Free Republic

AUSTIN, Texas - The state's highest criminal court has asked prosecutors to respond to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's request that the charges against him be dismissed. The all-Republican appeals court on Tuesday gave prosecutors a week to submit arguments regarding the request filed Friday by DeLay attorney Dick DeGuerin. The court will decide whether to take the case after the prosecutors' response is received. DeLay spokesman Kevin Madden issued a statement Tuesday night saying the court had agreed to hear the case. A court official said Wednesday that was incorrect. The court's order had noted DeLay has filed...

VIENNA, Austria - The European Union submitted a motion Friday to the U.N. atomic watchdog agency that sets Iran up for referral to the Security Council later this year unless Tehran halts some of its nuclear activities. Diplomats earlier said a watered-down text was likely to get Russia's support, but the motion contained a direct reference to the Security Council and held out the likelihood of referral in the coming months. Iran increased the pressure against referral to the Security Council, diplomats told The Associated Press, threatening to restart uranium enrichment — a possible pathway to nuclear arms. The diplomats,...

/begin my translationJapan: "You are drunk, too!" -- Embarrassing Accusations over Showing up Drunk at Legislature 2005/06/22 "Never drank a drop(of alcohol)!" "You look flushed. You were drinking!" Japanese lawmakers at the main session of the lower house  were engaged in exchanging embarrassing accusations over showing up drunk at the session. On June 17th, after the end of the daily session, the largest opposition party, Minshuto, submitted, to Kono Yohei, the chairman of the lower house,  a motion for reprimand against two lawmakers, including former Prime Minister Mori Yoshiro, accusing them of showing up drunk at the vote over whether to extend the legislature...

On May 16, a judge in Placer County, Calif., refused to hear a motion by medical marijuana patient Steve Kubby -- who believes he can establish compelling evidence that county authorities committed fraud in 1999 to obtain a search warrant against him. Kubby, the Libertarian Party's candidate for California governor in 1998, has lived in Canada with his wife, Michele, since he was convicted in December 2000 for drug law violations in Placer County. He used -- and still uses -- marijuana to control the symptoms of adrenal cancer, which he fought with surgery and conventional medicine before discovering that...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A federal judge has allowed the county to continue with its plans to close the trauma center at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center by denying a temporary restraining order sought by doctors and residents. The motion by Friends of King/Drew argued that the court needed to intervene immediately so community members would not be deprived of emergency medical services. The court filing rejected Thursday is part of a civil rights lawsuit alleging that closing the trauma unit would have a disproportionate affect South Los Angeles residents. Health department officials have said they need to close...

This is a sad day. Once a standardbearer of journalistic integrity, CBS News has at last completed its unfortunate transformation from news provider to partisan advocacy group. I propose a nonbinding resolution that any post of CBS material not verified by a legitimate news source should not be posted under breaking/news CBS certainly is "breaking", but that's not really "news" Does anyone wish to second the motion? Thank you for your support, A Right Hon. Balrog of Morgoth (R-Moria)

LOS ANGELES, April 2, 2004—Jody Eldred Productions today announced it has just completed filming and is in the final stages of production on an inspirational documentary called, “Changed Lives: Miracles of The Passion,” which will air nationwide Easter weekend. With rave reviews from Diane Sawyer on ABC’s “Good Morning America” and Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s “Scarborough Country,” this one-hour T.V. special was shot in High Definition and documents the true stories of people whose lives have been forever changed by Mel Gibson’s incredible motion picture “The Passion of The Christ.” “I knew instantly that people’s lives were going to be...

Motion can be conjured out of thin air, according to a physicist in Israel. Alexander Feigel of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot says that objects can achieve speeds of several centimetres an hour by getting a push from the empty space of a vacuum1. No one has yet measured anything being set in motion by emptiness. But Feigel thinks it should theoretically be possible to make use of the effect to shunt tiny amounts of liquids around on a lab chip, for example. Such small-scale experiments could be useful for chemists interested in testing thousands of different drugs...

<p>Sacramento federal prosecutors lied and misled three judges to conceal dealings between the U.S. attorney's office and a Placer County narcotics detective, a defense attorney alleges in a sealed court document. The charge arises in a marijuana case against a former Rio Linda couple and grew out of attorney William Panzer's four-year quest for information about a federal grand jury subpoena.</p>

Judge considers motion to dismiss lawsuit against Cheney, Halliburton [actual headline] DALLAS - Halliburton Co. asked a federal judge Tuesday to throw out a lawsuit charging that the company and Vice President Dick Cheney, its former chief executive, misled investors by changing the way it counted revenue from construction projects. A lawyer for Judicial Watch, a public interest group that filed the lawsuit on behalf of three small investors, said the company tried to polish its financial reports beginning in 1998 by booking revenue on cost overruns before it was certain of getting paid. Halliburton shares dropped sharply when the...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 February 9 COBE Dipole: Speeding Through the Universe Credit: DMR, COBE, NASA, Four-Year Sky Map Explanation: Our Earth is not at rest. The Earth moves around the Sun. The Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Milky Way Galaxy orbits in the Local Group of Galaxies. The Local Group falls toward the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies. But these speeds are less than the speed...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 July 30 A Star Cluster in Motion Credit: Adam Block (NOAO) Explanation: Star clusters are a swarm of complex motions. The stars that compose globular clusters and many open clusters all orbit the cluster center, occasionally interacting, gravitationally, with a close-passing star. The orbits of stars around the cluster are typically not as circular as the orbits of planets in our solar system. Cluster stars frequently fall...