Free Republic

The number: Factory orders of 0.1% have come in a bit lighter than expected, and the number is down from 0.6% in June.

If the "corrected" story is true, wouldn’t we be having these kinds of terror alerts every day? Sometime early Monday, the Department of Homeland Security — America’s multi-billion dollar national security net — determined that two male travelers of Yemeni descent had boarded United Airlines Flight 908 and were headed to Amsterdam. DHS notified the federal air marshals on board — a message would have gone through the United Airlines pilots as federal air marshals are prohibited from using electronic devices on airplanes while in flight. Making things even more dramatic, DHS notified Dutch police who, once the plane had...

“It is possible for us to get a financial tax around the world.”

The Delaware GOP does not like Christine O'Donnell. Christine O'Donnell has surfaced as a credible challenger to the longtime frontrunner in the Senate race, Congressman Mike Castle, and the Delaware GOP is not happy about it. O'Donnell has been buoyed by an endorsement from Tea Party Express, which will try to spend about $250,000 on her behalf, and, just like that, the GOP's safe candidate is now considered to face a credible threat. Since that endorsement on Monday, the Delaware GOP hasn't had such nice things to say about her. "By no stretch of the imagination is Christine O'Donnell somebody...

September 2, 2010 4:00 A.M. After November To the victor go the spoils; this year’s spoils are enormous. Presume, for a moment, that Republicans have a really good election cycle this year: Control of the House shifts away from the Democrats, and a Republican (John Boehner?) prepares to become speaker. The Democrats lose, or almost manage to lose, control of the Senate (which they hold today by a nine-seat margin). Republican governors-elect and state legislators–elect prepare to take their oaths in state capitols across America. What will our political landscape look like if that comes to pass? The U.S. House...

Housing Numbers - Are They Being Cooked?September 1,2010 The Market Ticker Karl Denninger I have a very disturbing email that came in this evening. It alleges out-and-out fraudulent reporting of home sales in one of the regional MLS systems. That is, prices paid that are in fact much lower than the "sold" prices reported in the MLS. The person in question claims to have seen over 100 of these in his area. I have copies of two, and it appears, from the evidence that I have, that at least for those two the claim is accurate. One in particular I...

Can the "violent extremists are only found on the right" stereotype finally be put to rest? James Jay Lee, an environmental activist and self-described "world guardian", was shot and killed in a hostage standoff. Mr. Lee entered the headquarters of The Discovery Channel in Silver Spring, Maryland with a handgun and canisters resembling explosives strapped to his body. Thankfully, Lee's three hostages were not harmed. James Jay Lee was a tortured soul. What tortured him was the belief that the Earth was doomed by the proliferation of "human parasites" and the environmental damage caused by "civilization's filth". We can feel...

The Park51 mosque and community center near Ground Zero is not Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s first venture into real estate development. As The Record reports, beginning in the late 1970s, Rauf acquired five apartment buildings in Union City, North Bergen, and Palisades Park, all urban areas along the New Jersey bank of the Hudson River. He developed the properties with the help a series of government grants and loans totaling in the millions — including $384,000 in 1989 endorsed by Sen. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.), then mayor of Union City, and $1,295,000 underwritten by then Hudson County executive Robert C....

A federal civil rights agency sued Abercrombie & Fitch on Wednesday on behalf of an 18-year-old woman who said she applied for her first job at the company's store at the Great Mall in Milpitas and was turned down because she wore a Muslim headscarf. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission went to court against Abercrombie & Fitch last year over a similar incident in Tulsa, Okla. In Wednesday's suit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, the agency again accused the Ohio company of discriminating on the basis of religion. "This retailer that targets a youth market is sending...

KABUL - With Afghans clamoring to pull their cash from their nation's biggest bank, the United States risks a politically perilous decision: whether to step in to help shore up a wobbly bank critical not only to Afghanistan's economy but also to the battle against the Taliban. [snip] On Thursday morning, scores of Afghans again flooded the Kabul Bank offices to withdraw their savings. The scene was crowded but orderly. At one branch, where government employees were trying to cash their paychecks, the bank staff declared a limit of $1,000 per customer. [snip] Still the uncertainty was taking its toll....

The military has arrested Air Force Sgt. David Gutierrez, a 20-year military veteran accused of having unprotected sex with partners he met at "swinger" parties in central Kansas, even though he knew he was HIV positive. The Air Force Office of Special Investigations said Tuesday the 43-year-old airman has not been charged but was ordered into pretrial confinement at a military jail on McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita by his commander while the investigation continues. Gutierrez was arrested Aug. 9 and was expected to be charged in mid-September, said Air Force OSI spokeswoman Linda Card. Under military law, having...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Six in 10 American “Millennials” – those born between 1980 and 1991 – see nothing wrong with two people of the same gender getting married. But men, African-Americans and Southerners are least comfortable among their peers with same-sex marriage, and for the most part Christian Millennials oppose it. These are the findings from a LifeWay Research study for an upcoming book by Thom Rainer, president of LifeWay Christian Resources, and son Jess Rainer titled “The Millennials: Connecting to America’s Largest Generation.” The book is based on a wide-ranging August 2009 survey of 1,200 Millennials in the United...

"People should understand: Those who drink, those who smoke are doing more to help the state," Kudrin said according to a translation provided by Interfax news. New taxes on cigarettes were passed in June, Agence France Presse reported, and once they're fully implemented by 2013, the state's take per 1000 cigarettes will double to $19.20. Next year's portion of that hike should raise the average cost of a pack of smokes by about nine cents, according to a tobacco industry website. Russian cigarettes currently sell for about $1.40 a pack. Drinking is getting more expensive, too. By 2013, heavier alcohol...

PARIS (AP) -- American officers are taking up posts at Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport to help identify potential terrorists or other high-risk passengers heading to the United States. Officers from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Immigration Advisory Program joined French airport personnel Thursday. U.S. officers are working at airports in seven other countries under the program. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security expanded the program after an attempted terrorist attack by a passenger on an Amsterdam-Detroit flight last Christmas Day.

Federal regulators are seeking public input on what rules should apply to wireless Internet access and specialized services that aren't part of the Internet but are delivered over wired broadband connections. The move by the Federal Communications Commission marks the next step in the agency's long-running effort to adopt so-called "network neutrality" regulations to prevent broadband providers from discriminating against traffic flowing over their lines. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, as well as many big Internet companies, say these rules are needed to prevent phone and cable companies from abusing their control over high-speed Internet access to become online gatekeepers. But...

The local Alton, Illinois chapter of the Coffee Party was told to meet elsewhere after they scheduled a Muslim Speaker for a September 11 meeting. They told the owner of the coffee shop that they were non-political and non-religious. He told them to get lost. Local KMOV has the report:

Thilo Sarrazin's comments about Muslims have triggered outrage in Germany and abroad, but have met with willing listeners among the general public. His rhetoric is slowly bringing about change in Germany, transforming it from a tolerant society into one dominated by fear and Islamophobia. ***more Socially Acceptable The Turkish-German writer and sociologist Necla Kelek made a speech at the presentation of Sarrazin's book on Monday in which she defended his ideas. Kelek is a fan of Sarrazin and has won several awards in Germany, bestowed by people who -- like her -- see all the problems of the world as...

... I am issuing a personal call to action for the American people, for conservatives, for tea party supporters, for independents and independent-thinkers, and democrats disillusioned by their once proud party of John F. Kennedy, an Irish-Catholic and a strong anti-Communist: In 2010, we need to take back the houses of Congress from those that forced through Obamacare, government take-over of financial institutions, and American companies in general. ... In 2012: We need to take back the Victory Mosque, formerly known as the White House. Now, some in to the political Left might not be happy about the idea that...

This week in Sunday school, we talked about how character is passed down from parents to children through stories, experiences and practice. Every family has different stories -- the life narratives that describe what they have lived through, where they came from, and how they acted and reacted. These stories and experiences provide a foundation, an understanding of what the family values. This creates their underlying belief system. This understanding then underpins how we act in our daily lives. In my family, it's my mother's story of completing college in three years, taking extra classes and studying during the summer,...

For nearly 18 months, I woke up at 4 a.m. with my all-too-alert toddler son. Three hours later, when my Swedish wife left for the day, I would set out a second breakfast and then dress the boy and his 4-year-old sister and walk them to her state-subsidized preschool. Then my boy and I would go build sand castles in one of five nearby neighborhood parks ... I am not unemployed, and I am not a stay-at-home dad. I've got a "real" job; I just haven't gone to the office since last December. In total, I've spent 18 of the...

As past statements of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf continue to surface, many Americans have concluded that the would-be builder of a mosque at Ground Zero is lying when he calls himself a “moderate” representative of his faith. The more disturbing possibility, however, is that he’s telling the truth — that Rauf is indeed the voice of mainstream Islam. One indication is the resounding silence from the rest of the Islamic community. If that community were truly moderate — as we in the West understand the term — one might expect it to distance itself from a man who blames the...

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) conceded her primary race Tuesday night. And despite the crowing from the enviro left and the climate-skeptic right, this is bad news. Covering energy issues, I've often disagreed with Murkowski and her staff, particularly on whether the Environmental Protection Agency should have the authority to regulate carbon emissions. But she is one of the last few Republicans in Congress who favors addressing climate change robustly. She has even -- in her tortured, elected-from-a-deep-red-state way -- favored putting a price on carbon emissions, a rational policy that the rest of her party has demagogued to death with...

Al Gore's Poison By Brian Sussman Wednesday, a gun wielding, bomb toting, eco-terrorist-who claimed to have been "awakened" by Al Gore's Oscar winning film, An Inconvenient Truth-was shot and killed by police after holding several people hostage inside the Discovery Channel headquarters in Maryland. Sadly, it's not the first incident of someone going berserk after taking in Gore's work. This time it was Jason Jay Lee. In a manifesto posted online, Lee stated, "Focus must be given on how people can live without giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution." He also declared we...

PERTH, Australia, Sept. 2 (UPI) -- A Western Australia court, in a landmark decision, has ruled that transsexual "men" are, in fact, women. The ruling came on an appeal of gender legislation by Attorney General Christian Porter. The legislation, passed by the Western Australia State Parliament in 1999, permitted the state Gender Reassignment Board to issue a certificate when a person "demonstrates a belief in the gender they have been reassigned," along with other factors, such as receiving counseling. The appeal prohibits two female-to-male transsexuals from being recognized as men, the West Australian reported Thursday. The case hinged on the...

The US Department of Justice is suing Arizona, again. This from the Washington Post: "The suit against the Phoenix area Maricopa Community Colleges was filed less than two months after the Justice Department sued Arizona and Gov. Jan Brewer (R) over the state's new immigration law. It also comes as the department is investigating Joe Arpaio, the sheriff in Maricopa County, who is known for tough immigration enforcement."

James Lee, was killed by police discovery channel hostage

In George Orwell’s brilliant novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, one of the characters, Syme, in discussing the nature of Newspeak, says “It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.” Newspeak was a systematic attempt by the dictators of Oceania, a totalitarian society eerily similar to North Korea, to control thought by eliminating words that gave rise to ideas they disapproved. What Syme and Orwell are talking about is that the destruction of words is the destruction of ideas. There is a parallel to this in contemporary economic thought. Mainstream economists, Keynesians, Neo-Keynesians, and Neoclassicists, would have you believe that what common sense...

A man from Brisbane has finally spotted 'UFO', after spending 30 years on searching for one. Erik Black, 49, who has been interested in UFOs since he was a child, revealed that he had only heard or read about them and had never seen a "real one" until 2010 election night. "I have been researching UFOs for almost all my life and every time I came to the Northern Territory for holidays I read a UFO story in the newspaper, so I thought the NT was the place to be," the Courier Mail quoted him as telling the NT News....

Unfortunately for people who believed in the American dream of the large suburban house, two cars, and a yard with a white picket fence, the real estate bust hit suburbia far more than densely urban populations. Fringe housing in most metro areas lost almost twice the value than corresponding “walkable urban” areas.According to an American Conservative article some metro areas saw the highest housing values shift from suburban neighborhoods like Great Falls in the Washington suburbs or Highland Ranch south of Denver in 2000, to walkable urban neighborhoods, like Dupont Circle in Washington or LODO in downtown Denver, in 2010.So...

The Barack Obama that most Hoosiers remember voting for can still be found on YouTube. He stands before a cheering Elkhart high school gymnasium in August 2008, tireless, aspirational, promising a new America of jobs and hope. "We can choose another future," says the newcomer with the funny name. "So I ask you to join me." Today that view of Obama is harder to find in Indiana. A couple of weeks back and a dozen miles west of Elkhart, hundreds gathered in another school gym - except this time it was for a job fair. With the local unemployment rate...

– The Italian government has refused to grant official recognition to Islam in the tax code, citing polygamy that is sanctioned by Muslims and the religion’s failure to uphold women’s rights. The decision has to do with a bill that would allocate and distribute 8 percent of tax revenue to organized religions in the country. COREIS, one of Italy’s largest Muslim groups, responded to the decision saying, “Work should be begun on legally recognising those moderate Muslims who have for years shown themselves to be reliable interlocutors who are free of and fundamentalist ideology.”The bill proposes to expand the allocation of state...

The number of people requesting unemployment benefits declined for the second straight week, suggesting that the slowing economy isn't prompting widespread job cuts. New claims for unemployment aid fell last week by 6,000 to a seasonally adjusted 472,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. Economists had expected a slight increase, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters. The four-week average of claims, a less-volatile measure, fell by 2,500 to 485,500, its first decrease after four straight increases. Even with the declines, claims are still at much higher levels than they would be in a healthy economy. When economic output is growing...

A random walk among issues currently in the news.... Comes now Big Brother. Not only do state and local governments have unfunded retirement obligations totaling at least $2 trillion. Also, of the 50 states, at least 31 are insolvent. So, with states and localities facing such massive debt issues, why put a gun to their heads and force them to bargain collectively with police, fire, and emergency personnel? It's a unionist priority, and the Senate is expected to vote soon on the blandly named Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act. Passage would mean federal overriding of state laws principally in the...

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 29% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-two percent (42%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -13

How the Media Used to Treat Sarah Palin By Stacy Drake After discussing with a friend, the horrid hit-piece from Michael Joseph Gross in this week's Vanity Fair, he reminded me of an old article published by a different magazine, from a different time. Back in February 2008, Vogue featured a much different sort of article about Governor Palin. The piece was titled "Altered State" and it highlighted many different elements of the governor's life, both personal and professional. The beginning of the piece says a lot about who exactly Sarah Palin is as a person, and how the media...

>Middle East peace talks to resolve the so-called Israeli-Palestinian crisis have been coming and going most of my adult life and I’m no spring chicken — free range or otherwise. And now here they are again! But this time, as opposed to all those other times, the AP’s Robert Burns informs us, “the stakes are high.� Well, yes… but maybe not in the way Burns intended. What’s really going on here? Let’s do a thought experiment. The last time a hopeful world got transfixed by this roundelay (although this time it might not be paying much attention anyway) was back...

Hey President Obama, I found your “recovery!” It was hidden among the theater seats and swimming pools at Newton North High. With yesterday’s news that the private sector “unexpectedly”(!) lost another 10,000 jobs last month, and the U.S. auto industry having its worst August in 28 years, the White House buzz about “recovery summer” may seem odd to some. Heck, I know people who just shake their heads and change their voter registration when they hear Vice President Joe Biden insist that there’s “no doubt we’re moving in the right direction” economically. And with Herald headlines like “Joblessness blamed for...

In this film, you can ad to my count, Cons 2-Libs 0. To quote the YouTube site: The Runaway Slave movie crews were at Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor Rally” and at Al Sharpton’s “Reclaiming the Dream March” on Aug 28th. As the two ideologies clashed in DC, our movie crews were on the scene. In this raw footage, shot near the future MLK memorial site, Black Conservatives leaving the “Restoring Honor” rally encounter Sharpton’s protestors who were holding signs claiming “Tea Party Racism.” This is just one of debates that we captured after the rally had ended. Read more: http://religiopoliticaltalk.com/2010/09/some-black-conservatives-mixing-it-up-with-some-sharpton-liberals-awesome-cons-2-libs-0/

5,000 in Texas call for change in direction of energy policy. More than 5,000 energy sector workers flocked to three Texas rallies Wednesday to protest what they view as an onslaught of punitive measures from Washington that threaten oil and gas jobs and domestic energy supplies. In speeches and videos, speaker after speaker blasted the White House's temporary ban on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, enacted after the massive BP oil spill, and urged lawmakers to reconsider other proposed measures they say would boost taxes and business costs in coming years. "Mr. President, there are 9 million people...

WASHINGTON -- What is your vision of a university? Is it the classic vision, with profs walking the ivy-clad pathways, their books under their arms? Perhaps they wear tweed coats and smoke pipes -- not the lady profs, but the men. The ladies dress accordingly, and maybe they smoke pipes. All pore over their books for hours and impart their knowledge to a select body of students. Not the mob that today is forced -- rather cruelly -- to attend classes in remedial education to make up for what they missed in high school, very elementary things, such as reading...

THE VILLAGES — Renee Braun laughed as she read the introduction to the cover story in the September issue of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association magazine. “Yes, it should be The Villages,” exclaimed the Village of Summerhill resident who volunteers as the service officer for the association’s Orange Blossom Chapter 2234, serving The Villages and surrounding communities. “It definitely should be.” The Villages emerged as the “runaway favorite” among the 600 or so association members who responded to a magazine survey for a story on the best retirement communities.

The Big Bang was the result of the inevitable laws of physics and did not need God to spark the creation of the Universe, Stephen Hawking has concluded. In his latest book, The Grand Design, an extract of which is published in Eureka magazine in The Times, Hawking said: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.” “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the...

Ten civilians have been killed in a Nato airstrike on vehicles carrying election workers in northern Afghanistan, according to Afghan President Hamid Karzai. President Karzai strongly condemned the strike on Thursday, which he said had killed 10 campaigners working for a candidate in this month's election. Nato said the attack, in the northeastern province of Takhar's Rustaq district, was believed to have killed or wounded at least 12 insurgents, including two commanders. The alliance said it was aware of President Karzai's claims and was investigatiing. News of the attack coincided with the arrival in Kabul of US Defence Secretary Robert...

When then-Sen. Barack Obama visited the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board in 2008, I had one question for him: Which Democratic candidate for president would be best at keeping Iraq from imploding? "That would be me," Obama answered. He called Operation Iraqi Freedom "an enormous strategic mistake." Nonetheless, Obama also noted that, once the war had begun, "We had an obligation to fund our troops and to try to make this work as best we can." And: "Once we were in, we had some obligation, both strategic and humanitarian, to stabilize the country, and that we should be as careful...

Listen Live: Sound Off Connecticut with Jim Vicevich 9 a.m. to noon ET (Daily Thread)Sound Off Connecticut is a popular conservative/libertarian call in talk show hosted by Jim Vicevich weekday mornings from 9 a.m. to noon ET. Although based in Connecticut, the show welcomes callers from all over the United States! This is your chance to sound off America! Call into the show toll free (800) 966-9842! Listen to the LIVE AUDIO STREAM at http://wtic.com - it's free and NO registration is required! If you're in southern New England listen over the air to WTIC 1080 AM, the 50,000 watt...

(CNSNews.com) – The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is putting some of the blame on both the Tea Party and the Republican Party for what it sees as a growing tide of anti-Muslim anger.  CAIR officials said the rise in “Islamophobia” stems from the controversy surrounding the Islamic center and mosque that Muslims plan to build a few blocks from Ground Zero.   “We’ve seen a really strong uptick in Islamophobia recently – primarily sparked by the controversy over the Manhattan Islamic center,” Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s chief spokesman, told reporters at a press conference Wednesday. “We’ve seen hate vandalism at...

Tales From The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York PostFour young civilians — human beings, fathers, mothers, one of whom was also pregnant, collectively the parents of seven children — were brutally gunned down by armed, masked terrorists. Their murders were openly celebrated in the streets by their attackers and by thousands of their supporters.You would think that the world would recoil in horror — or that those who report the news, worldwide, would do so. Think again. These four precious souls were Israeli “settlers” and, as such, have already been so demonized that they are...

News Wednesday afternoon that an armed gunman had entered the cable TV headquarters of Discovery Communications in Silver Spring, Maryland and begun taking hostages alarmed people throughout the Washington, D.C. area and around the country. As law enforcement officials negotiated with the suspect, posts on social media outlets inevitably began arguing over the ideological motivations of the hostage-taker, James J. Lee. Conservatives were quick to point out the suspect's radical environmentalist manifesto, while left-leaning sources disclaimed any connection. News a few hours later that the suspect had been shot and killed by police spawned a round of smug black humor,...

Like hundreds of thousands of others, I attended the Glenn Beck “Restoring Honor” rally on the Mall in Washington, D.C. last Saturday. The crowds were massive. I figured the best way to document the size and scope of the crowd was in one continuous video shot, no cuts, no edits, walking from the back to the front. The walk took over 43 minutes. Starting at the Washington Monument as people continued to pour in at 10:00 am, walking through the crowds using the hill at the monument as amphitheater seating, I made my way through the crowd and to the...

Tom Barrett had it right earlier this year when the Democratic candidate for governor proposed eliminating the offices of secretary of state and state treasurer. We'll see those two offices and raise Barrett one more: lieutenant governor. The Editorial Board will not make recommendations for these offices this year. We believe that all three should be eliminated and the duties, such as they are, folded into other offices and departments. To do this requires changing the state constitution, which isn't easy, but it would be worth it. Our view has nothing to do with the current occupants or with the...