Free Republic

1. You refine heroin for a living, but you have a moral objection to beer. 2. You own a $3,000 machine gun and $5,000 rocket launcher, but you can’t afford shoes. 3. You have more wives than teeth. 4. You wipe your butt with your bare left hand, but consider bacon “unclean.” 5. You think vests come in two styles: bullet-proof and suicide. 6. You can’t think of anyone you HAVEN’T declared Jihad against. 7. You consider television dangerous, but routinely carry explosives in your clothing. 8. You were amazed to discover that cell phones have uses other than setting...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 17, 2006 – Military might will not win the battle for Afghanistan, NATO’s top military officer said here today. Building a government that guards the liberties of its citizens, provides economic opportunities and treats all fairly before the law will do more than simple military pressure, U.S. Marine Gen. James L. Jones said during a Pentagon interview. NATO has assumed the security mission in southern Afghanistan. The alliance now has responsibility for about 80 percent of the nation and is scheduled to assume command for the rest of the country by the end of this year. Jones said...

This might not be a world war, but it still needs a sense of urgency By Niall Ferguson (Filed: 23/07/2006) This is not the first time that world leaders have had their summers ruined by "a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing". In the summer of 1938, the quarrel between Germans and Czechs over the Sudetenland - which inspired Neville Chamberlain's notorious phrase - brought Europe to the brink of war. Chamberlain's shuttle diplomacy, which saw him fly three times to see Hitler in Germany, was inspired by memories of an earlier quarrel over...

Taiwan taunts China with show of military might (Filed: 20/07/2006) Taiwan has staged its biggest live-fire army drill in 20 years, simulating a triumphant repulsion of an invading Chinese force in a display designed to send a clear message to Beijing that the country will not be cowed. Chen Shui-bian is willing to challenge China More than 13,000 soldiers took part in the exercise, which included F-16 fighter jets and 550 pieces of artillery. Tanks fired shells at targets floating on the sea as paratroopers posing as Chinese communist soldiers fell from the skies, simulating an airborne assault against key...

Week of July 15, 2006; Vol. 170, No. 3 , p. 45 Mad cow disease might linger longer Nathan Seppa A rare but deadly human illness spread by cannibalism has an incubation period in some individuals of about 4 decades, researchers in New Guinea have discovered. The finding implies that a related human illness caused by eating beef from cattle with mad cow disease could also lie dormant for many years. HEADS UP. The box shows the area in New Guinea where until the 1950s, people practiced cannibalism, a ritual that spread the prion disease kuru. S. Norcross Scientists have...

A space telescope scheduled for launch in 2007 will be sensitive enough to detect theoretical miniature black holes lurking within our solar system, scientists say. By doing so, it could test an exotic five-dimensional theory of gravity that competes with Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. That is, of course, if the tiny black holes actually exist. The idea, recently detailed online in the journal Physical Review D, is being proposed by Charles Keeton, a physicist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and Arlie Petters of Duke University in North Carolina. Branes The Randall-Sundrum braneworld model, named after the scientists...

Neptune's largest moon, Triton, was originally a member of a duo orbiting the Sun but was kidnapped during a close encounter with Neptune, a new model suggests. Triton is unique among large moons in that it orbits Neptune in a direction opposite to the planet's rotation, which long ago led scientists to speculate that the moon originally orbited the Sun. But until now, no convincing theory for how Triton paired with Neptune existed. Gravity might have pulled Triton away from its companion to make it an orbiting satellite of Neptune, researchers report in a new study published in the May...

Hint from Hamas that it might recognise Israel By Tim Butcher in Jerusalem and David Rennie in Brussels (Filed: 08/04/2006) The first indications that Hamas might recognise the right of Israel to exist emerged following intense diplomatic and economic pressure from the international community. A senior Hamas official said Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister, would discuss the idea of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate Palestinian president and Fatah leader. Ismail Haniyeh with Mahmoud Abbas in Gaza The European Commission yesterday announced a temporary halt in direct aid payments to the Hamas-controlled Palestinian...

WASHINGTON, March 14, 2006 – U.S. military might is only one piece of the solution to winning the war on terrorism, a defense official said here yesterday. "In the war on terrorism, our enemies operate globally," said Jeffrey Nadaner, deputy assistant secretary of defense for stability operations. The effort requires the help of partner nations all over the globe, he said. Those enemies find opportunity in countries with which the United States is at peace, in countries where the United States is conducting military operations, and in ungoverned areas, he told the audience attending the 17th Annual National Defense Industrial...

Jefferson might claim deals private 'Official acts' issue could play key role in case Saturday, January 21, 2006 By Bruce Alpert Washington bureau WASHINGTON -- U.S. Rep. William Jefferson's public response to the federal government's investigation of his business dealings suggests his legal defense could be that his actions were distinct and separate from his congressional responsibilities and therefore not subject to federal bribery statutes, legal experts say. The New Orleans Democrat last week said he had never requested or accepted anything to "perform a service for which I have been elected." He said he is disappointed and perplexed by...

A researcher inspects the 5,000-year-old mummy known as Oetzi in this file photo from 2000. Oetzi is kept in a sealed-off chamber which researchers now worry may have been penetrated. Updated: 10:02 p.m. ET June 13, 2005ROME - Researchers suspect the corpse of a 5,000-year-old mummy frozen in the Italian Alps might have been contaminated by bacteria since its discovery in 1991, a doctor who cares for the body said Monday.

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!

BOSTON (Oct. 22) -- Boston Mayor Thomas Menino said he was considering banning alcohol sales near Fenway Park during the World Series, following rowdy celebrations of the Red Sox's league championship that turned deadly when a police officer shot a projectile into a crowd. Menino planned to meet with bar and nightclub owners on Friday and also said he would press universities to expel students found guilty of criminal conduct in the melee. "Since people won't accept responsibility, I, as mayor, will take it into my own hands," Menino said. Emerson College student Victoria Snelgrove, 21, died on Thursday, hours...

Kerry Might Reconsider USFK Reductions: Sandy Berger WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Sandy Berger, former White House National Security Advisor and key foreign policy and security advisor to Democratic Party presidential candidate John Kerry, hinted Wednesday that should Kerry win the U.S. presidential election in November, it was possible that the decision to reduce U.S. troops in Korea would be reconsidered. In a keynote address for an international symposium entitled "Regionalism in Northeast Asia: Opportunities and Challenges," hosted by Johns Hopkins University and the Maeil Business Newspaper, Berger said USFK reductions were inappropriate, claiming that pulling 12,000 troops out of Korea at...

Brown, Schweitzer, Velazquez and testosterone By ROB NATELSON It had to happen. Just when commentators – myself included – were talking about the “feminization” of our culture, here it comes: the testosterone election! First, there was Arnold Schwarzenegger. Next a firefight bursts out between George W. Bush and John Kerry over who will be tougher on terrorism. (It’s a clue that Bush will win this election that the focus has shifted toward the traditionally “Republican” issue of national defense and away from traditionally “Democratic” issues.) Now testosterone is pumping through the Montana governor’s race via the masculine issue of guns:...

CLINTON'S PRESIDENCY: WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN Sat Jun 26, 8:00 PM ET By Cynthia Tucker Bill Clinton hopes to be acquitted by history. Fortunately for him, though, no subject of history is ever around to hear its verdict. Scholars will probably wonder what drove legions of conservatives to hate Clinton with such fury that they wasted years and spent a king's ransom trying to drive him from office. They will no doubt note that Clinton accomplished much despite the "vast right-wing conspiracy": He righted the nation's finances after decades of dangerous deficits. He drove the initiative that stopped a pogrom...

The Air Force is readying the first airborne laser weapon, which could be used to intercept Scud missiles. Mark Farmer takes you inside the project. In a starkly sanitized clean room, a stocky Lockheed Martin engineer wearing a shower cap and laboratory smock scuttles in and about black plastic curtains, talking with near-manic intensity and flashing his bright eyes and wry smile. "Want to see something really cool?" asks Paul Shattuck as he yanks back the curtains, revealing a maze of psychedelically colored optics and black anodized metal hardware. "This," he says, "is what they call the Wall of...

Doctors might be treating Saddam in bunker Tue Mar 25, 6:00 AM ET Jack Kelley USA TODAY KUWAIT CITY -- CIA operatives and Army commandos who are hunting for Saddam Hussein believe that the Iraqi leader could be in a Baghdad bunker receiving medical attention from military doctors, U.S. intelligence and military sources said Monday. ''We know we hit him. We know he was wounded'' Thursday in a missile and bomb attack on a compound south of Baghdad, said a U.S. intelligence official involved in tracking Saddam. ''We also believe he hasn't left Baghdad.'' The assessment came on a day...

Tank wrecks warn of US might By Patrick Bishop in the northern Kuwaiti desert (Filed: 10/12/2002) It looked at first, like a scrap yard, sited incongruously at the side of a lonely desert road. Then I got closer. There was something odd about the shattered, rusting trucks jumbled up in the sand. Tanks destroyed by US forces lie in the desert outside Kuwait City A glance inside the cabs confirmed first suspicions. The vehicles were mostly Russian and East German military issue - the type used by Saddam's army of occupation in Kuwait. The shrapnel gashes and splintered windscreens told...

16:00 2002-11-05 Secret American Space Planes to Dominate Planet Earth The USA has been working on secret, new- generation space planes In the beginning of the 1990s, Russian intelligence uncovered the fact that the USA was testing a super-secret plane at one of its airbases. Russian agents attempted to see the new object with their own eyes and take pictures of it, but all attempts failed. The Americans provided incredible security for their secret weapon, and they tested the plane only at night. However, Russian agents managed to get some information about the new plane, which the USA calls Aurora,...