Free Republic

I have heard many folks openly observe that all members of Congress must live in a different world than we live in. I have pondered this oft heard statement and I must concur. I have a direct sense and understanding of these, now particularly odious folks, with a story of life as we knew it around the Beltway of Washington. Back in the late 1980's we were assigned to the D.C. area due to military posting. It was a cultural shock to the entire family. In part, the disparity was due to having lived in Germany for four wonderful years...

A visit to North Korea by U.S. envoy Stephen Bosworth ended in failure Thursday to convince the North to return to multilateral nuclear disarmament talks. "We identified some common understandings on the need for and the role of the six-party talks and the importance of the implementation of the 2005 Joint Statement," Bosworth told reporters. "It remains to be seen when and how [North Korea] will return to the six-party talks." He added, "This is something that requires further consultations among all six of us." But Bosworth claimed he had "very useful" meetings with senior North Korean officials. Further bilateral...

Young people are stupid. I do not exclude myself from this judgment; when a lad newly of voting age, my news addiction made me a curious specimen (though in those days CNN and newspapers were the only dealers in town), and as such I was as well informed a teenage boy as can reasonably be expected. And yet, I supported Ross Perot (ah, the follies of youth) - until he flaked out, of course, after which I drifted back to my natural home in the Republican Party. And really, is it any wonder young people are given to so much...

“Good morning sir, how are you this fine day?” With that one text from his 22-year-old intern’s boyfriend, Republican state Sen. Paul Stanley’s professional and personal life began to unravel, as his sexual liaison with his intern became public. And the hypocrisy of the “family values” 47-year-old married lawmaker with two children came to light. Stanley announced his resignation from his office on Tuesday, effective August 10, amid growing calls for the hypocritical lawmaker to step down. Stanley issued a short statement saying, “Due to recent events, I have decided to focus my full attention on my family and resign...

On April 15, while many Americans were filing their taxes or their extension requests, thousands rallied across the country to protest the government’s perceived abuses of the Constitution. In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry spoke at a rally which featured angry cries of “Secede!” from the crowd of Lone Star citizens. “We’ve got a great union” Perry, a Republican, said Wednesday. “There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that.” Perry’s comments have received harsh criticism from Texas Democrats, including State...

A congressman from the Philadelphia suburbs will challenge U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter in the Democratic Senate primary. In an interview with The Wayne Independent Wednesday morning, U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa.,confirmed his intention to run against Specter, a long-time Republican who switched to the Democratic party earlier this year. “I am going to get into the race against Arlen Specter ... for senator,” said Sestak in his first media interview as part of a three-week tour through all of the Commonwealth’s 67 counties. Wayne County was his first stop where he met with local Democrats prior to his interview with...

Amongst the several revenue-raising proposals in President Obama’s $3.9-trillion budget proposal is a carbon tax that will impact all American families. His budget aims to raise $646 billion through a cap-and-trade tax on energy. Last year, Peter Orszag, who was then Director of the Congressional Budget Office and is now President Obama’s Director for the Office of Management and Budget, testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on a similar proposal. Speaking about a cap-and-trade proposal to cut carbon emissions by 15%, he said it would cost the average household about $1,300 a year through higher energy costs. He...

He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm. Proverbs 13:20 The pages of history books are full of people who have been wise and those who have been foolish. We need only look at the newspapers and newscasts to see both types of people (when the U.S. government spends trillions of money it does not have, that's foolish). It has been said that you can tell a lot about a person by the company he keeps. When I was a kid, I was often warned about "hanging out with the wrong crowd." Some...

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. 1 Corinthians 1:18 Is it any wonder “they” don’t believe! This man: Was born of a virgin Claimed to be God, the Son of God, and Messiah Turned water into wine and walked on water Raised the lame and dead Cast out demons Healed the sick Lived a sinless life for 33 years Preached for three years Foretold of his impending death on a cross Predicted that he would be raised to life and...

Brainstorming has undoubtedly generated some bolts of brilliance and flashes of inspiration over the years. But in genteel Tunbridge Wells, the council decided it might lead to the traditionally Disgusted residents of the town becoming Offended as well. So now the expression brainstorming has been banned. And in future, meetings to generate new ideas will be referred to as 'thought showers'......

Charleston Daily Mail Secessionists from South and New England to meet The Associated Press Wednesday October 03, 2007 CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. -- In an unlikely marriage of desire to secede from the United States, two advocacy groups from opposite political traditions -- New England and the South -- are sitting down to talk. Tired of foreign wars and what they consider right-wing courts, the Middlebury Institute wants liberal states like Vermont to be able to secede peacefully. That sounds just fine to the League of the South, a conservative group that refuses to give up on Southern independence. "We believe that...

Islamic Spain: History's refrain It's a model for interfaith ties, and a warning about religious division. By Alexander Kronemer   Washington The past sometimes provides examples of glory and success that serve as models. Other times, as the philosopher George Santayana said, it warns of impending calamity for those who do not learn from it. For the past several years, I've been immersed in a history that does both. As one of the producers for an upcoming PBS documentary on the rise and fall of Islamic Spain, I've witnessed its amazing ascent and tragic fall countless times in the editing...

Hundreds of people posed naked on Switzerland's shrinking Aletsch glacier on Saturday for U.S. photographer Spencer Tunick as part of a Greenpeace campaign to raise awareness of global warming.

Show links Darwin, Hitler ideologies Holocaust was fallout of evolution theory, says new production -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: August 19, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com Charles Darwin should share with Hitler the blame for the 11 million or more lives lost in the Holocaust, a new television special explains. And, the program says, the more than 45 million American lives lost to abortion also can be blamed on that famous founder of evolutionary theory. The results of Darwin’s theories "This show basically is about the social effects of Darwinism, and shows this idea, which is scientifically bankrupt, has probably been...

Haven't geologists proved from scientific dating methods that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old? Doesn't astronomy prove that the universe must, at least, be billions of years old since it would have required billions of years for light from the nearest stars to reach the Earth? Don't all qualified scientists, including geologists, believe in Darwinian evolution and a billions of years old Earth and universe? The simple answer is "no". Both evolutionists and creationists have certain built-in assumptions in interpreting and using scientific data when it comes to the Earth's age. The issue many times comes down to which...

Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., says President Bush has no credibility among leaders of foreign nations when it comes to discussions of foreign policy. Biden, appearing on MSNBC’s "Imus in the Morning" show, said Bush lost credibility when weapons of mass destruction were not found in Iraq and his reluctance to apologize for "coming clean on Iraq” is hurting the nation’s reputation abroad. "The president has yet to be straight with the American people on what the deal in Iraq is,” Biden said. "All the way back since Abu Ghraib, the president has yet to be straight about the mistakes he...

WASHINGTON - John Dean, counsel to President Nixon during the Watergate scandal, is headlining a Senate hearing Friday on whether to censure President Bush for authorizing a domestic wiretapping program as part of the war on terrorism. The title of Dean’s 2004 book, “Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush,” made his view of the administration clear even before the wiretapping program became public. After The New York Times revealed the program in December, Dean wrote that “Bush may have outdone Nixon” and be worthy not just of censure but impeachment.

Evolutionists frequently point to the development of antibiotic resistance by bacteria as a demonstration of evolutionary change. However, molecular analysis of the genetic events that lead to antibiotic resistance do not support this common assumption. Many bacteria become resistant by acquiring genes from plasmids or transposons via horizontal gene transfer. Horizontal transfer, though, does not account for the origin of resistance genes, only their spread among bacteria. Mutations, on the other hand, can potentially account for the origin of antibiotic resistance within the bacterial world, but involve mutational processes that are contrary to the predictions of evolution. Instead, such mutations...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The World Bank's board is expected next week to formally approve a plan to wipe out poor countries' debt, the lending institution's' president, Paul Wolfowitz, said Wednesday. "It will be in their hands to decide early next week," he told reporters. The plan would forgive nearly $40 billion worth of debt for 18 poor countries, most of them in Africa, over a 40-year period, he said. Wolfowitz believed the World Bank would be able to start providing debt forgiveness to countries by the middle of next year. The expected approval by the World Bank board would mostly...

The last time Don Glossop saw his customers they were ritually burning green candles, hoping voodoo would pierce the federal bureaucracy and hasten the arrival of desperately needed relief checks. Glossop's shop, New Orleans Mistic, has been closed since Hurricane Katrina swamped the city two months ago, and most of his clients, who practice a local variant of voodoo, have scattered across the country. He fears that Katrina, which laid waste to entire neighborhoods and claimed hundreds of lives here, may take another casualty: New Orleans' status as the country's voodoo capital. "As of today I would say it's pretty...

Dean's latest Howard Dean, the Democratic National Committee chairman who was the hero of his party's anti-war wing before his gaffe-prone 2004 presidential candidacy crashed and burned in Iowa, still doesn't think the Iraqis are better off with dictator Saddam Hussein out of power and in prison. Appearing on CBS' "Face the Nation" yesterday, the fiery former Vermont governor said, "It looks like today, and this could change, as of today it looks like women will be worse off in Iraq than they were when Saddam Hussein was president of Iraq." Mr. Dean was the guy who said right after...

LAND O'LAKES -- A radio-station stunt that had three listeners dressed up like escaped jail inmates went awry Friday when dozens of people called 911 and the resulting ruckus tied up traffic during morning rush hour, authorities said. The three people, shackled and dressed in what appeared to be jail uniforms, were competing to try to get motorists to give them a ride, Kevin Doll, a spokesman with the Pasco County Sheriff's Office, said. The first one back to the studios of Tampa station WXTB-FM would win a trip to Los Angeles in conjunction with a new Fox show called...

-- WARNING SATIRE -- Who may apply for an outstretched-palm worker (beggar) license? Any male or female sixteen years of age or older may apply for an outstretched-palm license after accumulating a minimum of four years of documented, pre-approved outstretched-palm work experience, which may include unsolicited windshield-squeegeeing, but is not to include excruciating harmonica playing. All previous outstretched-palm work must have been conducted on an equal opportunity basis, with no preferences shown to passersby of any particular race or gender. The regulatory branch may, in its discretion, choose to audit an applicant's outstretched-palm work records to ensure that his or...

A mercury spill at Farrington High School sent students and a teacher to the health office. It happened when a ninth-grader cracked a 12-inch thermometer during a science experiment. Hazmat crews say about a teaspoon of mercury spilled onto the floor. A handful of students were exposed before the teacher cleaned up the mess. No one complained of itching skin or headaches -- effects of extended exposure to mercury. But the teacher and eight students were taken to the health office as a precaution. The classroom remained off-limits until an environmental firm did a thorough clean-up. Farrington uses mercury thermometers...

ATLANTA -- The mayor is threatening a country club with up to $90,000 in fines for refusing to extend spousal benefits to the partners of gay members. Mayor Shirley Franklin said last week in a letter to the Druid Hills Golf Club that the club violated Atlanta's human rights ordinance, which requires businesses to treat domestic partners registered with the city as married couples. Franklin said she is ordering the city solicitor to fine the club $500 a day for up to six months -- a total of $90,000 -- unless the rule is changed.

With support from John Kerry's campaign, two third-party candidates for president officially asked on Tuesday for a recount in Ohio, the state that put President Bush over the top in November. The requests, mailed to all 88 counties, were expected to arrive by Wednesday. Generally, county election boards must agree to a recount, as long as the parties bringing the challenge pay for it. And the Green and Libertarian parties collected enough donations to cover the required $113,600, or $10 per precinct. David Cobb, Green Party presidential candidate, said the election was full of irregularities, including uncounted provisional ballots. "There...

I'm just interested. I could do without church. Thanks to all who participated in my other thread on "who believes salvation can be lost". There are just so many responses. How important is church to you as a conservative? I think you can be moral and christian without church.

Never one to mess up a good story by sticking with the facts, the liberal media in Washington refuse to tell us much about the inner-workings of the Senate. Oh sure, they are quick to carp about anything they think may be a misstep by a Republican member. But that is about as deep as their news reports usually go. No one ever reports that few senators fully understand, or even read, any of the bills before voting. Nor are we often informed that an inordinate amount of each senator's time is spent seeing lobbyists and other campaign contributors, rather...

<p>LONDON, Nov. 15 (UPI) -- Britain's government is moving toward outlawing the spanking of children, even if it is done by parents in their own home.</p> <p>Officials plan to tack an amendment onto the Child Protection Bill to outlaw parental spanking because too many parents cover up abuse by claiming their children's bruises are the result of normal discipline, the Sunday Observer reported.</p>

FR Columnists Corner "The Pro-Life Movement's Problem With Morality" Commentary by Cathryn CrawfordMaking claim to being pro-life in America is like shouting, “I’m a conservative Christian Republican!” from your rooftop. This is partly due to the fact that a considerable number of conservative Christian Republicans are pro-life. It’s hardly true, however, to say that they are the only pro-life people in America. Surprisingly enough to some, there are many different divisions within the pro-life movement, including Democrats, gays, lesbians, feminists, and environmentalists. It is not a one-party or one-group or one-religion issue. The pro-life movement doesn’t act like it, though....

Military forces led by Sudan's militant Islamist regime burned to death a Christian pastor and his family in a massacre of 59 unarmed villagers, a relief group working in the area reported. The simultaneous attack on 10 villages in Eastern Upper Nile took place as Secretary of State Colin Powell met with Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail to discuss Sudan's removal from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.

WHAT A BUNCH OF LOSERS By Erik Barath On "liberation day," as crowds in Baghdad cheered American Marine convoys as though they were the New York Yankees driving through the "Canyon of Heroes" in October, I couldn't help but think about what certain groups who opposed this military action must now feel like. Collectively, leftists, "Old Euro" weenies and Bush-haters had done everything in their power to thwart this day of independence. So along with Saddam and his Baath party, the list of losers reads something like this: HOLLYWOOD: As Iraqi men kissed photos of George W. Bush and sang...

Lately, many members of this site have been posting indignant comments about the so-called "bribing" of other countries to get their cooperation in the WOT. These otherwise well-informed and well-intentioned FReepers risk the appearance of ignorance in these posts, and what's worse, appear to be foolishly taken in by another liberal media distortion. The fact is that the US has been "bribing" these countries since before the 20th century began, and especially in the last 50 years. In fact, it would be difficult to name one country in this world who has not been "bribed" by the US at one...

DAILY NOTEBOOK.... A Word From The Wise (Regarding The Foolish)... February 20, 2003: Shocked and saddened by the outpouring of stupidity and mindlessness expressed in the name of "peace" on the streets of various Western democracies of late? Then perhaps a few celebrated quotations from the wise will provide some solace, as well as buttress your beliefs in taking concerted action against the forces of tyranny: War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who...

The Oscars were announced this week, and the country's attention was, at least temporarily, focused on Hollywood. Who will win best actress? Can a musical take best picture? Will Bjork come to the awards show dressed as a spotted turtle? But even as all this Oscar fanfare graces the entertainment sections of the nation's newspapers and websites, our fab celeb friends are taking time out from their usual lalaland routine -- sipping cool drinks by the pool and storming into their trailers to have tantrums over their fridges being stocked with the wrong kind of flavored water -- in order...

ICONOCLAST DAILY NOTEBOOK.... LEST WE FORGET....... January 26, 2003: Yes, take another gander at that epic New Statesman magazine cover story (above) skewering America's war-mad President George W. Bush, just weeks before the "foolhardy" American attempt to free the Afghani people from the yoke of fanatical Taliban repression through the force of arms. Now think back carefully and try and remember all those many knowledgeable, pre-war warnings from the enlightened cognoscenti of the left about just how impulsive and destructive such an action would be. After all, the Americans were going to get bogged down in a second Viet Nam...

<p>Already shaken by a yearlong sex abuse scandal involving priests and minors, the Roman Catholic Church has yet to face another critical challenge - how to help thousands of nuns who say they have been sexually victimized.</p> <p>A national survey, completed in 1996 but intentionally never publicized, estimates that a "minimum" of 34,000 Catholic nuns, or about 40 percent of all nuns in the United States, have suffered some form of sexual trauma.</p>

As if he doesn't have enough legal troubles. A Harlem man who was charged in June with trying to rape a woman and practicing medicine without a license, yesterday filed a $1-million suit against the city and Fire Department for knocking him over on Sept. 11, 2001. Appukkuttan Narayanan, of West 145th Street, claims he was "a lawful pedestrian" on Canal Street and Broadway at 11 a.m. when he was knocked over by a member of the Fire Department, shortly after the World Trade Center towers collapsed.

God Bless America!Only in a great country like ours can we enjoy the blessings of freedom, prosperity, abundance, and still have leftovers... LOLIf your home is anything like ours, can you eat all day, and into the night, leave a tidy some of food, (like that G'dawful gooey cranberry stuff) and still have more food than what you had before you started. Look at your refrigerator, is it any room left... well is there??? LOL Here are some suggestions for that Turkey and trimmings that are still around!.....

Remarks by the President at Event Commemorating End of Ramadan THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release January 10, 2000 REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT AT EVENT COMMEMORATING END OF RAMADAN Presidential Hall 11:30 A.M. EST THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Thank you very much, Eid Mubarak, and welcome to the White House. N'Imah Saleem, you did a fine job for a 14-year-old, or a 24-year-old, or a 44-year-old. I thought she was terrific. Thank you very much, thank you. (Applause.) And, Imam Hendi, thank you so much for your words, your prayer, and for serving as the...

Albert Einstein, it is said, claimed that "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former." Over the 47 years since his death, it’s evident that the human race keeps plunging to new depths of absurdity. The Akron Beacon Journal reported on a product liability lawsuit a few weeks ago. In 1998, two carpet installers used an adhesive marked "All Weather Outdoor Adhesive." It also had a label cautioning, "Do not use indoors because of flammability." One of the installers admitted he had read the warning. The two were seriously injured in...

The Ninth District Quart, in a landmark decision, has outlawed the use of the word (G*D)in swearwords. The U S Senate disapproved of the decision 50 3/4 to 49 along party lines.

Some legal scholars say the ruling will likely either be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court ( news - web sites) or reversed by the full 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ( news - web sites). "I would bet an awful lot on that," Harvard University scholar Laurence Tribe said. Wednesday's ruling was in response to an atheist's bid to keep his second-grade daughter from being exposed to religion in school. In a 2-1 decision in favor of Michael Newdow, the panel took issue with the words "under God" in the pledge. Circuit Judge Alfred T. Goodwin said...