Free Republic

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.