Free Republic

There are many who thought this day might never come: we finally have a document from Obama’s college years. Well, sort of. Let me explain before you look. The website Buzzfeed has unearthed a copy of a syllabus from a class Obama used to teach at, presumably, the University of Chicago. So while it’s not what many have been hoping for (transcripts from when Obama was taking classes), it is technically a document from his college years — the years he was teaching. The syllabus is for a class called “Voting Rights” from the winter of 2002. And guess what...

British researchers say they've developed a laser process that can "uncopy" toner ink from paper as an alternative to traditional recycling. Scientists at the University of Cambridge say the process involves short laser pulses to erase words and images by heating the printed material to the point that it vaporizes. The technique works with commonly used papers and toner inks and is more eco-friendly than recycling, they said. "When you fire the laser, it hits the thin toner layer and heats it up until the point that you vaporize it," researcher David Leal-Ayala told the BBC. "Toner is mostly composed...

U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives www.atf.gov February 3, 2011 MEMORANDUM TO: Special Agent in Charge, Dallas Field Division THRU: Resident Agent in Charge , Lubbock Field Office FROM: Gary M. Styers, Special Agent, Lubbock Field Office SUBJECT: Contact with Congressional Investigators On February 2, 2011, at approximately 1500 hours, ATF Special Agent Gary Styers was contacted telephonically by Robert Donovan and Brian Downey, representing United States Senator Chuck Grassley and the Senate Judiciary Committee. Downey and Donovan after identifying themselves asked Special Agent Styers if he would be willing to answer some questions regarding...

Senators 'Disappointed' by Omission of Radical Islam From Homegrown Terror DocumentPublished December 09, 2011 | FoxNews.com Two prominent senators chided the Obama administration for releasing a strategic plan on homegrown terror that doesn't mention radical Islam and likens domestic extremism to "gang violence" and "sexual offenses." The 24-page plan, released Thursday, follows a Defense Department letter in October that classified the Fort Hood massacre as "workplace violence." Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, criticized that classification at a hearing earlier this week, and along with Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., issued the statement Thursday questioning why the Obama administration omitted Islam from its...

Scholastic Inc. is a nearly century-old educational publishing company that distributes books, magazines, and other teaching materials through the schools. If you have kids (or remember from your own grade-school days), Scholastic puts out news bulletins that get sent home weekly or monthly. One of those items is Scholastic News, which bills itself as “America’s Leading News Source for kids.” Reader Edward has a daughter in fourth grade who brought home the December issue of Scholastic News — and he wasn’t too happy when he saw the publication’s coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Read for yourself (click for...

The investigation revealed that the plastic laminates, and other document-making implements supplied by Serrano and others over several years have been used to manufacture thousands of false documents. The indictment alleges that Serrano has been intercepted on a wiretap discussing the fact that he has been engaged in the false document business for more than a decade. Evidence developed during the investigation revealed that the fraudulent documents were utilized by illegal aliens to gain employment, as well as other citizenship and residency related benefits. In addition, the operation supported a variety of criminal activity, in that the false documents were...

In a fledgling nation hungry for men to fight in the American Revolution, conscientious objectors were frequently greeted with scorn and their loyalty was questioned. (According to FR rules, please go to the link to read this most interesting story.)

It looks like the National Education Association is not putting its money where its mouth is. In its mission statement, the nation’s largest teachers union asserts that “we will focus the energy and resources of our 3.2 million members on improving the quality of teaching, increasing student achievement and making schools safer, better places to learn.” But a secret union document reveals that the NEA’s commitment to “improv(ing) teaching and learning” works out to a paltry $7.44 per member every year. This is according to a document obtained from an internal source of the Indiana State Teachers Association, one of...

A top aide to Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin supplied an answer last year to a thorny question a friendly witness would face the next day at a pivotal hearing on for-profit colleges, raising questions of witness tampering, an email obtained by The Daily Caller shows. As Harkin prepares for another event on the same subject at 2:00 p.m. today, the email raises fresh concerns about the senator’s committee conduct after he recently faced accusations from Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigators that he pressured them on an error-ridden report unveiled at the very same hearing. That Senate Health, Education, Labor...

Is constitutionalism akin to blind faith? Some statists certainly think so, as they have called the position “constitution-worship.” In light of this, what should we call those who lack that “faith”? Given that they don’t believe in the Constitution, and that the document is the supreme law of the land, can it be said that they don’t believe in law? Are these people, who are often atheists, also “alegalists”? Whatever you call them, they’re more visible and brazen than ever. Writing in Time magazine recently, Richard Stengel insisted that our Constitution “must accommodate each new generation and circumstance.” Georgetown professor...

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY Liberty is a free agency to do a thing or not at pleasure.Rational Liberty is a freedom of doing a thing from some motive agreeable to a Moral Law which is always founded in Reason or perfect vertitude.Religious Liberty is a freedom of doing right or any Moral action or refraining from any immoral or wrong action accord to the dictates of a person’s conscience. Every rule of conscious was given an intelligent Being by his Creator who created his Mind, to govern his actions and to his curator alone every such Being is only accountable rationally expecting...

I’ve been keeping you abreast of all the Obama administration’s Project Gunrunner stonewalling since March (links/chronology below). Today, vigilant GOP House Oversight and Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa is holding another hearing to pressure Team Obama for the whole truth. On Monday, Issa and GOP watchdogs spotlighted DOJ obstructionism (Sipsey Street Irregulars has a rundown here.) More fit is hitting the shan. And in one of those rare confluences, other MSM outlets have joined CBS News in exposing the story. First, new documents. Just in from Issa’s office: Moments ago in his opening statement at today’s hearing, Operation Fast and...

After Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson testified on Feb. 2 that regulating drinking water might help prevent children from getting autism, CNSNews.com asked Jackson by e-mail whether she could provide “any data, studies, documents, reports or other sources” to confirm her claim. Her office subsequently stated there were “emerging studies” but provided no evidence. In an e-mail statement to CNSNews.com on Feb. 11, Jackson said there were “emerging studies” that show a possible link between autism and environmental factors. But repeated requests by e-mail and by telephone to t

Monday, January 31, 2011 New USCCB Document Highlights Biblical Quotations in the Mass The Catholic Mass draws heavily from Scripture--in every prayer you hear quotations and allusions to biblical texts. In fact, last year I did a series presentations now available through Saint Joseph Communications here (shameless plug!) exploring the biblical backdrop for the prayers of the Mass.   Now the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has put out a footnoted version of the prayers of the new translation of the liturgy, alerting you to the Biblical background of each of the prayers.  Some examples: The response: "The Lord be...

For three days running, Al-Jazeera has been pounding the Palestinian Authority with release of hundreds of PA negotiating documents, which show Mahmoud Abbas as a two-faced leader -- publicly insisting on getting all of East Jerusalem, including the entire Old City, while privately agreeing to Israel's retention of virtually all Jewish neighborhoods in the eastern sector of Israel's capital. Or as Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat put it to an Israeli interlocutor: "We're giving you the largest Jewish Yerushalaim ever." With the Palestinians being that flexible and pragmatic about Jerusalem, the question

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that a peace agreement does not guarantee the existence of peace, which is why he insists on security arrangements.

Ohio Democrat Congressman Charlie Wilson was first elected to Congress in the Democrat wave year of 2006. Prior to that, he had been a long-time member of the Ohio state legislature, first elected to the Ohio House in 1996 and the Ohio Senate in 2004. (One of his four grown sons succeeded him in the legislature and is currently an Ohio State Senator.) He was also married for 27 years to his wife, Clara. The marriage ended in divorce in 1990. BigGovernment has obtained a trial brief filed by Mrs. Clara Wilson prior to the formal divorce proceedings. The brief...

HONOLULU (AP) -- It's now law in Hawaii that the government can ignore repetitive requests for President Barack Obama's birth certificate. Republican Gov. Linda Lingle signed into law Wednesday a bill allowing state government agencies not to respond to follow-up requests for information if they determine that the subsequent request is duplicative or substantially similar to a previous request.

Confidential intelligence documents obtained by The Times show that Iran is working on testing a key final component of a nuclear bomb. The notes, from Iran’s most sensitive military nuclear project, describe a four-year plan to test a neutron initiator, the component of a nuclear bomb that triggers an explosion. Foreign intelligence agencies date them to early 2007, four years after Iran was thought to have suspended its weapons programme. An Asian intelligence source last week confirmed to The Times that his country also believed that weapons work was being carried out as recently as 2007 — specifically, work on...

Have you heard the one about the pimp, prostitute, politician and the community organizer? Well, thanks to San Diego private investigator Derrick Roach, Californians are not laughing at what is turning into a political nightmare for California Attorney General Jerry Brown and ACORN. On Tuesday, November 24, Attorney General Brown appeared on KABC’s “Peter Tilden Show” after it was revealed that some 20,000 documents had been thrown into a National City dumpster by ACORN employees. The documents were thrown out in advance of state investigators arriving at the local ACORN office to conduct an investigation resulting from national media attention....

On Tuesday November 24th, the day after Big Government broke the story revealing tens of thousands of documents containing sensitive material had been unceremoniously dumped in a trash bin behind the San Diego ACORN office, Attorney General Jerry Brown appeared on Talk Radio KABC’s Peter Tilden Show. Considering this document dump occurred just a few days after the Attorney General had announced an investigation of this very same office, we anticipated his righteous anger at this obvious afront to the integrity of his investigation and the people of California’s right to investigate all evidence pertaining to the operations of ACORN.

A new U.S. EPA analysis requested by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) is spawning a lobbying frenzy among Midwestern utilities that claim the document shows they will be treated unfairly under federal climate legislation. They say the assessment (pdf) reveals that states like California will receive a financial windfall under a global warming bill, while states like Wisconsin will not get enough help and will have to spike electricity rates as a result. "The EPA document just confirms the formula will disadvantage Midwest states for decades to come while the coastal states will hit a 'federal jackpot' every year over the...

The CIA released the documents today that former Vice President Dick Cheney requested earlier this year in an attempt to prove his assertion that using enhanced interrogation techniques on terror detainees saved U.S. lives. The documents back up the Bush administration's claims that intelligence gleaned from captured terror suspects had thwarted terrorist attacks, but the visible portions of the heavily redacted reports do not indicate whether such information was obtained as a result of controversial interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding. Cheney's initial request in the spring that the documents be declassified was rejected by the CIA. Lawmakers derided his claims...

(CNSNews.com) – Michael Copps, a commissioner with the Federal Communications Commission and its former acting chairman, has circulated an internal report examining the state of media journalism in America and discussing ways to address issues such as the rise of media conglomerates and the prevalence of opinion journalism.

Venezuela and Bolivia are supplying Iran with uranium for its nuclear program, according to a secret Israeli government report obtained Monday by The Associated Press. The two South American countries are known to have close ties with Iran, but this is the first allegation that they are involved in the development of Iran's nuclear program, considered a strategic threat by Israel.

The draft document for the United Nations anti-racism conference, dubbed Durban II, is problematic both for Israel and western democracies in general, Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva Roni Leshno Yaar told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday. "At this stage it is not possible to say what in the text would improve, if at all. In fact I expect the text to get only worse on all issues which are important for western democracy," Leshno Yaar said in a telephone interview from Geneva. He spoke as representatives from 190 nations have been meeting in Geneva to debate the language...

American Patrol Report Letter to Supreme Court Justices I am writing about a possible threat to all of humanity. Under present law the President of the United States has sole authority to authorize the use of nuclear weapons. The possibility of holding the fate of the entire human race in ones hands is an awesome responsibility. The person to whom we grant that responsibility must be of the highest moral and ethical character. While the popular vote is a necessary prerequisite to assume the powers of the presidency, it should not be sufficient. I have become aware of serious questions...

I have been trying to get a response from the web site ever since Pelosi announced it. At first I just got time outs. Now I can't even get a DNS response. I know I'm being very cynical and paranoid, but could this be deliberate.

Declaration falls through the cracksThe Supreme Court's rare copy is safely tucked away, then forgotten for seven years, a spokeswoman says. By Steve Chawkins, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer January 19, 2008 When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to locate a rare, vintage copy of the nation's founding document, try looking behind the filing cabinet. That was a lesson learned the hard way at the Supreme Court, where a 185-year-old facsimile of the Declaration of Independence gathered dust for seven years, tucked behind the office furniture, a court spokeswoman acknowledged this week. Commissioned by John Quincy...

After a tense weekend that saw a marked escalation in an already brutal war of words between the two Democratic frontrunners, Barack Obama’s campaign launched a new salvo Monday with a Web site designed to track and respond to attacks by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. “We're asking all of you to be vigilant and notify us immediately of any attacks from Sen. Clinton or her supporters as soon as you see them so that we can respond with the truth swiftly and forcefully,” campaign spokesman Bill Burton wrote supporters. “[These] attacks could be phone calls, literature drops, blog posts, mail pieces...

VALENCIA, Spain - A U.N. climate change conference argued over words and phrases Wednesday in drafting a scientific report that will guide governments for years to come on their global warming policies. One dispute involving the U.S. delegation centered on whether human activity could lead to "abrupt or irreversible" effects on the Earth's climate, said participants in the meeting. Another focused on India's concerns over "adaptation" to global warming, a notion that implies greater financial aid to developing countries, participants said on condition of anonymity since the talks were confidential. They were just two of many unresolved issues raised during...

Now that Sandy Berger has been almost given a pass for his "activities" ... what if Karl Rove (or some other Bush Administration official) would have done what Sandy did? How would the mainstream media react? How would Hillary react? How would Reid and Pelosi react? How would Kennedy react? How would Dean react?

One day in the winter of 1996, while 12-year-old Suad Leija was getting ready for school, more than a dozen armed FBI agents raided her family's Chicago-area home. They were looking for her stepfather, Manuel Leija-Sanchez, who federal authorities believe runs a document-fraud network -- producing fake passports, Social Security cards, driver's licenses and a variety of other official papers -- with cells throughout the United States. That cold morning, the agents were too late. Manuel Leija-Sanchez had fled during the night to Mexico after he was tipped off to the impending raid, his stepdaughter recalled. The business continued to...

Excerpts on fake documents from President Bush's May 15 national address on immigration reform: "Comprehensive immigration reform must include a better system for verifying documents and work eligibility. A key part of that system should be a new identification card for every legal foreign worker. This card should use biometric technology, such as digital fingerprints, to make it tamperproof. A tamperproof card would help us enforce the law and leave employers with no excuse for violating it." --- Highlights of a bill the Senate passed in May: - Requires employers and subcontractors to use an electronic system within 18 months...

WASHINGTON - Forgers are making tens of millions, and possibly billions, of dollars selling counterfeit Social Security cards, driver's licenses, immigrant registration cards and other papers to an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. The dominant forgery-and-distribution network in the United States is allegedly controlled by the Castorena family, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say. Its members emigrated from Mexico in the late 1980s and have used their printing skills and business acumen to capture a big piece of the booming industry. Only trained experts can spot the fakes, and the Castorena Family Organization - or CFO, as officials call...

WASHINGTON - Muslim-Americans trying to re-enter the United States after international travel should record instances in which they're singled out as security risks, a civil rights group said Tuesday. The Council on American-Islamic Relations asked traveling Muslims to record any examples of excessive security checks or fingerprinting when returning from a religious conference in Canada this weekend or from the annual hajj to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, next month. Last year, three dozen Muslim-American men and women were searched, questioned, fingerprinted and photographed without explanation at two western New York border crossings after returning from a from an Islamic conference in...

The Instruction tacitly dismisses the tendentious claims that homosexuality is innate, or unchangeable, or changeable only in rare circumstances. While it acknowledges the disorder can be deep-seated in some persons, it maintains that it may also be just an adolescent hang-up one can leave behind. Here the Church's moral wisdom rescues her from the errors of politicized academic fashion. To treat adult homosexuality (except in rare cases) as a self-indulgent prolongation of juvenile weakness and infatuation may rattle some gay ideologues, but it's more realistic and more charitable than the standard APA account. In summary form, the Church is saying,...

UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. employees union has criticized Secretary-General Kofi Annan for retaining his former chief-of-staff as an adviser despite accusations the aide authorized shredding three years of files on the corrupt oil-for-food program for Iraq. The Independent Inquiry Committee led by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker criticized Iqbal Riza for giving approval to shred the documents on April 22, 2004 — a day after the U.N. Security Council authorized an investigation into the oil-for-food program. A resolution adopted by the Staff Council, the union's executive, and obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, said keeping Riza as a...

ALI BASE, Iraq (AFPN) -- Photographers here are proving that a picture is truly worth a thousand words in fighting the war on terrorism. “Our images tell the military story to the American public, our children and their children, and beyond,” said Master Sgt. Maurice Hessel, base multimedia center manager and still photographer. “Military photographers have had a tremendous impact on history and document the horrors of war,” said Sergeant Hessel, who is deployed from McConnell Air Force Base, Kan. “The men and women of the U.S. military are considered heroes in the eyes of most Americans, and I believe...

UNITED NATIONS - History's largest gathering of world leaders fell far short Friday of completing the major changes U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan sought to fight poverty, terrorism and human rights abuses — but the leaders took a first step. Their approval of a modest document, which commits governments to achieving U.N. goals to combat poverty and creates a commission to help move countries from war to peace, came alongside important developments in other areas. Meetings on the sidelines of the summit marking the United Nations' 60th anniversary produced rare Arab-Israeli contacts, further talks on Iran's nuclear ambitions and a new...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday adopted a watered-down document on poverty, human rights and U.N. reform for world leaders to approve at a summit this week, after shedding many of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's most ambitious goals during weeks of bitter debate. The compromise 35-page document is supposed to launch a major reform of the United Nations itself and galvanize efforts to ease global poverty. But to reach a consensus, most of the text's details were gutted in favor of abstract language. A definition of terrorism and details on how to replace the discredited U.N. Commission...

The Mexican national indicted by a federal grand jury in a multimillion-dollar scheme to distribute millions of phony identification documents to illegal aliens in the United States is, according to authorities, a leader of a crime syndicate that specializes in document fraud. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, who sought the indictment after a lengthy investigation, said millions of phony documents were sent to illegal aliens in the United States in the past five years, including 3 million that were shipped to the Los Angeles area alone. The documents were available on the street for $80 to $300, authorities...

COVINGTON, Tenn. (AP) - Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen put a halt Friday to document shredding in the state personnel department after learning that files were destroyed involving sexual harassment investigations of two men he appointed. The governor ordered the move until a new law can be passed to address the handling of such documents. The order requires the agency "to retain all investigative records, including those related to workplace harassment," said his spokeswoman, Lydia Lenker. The state's previous practice was meant to "protect people who would come forward," the governor said during an appearance in Covington, explaining that department investigators...

The American Civil Liberties Union has been shredding some documents over the repeated objections of its records manager and in conflict with its longstanding policies on the preservation and disposal of records. The matter has fueled a dispute at the organization over internal operations, one of several such debates over the last couple of years, and has reignited questions over whether the A.C.L.U.'s own practices are consistent with its public positions. The organization has generally advocated for strong policies on record retention and benefited from them, most recently obtaining and publicizing documents from the government about prisoners at Guantánamo Bay,...

Many judges these days like to refer to the Constitution of the United States as a "living, breathing document", implying that its text is designed to be flexible. It is not. The Constitution is a set of rules, and like any other set of rules, it is meant to be strict and uncompromising. Of course, the Constitution can be modified through the amendment process, but once ratified, any amendment becomes like the rest of the Constitution; rigid. And while any amendment may be repealed, as was the case with the 18th Amendment (The Prohibition Act), until that happens, it is...

I turned my eyes away from "In God We Trust," engraved deeply in the stone above the Speaker's chair, and walked under the direct stone gaze of Moses as I left the chambers of the U.S. House of Representatives. I walked through statuary hall in the U.S. Capitol, where Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were among the first presidents to attend regular church services. The House chaplain had given the opening prayer to start the legislative day and our member's chapel in the Capitol was open for morning meditation as I walked briskly across the Capitol grounds to the Supreme...

Pentagon Document: U.S. Paid Pro-Saddam Figures, Chinese and French Charles R. Smith Monday, Feb 28, 2005 Millions Missing – French, Chinese Companies Involved Newly released Pentagon documents show that a former member of Saddam Hussein's inner circle has resurfaced inside the new Iraqi government, bringing charges of corruption, bribery and bid-rigging. The documents also indicate that many firms – including French and Chinese ones that had cozy relationship's with Saddam's regime – continue to reap millions in contracts from Iraq's new governing authorities. As a result, millions of U.S. aid dollars and billions in Iraqi government funds have disappeared in...

Sandy Burglar? Thursday January 13, 7:00 pm ET Ibd Scandal: Anyone remember Sandy Berger? To the media, the former national security adviser who might have lifted sensitive documents is a forgotten man. Not entirely forgotten, though. A couple of media outlets -- the New York Post and Fox News -- say the criminal probe of the Berger case is in front of a federal grand jury. But then, no one would ever mistake the Post or Fox with being part of the establishment media. As Washington scandals go, the Berger case had a short shelf life. It was in the...

The respected columnist Andres Oppenheimer of the Miami Herald has gotten hold of a pretty seamy secret document showing an emerging alliance between South America and the Arab League. The 28-page draft document for a May 10-11 summit in Brazil will endorse Arab terrorism and condemn Israel. It would also 'study' the 'root causes' of terrorism, and 'distinguish' the kinds of terrorism they justify and the kinds they can condemn without consequence. We all well know what that means. Oppenheimer writes: My conclusion: South American countries are playing with fire by extending the focus of the summit to Middle Eastern...

My email to the FCC - fccinfo@fcc.gov - on 9/22/04 Where is the FCC on CBS? CBS News is investigating ITSELF on felonious behavior? Isn't this the job of the FCC? What if, after three months, CBS finds NOTHING? Is that when the FCC kicks in? This issue should be front and center at any and all staff meetings. No FCC investigation will be noticed - by everyone on the Internet. I fully expect a response from you within one day. Thanks for your help. The FCC responds 10/06/04 - You are receiving this email in response to your inquiry...