH-HOUR CRIME SPREE Final Days by Olson, Barbara "Disgraceful." That was former president Jimmy Carter's word for the final days of the Clinton administration. But as the late Barbara Olson shows in this riveting book, it was worse than disgraceful; it was well-nigh criminal. Here's the whole shocking story of a manic Clinton White House consumed with self-enrichment, gifts, pardons, federal land grabs, and an orgy of spending and regulating. If the Clinton administration was the most corrupt in American history, here was its most obscenely corrupt moment....

Brandon Singleton was 8 when he first saw the movie "Clueless," and it changed his life. He was entranced by the paradise of teenage consumption that the 1995 film portrayed, a Hollywood world of valet parking and designer duds. So when he entered Suitland High School in Prince George's County four years ago, he was determined to make it his reality. Now 17, he wears Armani sunglasses inside his mother's modest townhome on a recent afternoon as he rattles off a list of his favorite designer brands: Dolce & Gabbana, Coach and "a little Burberry here and there." His first...

Submashine Guns Self-loading Carbines and Sniper Self-loading Rifles Automatic Pistols Assault Rifles Machine Guns Self-loading Hunting Carbines Magazines for Assault Rifles and Machine-guns Bayonets and Knives Foreing Modifications   I love my work to which I devoted by whole life and, of course, I'm proud of my achievements. However, I would have been happy to live to the days, when people would need any more neither my assault rifles nor any other weapons... Mikhail Kalashnikov From The Publisher; Dear Readers, We would like to draw your attention to the publication of the Kalashnikov Arms album, describing the small arms created...