Free Republic

MOUNTAIN HOME, IDAHO -- The setting sun is streaming in the living room window of Marion Lewis's house as he puts aside his cigarette and starts telling the story of the day his daughter was murdered. break He remembers the day, Oct. 3, 2002, when Lori Lewis Rivera was shot to death by the D.C. snipers at a gas station in Kensington. Two thousand miles away, her father was oblivious, out in the wilderness running a giant rock-crushing machine. Lewis stares at the floor as he recalls it, kneading his beefy hands and wiping away tears with his fingers. break...

An intruder was shot dead by a resident in a northwest valley home Thursday night. Las Vegas police said four men broke into a house at 3025 Red Bay Way, near Cheyenne Avenue and Buffalo Drive, about 9:30 p.m. One of the four intruders was shot and killed. The other three fled the scene. Nobody else was injured, according to police, who gave no motive for the break-in.

Greensboro, NC -- Greensboro police say an 80-year-old man is not facing charges after he shot and killed a break-in suspect early Wednesday morning. Charles Haithcock called 911 immediately following the shooting of 19-year-old Michael L. Medley who he says broke into his home. Haithcock: “A man broke in on me and pulled a gun. i shot him and he’s laying out in the yard.” 911 Operator: “Is he breathing?” Haithcock: “I don’t know. he broke in the window. He pulled the air conditioning out in the living room. And I heard something and he come back to the bedroom....

PALM BEACH COUNTY, FL---Our news partners at the Sun Sentinel report: U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, who represents Broward and Palm Beach counties, plans to resign from Congress. He plans to announce his plans at a news conference Wednesday at 10 a.m. in Boca Raton. A Democratic source with knowledge of Wexler's plans said he is likely to take a public policy job that deals with the Middle East. Wexler, a senior member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, has long been involved in issues involving Israel and Turkey.

The Taliban in Pakistan have released a video confirming that their former leader Baitullah Mehsud is dead. A video received by the BBC shows the body of the former head of Pakistan's largest Taliban group lying in a room. It is not clear where it was taken. Mr Mehsud was killed on 6 August in the tribal region of South Waziristan in a missile attack by a suspected US drone.

Still fawning over Ted Kennedy, that is. Actually, I think we passed the "fawning" stage a few days ago - this has been going on 24/7 for the last 5 days straight - and have moved to the "cult of personality" stage. How much coverage did Ronald Reagan get when he passed? A 1-hour special? At least he actually WAS a US President (and never killed someone)!! Is this network acting on Ted Turner's direct orders to implement wall-to-wall coverage? Just makes no sense. Anyone care to predict what day (or`week) this revolting garbage will stop?

If you think American politics have gotten nastier, crueler, and more symbolic over the last 20 years, blame Ted Kennedy.

Didn't see this.

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter's 2010 reelection lead over Republican challenger Pat Toomey has shrunk to a tie with 45 percent for Specter and 44 percent for Toomey, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. And voters say 49 - 40 percent that Sen. Specter does not deserve reelection. President Barack Obama gets a 56 - 37 percent job approval, compared to 62 - 31 percent in a May 28 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University. By a bare 50 - 43 percent majority, voters approve of the President's handling of the economy. Specter, first elected to the Senate...

After more than 60 years together, Jimmy Carter has announced himself at odds with the Southern Baptist Church -- and he's decided it's time they go their separate ways. Via Feministing, the former president called the decision "unavoidable" after church leaders prohibited women from being ordained and insisted women be "subservient to their husbands." Said Carter in an essay in The Age: At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions...

After more than 60 years together, Jimmy Carter has announced himself at odds with the Southern Baptist Church -- and he's decided it's time they go their separate ways. Via Feministing, the former president called the decision "unavoidable" after church leaders prohibited women from being ordained and insisted women be "subservient to their husbands."

Dear Mr. Robinson: I've given the matter quite a bit of thought and have decided it is time to ZOT you. I was tempted when I noticed posters were allowed to insult anyone who disagreed with them; even more tempted when I saw new posters banned for asking questions, or expressing an opinion outside the mainstream - (though I must confess anyone adopting the screen name "Christ was killed by conservatives" was not going to last very long ! I'm sure he was referring to the Sanhedrin, but still...) When I saw your post today about getting "millions of people"...

News is out tonight that long-time CBS News Anchorman Walter Cronkite has died at the age of 92 . . . . Cronkite was the news for several generations of Americans. It was a five-night a week tradition at my house to sit down and watch the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. In his later years, Cronkite revealed a very strong liberal bent, far more so than was obvious in his newscasts, although he certainly leaned toward the Democrats. But his face and voice will always be synonymous with the news. Below is video of one of his most...

NEW YORK – Walter Cronkite, the premier TV anchorman of the networks' golden age who reported a tumultuous time with reassuring authority and came to be called "the most trusted man in America," has died. He was 92. CBS vice president Linda Mason says Cronkite died at 7:42 p.m. Friday with his family by his side at his home in New York after a long illness. He was the face of the "CBS Evening News" from 1962 to 1981, when stories ranged from the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to racial and...

Broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite has died at age 92, The New York Times reports.

The Rev. Alberto Cutié, the celebrity priest removed from his Miami Beach church after photos of him kissing and embracing a woman appeared in the pages of a Spanish-language magazine earlier this month, will leave the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Miami to join the Episcopal church. The small and private ceremony will happen early Thursday afternoon at Trinity Cathedral, the church's South Florida headquarters in downtown Miami. Bishop Leo Frade, head of the Episcopal Diocese of Southeast Florida, will officiate. Later, Cutié is expected to announce that he will marry his girlfriend, whom media reports have cited as 35-year-old Ruhama...

NPR has learned that Supreme Court Justice David Souter is planning to retire at the end of the court's current term. -snip-

The return of Sen. Arlen Specter to the Democratic Party (he flipped in 1965 from “Kennedy Democrat” to Republican) is something that should be celebrated by Republicans, at least those who are proud to call themselves conservatives. Specter is a career politician whose first priority is himself. Specter, whose predictable lament that the GOP is not the “big tent” he had been led to believe it was, now embraces a Democratic Party that is an even smaller tent. How many pro-life Democrats exercise any influence in that party? How many opponents to same-sex marriage are in the Democratic leadership? Smaller...

Specter says that President Obama, his old friend Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) have all agreed to campaign and raise cash for him -- and that he will welcome the fundraising help of Penn. Gov. Ed Rendell, another old friend. An unspecified group of national leaders will huddle together tomorrow to discuss those plans, he said.

Radical left-wing cartoonist Ted Rall -- who reveled in dismissing American servicemen as "idiots" -- was recently laid off. Editor & Publisher reported the story in an April 22 article: NEW YORK Chalk up one more wildly talented cartoonist to be victimized by the economy. “I’ve been laid off,” reads the headline on the blog of cartoonist Ted Rall, president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Rall, an editorial cartoonist for Universal Press Syndicate, has served as editor of acquisitions and development at United Media for the past two years. “My job was finding new talent -- comic strip...

The Washington Post has plans to fold its daily business section into the A section, according to sources at the paper. Staffers will be meeting shortly, and I expect an announcement soon. Will update when more information is available. UPDATE: Staffers have now been notified of the changes in the business section and other parts of the paper in a memo obtained by POLITICO. From Monday through Saturday, business coverage will now run in an expanded A section that includes National and International News, Economic & Business section, a Washington Business page, the Fed page, and Editorial and Op-Ed pages....

<p>Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has been found dead in the detention centre at The Hague tribunal.</p> <p>The tribunal said an autopsy would be conducted to establish cause of death, but there was no indication of suicide.</p> <p>Zdenko Tomanovic, a lawyer for Mr Milosevic, says the autopsy should take place elsewhere as his client said he was being poisoned in the jail.</p>

State Farm Florida is pulling out of the homeowner insurance business in Florida, the company said this morning, in a surprise move that will leave more than 800,000 policyholders without coverage and will cause almost certain turmoil in the Florida insurance marketplace. "Faced with steeply declining resources to cover future claims and expenses, State Farm Florida has little choice," said Jim Thompson, president, of State Farm Florida. ''This is not an action we wanted to take, but one we must take given the realities of the Florida property insurance market. "We regret the impact this will have on our customers,...

Gobin Stair, artist and the publisher of the Pentagon Papers, and longtime member of the First Congregational Parish Church of Kingston, died Tuesday night in his sleep. He was 96. Stair was a well-known abstract artist, but made a name for himself as publisher of Beacon Press when he decided to publish the 7,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers, the top-secret Defense Department history of the U.S.’s involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. The 1971 publishing created questions of credibility in the U.S. government and injured the Nixon administration’s war effort.

Frank Cieciorka, a graphic artist, art director and watercolorist whose woodcut rendering of a clenched-fist salute was the model for the New Left's most ubiquitous emblem, died on Monday at his home in Alderpoint, northeast of Garberville. He was 69. The cause was emphysema, said his wife, Karen Horn. In 1959 Mr. Cieciorka (pronounced che-CHOR-ka), then a college student, was an opponent of American military intervention in the Dominican Republic and Vietnam and joined the Socialist Party. In 1964 he volunteered as an organizer during the Freedom Summer drive to register black voters in Mississippi and became a field secretary...

The former press secretary to George Bush has announced he is backing Barack Obama in the race to replace his ex-boss as US president. Scott McClellan said on Thursday that he had decided to back the Democrat because he wanted to support the candidate with the best chance of changing the way Washington - the political heart of the US - works and gets things done. His announcement is yet another blow to the campaign of John McCain, the Republican contender, who is struggling to erode Obama's opinion poll lead. McClellan is the second former Bush administration figure this week...

RUSH: I wish to reach around and pat myself on the back. Way back during the Republican primaries -- when the battle was between Huckabee and Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and McCain -- we were told by the Republican Party hierarchy that the only chance the Republican Party had (by the way, we were told this also by some of the intellectualoids in our own conservative media) to win was to attract Democrats and moderates; and that the era of Reagan was over, and we had to somehow find a way to become stewards of a big government but smarter...

(Original article in Swedish. Translated by SB) Austrian party leader Jörg Haider killed in car accident The Austrian party leader Jörg Haider was killed in a car accident early Saturday morning. The governor of the Austrian province Kärnten, and party leader for BZÖ (The Union for Austria’s Future) Jörg Haider was killed in a traffic accident early Saturday in Klagenfurt, capital of Kärnten, it was reported by the news agency APA. The 58 year old Haider was driving his service car when it for unknown reasons left the road. Haider suffered severe chest and head injuries and died shortly after...

Dr. Deal Hudson of "Inside Catholic" reports that Dr. Nicholas P. Cafardi, noted legal scholar, former Dean of Duquesne University Law School and now prominent Catholic supporter of the candidacy of Senator Barack Obama has just resigned from his position as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Franciscan University of Steubenville. Deal reports that the President of the University, Fr. Terrence Henry, TOR,received a letter of resignation from the former Dean on Monday, October 6, 2008. Cafardi was once hailed, along with fellow legal scholar Doug Kmiec, as a leading Pro-Life voice among Catholic academics.

INDIANAPOLIS -- A man who police said broke into a home with the intention of sexually assault a 17-year-old girl in her bedroom died early Sunday morning after a struggle with the girl's father. David Meyers, 52, was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after officers arrived following a report of a home invasion in the 3500 block of West 79th Street at about 3:20 a.m. Officers said they found Robert McNally, 64, on the floor with his arm around the neck of Meyers, struggling to hold him down. When officers told McNally he could let go, they found that...

Two hours were enough for José Luis Sánchez and his family to pack their most valuable belongings in two vans – items accumulated in 10 years of living in the Dallas area. With his wife, children and their suitcases in place, Mr. Sánchez closed the door of his Mesquite apartment for the last time, sat at the wheel of one of the vehicles – his brother drove the other – and hit the road back to his homeland. So ended his decade-long adventure as an illegal Mexican immigrant in the United States. According to Mexican consulate officials in Dallas, some...

Alejandro Salazar slumps into a cushioned seat halfway into the bus, looks out from under a baseball cap and thinks about a future more than a thousand miles away. He came to the Las Vegas Valley from Mexico five years ago to build houses, launching a run of $700-a-week paychecks that made it worth crossing the desert into the United States. But those weekly checks were whittled down to $200 over the past year; he sold his van and is returning to Aguascalientes. “At least I have family there,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. He has $60 in his jeans...

After 30 years, Navratilova's Czech again Tue Mar 11, 3:12 AM ET Tennis legend Martina Navratilova said Tuesday she has regained Czech nationality more than 30 years after fleeing communism in the country of her birth to live in the United States. "I lost it at the time I defected. I got it back on January 9," Navratilova told a news conference on a visit to Tokyo. The 51-year-old former world champion said she was maintaining dual nationality and keeping her US passport. Born in Prague, Navratilova fled to the United States in 1975 at the height of the Cold...

Will Eliot Spitzer resign in time for this evening's network newscasts? I wouldn't if I were him. I'd wait until right afterwards, so that my smiling face wouldn't appear simultaneously on every TV set in the Western world. This is not New York provincialism. Spitzer is practically the most prominent and powerful Democrat in a huge state — Hillary Clinton's state, Wall Street's state, the state of millions of Democrats. Spitzer's boner really sticks out, even in this day and age. He didn't just get some on the side. He violated the law, if the federal complaint and published reports...

BAGHDAD - Iraq's elusive Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr has decided to drop out of politics for the time being because his disillusionment with the political scene in Iraq has left him sick and anxious, he said in an unusually personal letter to his followers released Friday. In a written response to a query from a group of followers asking why he hadn't been seen in public for so long, Sadr said he had decided to devote himself to a period of study, reflection and prayer after failing in his core mission to rid Iraq of the U.S. occupation or to...

Drug cartel hit men have killed a popular Mexican singer, along with his manager and assistant, near the U.S. border, authorities said Wednesday. Jesus Rey David Alfaro, known as the Little Rooster, is one of at least six singers of narcocorrido ballads about drug trafficking who have been slain since Mexico's drug war flared in 2006. "We believe Alfaro had links to the Arellano Felix cartel," said an official with the Baja California attorney general's office, who declined to be named. Alfaro's body was found last week covered with a blanket on the edge of the city, with rope marks...

Fidel Castro Steps Down...

Latest HOT HOT HOT Rumor From Friends/Fiends/Network News Sources – Hillary To Quit Senate As about 10 minutes ago, people are working this TOTALLY UNCONFIRMED rumor: Hillary will quit Senate. Reasons are multiple: 1. A desperation attempt to show voters she is willing to “put everything on the line" to devote all her time and energy to her quest for Presidency. 2. To do something, anything, to change the almost universal headlines about her imploding campaign. 3. Portray herself as a “victim” yet again. 4. She never had much power or respect in the Senate anyway. All her power stemmed...

Homicide detectives are investigating the bizarre death of a San Diego man after his suicide attempt turned into a fight with his girlfriend. Sevan Kevorkian's girlfriend found him hanging from a closet rod ... Investigators said that after she cut him down and revived him, Kevorkian, 36, started pulling her around the room by her hair. Police said the altercation was noticed by a man and woman who were pulling up in a vehicle in the neighborhood. The man climbed through a window to stop the assault and put Kevorkian in a carotid restraint, which is sometimes called a sleeper...

MIRAMSHAH, Jan 30: Militants retrieved and buried on Wednesday the bodies of 12 foreigners who had been killed in a missile attack on a residential compound in the Khushali Toorikhel area of North Waziristan on Monday night. Local people said the identity of the militants killed in the attack remained unknown but according to unconfirmed reports seven of them were Arabs while the other five from central Asian.The compound, located about three kilometres south of Mirali town, is owned by Abdus Sattar, a driver, who survived the attack.A large number of militants had surrounded the site to get the bodies...

(CNN) -- Five young men died Saturday when the car they were in drove off the end of a private airstrip near Ocala, Florida, became airborne for 200 feet and slammed into an oak tree, authorities said. "This had to be the worst vehicle crash that I have ever seen during my career," said Randy Robinson, a spokesman for the Emergency Medical Services Alliance with 27 years on the job. The 2008 BMW was split in two in the wreck, which happened at 3:45 a.m., said Lt. Mike Burroughs, a spokesman for the Florida Highway Patrol Troop B. He told...

Exclusive: After Obama Complaints, CNN Bans James Carville And Paul Begala From Appearing As Analysts Until Dem Primary Is Settled January 24, 2008 -- 7:11 PM EST

Banner Up According to FOX Simpson is on his way to Las Vegas to jail.

Just heard on the radio, Warren Jeffs was sentenced to two consecutive life terms. Nothing further.

I will be leaving FR. I will no longer post here and likely will no longer check the news here either. I began to post here a few years ago with updates on my attempts and eventual success at founding teenage republican clubs across New Jersey and the surrounding area. I used to run a ping list about the invasion of Islam into Europe. I ran an FR-based operation to try to change public opinion about the Iraq war using letters to the editor and "stats" e-mails. It seems however that as soon as I began to indicate that I...

ROME, November 1, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Pope Benedict XVI has accepted the resignation of Bishop Petrus Maria Martinus "Tiny" Muskens of the diocese of Breda in the Netherlands. He is  succeeded by Mgr. Johannes Harmannes Jozefus van den Hende, until now coadjutor in the see. Not yet 72, Bishop Muskens is over three years from the usual retirement age of 75, but has surrendered the pastoral governance of the diocese in conformance with can. 401 § 2 of the Code of Canon Law. The canon states, "A diocesan Bishop who, because of illness or some other grave reason, has become...

Just breaking on CNN. Domenici is supposed to announce his retirement tomorrow.

WASHINGTON -- Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee ripped the Bush administration's war against terrorism Friday, delivering a bold and potentially risky speech that could establish the former Arkansas governor as the maverick among top Republican candidates and test his party's loyalty to President Bush. ''This administration's bunker mentality has been counterproductive both at home and abroad,'' Huckabee said in opening a broad indictment of Bush's style and policy. The speech came after several top Republican candidates started distancing themselves from Bush, vowing change on such issues as illegal immigration and federal spending even as they endorsed Bush's foreign policy. By...

*** EXCLUSIVE TO THE RADIO EQUALIZER *** Though not yet confirmed by the man himself, top- level industry sources tell the Radio Equalizer that Bill O'Reilly is giving up his nationally syndicated radio show. We're hearing his last broadcast will occur sometime in December. Carried by as many as 400 stations, the Radio Factor has turned in mixed results nationwide, with a strong performance in several major markets. It airs in most of the largest American cities, including Los Angeles, New York City and Boston. Kicking off in May, 2002, the show initially had about 200 affiliates. With Rush Limbaugh...

The latest Gallup Poll is out and it shows a small surge for Fred Thompson, while Mitt Romney falls, and Ron Paul falls along with him:WASHINGTON — Former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson has gotten a modest bump in support after finally announcing he’s running for the Republican presidential nomination, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds. And Arizona Sen. John McCain may have started to turn around his beleaguered campaign.McCain, who bottomed out in a USA TODAY poll in mid-August after financial woes and a staff shake-up, has rebounded by 4 percentage points, to 15%. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has slipped...