Free Republic

  “You’ll Swing for This!” Thoughts on the Execution of Troy Davis David C. Stolinsky Sept. 26, 2011 On Sept. 21, Georgia executed convicted murderer Troy Davis by lethal injection. Twenty-two years ago, Davis murdered police officer Mark MacPhail. After shooting Officer MacPhail, Davis stood over him and shot him again. Predictably, MacPhail’s name was mentioned much less often than the murderer’s name, and there were demonstrations for the murderer but none for MacPhail. For details read Ann Coulter, who is an attorney and − unlike other commentators − actually reviewed the transcript. If opponents of capital punishment claim...

Doctors are prescribing drinking water for neglected elderly patients to stop them dying of thirst in hospital. The measure – to remind nurses of the most basic necessity – is revealed in a damning report on pensioner care in NHS wards. Some trusts are neglecting the elderly on such a fundamental level their wards could face closure orders. The snapshot study, triggered by a Mail campaign, found staff routinely ignored patients’ calls for help and forgot to check that they had had enough to eat and drink.

Amid the euphoria of Osama bin Laden's well-deserved de mise is the gut feeling Pakistan isn't shooting straight with us in the War on Terror almost 10 years after 9/11. Where -- if at all -- does Washington go from here with Islamabad? It's hard to stomach that the world's most renowned killer was comfortably chilling for five or more years in a pricey mansion in an army town less than 50 miles from the country's capital. Islamabad's response to the news hasn't helped. Struggling to find a voice, Pakistan's leaders wrapped denials, concerns, congratulations and warnings into their convoluted...

It is chilling to contemplate how the administration may seek to "balance" its veto by imposing new pressures on Israel. Talkbacks (5) A strange euphoria seems to have blinded some Israelis and American Jews concerning the context of President Barack Obama’s veto of a UN resolution. In the past, blatantly one-sided anti- Israeli resolutions were vetoed as a matter of course. On this occasion, the issue was complicated because of the Obama administration’s disastrous, long-standing obsession with the settlements, which paved the way for the unprecedented Palestinian demand for a settlement freeze as a precondition to negotiations. Desperate to avoid...

A horrifying investigative film, shot undercover in Zimbabwe, has exposed how prisons under President Mugabe have become death camps for thousands of inmates who are deprived of food and medical care. The documentary, shown last night on South Africa's state broadcaster SABC, documented the “living hell” for prisoners across 55 state institutions. The result, Hell Hole, was a grim account of a crisis in which dozens of inmates die each day.

A man awaiting trial on a murder charge is suing Benton County, Arkansas, complaining that the “skimpy rations” he has been fed in the county jail caused him to lose more than 100 pounds during eight months in jail. “I used to be a sturdy 400-plus pounds,” Laswell boasted. “Now, I’m practically skin and bones. It’s cruel and unusual punishment.” Laswell is being assisted in his suit by the ACLU. “This is but another sorry example of the pattern of torture and abuse that has overtaken the U.S. penal system under the Bush Administration,” said ACLU spokesman, Bertram Petty. “Starving...

Former US president defends meetings with Hamas terrorists, tells university students in Egypt sanctions imposed on Gaza Strip are 'criminal atrocity' after meeting in private with Hamas leaders. 'For every Israeli killed,' says Carter, 'between 30 to 40 Palestinians are killed because of the extreme military capability of Israel' News agencies Published: 04.18.08, 00:27 / Israel News Former US President Jimmy Carter called the blockade of Gaza a crime and an atrocity on Thursday and said US attempts to undermine the Islamist movement Hamas had been counterproductive. Speaking at the American University in Cairo after talks with Hamas leaders from,...

Latino college students who spent a week fasting to call attention to the Dream Act are demanding the firing of radio host Michael Savage for saying on the air: "Let them fast until they starve to death." About two dozen young people from across the state - including four from San Jose - are also demanding apologies from 350 radio stations throughout the country that air the program, "The Savage Nation."

PEACHTREE CITY, Georgia, July 11, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A Marine candidate who nearly drowned four years ago in boot-camp met his death after his family agreed to let doctors remove his feeding tube. "He smiled all week [since the tube was removed]. It was the first time. He seemed so happy, not in pain," his mother, Melia Isaac said of her son, who had been reduced to a comatose or minimal conscious state. "I'm going to wonder for the rest of my life if I did the right thing. But I believe I did. He didn't have much of a...

NORTH RICHLAND HILLS -- A North Richland Hills woman accused of letting her 78-year-old husband die of malnutrition and dehydration surrendered to Tarrant County authorities Thursday night, police said.Lowesta Ann Halliburton, 43, was free Friday after posting $50,000 bail. She is expected to be charged with injury to the elderly by omission, a first-degree felony. If convicted, she faces life in prison and a $10,000 fine.Her common-law husband, Richard Hoye, died May 21 at their home.Halliburton has said that police targeted her because of the couple's 35-year age difference and the fact she is black and Hoye was white.

BOULDER, Utah - By Day 2 in the blazing Utah desert, Dave Buschow was in bad shape. Pale, wracked by cramps, his speech slurred, the 29-year-old New Jersey man was desperate for water and hallucinating so badly he mistook a tree for a person. After going roughly 10 hours without a drink in the 100-degree heat, he finally dropped dead of thirst, face down in the dirt, less than 100 yards from the goal: a cave with a pool of water. But Buschow was no solitary soul, lost and alone in the desert. He and 11 other hikers from various...

The parents of a baby that died of starvation after being fed a vegan diet have been found guilty of malice murder, felony murder and first degree cruelty to children. Jade Sanders, 27, and Lamont Thomas, 31, will get an automatic life sentence for the death of their 6-week-old infant, Crown. After being fed a diet largely consisting of soy milk and apple juice, he weighed only 3 1/2 pounds when he died. The Fulton County jury deliberated the case for about seven hours. Prosecutors said it was a chilling case of murder by starvation, a painful and prolonged death....

The Government has admitted it is allowing elderly people to battle against starvation in care homes and hospitals, years after being alerted to the scandal by charities. Ivan Lewis, the health minister, conceded that some elderly people were given a single scoop of mashed potato or served meals with plastic cutlery "best suited to picnics". His remarks, made to a local Birmingham newspaper, went on to admit that a single scoop of mashed potato "masquerades as lunch every day". "Plastic cutlery has its place at a summer picnic but not for everyday use. Yet some older people are still being...

Growing up in North Korea, Hyok Kang was surrounded by desperate people who ate grass and bark before they died. Yet pervasive propaganda made them feel lucky to be there. The first time I ate chocolate was when I was five years old. My grandfather had relatives in Japan who were given exceptional permission to visit us. They came like extraterrestrials with their arms full of presents and food. I remember waving tins of condensed milk and chocolate bars under my friends’ noses. I was a horrid little boy. It was 1990 and I didn’t yet know what famine was....

  NORFOLK, U.K., August 8, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – At the same time that the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital is being investigated for allegedly starving and dehydrating a woman to death in 2003, the wife of a former patient treated on the same ward is calling for another investigation into the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of her husband. Kate Speed claims that although her husband’s death certificate states that he died from pneumonia, that in fact he died because of a hospital-ordered dehydration, an ultimately fatal measure that neither she nor her husband approved. “The whole of my husband’s...

ALARM - Saddam Hussein stopped the hunger strike BAGHDAD - Iraqi deposed president Saddam Hussein ceased there is one week his hunger strike after having refused during eleven days to feed, affirmed Monday with AFP his principal defender Khalil Al-Doulaimi.

A schizophrenic artist who died after handcuffing himself to a tree after throwing away the key, may have tried to free himself, an inquest has heard. The skeleton of Richard Sumner - 47 when he went missing three years ago - was found in a remote area of Clocaenog Forest, Denbighshire, in April 2005. Mr Sumner, from Crosby, Merseyside, may have changed his mind about killing himself but could not reach the keys, the Denbigh inquest was told. The coroner recorded an open verdict. Mr Sumner, at one time a scenic artist for opera productions at Glyndebourne, had suffered from...

Rockville, Md. -- A judge allowed corrections officials to forcibly feed convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad while he awaits trial in the county for six October 2002 killings. Muhammad had not eaten anything since being transferred to the Montgomery County, Md., jail on Monday, corrections officials said in court documents filed Thursday. He was apparently upset with the food he was being served and the handling of his legal material. Doctors had concluded that Muhammad, 44, was at risk of serious injury or death of he continued his hunger strike, corrections officials said. Judge James L. Ryan issued an order...

BRISTOL, August 16, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Kelly Taylor, a 28-year-old woman who is not terminally ill, has ended her attempt to starve herself to death after 19 days because of the pain of the effects of starvation. Mrs. Taylor claimed that she had chosen self-starvation as the only method of suicide that would not leave her husband Richard liable for prosecution. Nevertheless, after 19 days, she said, “It has become too uncomfortable and I would not wish what I have been going through on my worst enemy.” Taylor suffers from a congenital heart condition known as Eisenmenger Syndrome which, despite...

'This was torture': Boy malnourished, kept in closet By Sheila K. Stogsdill The Oklahoman BRAGGS - For longer than he can remember, a 4-year-old boy subsisted on ramen noodles and a makeshift oatmeal mixture and endured beatings and handcuffs, all for wetting the bed, investigators said Monday. "This was torture," said Tim Brown, a Muskogee County sheriff's detective, who called it "the worst child abuse case I've ever seen." The boy weighed 26 pounds when he was found June 25. Gore police responding to an anonymous tip of neglect found the child malnourished and severely beaten. Muskogee County Sheriff Charles...

NASHVILLE - Have condemned inmates who've died because of lethal injection done so peacefully or has a drug that paralyzes the muscle system masked horrific side effects? States are grappling with that question in the latest wave of death row appeals. The Tennessee Supreme Court heard arguments about the drug Pavulon, or pancuronium bromide, in a death row case last month, and is expected to rule by September. In Kentucky, a similar issue is expected to reach the state Supreme Court soon. In Missouri, an inmate got a last-minute stay in May so the U.S. Supreme Court could review his...

KLINE TWP. – First she was charged with starving her son to death. Now Lyda Miller is accused of starving three dogs she owns. Miller, 41, and two other people were cited Monday with animal cruelty after police and officials with the Schuylkill County SPCA discovered five extremely malnourished dogs inside the home they shared at 22 James St. in Kelayres, said Kline Township Police Chief John Petrilla. Two of the animals were in such poor condition they had to be euthanized, Petrilla said. The other three are being nursed back to health by officials with the Ruth Steinert Memorial...

A restaurant deliveryman who immigrated from China and speaks virtually no English spent three days unnoticed in a stalled high-rise elevator in the Bronx as an intensive search swirled around him, the police said today. He emerged this morning thirsty but appearing otherwise all right after someone finally heard - or he finally figured how to trigger - the elevator car's alarm. But there was no immediate answer to the question that officials, co-workers, reporters and the hundreds of people who live in the apartment complex were asking: So what took so long? The deliveryman, Ming Kuang Chen, 35, was...

U.S. conservatives gunning for the presidential payoff Jan. 15, 2005. 08:14 AM TIM HARPER PHOENIX, Ariz.—When U.S. President George W. Bush takes his oath of office next week in the midst of a $40-million, four-day orgy of Republican euphoria, he will be carrying the dreams of a newly emboldened conservative movement. The American right is ascendant. It is empowered. And it is impatient. Evangelicals and ``faith-based'' groups are looking to Bush to do nothing less than entrench a conservative philosophy, one they believe has long been trampled and one they expect will last a generation or more. Their fundamental beliefs...

Science proves that love is blind Scientists have shown that there is a degree of truth in the old adage that love is blind. They have found that feelings of love lead to a suppression of activity in the areas of the brain controlling critical thought. It seems that once we get close to a person, the brain decides the need to assess their character and personality is reduced. The study, by University College London, is published in NeuroImage. The researchers found that both romantic love and maternal love produce the same effect on the brain. They suppress neural activity...

Euphoria today, but difficulties lie ahead By Phil Reeves 15 December 2003 It was a euphoric day, and rightly so. But for all the celebrations, it does not change the hard fact that many political obstacles still lie ahead. Chief among them is the task of creating a transitional Iraqi government which will allow President George Bush formally to declare an end to the US occupation while keeping some US troops in Iraq, their presence ensured by an agreement with the new US-sponsored administration. The Americans and their allies have set a target date of 1 July for a handover...

<p>Multiple U.S. intelligence sources saw Saddam Hussein enter a building in Baghdad on Monday and not emerge before four 1-ton Air Force bombs destroyed it, government officials said yesterday.</p> <p>One official said some analysts believe the multiple eyewitness accounts suggest the Iraqi dictator is dead. The penetrating bombs reduced the building near the popular al Saa restaurant to rubble.</p>