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Andrew Bustamante is a former CIA covert intelligence officer. Check out his work and podcast at ...

An evidence based argument with real life situational videos for carrying a concealed pistol with a round in the chamber.

Eight siblings have been found stabbed to death in a house in Australia. The children, aged from 18 months to 15 years, were discovered by an older brother, aged 20, who arrived home to find them dead. The mass killing is not believed to be terror-related, but Prime Minister Tony Abbott said that “these are trying days for our country.” The tragedy comes just days after an armed siege in Sydney claimed the lives of two hostages and the Islamist hostage taker.

Russia Today correspondent Abby Martin accused Israel on Saturday of using “Hitler’s methods” against the Palestinian population in order to maintain a “Jewish majority” in the country. Martin, a vehemently anti-Israel correspondent for the Russian state-funded channel, alleged that "Israel is the only country in the world that was paved for a specific group of people that experienced such horrific discrimination and genocide, and for that same group of people to now use Hitler's methods against another minority to maintain a Jewish majority, is insane." The Israeli government's "word just doesn't cut it," she said, asserting the part that "irks"...

For much of this year, the Obama administration touted its tougher-than-ever approach to immigration enforcement, culminating in a record number of deportations. But in reaching 392,862 deportations, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement included more than 19,000 immigrants who had exited the previous fiscal year, according to agency statistics. ICE also ran a Mexican repatriation program five weeks longer than ever before, allowing the agency to count at least 6,500 exits that, without the program, would normally have been tallied by the U.S. Border Patrol. When ICE officials realized in the final weeks of the fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30,...

I’ve spent much of the last six weeks out on the ground, working with Iraqi and U.S. combat units, civilian reconstruction teams, Iraqi administrators and tribal and community leaders. I’ve been away from e-mail a lot, so unable to post here at SWJ: but I’d like to make up for that now by providing colleagues with a basic understanding of what’s happening, right now, in Iraq. This post is not about whether current ops are “working” — for us, here on the ground, time will tell, though some observers elsewhere seem to have already made up their minds (on the...

Moscow, October 6, Interfax – The existence of God has been proved by scientific methods, Academician Anatoly Akimov, director of the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Physics, has stated. ‘There is God, and we can see the manifestations of His will. This is the opinion of many scientists; they not only believe in the Creator but rely on certain knowledge’, he said in an interview published by the Moskovsky komsomolets daily on Friday. The scientist noted that in the past centuries very many physicists believed in God. Moreover, until Isaac Newton, there was no separation between science and religion; science...

MARINE CORPS RECRUIT DEPOT SAN DIEGO (Aug. 18, 2006) -- Since August 2005, almost every drill instructor who has graduated from Drill Instructor School here has attended the Instructors’ Course at the depot’s Marine Corps Martial Arts Program facility. The course is designed to give drill instructors more knowledge and experience with the materials taught in MCMAP before they teach it to the recruits. “Instructors’ courses are recommended for all drill instructors to make them more proficient in MCMAP to help the recruits out,” said Staff Sgt. Jeff J. Vandentop, course instructor on the depot. A minimum of a gray...

7:27 am PT, Thursday, Jan 26, 2006 Using New Methods, Oregon State University Archaeologists Uncover 10,000-Year-Old Coastal Site By Mark Floyd, 541-737-0788/OSU CORVALLIS, Oregon - Researchers from Oregon State University have analyzed a second archaeological site on the southern Oregon coast that appears to be about 10,000 years old, and they are hopeful that their newly fine-tuned methodology will lead to the discovery of more and older sites. Results of their study were just published in the journal Radiocarbon. The site, located on a bluff just south of Bandon, Ore., included a large number of stone flakes, charcoal pieces and...

The terrorist attacks on London's transportation system place recent reports of American soldiers' abuse of detainees at Guantanamo in a new perspective: They illustrate the unintended consequences of absolute prohibitions and generalizations about the treatment of prisoners. The Pentagon's own investigations reveal that incidents at Guantanamo include the chaining of a detainee to the ground in an interrogation cell, another inmate silenced with adhesive tape over his mouth, and a female interrogator pretending to smear menstrual blood on a prisoner's face. The treatment of one important prisoner — Mohamed al-Qahtani, a Saudi who has admitted being the so-called 20th hijacker...

When it comes to the classroom, religious extremists have an ambitious agenda: to replace science with ideology at every opportunity. As if denying even that their own ideas can evolve, they've recently taken up their dusty arms against an old, familiar issue — the teaching of evolution in public schools. New Name, Same Agenda The supposed rival to the theory of evolution — creationism — now goes by the new name of "intelligent design." Just as with other phrases (like the Bush administration favorite, "culture of life"), the name change is merely the latest tactic in an ongoing strategy by...

A chorus of democrats has begun to sing a song written by New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, whose lyrics included a line suggesting that we should close the Guantanamo Bay detention center because of alleged failings in how we treat the prisoners' holy books. First, we gave them food, then clean clothing, then supplied all the prisoners with copies of the Koran, one for each prisoner. We gave them the time and place to bathe, to ponder and to pray. Then, it comes out that one, two, maybe three times over a span of three years (that would be...

Researcher Develops Methods to Test Artifacts' Links to the Bible Newswise — A Purdue University professor has invented a system to judge whether ancient inscriptions refer to people in the Bible. Lawrence Mykytiuk (MICK-ee-took) uses the system to test whether archaeological inscriptions refer to ancient Hebrew kings such as David, Omri, Jeroboam II, Uzziah and other Old Testament personages such as Mesha and the high priest Hilkiah. The system and results are detailed in his new book, "Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions of 1200-539 B.C.E." (Society of Biblical Literature, $42.95). Mykytiuk's work steps outside the conflict between two...

In reading Letters to the Editor in many newspapers, I find that there are many people who try to compare the Terrorist war with WWII and want us to treat captured terrorists the same way we treated German POWs in the 40s. As a WWII combat veteran, I can state that with all previous wars, we had national, uniformed nations fighting each other. Even with bombings, civilians had sufficient warnings so that they could escape to bomb shelters whether in London or Berlin. Prisoners of war were treated with the Geneva accords in mind. Today none of this “gentlemen’s war”...

At some point, perhaps in the not too distant future, the Terri Schiavo case may prove to be the seminal event that sparked the final days of the once-respected and essential soul of America. That which makes the Terri Schiavo case and controversy unique is neither that she has been on feeding and hydration tubes, nor that they were removed so that she would finally and inexorably die. Rather, it is that we, as a nation, have been intimately involved in the death watch and a media event…that of the murder of an innocent woman. I have heard estimates that...

N.C. study: Germs can't fight soap, water Researchers test hand-washing methods The Associated Press Posted on Sat, Mar. 12, 2005 CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - Mom was right. A new study by infection-control specialists at UNC Hospitals confirms that the best way to get germs off your hands is with plain old soap and water. The researchers tested 14 hand-hygiene agents plus tap water against specific bacteria and viruses applied to the hands of 62 adult volunteers. Soap and water, or microbial soap and water, proved the most effective at removing viruses and bacteria. "Based on these findings, I'd put my...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

The Interview The Democrats had decided that they needed to hire a polling organization to make the best determination of where John Kerry stood in the polls. After extensive research they narrowed field down to three candidates: Rasmussen, Gallup and Zogby. The three organizations were invited to a final interview. The first candidate, Rasmussen was asked: “Where does John Kerry stand in the polls?” The representatives from Rasmussen then went into a 45-minute presentation by three different people on polling methodology, registered voters vs. likely voters, statistical analysis and past history of his organization. The Democrats were impressed, but proceeded...

As your father, I believe I owe it to you to share some thoughts on the present world situation. We have over the years discussed a lot of important things, like going to college, jobs and so forth. But this really takes precedence over any of those discussions. I hope this might give you a longer-term perspective that fewer and fewer of my generation are left to speak to. To be sure you understand that this is not politically flavored, I will tell you that since Franklin D. Roosevelt, who led us through pre and WWII (1933 - 1945) up...

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld defended military interrogation techniques in Iraq (news - web sites) on Wednesday, rejecting complaints that they violate international rules and may endanger Americans taken prisoner. Rumsfeld told a Senate committee that Pentagon (news - web sites) lawyers had approved methods such as sleep deprivation and dietary changes as well as rules permitting prisoners to be made to assume stress positions. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also noted that the rules require prisoners to be treated humanely at all times. But Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill. said some of the...