Free Republic

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) -- A Navy tradition has caught up with the repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" rule on gays serving openly in the U.S. military. The Navy said two women shared the coveted "first kiss" Wednesday when the USS Oak Hill returned home to its Virginia base. Marissa Gaeta of Pacerville, Calif., descended from the ship and shared a quick kiss with her partner, Citlalic (SEET-lah-leek) Snell of Los Angeles. The crowd screamed and waved Navy flags around them. Both women are fire controlmen in the Navy. They met at training school and have been dating...

NEWBURGH – An almost $2 million federal grant will allow the creation of a New York Renewable Energy Cluster in Newburgh. The money will make way for the Solar Energy Consortium to expand its industry-led clean energy manufacturing cluster into Orange County. Congressman Maurice Hinchey, who helped get the grant and played a key role in establishing TSEC, said the cluster will mean work for Newburgh residents. “It’s going to create a lot of jobs for the City of Newburgh and it’s exactly the type of economic development I envisioned when I spearheaded creation of TSEC back in 2007,” Hinchey...

Officials from the Department of Energy have for months been sitting in on board meetings as "observers" at Solyndra, getting an up-close view as the solar energy company careened towards bankruptcy after spending more than $500 million in federal loan money. Word of the Energy Department's unusual arrangement came as federal agents on Thursday converged on the California headquarters of the failed solar company, focusing fresh attention on the first corporate beneficiary of President Obama's stimulus program to create new clean energy jobs. The company, which closed its doors last week and laid off 1,100 workers, has been a subject...

SALEM – The State of Oregon’s health care costs have increased by $6 million annually according to actuaries because of newly eligible dependents required by the national health care law. Under the new health care law, Public Employee Benefits Board (PEBB) eligibility rules were loosened and expanded to include more dependents. The expansion allowed for a new age group of adult children aged 25 to 26 who were previously ineligible to be included on their parents’ health care benefits. The eligibility rules were also loosened to include all dependents between the ages of 19 and 24 who were previously eligible...

A devastating earthquake strikes Japan. A massive tsunami kills thousands. Fears of a nuclear meltdown run rampant. Bloodshed and violence escalate in Libya. And U.S. companies selling doomsday bunkers are seeing sales skyrocket anywhere from 20% to 1,000%. Northwest Shelter Systems, which offers shelters ranging in price from $200,000 to $20 million, has seen sales surge 70% since the uprisings in the Middle East, with the Japanese earthquake only spurring further interest. In hard numbers, that's 12 shelters already booked when the company normally sells four shelters per year. "Sales have gone through the roof, to the point where we...

From November 1943, until her demise in June 1945, the American destroyer 'William Porter' was often hailed - whenever she entered port or joined other Naval ships - with the greetings: 'Don't shoot, we're Republicans!' For a half a century, the US Navy kept a lid on the details of the incident that prompted this salutation. A Miami news reporter made the first public disclosure in 1958 after he stumbled upon the truth while covering a reunion of the destroyer's crew. The Pentagon reluctantly and tersely confirmed his story, but only a smattering of newspapers took notice. In 1943, the...

An American boy based in Indonesia has been selected to play the role of Barack Obama in the upcoming movie about the US president’s childhood in Jakarta. “Obama Anak Menteng” (“Obama The Menteng Kid”) is expected to begin filming this week and rushed into Indonesian cinemas by June 17. The film is based on the novel of the same name, which author Damien Dematra claims to be a true account of “Barry’s” childhood in the Jakarta suburb. He reportedly wrote the novel in just five days after five days of research. Hasan Faruq Ali, selected for the role, told a...

The U.S. Air Force admits that the chaplain's office at Andrews Air Force Base retracted an invitation to Family Research Council President Tony Perkins--a former Marine officer--to speak at a prayer luncheon held at the base on Thursday after the conservative leader criticized President Obama’s efforts to end “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell"--the military policy on homosexuality. “The Chaplain’s Office retracted Mr. Perkins’ invitation after his recent public comments made many who planned to attend the event uncomfortable,” the Andrews base public affairs office said in a statement issued late Thursday. “This was a local decision made by the Chaplain’s Office...

A transgender couple have revealed they are expecting their first baby in a month’s time. Scott Moore - thought to be only the second ‘pregnant man’ to go public - is due to give birth to a boy in February, with husband Thomas by his side. The couple were both born girls and have undergone surgery to transform their sex. Scott, 30, who is legally married to Thomas because he still has a female birth certificate, says he is eagerly looking forward to giving birth. They have decided to call the child ‘Miles’. ‘We know some people will criticise us...

Five days after the catastrophic 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, a medical worker has sent an urgent plea/complaint that the hospital he is at outside Port Au Prince has only treated four quake victims from the destroyed Haitian capital while teams of surgeons have no patients to treat.Tim Traynor sent the following e-mail to Democracy Now!I am sitting at Hopital Sacre Coeur in Milot, Haiti, 75 miles north of PAP waiting for patients that have yet to arrive. I have a 7 member trauma/ general surgery team that arrived from the States earlier this afternoon and have received only 4 people...

Three intelligence reports warned that Taliban insurgents were planning an attack just days before this month's raid on two remote military outposts in eastern Afghanistan that killed eight U.S. soldiers, but the reports were dismissed as insignificant, U.S. officials told The Washington Times. As a result, military officials did not send additional troops or make preparations to protect the 140 U.S. and Afghan troops at the combat outposts near Kamdesh in Nuristan province by the Pakistan border, the officials said. Army Maj. T.G. Taylor, a spokesman for the Army's Task Force Mountain Warrior, told The Times that the three reports...

Why are forum replies reviewed and posting delayed? Makes it kinda tough to carry on a conversation when it takes hours to communicate.

Conservatives are taking too much solace in the precipitous drop in Barack Obama's approval ratings, and too many of us are overconfident that his administration is merely a replay of the hapless presidency of Jimmy Carter that was easily swept out in a landslide election. Today's situation is far different, far more conducive to our political adversary's political power, than that which faced Carter. And Obama is an entirely different breed of cat. He's more ruthless, more tactically savvy, and has far more dangerous objectives. A drop in his poll ratings isn't as serious a setback for him as similar...

Methinks Wisconsin State Senator Jim Holperin doth protest too much. In his attempts to rebut a critique by Tom Tiffany of his first six months in the Democrat-controlled Wisconsin Senate, Senator Holperin parrots the Democrat talking point that the Democrats “eliminated a $6.6 billion deficit, and left the state with a $270 million surplus.” Two observations here: If there’s going to be a $270 million surplus, that means Wisconsin taxpayers will be paying $270 million more in taxes than it will take to pay for Democrat spending. I don’t suppose the taxpayers will get any of that surplus money back,...

Link from Drudge: Troy's celebrated solar house left in the dark Direct posting of Detroit News articles is not allowed.

WASHINGTON (AP) - House Democratic leaders are scaling back their plans to cut the gases blamed for global warming and to transition the country to cleaner sources of energy. Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Rep. Henry Waxman of California announced Tuesday the outlines of a deal that they said would ensure the legislation will please both environmental and industry groups and have the support of moderate Democrats on the House Energy Committee.

Bureaucratic infighting is holding up one of the Obama administration's top goals in renewable energy - the construction of wind turbines off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts that would generate clean electricity and create "green" jobs. At the center of the fight are two obscure but powerful federal agencies, each of which claims the ability to approve new wave and tidal energy projects along the outer continental shelf. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the Minerals Management Service (MMS) each says it has the sole authority to issue permits and licenses, and neither is willing to budge. The result:...

It is my humble suggestion that the monstrosity of handouts to thugs, unions, and dependents be henceforth known as: Porkulus Marximus. That's my vanity for the season.

The steep fall in global commodity prices over the past several weeks has brought Argentina to the brink of fiscal collapse—alas, not an unfamiliar position for the South American country. For far too long, the Argentine government behaved as if commodity prices would keep rising forever. It spent like a drunken sailor and made unsustainable commitments to the public sector. Such irresponsible fiscal policies were promoted aggressively by Argentine President Néstor Kirchner, who served from 2003 to 2007, and they have been continued by his wife, Cristina, who in 2007 was elected to succeed her husband as president. Until recently,...

My first time posting here, so hope I'm doing this right. Thought you might enjoy the very short video. http://pumaparty.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2622

Late Sunday night, my wife and I drove from Sacramento, Calif., to Los Angeles. We figured that it would be wise to leave Sacramento in the early evening to avoid traffic. At 7 p.m., we climbed into the car and headed for Interstate 5, the major highway connecting Northern California and Southern California. For the first five hours of the drive, things went as planned. The highway was relatively clear, and we sailed along happily at 80 mph. Then we saw it. A sign. A large orange sign reading: Freeway Closed Ahead, 11 p.m.-4 a.m. It was too late to...

LONDON, Sunday, July 1 — British officials raised the country’s terrorism threat alert to its highest level on Saturday after two men slammed an S.U.V. into entrance doors at Glasgow Airport and turned the vehicle into a potentially lethal fireball. Less than 38 hours earlier the police uncovered two cars in London rigged to explode with gasoline, gas canisters and nails. Early Sunday, after a day of fast-moving developments, the London police announced that two people had been arrested in Cheshire, in northwest England, “in connection with the events in London and Scotland.” The arrests were in addition to those...

Authorities per-CNN that a body has been found inside Cherokee...terrorist didn't get out.

I've been hearing rumors for a couple of weeks now that New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin is considering running for Governor. I finally found a news outlet that confirms this rumor, thanks to freelance journalist Jason Berry, who appeared on Informed Sources last night to predict that Nagin will run for Governor. Hat tip to Library Chronicles. As an aside, is this Jason Berry the author of Amazing Grace, an account of Charles Evers' run for Governor in Mississippi back in 1972? But back to the issue at hand - Ray Nagin running for Governor of Louisiana. This makes...

Comedian George Carlin once said, “The term ‘bipartisan’ simply means that there’s a larger than usual deception going on.” Those words were never truer than they are today. The Senate “reached across party lines” to craft a deal that would “grant amnesty to millions of illegals while securing our borders.”

The chase started when the suspect got into a car and drove off and the deputy pursued. The suspect crashed into a tree at the 5700 block of Siverly Lane, Curtice said, and then ran on foot. The deputy followed, chasing the suspect through backyards. The suspect doubled backed and drove off in the deputy's vehicle. The suspect crashed the patrol car near the corner of Dakota and Armstrong avenues, Curtice said.

Following faith and fashion By Indlieb Farazi in Doha, Qatar Wednesday 29 March 2006, 12:56 Makka Time, 9:56 GMT The abaya is an over-garment worn by many Muslim women Reema and her friends are slowly parading around a Doha shopping mall, making sure their fashionable floor-length coverings are seen. The glamorous girls shroud their jeans and colourful tops with long black robes, mixing fashion with religion and tradition. "I think it looks really elegant. There are so many abayas on the market at the moment - the latest being the farasha, or butterfly-style abaya. It isn't tight-fitting like the French-style...

Just saw on CNN that 23 tons of explosives were dropped on a Hezbollah bunker. Top Hezbollah officials are believed to have been inside. No story on the website yet.

NEW ORLEANS - The Federal Emergency Management Agency is closing its long-term recovery office in New Orleans, claiming local officials failed to meet their planning obligations after Hurricane Katrina. The office is responsible for helping the city devise a blueprint to rebuild destroyed houses, schools and neighborhoods. "FEMA cannot drive the planning — our mission is to support it. We can only do so much and then we look to the city to embrace and begin planning and managing," said FEMA's national spokesman Aaron Walker. "Once they begin planning, we can re-engage with them." Of the 35 employees who initially...

Despite the amazing technological improvements in aircraft and air-traffic control, winter can still snarl air traffic and result in cancellations, delays, missed connections and assorted other ills. While one cancellation can appear pretty much the same as another, travelers find quite a bit of difference in what airlines owe them in a major snarl. Here's a primer on cancellations and what you can do about them. With one exception, what you get when your flight doesn't operate as advertised is entirely up to the airlines. That one exception is when an airline "bumps" you due to overbooking: when it sells...

WASHINGTON - They are the Pentagon's new "rules of engagement" _ the diamond ring kind. U.S. Army chaplains are trying to teach troops how to pick the right spouse, through a program called "How To Avoid Marrying a Jerk." The matchmaking advice comes as military family life is being stressed by two tough wars. Defense Department records show more than 56,000 in the Army _ active, National Guard and Reserve _ have divorced since the campaign in Afghanistan started in 2001. Officials partly blame long and repeated deployments which started after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and stretched the...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted on Thu, Feb. 02, 2006 Patron, 17, who “thought it was his duty” beats, subdues man Store robber runs into one tough customer By CHRISTINE VENDEL The Kansas City Star “Open the register before someone gets hurt!” shouted the robber, who at the time probably wasn’t including himself in the list of possible someones. But it was the robber who got clobbered Tuesday night at a Kansas City discount store. A teenage customer who “thought it was his duty” attacked the thief, disarmed him and beat him when he refused to surrender. The 6-foot-1-inch boy said he was...

"The newspaper as television set." It is under this heading that we will give some well-known television journalists, who under various pretexts have been removed from the Russian ether, a chance to speak. Here are the tele-journalists whose programs we would like to see on the pages of ‘Novaya Gazeta’: Alexander Gerasim, Alexander Gurnov, Sergey Dorenko, Yevgeny Kiselev, Vladimir Karamurza, Stanislaw Kucher, Alexander Lyubimov, Nikolai Nikolayev, Andrei Norkin, Leonid Parfenonov, Igor Pototskiy, Yuri Rostov, Eduard Sagalayev, Svetlana Sorokina, Victor Shenderovich, and Savik Schuster. Today - Nikolai Nikolayev, from 'Independent Investigation'. What went on behind the scenes of a famous news...

I downloaded two packs from microsoft last night...what can I say...I was bored. I think I downloaded some of these: Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer for Windows XP Service Pack 2 (KB883939) Update for Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 (KB831167) Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer for Windows XP Service Pack 2 (KB896727) I cannot remember, and I dont suppose there is a way to find out what I did. Can anyone help me out. Email is my life line to the real world.

WASHINGTON — The elderly couple, Daniel and Wilda Davis, opened their door to Russell Wayne Wagner on Valentine's Day 1994. "He took Mom and Dad and sat them on a kitchen chair, tied their hands behind their heads and put a pillowcase over their heads, stabbed them 14-15 times and then he robbed them and then he left," their son, Vernon Davis, tearfully told the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee Thursday. Wagner was convicted of the couple's murders and sentenced to two life terms with parole eligibility. When he died in prison, he was cremated and placed in the nation's premiere...

New Orleans police sought sexual favors, took snapshots of helpless victims Ged Scott, 36, of Liverpool, England was with his wife and seven-year-old daughter in the Ramada Hotel when the flood waters started rising. "At one point, there were a load of girls on the roof of the hotel saying 'Can you help us?' and the policemen said 'Show us what you've got' and made signs for them to lift their T-shirts," he told the Liverpool Evening Echo. "When the girls refused, they said `Fine' and motored off down the road in their boat." "I could not have a lower...

The Fox News Channel's Major Garrett made another appearance on the program this evening, following up on his blockbuster story yesterday. Among other things, Garrett got confirmation --on camera-- of the Louisian State department of Homeland Security's blocking of the delivery of relief supplies to the Superdome and the Convention Center. In addition, Garrett received confirmation from senior Salvation Army officials in Washington, D.C. that the Salvation Army's efforts at supplying the evacuees were also repeatedly blocked. Radioblogger will have the transcript up later, but the key takeaway was when I asked Garrett if characterizing Louisian's preparation for the storm...

The Louisiana Department of Homeland Security blocked a vanguard of Red Cross trucks filled with water, food, blankets and hygiene items from bringing relief to the thousands of hungry and thirsty evacuees stranded in the New Orleans Superdome after Hurricane Katrina struck, according to a Fox News Channel report. The state agency responsible for Louisiana's security "told the Red Cross explicitly, you cannot come," said Fox News reporter Major Garrett in a radio interview. Garrett told nationally syndicated talk host Hugh Hewitt that according to the Red Cross, the delivery was blocked immediately after the storm passed Monday. The Louisiana...

Paris - A confusing series of alarm signals and the lack of an effective common language between its pilots doomed a Cypriot airliner that crashed near Athens last month, killing all 121 people on board, the daily International Herald Tribune said on Wednesday, quoting investigators. An air system knob that had been incorrectly set during maintenance on the ground prevented the Helios Airways Boeing 737 from pressurising properly, but the crew failed to notice the problem during their preflight checks, people connected to the investigation told the newspaper. Then, as the aircraft ascended through 3 000m, a pressurisation alarm -...

BREAKING NEWS: New Orleans flood waters contaminated with e. coli, official in office of of Mayor Ray Nagin tells CNN.

ROME - An Italian judge has ordered the arrest of 13 CIA agents for allegedly helping deport an imam to Egypt as part of U.S. anti-terrorism efforts, an Italian official familiar with the investigation said Friday. The agents are suspected in the seizure of an Egyptian-born imam identified as Abu Omar on the streets of Milan in February 2003, according to the official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information. The U.S. Embassy in Rome declined to comment. Prosecutors believe the agents seized Omar as part of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program, in which terror...

unnngh...

Just a quick question...I've noticed several articles on FR with the keyword "CARY." The articles seem to cover a very diverse range of topics. What does CARY mean? Is it an acronym? Curious.....

GENEVA - The United Nations (news - web sites) is failing to protect millions of people displaced by conflict in Sudan's Darfur region and violence in other hotspots around the world, a U.N. report said Friday. The world body's approach to the problem of people who have fled their homes but not crossed any international borders "is still largely ad hoc and driven more by the personalities and convictions of individuals on the ground than by an institutional, systemwide agenda," the report said. The U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank,...

Poptart Ashlee Simpson Walks Off Stage After Lip-sync Flub During NBC's SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE... Here is the link to the video: http://www.collegehumor.com/news/ashlee_snl.wmv

Howard Dean's wife Judith Steinberg accompanies Dean and their son Paul to a courtroom hearing last month. This was a rare public appearance by the former first lady of Vermont. Shown at right is a publicity photo released by the Dean Campaign.

WASHINGTON - Prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the CIA failed to act on intelligence it had about hijackers, the FBI was unable to track al-Qaida in the United States, and key National Security Agency communications intercepts never were circulated, a congressional investigation has concluded. But even had these and many other failures not occurred, no evidence surfaced in the probe by the House and Senate intelligence committees to show that the government could have prevented the attacks that killed more than 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. A 900-page declassified version of the report being...

U.K. Citizen/Human Shield/High Rantress Ms. Uzma Bashir AKA "Baghdad Betty" Title: "A Lady With Real Attitude" By Paul Belden BAGHDAD - On the first night of bombing in Baghdad, I recall having written about a much-loved young peace activist named Uzma Bashir who had gone to Iraq to serve as a human shield, and whose many friends had gathered in an Amman hotel to hear the latest news from Iraq. They were all very frightened for her safety, I wrote.They needn't have bothered. As it turned out, the bombing campaign didn't hurt Uzma one bit. It did, however, really...

Thursday, March 27, 2003 - 12:00 a.m. Pacific FBI defends interviews to gather intelligence By David Postman Seattle Times chief political reporter Charles Mandigo E-mail this article Print this article Search web archive OLYMPIA — The FBI says its interviews of Iraqi exiles and immigrants in the United States is part of an intelligence-gathering effort to bolster the search for weapons in Iraq and to gather evidence that could be used in war-crime trials. Sensitive to concerns from the Iraqi community, though, the Seattle FBI office said it is trying to make the interviews more cooperative and less threatening after...

Sunday Nov. 10, 2002; 2:10 p.m. EST McAuliffe Relative Got Millions While Senate Dems Went Begging In the wake of devastating Democratic Party defeats in last Tuesday's election, party faithful are complaining openly that Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe lost the U.S. Senate by making the defeat of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush his top priority - as questions swirl over whether McAuliffe's family ties played a role in questionable allocations of vital campaign cash. In a development that was largely overlooked during the campaign, McAuliffe's father-in-law, Richard Swann, served as finance chairman for Bush's Democrat challenger Bill McBride, whose...