Free Republic

A SCIENTOLOGY-run "detoxification" clinic in Manhattan is endangering patients because of its leaders' strict adherence to the church's teachings, a whistle-blowing former employee has told City Confidential. The source, who until recently worked at the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification program on Fulton Street, said he witnessed "strange practices" at the tax-funded center, which was co-founded by Tom Cruise.

The US decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was meant to kick-start the Cold War rather than end the Second World War, according to two nuclear historians who say they have new evidence backing the controversial theory. Causing a fission reaction in several kilograms of uranium and plutonium and killing over 200,000 people 60 years ago was done more to impress the Soviet Union than to cow Japan, they say. And the US President who took the decision, Harry Truman, was culpable, they add. "He knew he was beginning the process of annihilation of the...

Dean: Immigrants are GOP's 2006 foil By Larry Eichel Inquirer Staff Writer Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean told the National Council of La Raza yesterday that he expected the Republican Party to "scapegoat immigrants" during the 2006 election campaign.In a speech on the last day of the Hispanic advocacy organization's annual gathering, at the Convention Center, Dean said the GOP had tried to generate resentment against blacks in the 2002 elections through the issue of affirmative action and against gays last year by focusing on marriage."In 2006, it's going to be immigration," he said. "You wait and see."As evidence, Dean...

In a recent interview on CNBC with Ron Insana, one of the "old-timer" funds manager, Julian Robertson, predicted "utter global collapse" as a consequence of the bursting of the world-wide property bubble. Often called "Never Been Wrong Robertson", the former head of Tiger Management (once the largest hedge fund in the world), is extremely worried about the speculative bubble in real estate. Specifically, he is very worried about a world that is sustained by American consumer spending which is in turn 1/4 sustained by a property bubble. He predicts that 20 million people could lose their homes once the property...

The US House of Representatives passed a spending bill last week that contains provisions establishing a national ID card, and the Senate is poised to approve the measure in the next few days. This week marks the American public’s last chance to convince their Senators they don’t want to live in a nation that demands papers from its citizens as they go about their lives. Absent a political miracle in the Senate, within two years every American will need a conforming national ID card to participate in ordinary activities. This REAL ID Act establishes a massive, centrally-coordinated database of highly...