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Gambler Who Lost Millions Wants Some Debt Forgiven SAN FRANCISCO (Dec. 8) -- Terrance Watanabe sometimes got so high on painkillers and alcohol in Las Vegas that he walked into doors and passed out at the gaming tables. The Omaha philanthropist consumed more than two bottles of expensive vodka daily and gambled for days at a time without sleeping. In a single year, he lost $127 million at two casinos owned by Harrah's Entertainment. Nearly $1 billion in wagers passed through his hands. This embarrassing portrait of excess and dissipation comes from legal documents filed by Watanabe's own attorneys, who...

In the Muslim faith a Muslim man can marry a child as young as 1 year old and have sexual intimacy with this child. Consummating the marriage by 9. The dowry is given to the family in exchange for the woman (who becomes his slave) and for the purchase of the private parts of the woman, to use her as a toy. Even though a woman is abused she can not obtain a divorce. To prove rape, the woman must have four male witnesses.

It wasn't too long ago that Levi Johnston was pretty much like any other Alaskan teenager. With the exception of dating the then-governor's daughter he was, dare we say, a no body. But in less than two years he's fathered a son, broken up with the 2008 Republican Vice Presidential canidate's teenage daughter, fought a rather public custody fight with Sarah Palin's family, and now landed squarely on the pages of Playgirl. We should also point out: added a bodyguard (as seen in this picture from today at the Us Weekly Hot Hollywood Party.) The fruit of his labor will...

Seen on a bumper sticker: "PRAY for OBAMA; Psalms 109:8" Check out Psalms 109:8: "  8. Let his days be few; and let another take his office." Do I hear an "Amen" to that, anybody???! {And for our Secret Service friends who monitor Free Republic, by "days be few," we of course mean his "days in office"! }

Barack Obama: you can dress him up, but you can't take him out. Every time he goes abroad, he embarrasses himself and sells out his country. In Japan today, Obama gave a press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama. He was asked this question, for which he was unaccountably unprepared: "And to President Obama, you are a proponent of a nuclear-free world, and you've stated, first of all, you would like to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki while in office. Do you have this desire? And what is your understanding of the historical meaning of the A-bombing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?...

Geraldo resists labeling Hasan a terrorists. Speculates it could have been a toothache that set him off. VIDEO

Alan Grayson's recent self indulgent behavior has paralyzed his ability to serve as an advocate for the citizens of Central Florida. On December 16th 2009, the day on which the Sons of Liberty dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor, Central Floridians will again say no to the overreaching government intrusion propagated by Grayson. Central Floridians will drop a money bomb to show Grayson and Pelosi that an oppressive, overreaching government has not and never will be what makes America great. Pledge your support today, so that Grayson is defeated.

Barak Hussein Obama has cast the One Ring into Mt. Doom. Unfortunately, he did not follow up on this action by casting himself in as well. This leaves the Dark Lord still in power. When asked why he failed to destroy the Dark Lord once and for all, Mr. Obama apologized to the Dark Lord for Gondor's arrogance and past foreign policy and promised further negotiations. . .more to follow.

Hold On to Your Dream Today's Scripture "Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful" (Hebrews 10:23, NIV) Today's Word from Joel and Victoria At some point in life we all face hardships. It may be something physically or emotionally challenging. Or it may be a dream or an opportunity that we missed out on. Whatever your difficulty is, don't let it discourage you from believing in God's best. The enemy wants to keep you focused on everything negative that's happened, but don't let him steal the dreams God has given you....

Take Action Today's Scripture "…faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead" (James 2:17, NIV) Today's Word from Joel and Victoria Have you ever met a person who prayed one way and spoke another? One minute they’re believing for their dreams to come to pass, and the next minute they're talking about how they're never going to get where they want to be. What they haven't realized is that their actions aren't working together with their faith. This lack of consistency doesn't do our prayers any good. God wants our words, actions and beliefs to...

ALBANY - In a stunning request, the Obama administration has made it clear to poll-challenged Gov. Paterson that the White House would prefer he not seek election to a full four-year term next year. Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2009/09/19/2009-09-19_obama_administration_.html#ixzz0RdGUhJLx

This is a big week for the president's teleprompter. He's first taking it across the Potomac for a speech urging schoolchildren to wash their hands, study hard and stay in school. Good advice for everyone, no doubt, and maybe the advice will stimulate the sale of soap to people who really need it. Politicians particularly should take to heart a presidential admonition to keep their hands clean. Who can argue with that? Democrats everywhere are looking for places where the applause will be at least polite, with no yelling, screaming and waving of hands. The Secret Service, which never sleeps,...

If Bill Clinton were to come out tomorrow and expose this corrupt administration of Obama and his minions he may be able to save this country. Clinton with all his faults is a Saint compared to the fool that this foolish country has elected. This could be his legacy....his moment in time that he so desperately needs and seeks!

Ooohh... No, please... Not Joe Biden. Team Obama sent out Big-Dog Joe Biden to Republican Whip Eric Cantor's district in Virginia to bash the Minority Whip for attacking Obama's Stimulus bomb. ...140 supporters showed up.

Obama losing his cool? By: Carol E. Lee July 16, 2009 10:35 AM EST It’s been a tough week for President Obama’s cool factor. Not only is he weathering criticism of his policies, but the Cool One has also taken a few dings to his immaculate image in recent days. It started on Monday. Speaking at the White House, Obama was just getting into a sharp defense of his economic agenda when one of the teleprompter screens holding his speech crashed to the floor and shattered into pieces. “Oh, goodness,” said a surprised Obama. “Sorry about that, guys.” Needing a...

Could you imagine if Bush would have stumbled like this? This would be rolling non-stop 24-7: http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/07/media-ignores-obumblers-stumble.html

Q Sonja Sagmeister from a little country, Austria, from Austrian Television. Mr. President, you said you came here to learn and to listen. So a quite personal question -- what did you learn from your personal talk with the European leaders? And did this change in a certain way your views on Europe and its politics? PRESIDENT OBAMA: It's an interesting question. I had already formed relationships with many of them. ... There's a lot of -- I don't know what the term is in Austrian -- wheeling and dealing -- and, you know, people are pursuing their interests, and...

President Obama has presented Congress with some questionable accounting for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, analysts and Republican lawmakers say, as they begin to pore over his $3.6 trillion budget for the next fiscal year. Critics say the administration at once has both grossly over-estimated the amount of money it will save by winding down the war in Iraq and under-estimated the actual price of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in the years ahead.

Washington, D.C. — From the day that Barack Obama wrested the presidential nomination from Hillary Rodham Clinton, his campaign became — according to those who were running it — "inevitable." Even before winning the election, Obama began assembling a much-vaunted "team of rivals" to guide U.S. foreign and domestic policy. Though his running mate, then-Senator Joe Biden, predicted that, "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama" and warned that it would be "an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy," we were assured that the Obama administration would be ready...

Here's all you need to know: "Pick up your First Edition Hillary-In-The-Box while they are still available.

Another thing on which the British media have been a trifle reticent is the way in which Foreign Secretary David (bananaman) Miliband has upset yet another UK ally after showing such hostility towards Israel. In his much-ridiculed Guardian article denying that Islamic terrorism was a unified phenomenon and claiming that Islamic terrorism could be defeated by 'co-operation', he wrote that Lashkar e Taiba, the group held to be responsible for the Mumbai massacre last month, was only concerned with the issue of Kashmir. As I said here, LeT wants the restoration of Islamic rule over the whole of South Asia,...

BERLIN (Reuters) - Syria is ready to cooperate with U.S. President-elect Barack Obama and wants him to get seriously involved in the Middle East peace process, President Bashar al-Assad told a German magazine. In an interview with Der Spiegel released on Saturday, Assad also expressed some caution about future relations and said he preferred to talk about hopes rather than expectations. Ties between the West and Syria have been strained by U.S. accusations that Syria turned a blind eye to Islamist fighters infiltrating Iraq and in 2004 Washington imposed sanctions on Syria for backing anti-American groups in the region.

Antidisestablishmentarianism is on the march. Which is odd, considering there is only the faintest whiff of disestablishmentarianism to fight. The Archbishop of Canterbury set this hare running with his usual confused mumbling into his beard. To disestablish the church would be "by no means the end of the world", he said bravely. He hastened to add that he did not want the church sundered from the state right now. And he would oppose "secularists [boo, hiss] trying to push religion into the private sphere". This sent the Telegraph and Mail into a spin, claiming a devilish distestablishment plot on the...

I only discovered here last month and it's great to have a proper place for REAL conservatives to talk on the web without being infested with democRAT trolls. I have been running a small book shop for years. This years sales have been lower than ever due to families struggling and competition from web shops like Amazon. This is a real worry. But around the corner the library is CONSTANTLY packed. There's literally QUEUES OUT OF THE DOOR! How am I supposed to compete with somewhere that basically gives new books away for FREE? They're even planning to SPEND MY...

President Shimon Peres told Diaspora Jewish leaders Monday, "You have to close your eyes" to make peace. He also reasoned that a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority will encourage Sunni Muslims against Ahmadinejad. Speaking at the annual General Assembly of the United Jewish Committees, he said that "making peace is a little bit like marriage [and] you have to close your eyes and accept what is possible to accept." His audience laughed and applauded. He also explained his reasoning why surrendering Judea and Samaria to the PA and establishing a new Arab state in their place would have a...

Woman out $400K to 'Nigerian scam' con artists  Story Updated: Nov 11, 2008 at 9:07 PM PST By Anna Song KATU News and KATU.com Web Staff SWEET HOME, Ore. – Janella Spears doesn’t think she’s a sucker or an easy mark. Besides her work as a nursing administrator, Spears – no relation to the well-known pop star – also teaches CPR and is a reverend who has married many couples. She also communicates with lightning-fast sign language with her hearing-impaired husband.So how did this otherwise lucid, intelligent woman end up sending nearly half a million dollars to a bunch...

Carson City, NV - Pat Cattell, 71, is John McCain's contemporary and a lifelong Republican who switched to support Barack Obama. She said as she watched him accept the Democratic nomination for president that sees him as the future and presumptive Republican nominee John McCain as the past. She has her feet on the ground but her eyes stay fixed on the prize of an Obama victory in November. She was among nearly 30 Democrats at a house party Thursday evening here to hear and watch Obama's speech. She isn't anti-McCain. "A fine decent man," she said of the senator...

Civilized world vs uncivilzed

The recently freed Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt has urged an end to the Colombian government's "vocabulary of hate" against her former captors. Ms Betancourt, a former presidential candidate, was held hostage for six years by Marxist Farc rebels. But, while praising President Alvaro Uribe's work towards her release, she said it was time to end "extremist" language towards the Farc. Ms Betancourt is in Paris, where she flew after her release on Wednesday. "I think we have reached a point where we must change this radical, extremist vocabulary of hate of very strong words that intimately wound the human being,"...

MADRID (AFP) — Last week's meeting between former US president Jimmy Carter and the exiled leader of Hamas militants did not produce any results, Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Malki said here Wednesday. "President Carter came to the region thinking he could achieve something. Unfortunately president Carter left without anything concrete," he told a conference in the Spanish capital. "The only thing he achieved was permission on the part of Khaled Meshaal of Hamas to deliver a letter from a detained Israeli soldier to his family. Nothing else," he said. "Hamas offered nothing to president Carter. They reiterated the same positions....

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States was for slavery “before we were against it.” That history lesson was brought to you by Sen. John Kerry, who argues that if an entire nation can be indecisive about human bondage, voters surely should forgive a political leader who changes his or her mind. “Decisiveness wrongly applied can create a lot of pain for the nation and big, big historic mistakes,” says the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee labeled a “flip-flopper” by President Bush. Four years after his unsuccessful run, Kerry sat down with Associated Press reporters for more than 30 minutes to discuss...

Charlize Theron has referred to the Turkish city of Istanbul as Budapest three times in an interview about her "backpacking" adventures around the world. Theron, an Oscar winner known for taking on tough roles, described buying Turkish carpets in a bazaar and attending the Istanbul International Film Festival in "Budapest", the Daily Mail reports.

Do you have a very best stock? A stock that brings you closer to retirement year in and year out? One like Kraft, formerly American Dairy Products, which -- as tracked back by Dr. Jeremy Siegel -- turned $1,000 into more than $2 million over 53 years with dividend reinvestment? In terms of returns, Kraft has quite literally been the very best stock of the past half-century. I pay special attention to this stuff: My job is to find companies with the same magic that's made Kraft such a dynamite stock. A repeatable fortune What's the secret of Kraft's phenomenal...

Last weekend after returning to my office from the television studios of a major network where I had done a brief segment on the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, I turned on CNN to watch their coverage of the Bhutto assassination's aftermath. Sen. Hillary Clinton was telling Wolf Blitzer that she didn't think "the Pakistani government at this time under President Musharraf has any credibility at all." She then said something that betrayed a serious lack of knowledge about Pakistan and called her own credibility on the subject into serious question. "If President Musharraf wishes to stand for election," she...

Last week, pundits across the spectrum castigated Mike Huckabee for a couple of glaring mistakes in his response to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. He offered "apologies" to Pakistanis, later clarifying to "condolences", and inexplicably placed Afghanistan on Pakistan's eastern border, rather than western. If those gaffes qualify for headline treatment, then Hillary Clinton's confusion on Pakistani politics should get top-of-the-wires treatment, at least: Senator Hillary Clinton was praised in the wake of the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto for demonstrating her command of the players and the issues at stake in Pakistan, even as another candidate,...

This is what you call a man who is out of touch. There is no excuse for him to be speaking with authority about something so important without having done his homework.

Pretty much. Here’s what he said: MIKE HUCKABEE: I’ve been to Guantanamo, I was there, I guess it’s been about a year and a half ago. I think the problem with Guantanamo is not in that its facilities are inadequate. It’s the symbol that it represents. It’s clearly become a symbol to the rest of the world as a place that has become problematic for us as a nation. I was quite frankly impressed with the quality of the facilities and even the attention to care that was given to the detainees, but that aside, it doesn’t alter that Guantanamo...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush should announce on September 15 an initial pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq to spur the Iraqi government to take steps toward political reconciliation, an influential Republican senator said on Thursday. Virginia Sen. John Warner said Bush should "announce on the 15th that in consultation with our senior military commanders he has decided to initiate the the first step in a withdrawal of our forces."

A day after blasting Democratic presidential rival Sen. Hillary Clinton for accepting campaign donations from News Corp. officials, John Edwards acknowledged that he, too, had gotten payments from an arm of the company but said all of the money went to charity.

Perhaps Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico and Democrat presidential candidate, and his handlers misunderstood: Candor, not cluelessness, is the new political-speak. It is the only plausible explanation they can use following his abysmal performance on "Meet the Press" last Sunday, an appearance peppered with so many apologies and I-shouldn't-have-said-thats that one might think they were at a backwoods revival. His "Meet the Press" mistakes came in every size -- big ones and small ones, even medium-sized ones: from immigration flip-flops to character flaws that reflect a propensity for exaggeration. Heck, he even flubbed his favorite baseball team. SNIP Then...

Michaal Ramirez's cartoon commentary on Jimmy Carter is here.

Just call him the pimpinatorGOVERNOR TAKES BIODIESEL PUSH TO `PIMP MY RIDE' By Kate Folmar MediaNews Sacramento Bureau Article Launched: 04/10/2007 01:34:25 AM PDT Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is hooking up with the MTV reality show "Pimp My Ride" for a special Earth Day episode that he hopes will boost the street cred of low-emission cars. Typically, the program features everyday people who have their trashed rides tricked out into bling-mobiles with built-in espresso machines or lava lamps. But for this episode, the crew will transform a 1965 Chevy Impala into a clean, green biodiesel machine. Efforts to reduce global warming...

A Chinese man is divorcing his wife after she pretended to hang herself as an April Fool's joke It happened when Mr Lin, of Shanghai, came home on April 1 after a business trip, reports the Shanghai Evening Post. "When I opened the door, I saw a black object swinging in the air. When I turned on the light I was shocked to see my wife had hanged herself," he said. Lin immediately called police and the property office. Office staff helped Lin take down the 'body' while waiting for the police.

Ten of the best April Fool's Day hoaxes: US museum Thu Mar 29, 4:19 AM ET From television revealing that spaghetti grows on trees to advertisements for the left-handed burger, the tradition of April Fool's Day stories in the media has a weird and wonderful history. Here are 10 of the top April Fool's Day pranks ever pulled off, as judged by the San Diego-based Museum of Hoaxes for their notoriety, absurdity, and number of people duped. -- In 1957, a BBC television show announced that thanks to a mild winter and the virtual elimination of the spaghetti weevil,...

Former Booker winner and winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, Nadine Gordimer, has been attacked at her home in South Africa. Gordimer, 83, was assaulted when three men broke into her home in Johannesburg on Thursday, taking cash and jewellery. The author, who was locked in a store room with her maid while the burglars fled the scene, did not receive any serious injuries. Police spokesman Sergeant Sanku Tsunke said no arrests had been made. Despite demands to hand over her jewellery, Gordimer refused to part with her wedding ring from her marriage to art dealer Reinhold Cassirer, who...

QALAT, Afghanistan U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan guerrilla war can never be won militarily and called for efforts to bring the Taliban and their supporters into the Afghan government. The Tennessee Republican said he had learned from briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated by military means. "You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government," Frist said during a brief visit to a U.S. and Romanian military base in the southern Taliban stronghold of Qalat. "And if that's accomplished we'll be...

LITTLE ROCK In an appearance in Little Rock today, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright criticized the Bush administration's foreign policy as a "mess." Albright says the White House is ignoring other international problems by focusing solely on the Middle East. About 12-hundred people turned out at the Statehouse Convention Center to hear Albright speak. She served as Secretary of State and as Ambassador to the United Nations under President Bill Clinton. Today's appearance was sponsored by the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service and the Clinton Foundation. In her speech, Albright criticized Bush's foreign policy team and...

Judiciary: Detroit Judge Anna Diggs Taylor has agreed to the American Civil Liberties Union's demands to shut down the National Security Agency's wiretapping program. Terrorists everywhere are cheering. The 73-year-old Judge Taylor, appointed by Jimmy Carter in 1979, has a long history as a radical. In 1964, she helped set up a Mississippi office of the National Lawyers Guild, which Congress in 1950 called the "legal bulwark of the Communist Party." What happened Thursday was nothing less than a judicial disarmament of the U.S. — stripping away some of our most valuable weapons in the global war on terror.

Comments Appear In Men's Vogue Magazine Interview (CBS) CHICAGO U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is now talking openly about running for the White House. The senator graces the cover of the September-October issue of Men’s Vogue magazine, which hits the stands on Aug. 22. In an interview with writer Jacob Weisberg, Obama talks more than ever about the possibility of running for President. Obama is quoted in the magazine, “Look, it was highly unlikely that I would ever be a U.S. senator, so it’s very flattering for people to talk about a presidential race." “My attitude about something like the...

Globalization: Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is having a grand time cavorting around the world on his Axis Of Evil tour. But we notice he's disgusting as many countries as he's wooing. Vietnam is the most interesting. Chavez blew into Hanoi on Monday and right away began praising Vietnam's government in exactly the way it didn't want: by hailing communism. "Vietnam, with its valor, defeated imperialism not only on the battlefield, but also has maintained socialism in the ideological arena," the South American dictator intoned. Uh-huh. To Vietnam's officials, who've been trying diligently to integrate their nation into the world economy, that's...