Free Republic

Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.) is questioning President Obama's use of an autopen in signing an extension of the Patriot Act. In a letter Friday, Graves asks Obama to confirm that he saw the law prior to its autopen signing. "Mr. President, I write to request your confirmation that S. 990, as passed by Congress, was presented to you prior to the autopen signing, as well as a detailed, written explanation of your Constitutional authority to assign a surrogate the responsibility of signing bills passed into law," Graves wrote. Obama signed the bill into law late Thursday night. The autopen was...

"This is total, total discrimination," said F. Lee Hart III of Suffolk, chairman of the SCV Oakwood Restoration Committee. "I don't think they want to see an Arlington of Richmond, with all of the positive media and tourism that this cemetery will draw, this being the largest combat casualty Confederate cemetery." Virginia Senator James Webb to the rescue. As the Richmond Times Dispatch piece notes, James Webb recently reminded the V.A. that "Confederate and Union soldiers have the same legal status."

A new poll from SurveyUSA predicts a statistical tie in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup between Republican Rep. Sam Graves and Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill for her seat in Missouri. The poll showed McCaskill with 48 percent to Graves’ 44 percent if the 2012 general election were held now, with a margin of error of 2.2 percentage points. Missouri-based Republican consultants Axiom Strategies commissioned the poll, which surveyed 700 adults in the state from Jan. 21 to Monday. The firm did not release polling numbers for contests pitting other Republicans against McCaskill or for GOP primary challenges to Graves. However, Axiom...

Scientists say they have identified an embalmed head as belonging to King Henri IV of France, who was assassinated in 1610 at the age of 57. The head was lost after revolutionaries ransacked the royal chapel at Saint Denis, near Paris, in 1793. A head, presumed to be that of Henri IV, has passed between private collectors since then. A team of scientists used the latest forensic techniques to identify features seen in portraits of the king. A lesion near his nose, a pierced ear and a healed facial wound - from a previous assassination attempt - were among the...

Buena High School JROTC cadets place wreaths at grave markers on Saturday. (Ty Holland • For the Herald/Review) SIERRA VISTA — A year ago, when just 242 holiday wreaths were laid on the graves of veterans in Sierra Vista, a group of local women thought those who served this country deserved better, and they decided to do something about it. On Saturday morning, each and every one of the nearly 1,400 graves at the Southern Arizona Veterans Memorial Cemetery was adorned with a touch of red and green as a result of their effort.

his year 323 hallowed Catholic sites have been desecrated. All of this happens under the pall of unholy silence. [kreuz.net] Since the 1st of January 2010 there have been 140 Catholic cemeteries and 183 Catholic churches and chapels desecrated. Bruce Hortefeux (52), French Interior Minister, said this in a conference on the 22nd of September. The reason for the Minister's explanation was the violation of almost twenty Catholic graves in the 2,700 population community Frontenay-Rohan-Rohan in Western France.

Estimates of the number of graves potentially affected by mix-ups at Arlington National Cemetery grew to as many as 6,600 today, as the cemetery’s former superintendent blamed his staff and a lack of resources for the scandal that forced his ouster.

There is a small but dedicated faction of collectors and aficionados which considers Philmore Graves to be among the best turners in the renowned group of masters of the North Carolina art pottery genre. I count myself among the Phil Graves fans, but perhaps I am biased, as I will explain.

MEDINA, Saudi Arabia – At the cemetery where the Prophet Muhammad's family is buried, an Iranian Shiite Muslim pilgrim overcome with emotion was jerked by a Saudi soldier, who barked a sharp order: "Stop crying!" The soldier, a gun at his hip, then hovered over the pilgrim as he wrapped up his prayers to make sure he didn't start weeping again. The Baqee cemetery is where the bitter rivalry between Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran gets personal. Iranians and other Shiites flock to the graves to pay respects to several revered descendants of Islam's prophet, while Saudi soldiers...

Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.) is criticizing the new ethics office that recommended he be reviewed by the House ethics panel. Graves issues a statement Thursday thanking the House ethics committee for dismissing the charges against him and lashed out at the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE). Graves struck early by releasing the statement before the ethics panel publicly announced that it had unanimously dismissed the complaint against him. Graves lashed out at the OCE in his statement, accusing it of investigating an anonymous complaint and looking into a matter that even if true did not violate House ethics rules. “I...

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is facing mounting pressure to intervene in an intense dispute between an outside ethics office she pushed through the House and the full ethics committee. The stakes are high for the future of the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), a new entity Democrats created to help police lawmakers. Its board members and top staff are threatening to resign if the ethics committee doesn’t meet a deadline the OCE believes is critical to its role, according to several sources within the ethics community. Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami said the Speaker believes cooler heads will prevail and the...

She was dumped by a boyfriend who no longer wished to follow her around the world. She found herself heartbroken and sick and finally went to a doctor who said he had news -- at 39, she was with child. Impossible, she replied: Throughout her previous 17-year marriage she tried repeatedly to get pregnant,

JERUSALEM – Palestinian Christians in a normally quiet village are reeling from a series of grave desecrations this week that they say are indicative of intimidation tactics from the town's growing Muslim population. "Christians don't feel free anymore. Our way of life is changing while the Muslim population grows," a local Christian told WND. The Christian would only give his first name, Anis, for fear of Muslim retaliation if he speaks out. He pointed out there are several other Anis's in his village, Jisna, which is located near the West Bank city of Ramallah. This week, 70 Christian grave sites...

On this Memorial Day, thousands of small American flags will fly in cemeteries near your home, next to the headstones of men and women who defended this country. Flags also will decorate the thousands of graves at Arlington National Cemetery as well as sacred ground throughout Europe and the Pacific that bears long, straight rows of ivory-white crosses and stars. Many of the young Americans who rest under these simple markers did not live past the age of 19 or 20. There also are tens of thousands of equally young men who fought gallantly for this country during World War...

MONTGOMERY, AL (WSFA) - Construction workers at a city lot in downtown Montgomery stumbled upon numerous bodies Tuesday morning.

Clues to the mysterious deaths of 57 Irish immigrants came first from a secret file that had been locked in a vault until 1970. The men, who sailed from Ireland in 1832, arrived in Chester County to work on the railroad. They died about eight weeks later, most of cholera. Until the file was read six years ago by two brothers, both historians, the immigrants were the stuff mostly of legend and ghost tale. On Friday, another milestone in their story was found in East Whiteland Township. An archaeology research team based at Immaculata University in Chester County uncovered 90...

The remains of a woman's skull with a rock thrust into its jaws is evidence of the mediaeval fear of vampires, Italian anthropologists have claimed. Scientists found the skull, with its mouth agape and a large slab of rock forced into its mouth, while excavating a mass grave dating from the Middle Ages on an island near Venice. Female "vampires" were often blamed for spreading the plague epidemics through Europe, said Matteo Borrini of Florence University. Wedging a rock or brick into the mouth of a suspected vampire was a way of preventing the person from feeding on the bodies...

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- Two historic cemeteries in Colorado Springs face a troubled future -- and not because the death rate is slowing.

A United Nations human rights expert will travel to the Twin Cities next month to listen to Hmong families upset about the desecration of graves in Thailand. The expert will hear testimony about the unearthing of hundreds of graves where thousands of Hmong refugees once lived. The site is near a Buddhist temple in Thailand. The hearing will be at the University of Minnesota, where the Human Rights Program has taken up a project to study and help resolve the issue.

Police in northern Baghdad found a mass grave Tuesday that contained the remains of 15 people, an Interior Ministry official said. The grave was in a house under construction in the Ur neighborhood, which used to be controlled by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia. Authorities were attempting to determine who the victims were and when they died. In other incidents, two bombs in a car exploded in Nineveh province's Sinjar area Tuesday. A civilian was killed and 11 were wounded, authorities in Mosul said. A roadside bomb exploded in front of the western Baghdad house of an Electricity...