Free Republic

Lately, I've had disturbing thoughts about the future, and the question arose in my mind: Can the United States become so bad, politically, that an option to leave for better climes becomes desireable? I think of our ancestors in Europe and their deep-rooted, ancient love for their own country, who, because of overwhelming political and social unrest and tyranical oppression, made the excruciating decision to migrate to America with little to start out and no prospects to succeed. I can't believe that we are so much better than many of these fine, Godly men, that we have resolve that they...

In an apparent lack of confidence in the leadership of Raul Castro, the number of Cubans leaving the island illegally by sea has been rising, according to U.S. officials. The number of people attempting the perilous voyage across of the Florida Straits has risen 21 percent compared to the same period last year. The number intercepted by the Coast Guard increased 65 percent. Since the beginning of October 2007, some 2,891 Cubans have attempted the journey across the straits. While 1,697 successfully reached the United States, 1,194 were intercepted at sea and returned to Cuba. Nearly ten times the number...

NEW YORK - A small bomb caused minor damage to a landmark military recruiting station in the heart of Times Square before dawn Thursday, and police were searching for a hooded bicyclist seen on a surveillance video pedaling away. The video shows the bicyclist getting off a bike at 3:40 a.m. Thursday and walking toward the building. A minute or so later, the person returned to the bike and rode away. A brief flash and a cloud of white smoke follows. A bike, believed used in the crime, was later found in the trash on West 38th Street, Police Commissioner...

YUMA, Ariz. - A Border Patrol agent trying to stop a vehicle that had illegally entered the U.S. was struck and killed Saturday in southeastern California, agency officials said. The agent was killed about 20 miles west of Yuma in the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area, a spot along the border that is popular with off-road vehicle enthusiasts and frequently used by smugglers. The agent attempted to impede the vehicle's progress before he was hit, but the Border Patrol did not immediately have more information, said agent Eric Anderson, a spokesman for the agency's Yuma sector. The name of the...

SAN DIEGO – Seven people were hospitalized early Thursday morning after a car fleeing from the Border Patrol on a rural highway collided with a tree about 50 miles east of San Diego, the Border Patrol reported. The crash occurred about 4:15 a.m. on Old Highway 80 and Ribbonwood Road, about two miles west of Boulevard, according to Border Patrol spokesman Richard Smith. Agents had “initiated a pursuit” of a car heading eastbound on Old Highway 80 from Tierra del Sol that they suspected was carrying illegal immigrants near Campo, Smith said. The driver apparently lost control of the car...

McMINNVILLE, Ore. - A man wearing nothing but women's high heels was the cause of a building lockdown by police in downtown McMinnville. The unidentified man was spotted sitting on a bench on the basement floor of a nearly vacant medical building Wednesday afternoon. After a call to 911 dispatchers, two McMinnville police units responded and were assisted by deputies from the Yamhill County Sheriffs Office and the Oregon State Police. The building was locked down and surrounded, but alas, no naked man. The man was described as 40 to 50 years old, bald or with short white hair, of...

Jews fleeing anti-Semitism in France are flocking to southern Florida, according to a local newspaper. Most of the 14,000 who have fled since 2001 have moved to Israel, but the Florida coast is a close second. Jewish organizations estimate that 2,000-4,000 French Jews live in the Miami-Dade County area. "The general hostility of Muslims in France toward Jews, is...behind my decision to leave,'' Rod Kukurudz, who now lives with his wife and their three daughters in Surfside, Florida, told the Miami Herald. "French Jews see the handwriting on the wall and say, `We're not going to wait until it's too...

Britons seized while trying to flee Somalia By Bonnie Malkin and agencies Last Updated: 2:30pm GMT 02/02/2007 Four Britons are being held by the authorities in Kenya after being arrested apparently fleeing from war-torn Somalia, the Foreign Office has said. Police officials in Kenya said they were among several foreigners detained on the country's border with the east African state. Somalia is in the grip of a violent power struggle between Islamic extremists and government forces, who are backed by Ethiopian troops. Last month, there were reports that Britons had been fighting alongside the Islamic forces with some killed, injured...

Superstition stops villagers fleeing active Java volcano By Sebastien Berger on Mount Merapi (Filed: 15/05/2006) Clouds of ash and smoke and a fiery stream of lava were pouring out of Mount Merapi yesterday as Indonesian authorities grew increasingly concerned. Thousands of villagers fled the fertile slopes of the volcano after officials on the island of Java said an eruption was imminent. A fiery stream of lava cascades down the side of Mount Merapi on the island of Java yesterday They raised their alert to the highest possible status and ordered an evacuation of territory stretching up to seven miles from...

Seven people were injured when the driver of a pickup truck fleeing from Border Patrol agents crashed into a second pickup in Marana. A Border Patrol agent spotted the Chevrolet truck on Arizona 86 near Sandario Road about 10:30 p.m. Sunday, said Agent Sean King, a Border Patrol Tucson Sector spokesman. The agent was suspicious because the truck had no license plate. He tried to pull it over, but the driver sped away, King said. A helicopter followed as the truck turned onto Interstate 19 and then Interstate 10, he said. It left the freeway at Tangerine Road and ran...

Census: Americans Are Fleeing Big Cities By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press Writer Thu Apr 20, 12:15 AM ET WASHINGTON - Americans are leaving the nation's big cities in search of cheaper homes and open spaces farther out. Nearly every large metropolitan area had more people move out than move in from 2000 to 2004, with a few exceptions in the South and Southwest, according to a report being released Thursday by the Census Bureau. Northeasterners are moving South and West. West Coast residents are moving inland. Midwesterners are chasing better job markets. And just about everywhere, people are escaping to...

Lahore: The Christian community in Pakistan's Sangla Hill has started fleeing the area following threats from religious organizations who threatened to demonstrate against their colleagues, arrested on charges of burning down churches and pastoral residences in the area. The provincial police had arrested 88 people after a mob attacked and burned down four churches, a Christian school and two pastor residences on November 12. “There was lots of panic in the area, as several Christians fled the locality after the threatening calls and demonstration plans. But this time round police acted swiftly and cordoned off the area with the help...

HOUSTON – Hurricane Rita closed in on the Texas Gulf Coast and the heart of the U.S. oil-refining industry with howling 145 mph winds Thursday, but a sharper-than-expected turn to the right set it on a course that could spare Houston and nearby Galveston a direct hit. The storm's march toward land sent hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the nation's fourth-largest city in a frustratingly slow, bumper-to-bumper exodus. "This is the worst planning I've ever seen," said Judie Anderson, who covered just 45 miles in 12 hours after setting out from her home in the Houston suburb of LaPorte....

today's jokes...    Q: What do you call 10,000 liberals fleeing to Canada?A: a good start...    It's been confirmed that Hillary Clinton is running for president in 2008. She was spotted goose hunting in Ohio yesterday... 

A series of experiments on how panicked mice escape an enclosed area shows that they behave in much the way computer models predict that panicked humans would. This verification provides important new information for preventing future human disasters, the study's authors say. Disasters such as the May 2001 stampede at a football stadium in Ghana that killed more than 120 people, and the February 2003 Chicago nightclub stampede that killed 21 people, have spurred scientists to develop models to predict how penned in people behave when trying to flee a disaster situation. But computer models have remained unverified because escape...

Afghan, U.S. forces seek fleeing Taliban in south Pakistan renews hunt in border regions ASSOCIATED PRESS QALAT, Afghanistan, Sept. 4 — Afghan and U.S. forces scoured gorges and rugged mountain peaks in southern Zabul for suspected Taliban fleeing fighting that left scores of insurgents dead, an Afghan commander said Thursday. While Afghan officials claimed victory, the U.S. military said the battle in Zabul's Dai Chupan district was not over. Separately, at least 24 Pakistani military helicopters swooped in low over the tribal regions that border Afghanistan in a renewed hunt for fleeing al-Qaida and Taliban, witnesses said Thursday. Government officials,...

<p>LOS ANGELES (AP) - A woman who died when she fell or jumped from a burning fourth-floor apartment and was impaled on a wrought iron fence lived in a home where the smoke alarm had been disconnected, authorities said Wednesday. The woman, who has not been identified pending notification of family, was pronounced dead at the scene Tuesday night, said Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey.</p>

Note the difference between (democrat-led) GA "re-districting" that gerry-mandered as many republicans out of THEIR historical districts (most notably Bob Barr!) as possible. These re-districting meetings were DELIBERATELY setup and monitored by the national Democrat Party and with national democrat party polling data DURING the GA sessions - BUT THEY WERE HELD IN SECRET and republican lawmakers were deliberately excluded from even finding out where the meetings were being held. The GA Repub party protested, but NOBODY in the press even noticed or complained. No national news at all. Local stories took an attitude of "shrugging shoulders" and "that's politics...

Australian SAS troops are in control of a major highway to Baghdad and are some of the closest coalition forces to the Iraqi capital, according to an American journalist fleeing the city. "They were clearly at the very front lines of reconnaissance and they were calm. There was no fear in any of their eyes," US correspondent Nate Thayer told Sky News. The elite soldiers were the first significant military force encountered by Thayer as he drove out of Baghdad, he said. Thayer's report is the first on the location of the SAS but he has promised them he will...

Leaving Kuwait Tuesday, March 18, 2003; 3:50 PM As war looms in neighboring Iraq, travellers at Kuwait International Airport tried to get last-minute flights out of the country. Video here.

<p>Shepard Smith just had a live report from on the spot in Modesto and the reported said that according to the Modesto Bee and a Sacremento TV station that Scott had checked out of a Mexican hotel on Wednesday when his Agriculture conference was Sunday.</p>

Fleeing Iraqis push pleas for asylum to record By Andy McSmith, Chief Political Correspondent (Filed: 31/08/2002) Hundreds of Iraqis fleeing Saddam Hussein's regime have pushed the number of people seeking political asylum in Britain to a record level, the Home Office confirmed yesterday. The figure of 20,400 in three months, an increase of four per cent, will put renewed political pressure on the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, who has recently had to abandon his target for removing unsuccessful applicants for asylum from the country. It is the first time the quarterly figure for the number of asylum seekers has exceeded...

Pakistani Tribesmen Hid Hundreds of Fleeing Al Qaeda Fri Aug 23,12:42 PM ET KOHAT, Pakistan (Reuters) - Two Pakistani tribesmen have confessed to sheltering hundreds of foreign members of Osama bin Laden 's al Qaeda network and their relatives who fled the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan , investigators said on Friday. The Pakistani investigators, who did not want to be identified, said the men from the Sarki Khel tribe told them militants arrived in October after the U.S. bombing began. They said hundreds of militants were sheltered in South Waziristan, a northwestern tribal area bordering Afghanistan. The tribesman told...