Free Republic

Rep. Barney Frank won't seek re-election Posted by CNN Wire Staff (CNN) - Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, a 16-term Democrat, will announce Monday he does not intend to seek re-election in 2012........

Las Vegas copyright infringement lawsuit filer Righthaven LLC’s financial problems grew Tuesday when the federal court in Las Vegas commanded the U.S. Marshals Service to seize more than $63,000 in Righthaven assets to satisfy a creditor’s judgment and costs. Lance Wilson, clerk of the court, signed a writ of execution requested by attorneys for Wayne Hoehn, who was sued for copyright infringement by Righthaven —but then defeated Righthaven in court when his case was dismissed this summer. Righthaven since March 2010 has filed 275 lawsuits against websites, bloggers and message board posters claiming they infringed on material from the Las...

BEIJING -- A 2-year-old Chinese girl left unattended fell 10 stories from her family's apartment window and survived after being caught by a woman passing by, state media reported Sunday. The toddler was in critical condition Sunday with internal bleeding and other unspecified injuries while the woman who saved her suffered a broken arm, China Central Television and the Xinhua News Agency said. The girl, named Zhang Fangyu but known by the nickname Niu Niu, was in the care of her grandmother Saturday afternoon when the older woman left the 10th-floor apartment outside the eastern city of Hangzhou to run...

New York (AP) -- U.S. newspaper advertising revenue fell 7 percent during the first three months of the year. That left the industry's quarterly ad revenue at its lowest level in 27 years.

The Republican-led Ohio Senate voted on Wednesday night to severely limit the collective bargaining rights of 350,000 public workers. The 17-16 vote came hours after the full House approved the measure on a 53-44 vote, 10TV News reported. The measure affects safety workers, teachers, nurses and a host of other government personnel. It allows unions to negotiate wages but not health care, sick time or pension benefits. It also does away with automatic pay increases in favor of merit raises. Gov. John Kasich said that his $55.5 billion state budget counts on unspecified savings from lifting union protections to fill...

Luke 2: 1-20 The Story of Christ's Birth And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem (because he was of the house and lineage of David), to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being with...

Apologist, lawyer and theologian John Warwick Montgomery references this choice in a quick blurb about the existence of evil and a good God: "Opponents of theism have perennially argued that the natural and moral evils in the universe make the idea of an omnipotent and perfectly good God irrational. But if subjectivity (and its correlative, freewill) must be presupposed on the level of human action, and if God’s character as fully transcendent divine Subject serves to make human volition meaningful, then the existence of freewill in itself provides a legitimate explanation of evil. To create personalities without genuine freewill would...

The Senate, by a vote of 56-43 did not pass the motion to proceed to debate on the defense authorization bill (S.3454). The procedural vote sought to move the bill forward and begin the general debate; however 60 votes were needed to pass the motion. The source of the conflict were two provisions in the bill; repealing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy and an immigration measure, the DREAM Act. Republicans have voiced their opposition to the measures, as well as Democratic leaders’ refusal to allow the other side to bring forth their amendments for consideration. In the House, Democratic...

The Senate, by a vote of 56-43 did not pass the motion to proceed to debate on the defense authorization bill (S.3454). The procedural vote sought to move the bill forward and begin the general debate; however 60 votes were needed to pass the motion. The source of the conflict were two provisions in the bill; repealing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy and an immigration measure, the DREAM Act. Republicans have voiced their opposition to the measures, as well as Democratic leaders’ refusal to allow the other side to bring forth their amendments for consideration. In the House, Democratic...

It’s pure panic time in Democratic circles as the 40-year reign James Carville predicted seems to ending a few decades early. MoveOn.org, a long-time Progressive powerhouse in DC and around the country, is running around with its hair on fire and preparing for a bad November.

priest from Hungary is a good skater -- and is presenting the good news to the yout and You-tube users. Redics [kath.net] A Hungarian Priest puts on his skateboard-arts for the attention of children, youth and recently Youtube Users. Report from news.at.

CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan - An Afghan gentleman begged a squad of Marines, out for a routine visit to a village in southern Afghanistan, to come to his nephew's rescue. They entered the man's compound and found a 10-year-old boy curled up in pain from severe burns over his back. This was a whole new mission for a group of warriors who normally spend their days training Afghanistan national security forces across the region.

PHOENIX – The two proposed referendum drives challenging Arizona's new sweeping law targeting illegal immigration are being abandoned, organizers said Monday. Andrew Chavez, a professional petition circulator involved in one of the efforts, said its backers pulled the plug after concluding they might not be able to time their petition filings in such a way as to put the law on hold pending a 2012 public vote. Jon Garrido, the chief organizer of the other drive, attributed its end to a belief that the law would have been subject to legal protections under Arizona's Constitution if approved by Arizona voters....

Oooh, I hear laughter in the rain...That song's been running through my head all day... Neil Sedaka Ooooh, how I love the rainy days and the happy way I feel inside...Bob Bennett is toast. The Utah delegates said so today, speaking on behalf of their fellow Utah citizens (would that be Utes?... ) He was in near tears at the shock, the SHOCK! of losing his "career". Ummm, bub, (Bob), that was never meant to be a "career". This is the problem. These SOBs have been in there so long it is their freaking career. And it has been, because...

A lifetime of crippling disability is cured overnight By Kathi Goertzen    Story Published: May 6, 2010 at 11:15 PM PDT Story Updated: May 7, 2010 at 10:46 AM PDT Ed Impala SEATTLE - Ed Impala is flesh and blood proof there is always hope, no matter what the medical challenge.Ed and his twin brother Frank were born in Redmond in 1956. As a child, Ed could never keep up."My balance was bad. My body was always pulling me back. The fatigue was severe. My parents took me to doctor after doctor, and they'd say, 'He'll outgrow it,'" says Ed.But...

There has been a lot said and written in the last couple of days about a new poll showing that only 20% or so of Americans "trust the government." The news is being gravely received and treated as further and redundant proof that the country is in a bad way. To me, though, it sounds like pretty good news. We need more distrust of government for the very good reason that government is pretty much an untrustworthy enterprise. If more Americans had been inclined to distrust the government five, ten, twenty, or more years ago, we might not be in...

Daniel 8:23-25 23-26"'As their kingdoms cool down and rebellions heat up, A king will show up, hard-faced, a master trickster. His power will swell enormously. He'll talk big, high-handedly, Doing whatever he pleases, knocking off heroes and holy ones left and right. He'll plot and scheme to make crime flourish— and oh, how it will flourish! He'll think he's invincible and get rid of anyone who gets in his way. But when he takes on the Prince of all princes, he'll be smashed to bits— but not by human hands.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Americans regained more of their shrunken wealth last quarter, mainly because the healing economy boosted stock portfolios. But the gain was less than in the previous two quarters. The Federal Reserve reported Thursday that household net worth rose 1.3 percent in the fourth quarter to $54.2 trillion. It marked the third straight quarter of gains. Net worth had risen by a stronger 4.5 percent in the second quarter of 2009 and by an even faster 5.5 percent in the third quarter.

Hamas official Ayman Taha Sunday announced two of the three victims in Saturday's car bomb in southern Beirut were Hamas members, the local Now Lebanon news website reported. Taha told a press conference that the two Hamas members killed by the blast were Basil Jomaa and Hassan Haddad of Hamas' office in Dahiyeh, the stronghold of Lebanese Shiite armed group Hezbollah. A car bomb struck on Saturday night the Haret Hreik neighborhood in South Dahiyeh, killing three and injuring five others.

Wednesday December 23, 2009 Top Ten Good News Stories of 2009 Compiled by John-Henry WestenDecemer 23, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The following are the top ten good news stories of 2009, ranked according to popularity.1) 12-Year-Old Stuns Pro-Choice Teacher and School with Pro-Life Presentation  12-year-old "Lia" of Toronto become a star at her school and on Youtube with her five-minute pro-life speech, crafted for a school competition. A video of her speech has been watched over 800,000 times on Youtube.2) List of Bishops Opposing the Notre Dame Invitation and Award to President Obama83 U.S. bishops spoke out against Notre Dame's...

GREAT FALLS (AP) — A Great Falls man who found a $6,000 diamond ring at the mall has returned it to its owner and wouldn't even accept the reward. Chandria Murphy of San Antonio, Texas, was helping her mother at her chair massage business at a Great Falls mall earlier this month. She was getting ready to close up on Dec. 10 when a last-minute customer arrived. She took off her three-diamond ring and placed it on a table. She usually puts it in her pocket. Murphy finished up and went home before she panicked and realized she didn't have...

We're following up on a story tonight that shows one good turn deserves another. Sunday night, we told you about a missing backpack in Kalispell. It contained a laptop and $6,000 that belonged to the former president of Burger King. Russ Klein thought he put it in his rental car. As it turns out, the vehicle was someone else's. We ran the story Sunday night. The next morning, the car's owner took the bag, the laptop and the cash to Kalispell Police. Klein offered a reward, but the good samaritan turned it down. So, Klein and his wife gave the...

The U.S. Supreme Court said on Monday that it rejected an appeal by four former Guantanamo Bay prisoners arguing that they should be able to proceed with their lawsuit against top Pentagon officials for torture and religious abuse. The justices refused to review a U.S. appeals court ruling that dismissed the lawsuit by the four British citizens over their treatment at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba on the grounds the officials enjoyed immunity. The four men -- Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed and Jamal al-Harith -- were captured in late 2001 in Afghanistan and were...

movement is winning the abortion battle because nearly 1,500 abortion businesses have closed down since 1991. The report, from Operation Rescue, is an encouragement at a time when the pro-life community is frustrated by the abortion-health care debate in Congress. The pro-life group says the number of abortion facilities has declined as polls have shown Americans increasingly pro-life. "We now have an accurate listing of every open abortion clinic in the country," Operation Rescue president Troy Newman told LifeNews.com. "In 1991, it was estimated that there were nearly 2,200 abortion clinics in the country, today there are just 713." "The...

NEW DELHI - India will not accept a legally binding emission cut nor a peak year of carbon emissions at the global climate talks in Copenhagen, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said on Thursday. "There is no question of India accepting a legally binding emission reduction cut," he told parliament, laying out India's negotiating position ahead of the December talks.

Man Survives 47 Minutes in Cardiac Arrest Doctors Wouldn't Give Up on N.Y. Man, Delivering 4,500 Chest Compressions and 8 Defibrillator Shocks to Save Him (WCBS)  What happens if your heart stops beating? Is it possible to survive? CBS station WCBS in New York recently met a Brooklyn man who lived after his heart quit for 47 minutes, and it's all thanks to a team of doctors who refused to give up until they brought him back from the dead. "These doctors did not stop," Joe Tiralosi said, fighting through tears to find the words to describe his experience....

FORT HOOD, Texas — The attorney for the Army psychiatrist accused of killing fellow soldiers at Fort Hood says doctors have told the soldier he may be paralyzed from the waist down. Attorney John Galligan told The Associated Press on Friday that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan told him that he has no feeling in his legs and doctors say the condition may be permanent. Galligan says Hasan also told him he had extreme pain in his hands. Hasan was shot by police officers responding to last week's shootings at Fort Hood. Galligan spoke with him Thursday in the intensive care...

Recently declassified documents obtained by Wired magazine reveal a massive Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) data mining operation. It already possesses over 1.5 billion records from government and private-sector sources. That figure is expected by the FBI to balloon to over 6 billion within a few years. And it is not just terrorists they are after.  According to the documents, the National Security Branch Analysis Center (NSAC) is being used to pursue multiple types of non-terrorism domestic investigations. It is also meant to be able to sort through the data — everything from health and travel records to credit card...

ATLANTA (September 4, 2009) – This week, Senator John Douglas (R-Social Circle) fought to ensure that Georgia classrooms were given the opportunity to choose how their class time is used during the broadcast of President Barack Obama’s “Back- to-School” address. As a result, the Georgia Department of Education (GaDOE) released a statement to Georgia school systems noting that instructional time is a valuable commodity for schools and if a decision is made to show the video, it is important that its viewing and any subsequent discussion be tied directly to the standards being taught at the school. In addition, the...

Tech, UGA Games Free Online To Military Posted: 11:06 am EDT August 27, 2009 ATLANTA -- U.S. troops around the world will again be able to listen to Georgia and Georgia Tech football games online for free this fall. The two schools have agreed to waive annual fees on live streaming audio on all athletic events for military personnel stationed overseas and serving within the U.S. They have been providing the free service since 2006. “I am delighted both the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech are once again providing free Internet broadcasts of their athletic events for our nation’s...

President Obama set out for a weeklong family vacation Sunday facing the first stiff headwind of his presidency, with public polls showing his popularity has dipped as he has attempted an overhaul of the nation's ailing health care system. A series of national surveys has confirmed what was becoming clear as large groups of protesters rallied outside the speeches and town-hall events the president hosted last week in Western states. The Rasmussen Reports daily tracking poll released Sunday showed that 41 percent of voters strongly disapprove of Mr. Obama's performance as president, compared with 27 percent who strongly approved. Rasmussen...

The unemployment rate dipped to 9.4 percent in July, its first decline in 15 months, leading the White House to claim the economy is finally pulling "back from the edge." White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Friday there's still plenty of work to do despite the latest government report showing the jobless rate dropped a tenth of a point from the month before. He said President Obama still thinks the jobless rate will hit 10 percent later this year, but the report is "more evidence that we have pulled back from the edge" of a depression.

HAVING accepted that his son was dead, Richard Cass went to the Blue Mountains on Tuesday to have a small "closure ceremony". He carved his boy's name, lit a candle and planted a red rose for England. With hope lost and his heart broken, he then prepared to return to Britain to tell Jamie Neale's mother he was sorry but he had not been able to find their boy and bring him home. "I'd prepared myself," Mr Cass said yesterday. "I thought, he's got lost in the dark, fallen off a cliff. "I'll be honest, I'd lost faith." Mr Neale,...

Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm "exceeded her legal authority" when she directed the state Department of Environmental Quality to impose new legal requirements on future coal-fired plants, Attorney General Mike Cox has determined. State Rep. Kenneth B. Horn, a Frankenmuth Republican, was one of two lawmakers who had asked Cox to issue an opinion on the governor's directive that she announced in her State of the State address this month. In her announcement, the Democratic governor called for the DEQ to review the need for new coal-fired plants and to explore alternatives before issuing air quality permits. She said the state...

OAKLAND -- A man being robbed by two Oakland men in the parking lot of the Fruitvale BART station managed to grab a knife from one of the assailants and stabbed the other one to death, authorities said today. The robbery victim was approached by the two 18-year-old men about 9:30 p.m. Thursday. One of the men showed a knife and the other said he had a gun, BART spokesman Linton Johnson said. Their target, a 23-year-old man who lives out of state, was robbed of some items before wrestling away the knife from one of the men and stabbing...

  Dedicated: Nurse Debbie Noble, right, walked to treat kidney patient Steph Crawford  Nurse walked nine miles in the snow to save my lifeAnna Davis 13.02.09   A nurse walked nine miles through deep snow two days in a row to save the life of a patient who required kidney dialysis and was trapped at home.Renal nurse Debbie Noble, 49, made the four-hour round trip to help Steph Crawford fearing she could die without the treatment.Mrs Crawford, 45, from Ewell, suffers from kidney failure. She could not drive to her usual dialysis centre in Kingston, and ambulances could not...

  Ghanaian orphan ... Paul Apowida My duty to serve the country   Published: 30 Dec 2008     AN orphan has joined the British Army to repay the country that saved his life. Ghanaian Paul Apowida was sent to a boarding school and later college by UK charity Afrikids. He had been brought up in an orphanage after being rescued by a nun when his stepmum tried to poison him. Now rifleman Paul, 23, has joined the 1st Infantry Training Battalion in Catterick, North Yorks, to pay the debt he feels he owes. The talented artist, who recently...

A Canadian woman who went missing last week in a blizzard has been found alive, buried under almost a foot of snow for four days.   Freezing: Donna Molner is taken to hospital after four days in the snow  Donna Molnar, 55, set off from home in Ancaster, Ontario, on Friday but her car got stuck in a field of snow drifts.The vehicle was found a day later, abandoned by the side of a road.By this time, fears for her survival were mounting and it was not until Monday, when police officer Ray Lau was trudging through almost knee-high...

CHICAGO, Dec 15 (Reuters) - The Arena Football League has canceled its 2009 season, but will resume play the following year, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and The New York Times reported on Monday. League officials could not be reached to comment, but have previously denied the indoor football league would cancel the 2009 season. The AFL, founded in 1987, has 16 teams after New Orleans folded in October. However, the owner of the Cleveland Gladiators told the Times that AFL executives and team owners moved to suspend the 2009 season, pending approval by the players' union, so the league could...

Call it the big shrink. Citing the effects of a recession that's prompting marketers to trim budgets and the number of media outlets they work with, media companies are shedding jobs at a furious rate. But the deep cuts they're making are as much about these conglomerates shedding their old media models as they are about the economy. Viacom and NBC Universal swung the ax last week, eliminating 850 and 500 jobs, or 7% and 3% of their work forces, respectively. Add that to 600 job cuts at Time Inc., 1,500 at Yahoo, 1,800 at Gannett, hundreds at CBS's radio...

A hero Royal Marine saved 130 soldiers from certain death when he rugby tackled a suicide attacker before he could detonate a huge motorcycle bomb. The 40-year-old Marine saw the Afghan insurgent reaching for a yellow detonator button on the bike and leapt into action to drag him away.He foiled a cunningly planned attack in which the same motorcycle had been checked by the same troops just hours earlier when its panniers had been packed with potatoes instead of explosives.The suicide bomb contained 70 kilograms of explosives and was so huge it would have destroyed everything within 180 metres...

An elaborate modeling of housing prices and traffic congestion in cities across the US concludes that financing roads with comprehensive congestion priced tolls rather than taxes rather would provide major benefits in reducing housing prices and sub-optimal densities - 'sprawl' - as well as reducing the familiar delays and uncertain travel times. Moving to tolls or other direct road use charges will significantly improve overall welfare, economic efficiency and standards of living, the study says. Authors are Ashley Langer University of California Berkeley and Clifford Winston, Brookings Institution. The study is reported in Brookings-Wharton Papers on Urban Affairs 2008. ......

Bush's 'Fire Sale' For Oil, Gas Industries SALT LAKE CITY (AP) ― The view of Delicate Arch natural bridge - an unspoiled landmark so iconic it's on Utah's license plates - could one day include a drilling platform under a proposal that environmentalists call a Bush administration "fire sale" for the oil and gas industry. Late on Election Day, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced a Dec. 19 auction of more than 50,000 acres of oil and gas parcels alongside or within view of Arches National Park and two other redrock national parks in Utah: Dinosaur and Canyonlands. The...

BAGHDAD — The U.S. military says U.S. and Iraqi forces have killed a senior Al Qaeda in Iraq leader in the Tarmiyah area north of Baghdad. A U.S. statement says the Al Qaeda leader, known as Abu Ghazwan, was killed Thursday during a raid on a weapons cache.

One of the reasons for the success of the surge in Baghdad was the construction of blast walls that separated Sunni and Shia neighborhoods. These walls gave a certain level of security to both sides who had been ravaged by sectarian violence for months. The walls come a tumblin' down. .. Market by market, square by square, the walls are beginning to come down. The miles of hulking blast walls, ugly but effective, were installed as a central feature of the surge of American troops to stop neighbors from killing one another."They protected against car bombs and drive-by attacks," said...

Reading FR over the past 48 hours or so has been downright depressing. Yesterday I found myself snapping at my children for no other reason than my negative state of mind. The election is still a month away. I don't believe that all is lost. Polls are being manipulated and so are we! So, what GOOD news have you heard lately? What is going on in your part of the country that gives you hope that McCain will win? What positive anecdotes can you share with all of us? Post it here. We could all use the encouragement.

Internet users, as well as editors making edits on Wikinews and Wikipedia, have been the victims of a recent hoax that talk show host Oprah Winfrey has been found dead in her Chicago, Illinois home. The rumors are considered to be a hoax, connected with the online group known as Anonymous. Other reports say that the website 4chan.org is responsible for starting the rumor which began to spread quickly over the Internet. The rumors started after a statement Winfrey made on a recent show, defending a United States Senate bill against pedophiles and child rapists saying a pedophile group has...

Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) -- The Democratic-controlled Congress, acknowledging that it isn't equipped to lead the way to a solution for the financial crisis and can't agree on a path to follow, is likely to just get out of the way. Lawmakers say they are unlikely to take action before, or to delay, their planned adjournments -- Sept. 26 for the House of Representatives, a week later for the Senate.

LONDON (Reuters) - The bankruptcy filing of Lehman Brothers (LEH.N) is another blow for the hedge fund industry, though the writing has been on the wall long enough for many to have reduced their exposure to the U.S. investment bank. Legendary fund manager George Soros, who runs around $18 billion in assets, looks likely to have had his fingers burned after raising his stake in Lehman to 9.5 million shares in the second quarter. A spokesman for Soros Fund Management declined to comment on the composition of their portfolio. British activist hedge fund Algebris will also probably have taken a...

A major secret British operation to boost the economy in Afghanistan's Helmand province has been completed after a force of 5,000 troops fought for a week to drive a huge dam turbine through Taliban lines. British commanders estimate that more than 200 Taliban were killed as they tried to prevent the convoy of 100 vehicles from getting the machinery to Kajaki hydroelectric dam where it will provide a significant increase in energy for up to two million Afghans. The operation has been described as the biggest of its kind since the Second World War. For the last five days the...