Free Republic

If you asked people what the two key events in the 20th century were, most would likely point to World Wars I and II because they transformed civilization. However, can something like the debate over climate change be as equally transformative? James Delingpole, author of "Welcome to Obamaland: I've Seen Your Future And It Doesn't Work," spoke at the Heartland Institute's International Conference on Climate Change on May 17, and insisted he wasn't being hyperbolic when he likened the climate change debate to the two world wars. Delingpole, who coined the term "ClimateGate," alleged the debate of the issue and...

Most of us have heard or seen what global warming alarmists say the consequences will be if something isn’t done to limit the man’s impact on the environment. Al Gore, in his movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” warns global sea levels will rise by a whopping 20 feet, causing coastal flooding and creating a refugee crisis. Others aren’t quite as gloomy, but that’s not the real threat to the planet. At the Heartland Institute’s International Conference on Climate Change on May 17, Professor Don Easterbrook of Western Washington University warned that the climate is headed for a period of cooling. He...

ABOARD THE HEARTLAND FLYER — Amtrak and transportation officials from Oklahoma and Texas have started a yearlong test to see whether beef-based biodiesel can efficiently run The Heartland Flyer passenger train between Oklahoma City and Fort Worth. Texas cattle are supplying 20 percent of the fuel for the 3,200-horsepower engine, the rest is regular No. 2 diesel.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama heads into the American heartland Tuesday, to launch the Democratic mid-term election campaign in states paying a heavy price for the worst economic crisis in decades. Obama will spend two days hopscotching across to Illinois, Iowa and Missouri, after urging his young, multi-racial supporters to thwart what an aide termed a Republican-induced "nightmare" at mid-term elections in November. Democrats fear heavy losses in the polls, which could put their grip on Congress at risk, as opinion surveys show Obama still has lagging approval ratings nationwide, despite several recent big victories. In a YouTube video,...

APPENZELL, Switzerland – Voters in the heart of the Swiss Alps on Sunday passed legislation banning naked hiking after dozens of mostly German nudists started rambling through their picturesque region. By a show of hands citizens of the tiny canton (state) of Appenzell Inner Rhodes voted overwhelmingly at their traditional open-air annual assembly to impose a 200 Swiss franc ($176) fine on violators. Only a scattering of people on Sunday opposed the ban on the back-to-nature activity that took off last autumn when naked hikers — primarily Germans — started showing up in eastern Switzerland.

BAHAWALPUR, Pakistan – The compound bore no sign. Residents referred to it simply as the school for "jihadi fighters," speaking in awe of the expensive horses stabled within its high walls — and the extremists who rode them bareback in the dusty fields around it. In classrooms nearby, teachers drilled boys as young as 8 in an uncompromising brand of Islam that called for holy war against enemies of the faith. Sitting cross-legged on the floor of the Dar-ul-uloom Madina school, they rocked back and forth as they recited sections of the Quran, Islam's holy book. Both facilities are run...

Heartland Meeting of Climate "Realists" a Huge Success Over 800 scientists and economists from 24 countries were in attendance this week at the Second Annual ICCC in New York City organized by the Heartland and with 60 co-sponsoring organizations including Icecap. They heard talks by 80 scientists from 14 countries. The opening remarks were made by the Heartland's Joe Bast. The presentations of the keynote speakers which included Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic and the European Union, Dr. Richard Lindzen, Astronaut Harrison Schmidt, former Hansen boss Dr. John Theon, Former Governor Dr. John Sununu, Dr. Arthur Robinson, Dr....

2009 is not even a full month old and already we have learned of two significant data breaches. Both breaches 5 Million Checkfree Consumers Warned involve account information, not personal identifying information (PII). Both, however could leave actual bank accounts of millions of consumers vulnerable to unauthorized access. The latter breach, if it proves to be as big as the initial indicators reveal, may result in the selling or closing of the business. Too extreme? The Heartland breach is being compared in scope to TJX (TJ Max) who was unable to handle the attorney general investigation, publicity and fines changed...

This was posted by someone on Free Dominion, it is too good not to share. http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=105542 Obama wins -- Heartland Republic secedes ____________________________________________________ What could happen following November 4th November 5th, 2008. Democrats are still partying across America after their decisive electoral college win. John McCain, disoriented and trying to fight back tears, tells Wolf Blitzer in an interview, "I hope for calm in our great country, but the future is very unpredictable now." Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin returns to Alaska saying "the American way of life depends on freedom and not on big government." During late November and December,...

When Montana's governor, Brian Schweitzer, launched his campaign for re-election this summer he chose to be pictured on a horse lassooing a calf, and in silhouette against a barn door, presumably after a long hard day on the ranch. What was not mentioned was the word Democrat - a party affiliation that in some parts of the west still conjures up associations with gay marriage, gun control and abortion. Those sensibilities could be in for a shake-up as Barack Obama launches the Democrats' most aggressive drive for years for votes from the Rocky Mountain west. The strategy unrolling now across...

Pulaski County, Indiana, is typical only if you consider a “typical” American county to be 170 years old, have just over 13,000 folks and its largest town’s population to be 2,500. There’s not even a Wal-Mart in the entire county. Named for a Polish hero of the American Revolution, who died at the famous Siege of Savannah in 1779, the two main towns (Pulaski, and the county seat of Winamac) sit along the Tippecanoe River, named for the famous 1811 Indiana battle that preceded the War of 1812. On Memorial Day Weekend, while driving a circuitous route from Indianapolis to...

A FEW years ago I joined some colleagues on an academic conference jaunt to a large private university in the American northeast. The approved conference itinerary was to take us directly from our swish Chicago hotel to the campus gates, in the hygienic manner of the modern business traveller. For reasons too complicated to retell, on the return trip we found ourselves becalmed in a village in the backwaters of rural Indiana, in the old American heartland. The streets we strolled down were lined with wooden bungalows, and there was a flagstaff with the Stars and Stripes in every other...

When Fred Thompson announces his entry into the 2008 Presidential campaign, he'll have at least one group of hardworking Americans to help carry the message -- Truckers with Fred. The group, a movement of volunteers has been organizing quickly with two goals in mind: first, to convince Fred Thompson to enter the race and second, to help him win. Volunteers have posted a website and the group's named its first National Directors, with promises of more names to come. "This thing has really started to move," says Bob Fauls, who along with his wife Chris Fauls, have been named the...

The real Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is back, and now he’s taking on rural California. Landowners are up in arms over a mostly overlooked provision in last week’s budget revise to terminate a 40-year-old environmental- and agricultural-preservation act, which critics say will negatively affect California’s heartland. The governor has eliminated state funding for the Williamson Act, which leaves California’s farmland and open spaces vulnerable to urbanization. “In my own county, for example, about 65 percent of the land is protected under the Williamson Act,” Assemblywoman Lois Wolk of Davis said. “So unless we want to see more houses instead of crops,...

Muslims face hatred in US heartland http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=42559 CINCINNATI: Tala Ali, 25, has seen the good and the bad of being a Muslim in heartland America. People have leaned out car windows to scream at her: “Terrorist go home.” But strangers curious about her headscarf have also approached her apologetically to ask about Islam. “I love it, actually, when people ask me questions,” said the pink-scarved Ali, who came to the United States with her Jordanian father and Palestinian mother when she was five. “Out here, I’m the only Muslim some people may meet,” said Ali, waiting for friends after Friday...

Did anyone see the segment where the Hearland host had some gun grabbing moron on (from Commiefornia), along with a Repub Congressman to talk about a new hunting law. This woman had the nerve to say: "I have worked with 8 year-olds and they shouldn't have guns." "This is just another way for the gun companies to sell more guns" . . . blah, blah, pink guns for women, blah, blah. The host never challenged her. He just blabbered about "I just can't imagine an 8 year-old hunting." These people are Nazi's. I was hunting, with adult supervision, at that...

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- The third anniversary of the Iraq invasion unleashed a surge of pessimism at a local farmers' market here, where stalwart Republicans, standing amid aisles of produce and miracle cures, said President Bush has messed up a war that looks more like Vietnam every day. ''It's chaos," said Roger Madaras, who voted twice for Bush. ''How many more people are going to be killed? We were going in to free the people of Iraq, but as far as I'm concerned, a lot of them are worse off today than they were under the dictatorship." Madaras, the owner...

For a political junkie, the Dubai ports debacle has been a bit like the movie “Pulp Fiction”—just one freaky story inside another, unfolding at a rapid pace and leading to an unexpected ending that made no darn sense and yet was really quite satisfying emotionally. I give it two thumbs way up. Unfortunately for the President, he played the part of “Marcellus Wallace” in “Port Fiction.” He talked tough at the start of the whole thing, but really took it hard in the end. (Bada bing!) And along the way we got to see Chuck Schumer support racial profiling, Hillary...

Meir Shitreet says Israel will have to leave most of its Biblical heartland By Israel Insider staff and partners December 2, 2005 Israel will have to pull out of most of the West Bank and allow the Palestinians to establish a state, a Cabinet minister close to Ariel Sharon said in an interview published Friday. In the meantime, "not a single additional house" should be built in the communities of Judea and Samaria ("the West Bank"), Cabinet minister Meir Sheetrit, who recently joined Sharon's new centrist Kadima party, told The Jerusalem Post. Israelis should instead settle in the outlying Negev...

Not long ago, while waiting to meet some friends for dinner, I dropped into a bookstore where I happened to glance through the political bestseller, What's the Matter With Kansas? -- a title borrowed from a once famous article by a once famous editor, William Allen White. I didn't buy the book, nor did I have enough time to read very much of it. But, then, who needs to read very much of any bestseller nowadays? Thanks to the thoughtful tendency of modern publishing houses to restrict themselves to publishing books that can be summed up in a single sentence,...