Free Republic

Good afternoon to all of you gardeners. I apologize for the late post today. Well the last days of October are upon us and the garden is finally tilled for the last time this year. I seeded it with an annual rye grass. I also started rebuilding my compost pile. The oak and pecan trees have yet to drop their leaves so I will have to wait for their contribution to the compost pile until November.

THE jury in Australia's largest terrorism case has been asked to consider the "evil" America has done, as a court judges 12 Melbourne men accused of plotting to commit "violent jihad". Opening the defence case today, lawyer Remy van de Wiel, QC, told the jury America had suffered an enormous blow to its pride as a result of the September 11 World Trade Center attack. Mr Van de Wiel described the attacks as "evil and shocking". "But don't forget, America has done many evil things too," Mr van de Wiel told the court. He also told the Victorian Supreme Court...

By JEB BUSH AND KEN MEHLMAN We support the immigration reform compromise worked out in the Senate for a few simple reasons. It strengthens our national defense. It makes our economy more competitive and flexible. It enhances the rule of law and promotes national unity. And it also does these things in a fair, practical way. The bill provides real border security for the first time, protecting us against the entry of terrorists and stemming the flow of illegal drugs. The temporary worker program will reduce the number of people trying to sneak past the border patrol, allowing law enforcement...

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands that connected them with another, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. The history of the present King George of America is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts about the excesses of King George of America be submitted to a candid world: s He has refused his Assent...

Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records. According to sources with firsthand knowledge, Cheney authorized Libby to release additional classified information, including details of the NIE, to defend the administration's use of prewar intelligence in making...

OROVILLE, Calif. --A 24-year-old man could be shoveling horse manure as part of his punishment for punching a police horse. Butte County Superior Court Judge Stephen Benson sentenced Robert William Huff, of Chico, to 20 hours of community service and 24 hours in jail after he pleaded no contest Tuesday to a charge of assaulting a police horse. The horse, named "Bailey," was helping police control fraternity party crowds last Labor Day when Huff allegedly backhanded it in the face. Huff's attorney, William Short, said the horse had stepped on Huff's foot and was he was trying to get it...

The study found radio listeners were the most polarized news consumers, due in part to ... Rush Limbaugh. Conservative listeners have their ideals reinforced ... which ultimately lead to even more extreme views. Newspaper readers were the least polarized news consumers...readers are less likely to adopt extreme attitudes about certain issues. "Overall, our findings point to radio as a reason for the increasing polarization of the U.S. public" click the graphic for a link to PEW Research(this graphic was added and is not part of the press release - BUT it is composed of data from Pew...) Newswise — Recent...

Because the junior senator from Massachusetts, John Kerry, wasn't able to deliver a State of the Union speech last week, his state's senior senator gave one instead last month at the National Press Club.Sen. Edward Kennedy outlined the state of disunion in the Democratic Party, vowing, nonetheless, to remain confident and hopeful: ''So I look forward to this year and the years ahead with full awareness of the great challenges facing our country, but with full confidence as well in our ability to renew our Democratic Party to successfully meet them and persuade America that we are right.''Just how the...

"The role of Government is not to create wealth; the role of our Government is to create an environment in which the entrepreneur can flourish, in which minds can expand, in which technologies can reach new frontiers." -President George W. Bush Three years. Three tax cuts. An economic recovery—American ingenuity—unleashed. At a critical moment in the Nation's economic history, while a recession was taking hold, America was attacked, and corporate fraud was exposed. In response to these challenges, the President acted decisively to strengthen the economy and create jobs. The President's leadership resulted in Congress returning taxpayer money to the...

Dow 40,000, Nasdaq 20,000 by 2009; Harry Dent predicts a 'New Millionaire Economy' By Paul B. Farrell, CBS.MarketWatch.com Last Update: 9:25 PM ET Nov. 2, 2004 ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (CBS.MW) -- You want some optimism? Well folks, after a flatlining market and the brutal, negative election campaign we've been dragged through, America desperately needs some optimism. And here it is. Harry Dent's latest predictions: Dow 40,000, Nasdaq 20,000 by 2009. In many ways, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terror were no match for the divisive domestic "war" for the American presidency. It's been absolute torture....

...Obscured by America's election frenzy and Western Europe's gloomy unemployment, the environment for global growth has been the best in many decades. U.S. GDP grew a solid 3.9% in the four quarters through September, while economies in Japan, Brazil, China, India, Turkey and Russia are expanding at or near their highest pace in decades. Thus, fast growth likely encompassed more of the world's population and land mass in 2004 than ever before. This broadening of global growth emphasizes the power of freedom and markets and the past weight of communism, world wars, the 1970s inflation and the late 1990s deflation.......

Apparently, Al Jazeera edited the 18-minute Bin Laden tape down to 6 minutes, leaving out parts that could help President Bush: Officials said that in the 18-minute long tape — of which only six minutes were aired on the al-Jazeera Arab television network in the Middle East on Friday — bin Laden bemoans the recent democratic elections in Afghanistan and the lack of violence involved with it. On the tape, bin Laden also says his terror organization has been hurt by the U.S. military’s unrelenting manhunt for him and his cohorts on the Afghan-Pakistani border. A portion of the left-out...

A disturbing story in the March 1 issue of Pravda suggests that the U. S. Government is working on the discovery of a mysterious point over the South Pole that may be a passageway backward in time. According to the article, some American and British scientists working in Antarctica on January 27, 1995, noticed a spinning gray fog in the sky over the pole. U. S. physicist Mariann McLein said at first they believed it to be some kind of sandstorm. But after a while they noticed that the fog did not change its form and did not move so...

Limp 'Biscuit' - 'Seabiscuit' pulls up lame, courtesy of a director who should have reined in the sentimentality By Christopher Kelly Star-Telegram Film Critic [Review of movie snipped to avoid plot giveaway - last paragraph of review follows:] Considering the heartless alternatives out there, I suspect this kind of big, sloppy treacle will probably go over big. All that proves is that no one ever went broke by pandering to white, middle-class audiences. Indeed, from its stately pace to its gleaming photography to the fact that the only African-American character seems to have stepped out of a regional theater production...