Free Republic

Londoners turn blue for climate protestUpdated: 07:30, Sunday December 6, 2009 Thousands of people have painted themselves blue and marched through central London to call for action on climate change. Two days before a crucial climate summit begins in Copenhagen, protesters decked themselves out in blue facepaint, eyeshadow, wigs and stockings and converged on Big Ben on a grey Saturday afternoon. Organisers said 40,000 people took part while the Metropolitan Police put numbers at 20,000. Demand action until blue in the face,' one placard read, while others said quit dirty coal'. The peaceful protest stopped traffic as it moved from...

My guess is that she really doesn't know what she wants, or who she really is. It's probably dangerous to admit to a moment of empathy. I'll either get disqualified from ever becoming being a Supreme Court justice or asked to turn in my press card. But after watching reruns of Gov. Sarah Palin's resignation from the governorship, after hearing every grammatically challenged sentence and inconsistent paragraph dissected by some talk show host, I started to (blush) feel her pain. There was the frozen smile, the vulnerability, the odd grab bag of unfiltered, unedited, unintelligible un-reasons scattered across the lawn....

BERLIN - The UN's special torture rapporteur called on the U.S. Tuesday to pursue former president George W. Bush and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld for torture and bad treatment of Guantanamo prisoners. "Judicially speaking, the United States has a clear obligation" to bring proceedings against Bush and Rumsfeld, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak said, in remarks to be broadcast on Germany's ZDF television Tuesday evening. He noted Washington had ratified the UN convention on torture which required "all means, particularly penal law" to be used to bring proceedings against those violating it. "We have all these...

There appears to be no question that Defendant Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was a U.S. citizen. It is also undisputed, however, that his father, Barack Obama, Sr., was a citizen of Kenya. Obama’s parents, according to divorce records, were married on or about February 2, 1961. Defendant Obama claims he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961 and it is uncertain in which hospital he claims to have been born. Obama’s grandmother on his father’s side, his half-brother and half-sister all claim Obama was born not in Hawaii but in Kenya. Reports reflect that Obama’s mother traveled...

Judge R. Barclay Surrick dismissed Berg v Obama on Friday evening on the grounds that Philip J Berg, Philadelphia attorney and former Deputy Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, lacks standing. To have "standing" the plaintiff must show "(1) a particularized injury-in-fact, (2) evidence showing that that the party being sued actually caused the plaintiff’s particularized injury-in-fact, and (3) that adjudication of the matter would actually provide redress." [1] In regards to injury the judge writes, "regardless of questions of causation, the grievance remains too generalized to establish the existence of an injury in fact." Apparently, the judge doesn't...

9/11 widow Ellen Mariani(Derry, N.H.) says George W. Bush is a gangster. We talk to her and her lawyer Philip J. Berg: Ellen Mariani last saw her husband Louis Neil early on the morning of September 11, 2001, at Logan Airport, where they were taking different flights to Los Angeles for a daughter’s wedding. He hadn’t gotten his tickets until the last minute, and couldn’t get on her flight, but there were seats open on Flight 175. Neil Mariani died when that plane crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center, and after rejecting a settlement offer of...

Confrontations emerge at Palin event in NC October 26, 2008 18:08 EDT ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) -- Supporters of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama are confronting people attending a North Carolina event featuring Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. The faceoff in downtown Asheville included loud yelling and vulgar signs. The event showcased the tension between people who live in the liberal enclave and the others living in conservative counties that surround Asheville. Authorities stood between the crowds, which included a couple of hundred Obama supporters and several thousand Palin supporters waiting to enter the event. Both sides crowded the sidewalks...

Former US military leaders have called on the Bush administration to make major cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. In a report, they say global warming poses a serious threat to national security, as the US could be drawn into wars over water and other conflicts. They appear to criticise President George W Bush's refusal to join an international treaty to cut emissions. Among the 11 authors are ex-Army chief of staff Gordon Sullivan and Mr Bush's ex-Mid-East peace envoy Anthony Zinni. The report says the US "must become a more constructive partner" with other nations to fight global warming and...

GUANTANAMO Pictures from Home. Questions of Justice. February 26, 2007 For Immediate Release GUANTÁNAMO PICTURES FROM HOME. QUESTIONS OF JUSTICE FOTOFEST March 31 - May 19, 2007 1113 Vine Street Houston 77002 Guantánamo. A word and a place that have become a part of our vocabulary, unsettling and unseen, invoking some of the most controversial aspects of the war on terror since 2001. FotoFest presents for the first time, GUANTÁNAMO. Pictures From Home. Questions of Justice., a rare glimpse into the life of the prison, the men who are detainees, their families, and the U.S. attorneys who represent the detainees....

The Bush administration can not allow the Democrats to take control of either house of Congress. And they are in a position to prevent it, regardless of the will of the American voters. These are the two controlling facts that make all other conditions of the coming election trivial in comparison, or even irrelevant. The failure of the media and even the Democratic Party to acknowledge and deal with these facts in no way diminishes their significance. Quite the contrary. And why can’t the Busheviks allow the loss of even one house of Congress to the Democrats? Such a loss...

Protesters corner Jeb Bush in Pa. 54 minutes ago Protesters greeted Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on his way to a campaign event for a Pennsylvania senator, and he briefly took refuge in a subway station supply closet to avoid the anti-Republican demonstrators. The president's brother encountered protesters on their way to join a demonstration outside the exclusive Duquesne Club, where Sen. Rick Santorum (news, bio, voting record), a Republican, was holding a fundraiser Friday. Officers used stun guns to subdue two protesters, saying they disobeyed orders to disperse, said Bob Grove, a Port Authority spokesman. "It was a very tense...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An Iraqi architect on Tuesday said he was forced to change his t-shirt before boarding a flight in New York because the shirt had "We will not be silent" written on it in Arabic and English. ADVERTISEMENT Raed Jarrar wrote on his Internet blog (http://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com) that he was required to change out of the shirt prior to boarding a JetBlue flight from New York's John F. Kennedy Airport to California this month because officials told him people were offended by the shirt. In an interview with New York Public Radio on Tuesday, Jarrar said, "I grew...

A few days before Joe Lieberman, who was very nearly vice president of the United States, was effectively vanquished from his party by Ned Lamont, an affable cable executive who once played a minor role in governing the town of Greenwich, Conn., I happened to talk with Jeffrey Bell. A political consultant who is as cordial a man as you will find in Washington, Bell isn't as famous as some of his fellow Republicans, but he owns a storied place in the history of the conservative movement. A young aide to Ronald Reagan during his 1976 insurgency, Bell went on...

First they came for the workplace, then for people’s homes and cars, and then the great outdoors. Now the anti-tobacco jihadists, having helped ban smoking in most public and many private places, have turned their attention to the most private space of all — the womb. John Banzhaf, the heavyweight George Washington University law professor who for years has led the anti-smoking brigade is setting his sights on fetal rights related to their smoking mums. While it is legally defensible to abort a fetus up until moments before birth, it is apparently inconceivable that a woman would expose her unborn...

BARTOW -- Brian Doyle knew that living his fantasy of having sex with the 14-year-old girl he had met over the Internet could land him in jail. The 56-year-old press aide for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security told the teen in an Internet chat that he had "soooo much to lose" by meeting her. Another time, he told the girl he knew as "Ashlynne" that she could be a police officer "trapping" him, according to court documents released this week. After several weeks of sexually explicit conversations and e-mailing the "girl" 16 pornographic movie clips, Doyle discovered that his...

Why should parents be forewarned about a Christian film with no sex, violence or raw language? The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has placed a PG rating on forthcoming film because it has a Christian message. Randy Sharp, director of special projects at the American Family Association, said the rating that reviewers gave Facing the Giants was for "thematic elements." Not only was the rating unwarranted, Sharp said the reasoning behind the rating was just as offensive. "The MPAA gives a warning to parents about content that may be found offensive," Sharp told CitizenLink. "Usually, a PG rating would...

May 11, 2006, 6:02 a.m. I Was an Icelandic “War Criminal” Believe me, Secretary Rice, you don’t want to go soft on the International Criminal Court. By Michael Rubin I looked forward to returning to Iceland. It had been seven years since I last lectured there, and I remembered it as a beautiful, rugged country, great for hiking and swimming. I was scheduled to deliver four lectures on Iran, Iraq, and transformative diplomacy at the Universities of Iceland and Reykjavik, and at the U.S. Naval Air Station in Keflavik. This trip would not be so smooth. Word of trouble began...

ONE of the world's leading authorities on Shakespeare's work, Harold Bloom, and the nation's pre-eminent poet, Les Murray, have declared literary study in Australia dead after learning that a prestigious Sydney school asked students to interpret Othello from Marxist, feminist and racial perspectives. "I find the question sublimely stupid," Professor Bloom, an internationally renowned literary critic, the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale and Berg Professor of English at New York University, said yesterday. "It is another indication that literary study has died in Australia." The question was an assessment task in March set for advanced English students in Year...

"I need to get reacquainted with my partner Dan." - Jim Loney, freed Christian Peacemaker Team member, March 27. The Christian Peacemaker Team members have been called misguided and naive. But it's clear from here that Jim Loney is only selectively naive. He could not afford to talk about his partner while in captivity and didn't. Homosexuality in Saddam Hussein's Iraq was punishable by death. Amnesty International says the current status of gay and lesbian rights is unclear. But here are few things that are crystal clear. 1) Jim Loney only feels free to speak his mind about his sexual...

Briton Norman Kember and his Canadian colleagues James Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden were freed after a multinational military raid acting on information provided by a detainee, the US military says. The rescue was completed without any shots being fired and with no kidnappers present, suggesting the operation was carefully planned and carried out. But the crucial bit of intelligence that enabled the rescue came only after two men were captured by US forces on Wednesday night. One of the suspects had the information which led officials to the Baghdad house where the hostages were four months into their ordeal....

To: Assignment Desk, Daybook Editor Contact: Connie Julian, 917-449-9064, Janet Yip 212-941-8086 or commission@nion.us News Advisory: From: International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration WHEN: January 10, 2006 at 1:30 p.m. WHERE: The White House, Walk-in Gate, across from Lafayette Park WEBSITE: http://www.bushcommission.org An unprecedented series of indictments alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity, in five separate areas, on moral, political, and legal grounds, will be delivered by a citizens' tribunal to President Bush at the front gate of the White House this Tuesday, January 10th. Named in the indictments are: President of...

Disclaimer: Reading this following article can be dangerous to your health. People with a heart condition should not attempt to read it. Also do not attempt to drive or operate heavy machinery. Do NOT open windows, but rather us a bucket to vomit. Opening the window may result in jumping out of it after reading several passages. LONDON, July 15 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Following the attack by U.S. author Gore Vidal on U.S. President George W. Bush’s so-called war on terror, John Pilger launched yet another attack in his book ‘The New Rulers of the World.’ “The rulers...

Tomorrow Feb. 4: Massive March to the White House; A New Movement With a Single Demand: Bush Step Down2/3/2006 12:17:00 PM To: Assignment Desk, Daybook Editor, Weekend Editor Contact: Ariel Vegosen 516-732-0579 or arielvegosen@yahoo.com ; or Travis Morales, 713-240-3192 News Advisory: Tomorrow Feb. 4: Massive March to the White House; A New Movement With a Single Demand: Bush Step Down WHO: -- Kathleen Chalfant, Broadway and TV actress -- Ann Wright, former U.S. diplomat and military officer quit in protest of war -- Martin Garbus, trial lawyer and author -- Doris "Granny D" Haddock, walked across the country for...

The four dozen regulars who show up weekly to protest at Edina's Alliant Techsystems come from all walks of life. Among them: nuns, college students, a surgeon and a retired chief executive officer of a major computer company. All share a commitment to civil disobedience. In nine years, there's been 176 arrests for nonviolent trespasses to protest Alliant's production of munitions. Lately, they've found something new and surprising to protest.

Associated Press CARACAS, Venezuela — Cindy Sheehan, the peace activist who just announced that she is weighing a run for Senate, plans to protest again outside President Bush's Texas ranch, Venezuela's president said today with Sheehan by his side. Hugo Chavez, his arm around Sheehan's shoulders, told a group of activists that Sheehan had told him that during Holy Week, in April, "she is going to put up her tent again in front of Mr. Danger's ranch." "She invited me to put up a tent. Maybe I'll put up my tent also," Chavez said, to applause from activists invited to...

  For Immediate Release   January 30, 2006 Hinchey, House Colleagues Urge President To Fact Check State Of The Union Address To Avoid Making False Claims Again   Members Want To Avoid Repeat Of 2003 Speech When President Falsely Stated Iraq Sought Uranium From Africa As Justification For Going To War   Washington, D.C. - On the eve of President Bush's State of the Union address, Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) led a group of 10 House members today in calling for the president to fact check his speech before delivering it to the nation on Tuesday night.  Hinchey and his colleagues...

THE museum set up by the French authorities to commemorate the D-Day landings is struggling under a mountain of debt amid a sharp decline in the number of visitors. The Memorial Museum in Caen, Normandy, has been accused of mismanagement for turning its back on the Second World War to concentrate on subjects from feminism to Father Christmas. In recent months the museum has focused efforts on transforming itself into a “place of reflection on the contemporary world”. “It’s ridiculous,” said Claude Quétel, who was sacked as the museum’s chief historian last year after protesting that it had fallen victim...

A 41-year-old peace activist who says she wanted to inspect a United States warship for weapons of mass destruction has been charged with trespassing. Margaret Pestorius, from the activist group Peace by Peace, said she and four other people went at 8.30am (AEST) yesterday to a restricted area of Trinity Wharf at Cairns, in north Queensland, where the frigate the USS Ingraham was berthed. "We were hoping to inspect it," Ms Pestorius said today. "We wanted to know what weapons were on board the ship, where the ship has been and what operations the ship is involved in." Ms Pestorius...

From Henk Ruyssenaars, a senior correspondent for the Foreign Press Foundation. FPF is a popular source for ultra-left crackpot outlets like Indymedia and Rense. CONVENIENT HEART ATTACK?Voices are raised that 'the stroke might be induced', a question which is as difficult to answer without proof, as the methods are easy. Among much other, there's this information concerning the possibilities: "Who could have chance to become such kind of assassin/murderer to create leaks on a victim's blood/brain barrier to cause cerebral hemorrhage?  That's because inducing cerebral hemorrhage is a method to quickly eliminate a victim. The victim will either have a...

Despite the attention lavished on Cindy Sheehan by the media, none of these "journalists" have bothered to ask her about her group--the Gold Star Families For Peace. If you will check out their website, you will find that it is very short on members. Of those listed besides Cindy Sheehan herself, there is only Linda Bright (who is a member of the group, but not a Gold Star Mother, apparently) and Nadia McCaffrey. That appears to be it. Two Gold Star Mothers. Two members. You may remember Nadia McCaffrey as the woman who got a lot of media attention by...

Liberal blogger Eric Brewer, who writes for the blog BTC News, wrote that a 'reporter' for Air America radio has been given a White House press pass.Brewer says he met the new 'reporter' while going through security to cover yesterday's White House briefing by Scott McClellan.The Air America reporter is identified as a lawyer from Aptos, California named Paul Sanford. A quick search shows that Mr. Sanford does have a law practice there, but according to his Website he does not have an education in journalism. However, he is a law professor which might explain his erudite debut question to...

Kathy Kelly was arrested at Senator Richard Durbin’s office in Chicago, on April 5, along with three other anti-war activists.  The Senate Appropriations Committee is to consider a spending bill on April 6 to provide nearly $80 billion more to fund the war in Iraq.  They sought a pledge from Senator Durbin to vote against the bill. Kelly was informed that that Senator Durbin will vote for the supplemental spending bill.  Kelly and her group then disrupted the operations of the senator's office by reading the names of US soldiers and Iraqi civilians who have lost their lives in...

FORT STEWART, Ga. - A soldier who said he refused to return to duty because he opposes the war in Iraq left his unit as its job became more dangerous, his commanding officer testified Thursday. Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, an infantryman with the Florida National Guard, is charged with desertion after failing to return to his unit in Iraq after a two-week furlough in October. He said his experiences in Iraq turned him against the war, and he claims he deserted his unit partly to avoid orders to abuse Iraqi prisoners. Capt. A.J. Balbo, the lead prosecutor, said in his...

Jeremiah Duggan's death baffled German police and was labelled suicide. Now, 18 months on, new evidence has prompted a reinvestigation His death at a bleak road junction in Germany seemed destined to remain shrouded in mystery. Shortly after leaving a meeting staged by far-right extremists, British student Jeremiah Duggan inexplicably ran in front of speeding traffic. Now the chain of events that led to the 22-year-old sustaining fatal head injuries early one morning on a Wiesbaden ring road are to be re-examined by police. For his mother, Erica, it is the culmination of an 18-month battle to discover what happened...

Diana Ponce talks on a phone in the yard of her San Pablo home Wednesday, the fifth day of a hunger strike to protest the gathering of armed volunteers, the Minuteman Project, at the Arizona-Mexico border to keep illegal immigrants from entering the United States. Chronicle photo by John O'Hara

When The New York Times, “Nightline,” and CNN nominate a young blonde for sainthood ahead of the Pope, it’s time for a reality check. Especially when that blonde, Marla Ruzicka’s sole purpose is to legitimize our enemies, cause problems for U.S. troops already in harms way, and morally equivocate dead terrorists with victims of 9/11. Jane Fonda lite—but unfortunately without having been spat upon by right-thinking veterans. The recent death of Ruzicka, an American “activist” in Iraq, elicited an orgy of gush—everywhere from Time Magazine to The Guardian of London to Al-Jazeera. A 28-year-old San Franciscan, Ruzicka was in Iraq...

ROME (Reuters) - An Italian aid worker held hostage last month in Iraq said guerrillas there were right to fight U.S.-led forces and their Iraqi "puppet government." In comments that were bound to annoy Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government, Simona Torretta also called on Rome to withdraw the troops it sent to Iraq to support its U.S. ally. "I said it before the kidnapping and I repeat it today," she told Corriere della Sera newspaper in an interview published Friday. "You have to distinguish between terrorism and resistance. The guerrilla war is justified, but I am against the kidnapping of...

Political road rage Wednesday, March 9, 2005 The woman escaped by hiding in this park. A woman became a road rage victim Tuesday not because of the way she drove, but because of how she voted in the last presidential election. It happened in Tampa and the entire drama was recorded during a 911 call. Officers say Nathan Winkler, 31, saw a Bush-Cheney bumper sticker on Michelle Fernandez's car and showed her a sign of his own. "He drove up next to me, with his, he has a sign hanging from his windshield, passenger window that says something about the...

I was shocked today to see a local school flying the US flag UPSIDE DOWN! And even worse this is a "Texas Exempliary School" and even worse then that is that this is an ELEMENTASRY SCHOOL!!! All these little kids get to come and go under the banner of the American left -the upside down USA Flag! School is: Southwest Independent School District Big Country Elementary 22580 Pue Road San Antonio, TX 78201 210-645-7560 They have heard from me (squeaky hispanic girl squawking something about "boosh" and "freedom of speech") and I think they should hear from every FReeper...

Since midsummer, the Senate Intelligence Committee has been attempting to solve the biggest mystery of the Iraq war: the disparity between the Bush Administration’s prewar assessment of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and what has actually been discovered. The committee is concentrating on the last ten years’ worth of reports by the C.I.A. Preliminary findings, one intelligence official told me, are disquieting. “The intelligence community made all kinds of errors and handled things sloppily,” he said. The problems range from a lack of quality control to different agencies’ reporting contradictory assessments at the same time. One finding, the official went...

 Print Copyright (c) 2005 The Daily Star   Tuesday, February 01, 2005 Bush must embrace the values of open societies By George Soros   President George W. Bush's second inaugural address set forth an ambitious vision of the role of the United States in advancing the cause of freedom worldwide, fueling worldwide speculation over the course of American foreign policy during the next four years. The ideas expressed in Bush's speech thus deserve serious consideration. "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture,"...

[snip] with the astonishing new poll released by the Military Times yesterday. That poll of 1,423 active members of the military indicates that the armed forces of the United States are passionate supporters of the Coalition's efforts in Iraq. Support for the war inside the military stands at 60 percent, 25 percent higher than the latest Gallup measurement of the American people as a whole. When it comes to President Bush's handling of the war effort, the results are even more lopsided. Only 42 percent of Americans approve, according to ABC News. In the military, Bush garners 63 percent support....

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-NY, announced on Sunday that he's introducing legislation to impeach Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. "I put in a bill for his resignation. It's shameful," Rangel told NBC's "News Forum" in New York. "Not only for his resignation, for his impeachment as well, because he would allow us to believe that he was shocked and he did not know exactly what we would be faced with [in Iraq]." Rangel blamed Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz for "advising the president to get rid of Saddam Hussein." "It's embarrassing," he complained. "Here we are, the greatest nation...

Yesterday many of us were lucky enough to hear Randi Rhodes SLAMMING Bev Harris on Err America after shilling for Bev for weeks. When I heard about this I was all excited to listen to the Randi Rhodes show rerun which is played every morning on 940 AM radio here in South Florida. However, when I listened in this morning, that interview was mysteriously GONE. I checked in on the online Randi Rhodes archives and that interview segment was also mysteriously GONE. A couple of other archive searches and the same result. The interview was edited OUT. Obviously Randi Rhodes...

Ryan Sager of the NY Post editorial board is posting quite a few interesting pictures of protests in NYC that you might otherwise not see in the MSM... an example: Take a look at his very entertaining blog at: http://www.rhsager.com/

Interesting email exchange from a good friend. He is having trouble getting Unfit for Command from Barnes and Noble. My email: “It is very disturbing that the Kerry people (and Kerry himself) are suing to silence dissenting political speech. . .the very speech the First Amendment was designed to protect. ("This is how Kerry reacts under the pressure of attack -- by trying to take away his opponents' freedom.") Clearly, Kerry thinks only speech that supports him is to be free and speech that is critical of him is not. Imagine the hoopla if Bush jokingly suggested shutting down Moore's...

<p>MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Several hundred animal rights activists -- some in their underwear, others topless -- marched through the streets of Pamplona Monday to condemn bullfighting on the eve of the Spanish city's wildly popular running of the bulls.</p>

Free spirits frolic at Fremont festivities By Diane Brooks Seattle Times staff reporter It was a great day to be naked. But we only can hope those bicyclists mixed some sunscreen with all that psychedelic body paint and glitter that so vividly depicted the flamboyant heart of Fremont. Seattle welcomed summer yesterday with its 16th annual Solstice Parade, a joyous, 75-minute celebration of all things wild and pagan. "I love it, because it's not 64 big sparkly floats with beauty queens on top waving, and people politely applauding when they go by," said volunteer traffic controller Chelsea Teller, who coordinated...

Ever wonder how the other half celebrates Earth Day at dinner? Read on...From www.earthdinner.org. I just found this so amusing. And cute! Tim & Nancy’s Family Dinner Tim and Nancy agree on a plan that will fit with their busy schedule and introduce their youngsters (3, 5, and 7) to the concepts of Earth Day. They invite several nearby relatives and ask them each to bring a picture of their favorite place on Earth. They create a simple menu with four dishes of organic foods – each representing a different element – earth, air, fire and water. When their guests...

It's about the trees, foe of logging says Activist charged in firebombings denies FBI's 'terrorist' label By ANDREW KRAMER THE ASSOCIATED PRESS VICTORIA, B.C. -- For 19 months, Tre Arrow was one of the most wanted fugitives in North America -- he was accused of firebombing logging and cement trucks in Oregon and having links to a group of radical environmentalists viewed as terrorists by the FBI. Now he's in the Vancouver Island Regional Correctional Centre, facing charges of trying to shoplift bolt cutters. He has begun a hunger strike to protest what he calls injustices in the U.S. legal...