Free Republic

To give credit where credit is due, President Barack Obama made something of a bipartisan gesture on Sunday night: he declined to endorse Frank Caprio, the Democratic candidate for governor of Rhode Island. This shock decision not to endorse the Democrat was effectively a thumbs up for Lincoln Chafee, the former Republican Senator. OK, Chafee is several miles away from being mainstream GOP. He’s a former Republican who left the party, ironically, after the party label had done for him in 2006. He endorsed Obama in 2008 and this year he’s running as an Independent. But it says something about...

WASHINGTON -- It has been said that the most terrifying words in the English language are, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." Never have those words been truer than today as thick, toxic crude oil gels along the shores of one of the most magnificent and valuable estuaries in the world, suffocating dolphins and pelicans, killing off entire links in the food chain and leaving behind a putrid mess that could take a generation to clean up. Thank you, federal government. As the only entity with oversight authority in waters that lap ashore in five different states,...

Barack Obama's bubble has been burst. Over the past three weeks, he has learned a primal conservative lesson, one on which all else is based. As put by the noted political philosopher Clint Eastwood: "A man's got to know his limitations." O now has a vague glimmering as to what his limitations are. His followers, as yet, do not. All of us live in bubbles of one size or another. Bubbles that encompass what we know, what we have experienced, our prejudices, our illusions, and our manner of thinking. It would be strange if it were any other way --...

Having been around since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt, I have seen twelve Presidents come and go prior to the $160 million coronation of Barack Hussein Obama. I have got to tell you this guy scares the heck out of me. I am used to guys like Harry Truman who, when the job was done, got on the train and went home without any fanfare. He was so broke Congress had to vote him a pension so he could afford to buy postage stamps. He turned away offers to sit on the boards of corporations because, as he put...

KABUL, Afghanistan — A boat crossing a river in Afghanistan's most dangerous province sank on Saturday, and at least 60 people were killed, including Taliban militants, the Defense Ministry said. The boat sank while crossing the Helmand River, which snakes through Helmand province, the world's leading opium poppy region and site of fierce battles the last several months. Hundreds of Taliban insurgents are believed to be in Helmand. The Afghan army was investigating to see how many Taliban insurgents and how many civilians were on board, the ministry said. The brief statement did not say what caused the boat to...

However, since it was revealed last week that the program is probably a few billion shy of the funding it needs to meet the obligations of homeowners, it has been open season. “Their incompetence is breathtaking,” said State Treasurer John Kennedy(D) on the Eyewitness Morning News last week. “Remember Otis of Mayberry, the town drunk, I think Otis is secretly running the Road Home program.”

As a front group for Palestinian terrorists, the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) sends young people from all over the world to the training fields of the West Bank and Gaza to learn from terrorists and to aid them logistically. Stop the ISM has now obtained photographs of ISM leaders and organizers holding AK-47 assault rifles. Unfortunately, neither U.S. Homeland Security nor the Israeli security agencies have to date regarded the ISM as a serious threat. Some of these ISM people in these photos managed to escape; nevertheless, arrests have been made, and more are forthcoming. In April 2003, Israel's Ministry...

In an effort to jump-start her sputtering Senate campaign, Rep. Katherine Harris went on national television invoking the memory of her late father and saying the money he left her will form the financial foundation of her challenge to Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson. Now the Harris campaign says that's not the case. Campaign spokeswoman Morgan Dobbs said Thursday that Harris will sell her existing assets rather than rely on money from her father, a bank executive who died in January. The Republican from Longboat Key appeared on national television saying she would use the money left to her by her...

JUST ANOTHER POWER GRAB by Timothy Rollins, Editor and Publisher November 10, 2005 In what is but yet another pathetic power grab attempt by the shamelessly corrupt United Nations, they are seeking to control the Internet as part of the agenda to be discussed at the World Summit on the International Society in Tunisia next week. The group currently holding control over operation and efficiency of the Internet is ICANN - the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - which is in large part controlled by the United States and loosely supervised by the U.S. Commerce Department. Prior to...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 — It was Gov. Blanco's first big disaster — and less than 48 hours before Katrina hit, she reassured the state. "I believe we are prepared," she said in Jefferson Parish on Aug. 27. "That's the one thing that I've always been able to brag about." Though experts had warned it would take 48 hours to evacuate New Orleans, Blanco did not order a mandatory evacuation that Saturday. "We're going to pray that the impact will soften," she said. Blanco and the mayor waited until Sunday, Aug. 28 — only 20 hours before Katrina came ashore —...

FEMA disaster website IE-only 9/6/2005 2:37:53 PM, by Ken "Caesar" Fisher As relief workers scramble to provide comfort and succor to the thousands and thousands of people dispossessed by hurricane Katrina, tech relief efforts are hitting snags. Equipment shortages, problems accessing the Internet, and the time it takes to set up computers for refugees to use are all getting in the way of getting people help, but that's not too surprising. This is, after all, a disaster.What is surprising, however, is the fact that the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) online registration site for disaster help is Internet Explorer-only. While...

<p>NEW ORLEANS - Tens of thousands of people spent a fifth day awaiting evacuation from this ruined city, as Bush administration officials blamed state and local authorities for what leaders at all levels have called a failure of the country's emergency management. The White House dispatched 7,200 more troops to the area, bringing the total in the stricken region to more than 40,000 National Guard and active-duty soldiers.</p>

In the Atlantic Monthly a few years back, Robert D. Kaplan went to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and other failed jurisdictions of West Africa and concluded that many of the "citizens" of these "states," roaming the streets raping and killing, belonged to a phenomenon called "re-primitivized man." Anyone watching TV in recent days will have seen plenty of "re-primitivized man," not in Liberia or Somalia, but in Louisiana. Cops smashing the Wal-Mart DVD cabinet so they can get their share of the booty along with the rest of the looters, gangs firing on a children's hospital and on rescue helicopters, hurricane...

A bomb scare forced hundreds to flee two terminals at Kennedy Airport yesterday after authorities mistakenly left a phony training bomb lying around, a source familiar with the incident said. At about 11 a.m., Transportation Security Administration officers noticed a suspicious package in their confiscated-items bin past the checkpoint for Americans Airlines' Terminals 8 and 9, officials said. Port Authority police investigated and called in NYPD Bomb Squad cops, who decided to clear both terminals, officials said. They determined the package was not dangerous at about 2 p.m. A source close to the investigation told The Post the item was...

Deportation tears a West Toledo family apart Toledo chef, wife to return to South Korea, leave son here. The options were limited and the choice excruciating. In a simple West Toledo apartment yesterday, Dae Jung sorted and stacked belongings bound for his homeland. If all goes as scheduled, the 46-year-old sushi chef and his imprisoned wife, Young, will meet tomorrow at Detroit Metropolitan-Wayne County Airport's international terminal. With immigration officials nearby, they will say good-bye to friends, supporters, and their 15-year-old son, Andrew, a U.S. citizen. At about 2:35 p.m., the Jungs will board Northwest Airlines Flight No. 25 for...

A pair of Chinese diplomats, AWOL from their Los Angeles consulate, sped through a Los Alamos National Laboratory security checkpoint in February. A lab spokesman declined to speculate Monday on what the diplomats were trying to do, although a Washington newspaper quoted unnamed U.S. government officials as saying the incident may have been intended as a test of LANL's security system. In any case, the Chinese diplomats witnessed firsthand a speedy reaction by the laboratory's armed guard force. "We have assets that are deployed and will pursue and halt any vehicle that fails to stop at a checkpoint," LANL spokesman...

<p>The voters yesterday raised the bar on performance in California government. When we elect somebody as leader, they emphatically told Gov. Gray Davis, we expect him to lead.</p> <p>We want a governor who wakes up every morning worrying about our lives, not his own career. We want a governor who listens to average citizens, not just the lobbyists and campaign contributors at the state Capitol.</p>

Book by Police Chief in Sniper Case Set Book by Charles Moose, Police Chief in Washington, D.C.-Area Sniper Case, Goes on Sale Monday The Associated Press BETHESDA, Md. Sept. 14 — The book that Charles Moose gave up his police job to write reveals little new about the three-week sniper investigation he led, but focuses much on his life, racism, criticism of the media and the ethics controversy over the book itself. "Three Weeks in October" goes on sale Monday, nearly a year after the Washington, D.C.-area sniper shootings started. The book by Moose, the former Montgomery County police chief,...

March 6, 2003 Agent Who Saw 9/11 Lapses Still Faults F.B.I. on Terror By PHILIP SHENON WASHINGTON, March 5 — The veteran F.B.I. agent who exposed the bureau's failure to heed evidence of terrorist plots before the Sept. 11 attacks is now warning her superiors that the bureau is not prepared to deal with new terrorist strikes that she and many colleagues fear would result from an American war with Iraq. The agent, Coleen Rowley of the bureau's Minneapolis field office, is not a counterterrorism specialist and does not have access to detailed intelligence about Al Qaeda and its planning....

VNS Scraps National Exit Poll Work 40 minutes ago By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer NEW YORK (AP) - Voter News Service abandoned its state and national exit poll plans for Election Night, saying it could not guarantee the accuracy of the analysis which media organizations use to help explain why people voted as they did. AP Photo Election Special Coverage News, tools, results and more. Go now. The decision did not affect VNS' separate operation for counting the actual vote. VNS also hoped to have limited information from the exit poll surveys to give its members guidance in projecting...