Free Republic

Samantha Baskin gets paid to be patient. One of thousands of students across the District who had pay problems in the summer youth jobs program last week, Samantha, 14, said that she doesn't actually do anything at the Washington East of the River Academy. "We don't do nothing," she said. The director "holds us in a room for hours." Although she was owed several hundred dollars, Samantha was paid a nickel Friday and was finally paid in full yesterday. (snip) At least 200 of the 800 students in the academy indicated by a show of hands that they had not...

Terminal 5 came in for renewed criticism yesterday after it emerged that passengers transferring between planes at Heathrow's troubled new £4.3bn building are losing more than 900 bags a day. "Passengers will be surprised and disappointed to learn that there is still a one in 12 chance of losing their bags,"

Millions of dollars behind in raising money and unlikely to meet a fast-approaching final deadline, the Denver committee hosting the Democratic National Convention is considering spending cuts. Committee sources say they are working with the Democratic National Convention Committee to consider lowering the $55 million in private cash and donated services that must be raised to bring the convention to town. The cuts would be made to the many parties the host committee is obligated to throw for the delegations and the news media, and other hospitality functions not tied to production aspects inside the convention hall. "There have been...

The Pentagon cannot account for nearly 15 billion dollars in payments for goods and services in Iraq, according to an internal audit which members of Congress blasted Friday as a "shocking" accountability failure. Of 8.2 billion dollars in US taxpayer-funded defense contracts reviewed by the defense department's inspector general, the Pentagon could not properly account for more than 7.7 billion dollars. The lack of accountability of the funds, intended for purchases of weapons, vehicles, construction equipment and security services, amounted to a 95 percent failure rate in basic accounting standards, according to the report. "We estimated that the army made...

Attorneys in the case of a 91-year-old Palisade man accused of sexual assault spent Wednesday morning in court trying to determine whether the aging man was fit to stand trial. It turns out he wasn’t. He died nearly a month ago and has been cremated, according to a relative who contacted The Daily Sentinel. Ralph Ridenour died Feb. 22 at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, said Jim Snell of Snell-McLean Funeral Home in Palisade, which handled arrangements for Ridenour. VA officials said they couldn’t comment on Ridenour. “That’s a relief for public safety,” Mesa County District Attorney Pete Hautzinger said...

WASHINGTON - The top U.S. military commander for the Middle East resigned Tuesday amid speculation about a rift over U.S. policy in Iran. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that Adm. William J. Fallon, whose area of responsibility includes Iraq, had asked for permission to retire and that Gates agreed. Gates said the decision, effective March 31, was entirely Fallon's and that Gates believed it was "the right thing to do." Fallon was the subject of an article published last week in Esquire magazine that portrayed him as opposed to President Bush's Iran policy. It described Fallon as a lone voice...

SACRAMENTO -- — The state's ability to protect children, renters, workers and the elderly as well as California's wildlife and its land would be impeded under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposals for closing a $14.5-billion deficit, state agency reports show. The proposed budget reductions, which Schwarzenegger submitted this week to the Legislature, would erode public protection programs across state government, according to hundreds of pages of assessments that agencies submitted along with the budget this week. Schwarzenegger decided to spread the pain across all areas of government, forcing most agencies to prepare to cut a tenth of their spending. Advocates for...

The Army Corps of Engineers came to the District in the late 1990s on an expensive mission: launch a massive overhaul of decrepit school buildings, which eventually included spending $80 million to replace ancient heating systems with brand-new boilers to last 25 years or more. Since then, 40 of the 55 renovated heating systems have broken down or needed major repair. Public schools officials failed to maintain the new equipment, leading to problems such as damage from mineral deposits that built up because the water was not properly treated...It would have cost just $100,000 a year to remove harmful minerals...

Tuesday/Wednesday, November 13/14 - about 4 a.m. Sources inside and outside Iran. A series of explosions rocked the Parchin Military Site (where missiles, including "cruise" type missiles, are manufactured) at Varamin south of Tehran. The Shahab 3, 4 and more recently Shahab 5 solid fuel missiles at the site are hidden in old salt mines in the mountain face in the area, further excavated and furbished for development and manufacture. The main purpose of this Ministry of Defense site, established by the late Shah's father - Reza Shah Kabir - in the early 1900's and taken over by the IRGC,...

...I've been following the trail of the Chahine Hezbollah organized crime family for years, I've learned a lot more about Hezbollah spy and FBI/CIA Agent Nada Nadim Prouty. ...she and her sister Elfat El-Aouar Chahine are not the only members of their family to defraud the federal government in immigration, tax, and Hezbollah related matters. Another sister, an OB-GYN, Rula Nadim Al Aouar {different spelling to confuse/evade U.S. authorities--a common Muslim and Arab practice), also engaged in a sham marriage and immigration fraud. ...Prouty is not Muslim. She is Druze, a secretive offshoot of Islam...her entire family is Druze. Her...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A stockpile of plutonium and other nuclear weapons materials stored at Los Alamos National Laboratory hasn't been fully accounted for in 13 years or more, a government audit has found. The northern New Mexico lab's workers have done regular, partial inventories of the material, which the government considers to be at high risk of theft, the audit by the Energy Department's inspector general, Gregory Friedman, found. Yet an inventory of all the material hasn't been done in "perhaps 13 years or more," Friedman wrote. It wasn't even done when the lab's management contract changed last year, investigators...

Why is the most best European fighting army, the British, losing the battle for Basra in southern Iraq? Because the UK Ministry of Defense supplied its soldiers with the wrong equipment, having invested its shrinking budget in long-term European Ego Projects to keep the military bureaucracy happy. Given soft vehicles that are terrifyingly vulnerable to IEDs and car bombs, the Brits initially claimed that "soft power" would do the job -- just as the Dutch boasted that having tea with the Taliban would ensure peace and love in their area of Afghanistan. But the British MOD was just rationalizing its...

What makes a voter a "staunch" Republican or Democrat? The definition is a matter of opinion, but undoubtedly certain minimal traits apply. Obviously that person must vote in their state Party primary/caucus and for the elected candidate in the general election. The other requirement is how they financially support candidates as well as their Party. A week ago, the Chicago Sun-Times published an article by Jennifer Hunter, "GOP lawyer sold on Dems." In the piece, Hunter writes about "attorney Jim Ronca of Philadelphia, a staunch Republican." After attending a Trial Lawyers event with Democratic Presidential candidates, Gov. Bill Richardson, Sen....

A $1.2 billion program to deploy new radiation monitors to screen trucks, cars and cargo containers for signs of nuclear devices has been delayed by questions over whether Department of Homeland Security officials misled Congress about the effectiveness of the detectors. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced the contracts for monitors with cutting-edge technology a year ago. He said they would improve radiation scans at borders and ports, while sharply reducing the number of false alarms. Congress had allowed the five-year project to move ahead after Homeland Security assured appropriators that the $377,000 machines would detect highly enriched uranium 95...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Undercover investigators, working for a fake firm, obtained a license to buy enough radioactive material to build a "dirty bomb," amid little scrutiny from federal regulators, according to a government report obtained on Wednesday. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued the license to the dummy company in just 28 days with only a cursory review, the Government Accountability Office said in a report to be released on Thursday. The GAO, which set up the sting, said the NRC approved the license after a couple of faxes and phones calls and then mailed it to the phoney company's...

GREENSBORO, N.C. - Detailed schematics of a military detainee holding facility in southern Iraq. Geographical surveys and aerial photographs of two military airfields outside Baghdad. Plans for a new fuel farm at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The military calls it "need-to-know" information that would pose a direct threat to U.S. troops if it were to fall into the hands of terrorists. It's material so sensitive that officials refused to release the documents when asked. But it's already out there, posted carelessly to file servers by government agencies and contractors, accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. In a survey...

WASHINGTON — Democrats pledged to take Congress in a new direction when it won control in November 2006, but less than six months after taking the reins, Americans aren't pleased with the results, giving lawmakers an all-time low public confidence rating. In a Gallup poll released Thursday, only 14 percent of Americans have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in Congress, a Gallup poll reports. The poll shows an all-time lowest confidence rating and one of the lowest ratings for any institution in 30 years. The lowest confidence rating for Congress was 18 percent during 1991 to...

Politics: When Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid calls America's top brass "incompetent," one wonders if he's not really using what psychologists call "projection" — attributing to others what you most fear about yourself. 'Incompetent" is how Reid, talking to liberal bloggers on Tuesday, described outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman and Marine Gen. Peter Pace. He should talk.

Judge Charles Elloie, the embattled jurist at Orleans Parish Criminal District Court who was temporarily suspended from the bench eight months ago over his practice of reducing bail bonds for felons accused of violent crimes, is retiring July 1 for health reasons. In two sentences written to the Louisiana Secretary of State in a letter dated Tuesday, Elloie ended both his decade-long, checkered judicial career and the state investigation into his pattern of freeing suspects from the confines of the Orleans Parish Prison -- even one man accused of raping his own 10-year-old sister. Elloie received approval from the Louisiana...

Leadership: So Jimmy Carter calls the Bush administration "the worst in history." This from the man who wrecked the world's greatest economy and made a nuclear Iran and North Korea possible. Profile In Incompetence: First In A Series We didn't think we'd see the day when a president-elect of France would be more appreciative of America's role in the world than one of our own former presidents. But here is Carter telling the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that President Bush's "administration has been the worst in history," one that has "endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war even when our own security is...

When I was assigned to the U.S. Pacific Command in the mid-1980s, we military officers would often discuss the ambassadors in our theater of operations – a huge area embracing more than 30 countries and most of the Pacific -SNIP- One name came up constantly as one of the best -SNIP-: then-U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia Paul Wolfowitz. He understood the culture, the people and the special circumstances of the world’s most populous Muslim country, and he did a superb job in dealing with that country within the context of U.S. national-security interests. Understand, then, my wonder over the last few...

Dozens of fire hydrants across the District are not in working order, including the two closest to Monday's fire at the D.C. public library in Georgetown. Fire and union officials say the faulty hydrants often aren't discovered until a fire breaks out, as was the case in Georgetown.... The city has struggled for years to keep hydrants in good working order, firefighters said. With nearly 9,300 hydrants citywide, keeping up with inspections can be difficult, they said. Some broken hydrants are clearly marked, but only those that have been identified as needing repair. The D.C. Water and Sewer Authority oversees...

SPENCER, Mass. (AP) -- Dozens of residents were taken to hospitals Wednesday with burns or rashes after the town's water supply was accidentally treated with too much corrosive lye, officials said. People in Spencer were advised not to use or touch the water until further notice, said Ed Coletta, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection. Residents started complaining of skin irritation and moderate burns after showering early Wednesday, police Sgt. John Agnew said. He said officials determined that a malfunction at the town's water treatment plant had released too much sodium hydroxide into the water supply. Sodium...

Dem leadership pulls DC voting bill from floor; conservative Dems were supporting DC gun repeal... Leader Hoyer seen yelling at staff on floor... Speaker Pelosi absent because she is desperately searching for Iraq supplemental votes... Holmes-Norton standing silently in disbelief..

Lee Celano for The New York TimesDylan Langlois, center, and Kasandra Larsen said goodbye to a friend as they prepared to move out of New NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 15 — After nearly a decade in the city of their dreams, Kasandra Larsen and her fiancé, Dylan Langlois, climbed into a rented moving truck on Marais Street last Sunday, pointed it toward New Hampshire, and said goodbye. Not because of some great betrayal — they had, after all, come back after losing everything in Hurricane Katrina — but a series of escalating indignities: the attempted carjacking of a pregnant friend;...

...There were 161 homicides in this city last year, and there have been 18 so far this year, making New Orleans by most measures the nation’s per capita murder capital, given its sharply reduced population. Many of the victims and the suspects are teenagers. About two-thirds of the deaths have gone unsolved: the killers, in many cases, continue to walk the streets and are likely to kill again, the police say. Other cities have plenty of murders. But only in New Orleans has there been the uniquely poisoned set of circumstances that has led to this city’s position at the...

David Paulin writes at The Big Carnival of the degeneration of the Chavez regime into a thug state. It has gotten so bad that some of Chavez's leftist supporters are now disowning him, as they see that socialism is just an excuse for power and riches being grabbed. ".... a remarkable news conference in Caracas [was] given by Luis Miquilena, 87, who guided Chávez to his first landslide election win. A long-time leftist, Miquilena left Chávez's cabinet five years ago, and at the news conference he savaged El Presidente. Miquilena thus joined a long list of former Chávez allies who...

Due to copyright constraints, I guess we can't post any excerpts from the Detroit News - here's a link to the article: http://cmsimg.detnews.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=C3&Date=20070124&Category=AUTO01&ArtNo=701240402&Ref=V4&Profile=1148Q=100&MaxW=250

SACRAMENTO An arbitrator has ruled that state officials miscalculated wages and benefits for corrections employees, a mistake that will cost California taxpayers an estimated $440 million over two years and force cuts to other state departments. The ruling, made public Friday, means the state will pay $200 million for back pay and health benefits to about 30,000 prison guards, probation officers and other correctional employees, retroactive to July 1, 2005. In addition, the employees are due a 3.1 percent pay increase retroactive to the start of the year under a provision that ties their wages to those of other law...

The Home Office stumbled into another crisis last night when it emerged that a radical Muslim terror suspect placed under one of the Government’s control orders has absconded, the third to disappear from supposed house arrest under the controversial security measure. Police across Britain are hunting the unnamed man, who allegedly “wanted to travel abroad for terrorism-related purposes,” the minister for policing, security and community safety, Tony McNulty, told MPs. The man fled from a mosque in which he had taken sanctuary, after police called to check why he had failed to hand in his passport, according to reports. He...

BAGHDAD, Dec. 29 -- Two senior Iranian operatives who were detained by U.S. forces in Iraq and were strongly suspected of planning attacks against American military forces and Iraqi targets were expelled to Iran on Friday, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials. The decision to free the men was made by the Iraqi government and has angered U.S. military officials who say the operatives were seeking to foment instability here. Special Report Washington Post stories and multimedia reports about Iraq, Afghanistan, the War on Terror and more. • Faces of the Fallen • Veterans: In Their Own Words • Afghan...

The triumph of the therapeutic over the tragic. Everyone seems to take some joy in listening to outgoing secretary-general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, especially during the holidays. But just as with other such ethicists as a lip-biting Bill Clinton or creased-browed Jimmy Carter, Annan is as publicly acclaimed as he is privately ignored. We like such itinerant moralists — more when they are off the job than on, and always in retrospect rather than contemporaneously. As we watch them hedge, we somehow feel apologetic rather than outraged over their latest deception. The secretary-general — introduced with fulsome praise...

United Nation's Chief Kofi Annan's Legacy of Failure by Nile Gardiner (December 16, 2006) http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4867 United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan delivered his swan song last week at the Truman Presidential Library in Missouri.[1] It was a thinly veiled parting shot at U.S. foreign policy delivered by an embittered U.N. leader seething with self-righteous indignation and resentment. Annan's Missouri speech will go down in history as one of the most blatant assaults on a U.S. administration by a serving U.N. official. In his condescending remarks, Annan warned, with Washington clearly in his sights, that "no nation can make itself secure...

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — Dozens of middle school students will be tested for hepatitis and HIV after their substitute science teacher allowed them to share needle-like instruments to prick their fingers for blood. The teacher, whose name was not released, was giving a life-science lesson to five seventh-grade classes Thursday at John F. Kennedy Middle School when he asked for volunteers to have their blood drawn using lancets so they could look at it under microscopes. Lancets are similar to the tools that diabetics use to test their blood sugar.

Former President Bill Clinton shook his left index finger at Chris Wallace during an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” denying charges he and his administration did too little to catch Osama bin Laden and ward off the 9/11 terror attacks. Leaning forward and appearing angry, Clinton said, “…at least I tried. That’s the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They (the Bush administration) had eight months to try. They did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed.” Clinton added that he authorized the CIA “to get groups together to...

WASHINGTON - The Commerce Department has lost 1,137 laptop computers since 2001, most of them assigned to the Census Bureau, officials said Thursday night.

Thanks to Bush's Incompetence, Bin Laden Won By Richard Cohen NEW YORK -- I hear bin Laden laughing. I heard him all day on Sunday and Monday as the mass murder of Sept. 11, 2001, was memorialized at the Pentagon and in that field in Pennsylvania and, especially, here where the most people died and where countless cameras recorded it all for posterity and an abiding, everlasting, anger. He laughs, the madman does, whenever George Bush says, as he has over and over, that America is "winning this war on terror.'' Osama bin Laden knows better. He has already won....

-snip- Ms. Dobbs' ordeal began late last year at the intersection of Walnut Hill Lane and Central Expressway. She had just pulled out of a shopping center and said she was in the act of putting on her seat belt when a Dallas police officer stopped her for not wearing one. -snip- Ms. Dobbs said she was placed in a filthy holding tank, about 10 by 15 feet, with only one concrete bench. Although a sign said it could hold eight people at most, as many as 28 were crowded in there, most of them sitting on the floor, she...

The original film footage of astronaut Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon, one of the most important artifacts of the 20th century, has been lost. The television broadcast seen by about 600 million people in July 1969 is preserved for posterity, but the original tapes from which the footage was taken have been mislaid, most likely in NASA's vast archives at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. The footage could transform our view of the moon landings, offering images far sharper than the blurred, grainy video shown around the world. It also could lay to rest the conspiracy...

JOHN SOLOMON As the British terror plot was unfolding, the Bush administration quietly tried to take away $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new explosives detection technology. Homeland Security's research arm, called the Sciences & Technology Directorate, is a "rudderless ship without a clear way to get back on course," Republican and Democratic senators on the Appropriations Committee declared recently. The administration also was slow to start testing a new liquid explosives detector that the Japanese government provided to the United States earlier this year. The department failed to spend $200 million in research and...

The head of the agency overseeing Boston's Big Dig highway project ordered a review of the entire metro highway system Wednesday after investigators looking into the fatal collapse of concrete ceiling slabs found 60 more questionable areas inside the same tunnel. Initial inspections revealed dozens of signs of bolts loosening and other potential failures in the eastbound connector tunnel, part of the main route to Boston's Logan Airport, Turnpike Authority officials and the Big Dig project manager said. There were also trouble spots in the tunnel's westbound lanes, they said. ''We're evaluating each of these individual sites,'' Massachusetts Turnpike Authority...

WASHINGTON - The government agency charged with fighting identity theft said Thursday it had lost two government laptops containing sensitive personal data, the latest in a series of breaches encompassing millions of people. The Federal Trade Commission said it would provide free credit monitoring for 110 people targeted for investigation whose names, addresses, Social Security numbers - and in some instances, financial account numbers - were taken from an FTC attorney's locked car. The car theft occurred about 10 days ago and managers were immediately notified. Many of the people whose data were compromised were being investigated for possible fraud...

Better safe than sorry is the official response to the collapse of the Forest Gate anti-terrorism operation. Better safe than sorry is apparently the inquiry conclusion on the police killing last year of Jean de Menezes in a London Tube train. Better safe than sorry is justifying the erection of concrete anti-bomb slabs round Waterloo and Victoria stations. In each case we are told that you cannot be “too safe” when it comes to public security. These responses may or may not be justified. They seem wholly disproportionate, but then none of us knows the extent of the secretly perceived...

A Chevy Chase couple has been ordered by the county to demolish their partially renovated home — or to move it 1.7 feet back from the property line. Marc and Marianne Duffy believe they are victims of a backlash against oversized homes being squeezed into small lots in older neighborhoods. They say they are being punished for a county agency’s mistakes. Neighbors who opposed the construction believe the Duffy’s problems are their own creation. Marc Duffy, an attorney, and Marianne Duffy, a stay-at-home mom and former attorney, served as their own general contractors on the project. ‘‘Three times my husband...

<p>I searched but did not see a thread already open for tonights speech. I think this is the most important speech the President will probably make for the remainder of his term.</p>

NEWARK, New Jersey-In the past year, two New Jersey laboratories have been unbable to account for plague-infested mince and vials of deadly anthrax spores, and top state officials are scrambling to devise better ways to safeguard deadly material. In both cases, authorities say they think the items in question were not actually lost, but were simply unaccounted for due to clerical errors.

  HEAR CLINTON! 'Can we kill 'em tomorrow?'('MY 9/11 LOSER DEAL IS FULBRIGHT'S FAULT... AND I DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' NOBEL.*)*If a loser like Carter can get one, where's mine already?' by Mia T, 4.24.06 LISTEN CAREFULLY TO THE AUDIO: Fulbrighters' gasps of horror follow clinton's "I always asked the same question for eight years, 'Can we kill 'em tomorrow?'  I don't think we can bring 'em back tomorrow, but can we kill 'em tomorrow?  If we can kill them tomorrow, then we're not weak...." I suspect the horror was provoked not by the (proven) fecklessness and recklessness and...

Once on fast track to be captain, Kirk Lippold now works at a desk. Last in a two-part series. WASHINGTON -- For 5½ years, the Washington military and political establishment has not known quite what to do with Kirk Lippold. Cmdr. Lippold was the skipper of the USS Cole when al-Qaida terrorists committed a suicide bombing in the Yemen port of Aden on Oct. 12, 2000. The attack, from a small barge that pulled alongside the Cole, blew a 40-by-40-foot hole in the guided-missile destroyer. Seventeen sailors died and 42 were wounded. After he led an intense three-week effort to...

All about Mary McCarthy 2 In From the Cold has some opinions on Mary McCarthy's career. The key paragraph: Equally interesting is her meteoric rise within the intelligence community. According to her bio, she joined the CIA as an analyst in 1984. Within seven years, she had rise to a Deputy NIO position, and reached full NIO status by 1994. To reach that level, she literally catapulted over dozens of more senior officers--and I'm guessing that her political connections didn't hurt. By comparison, I know a current NIO, with a resume and academic credentials more impressive than Ms. McCarthy's, who...

Reprinted from NewsMax.com Tuesday, April 18, 2006 12:09 p.m. EDTGen. Anthony Zinni: USS Cole Blunder Is My Fault Former CENTCOM Commander, Gen. Anthony Zinni - who has called for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign because of Rumsfeld's alleged incompetence in running the Iraq war - admitted six years ago that he made the disastrous decision to have the USS Cole use the port of Aden, Yemen for refueling, where the ship was blown up by al-Qaida terrorists. Worse still, at least one report indicates that Gen. Zinni may have played a role in an August 1998 leak that tipped...