Free Republic

ALERT: Rush was admitted to a Honolulu hospital today and is resting comfortably after suffering chest pains. Rush appreciates your prayers and well wishes. He will keep you updated via RushLimbaugh.com and on Thursday's radio program.

Joel Hill at the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office say 50 year old Michael Varnadore got into an argument with his mother Mary Jean Varnadore Monday night that resulted in a shooting. The report says Varnadore shoved his 70 year old mother onto a bed at her home on Star Circle in Cowpens. Deputies say The mother shot Varnadore in the leg. They say Varnadore was treated and released for Upstate Carolina Medical Center and was arrested and charged with assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature.

HONOLULU -- Conservative radio talk host Rush Limbaugh was rushed to a Honolulu hospital on Wednesday afternoon with chest pains, sources told KITV. Paramedics responded to the call at 2:41 p.m. at the Kahala Hotel and Resort. Limbaugh suffered from chest pains, sources said. Paramedics treated him and took him to Queen's Medical Center in serious condition. He was seen golfing at Waialae Country Club earlier this week. The country club is next to the Kahala Hotel and Resort. The radio show host had been in the islands during the holidays. Coincidentally, his visit comes at a time when two...

IVANA TRUMP ESCORTED OFF PLANE: NAPOLITANO DECLARES 'THE SYSTEM WORKED'December 30, 2009In response to a Nigerian Muslim trying to blow up a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day, the government will now prohibit international travelers from going to the bathroom in the last hour before the plane lands. Terrorists who plan to bomb planes during the first seven hours of the eight-hour flight, however, should face no difficulties, provided they wait until after the complimentary beverage service has been concluded. How do they know Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab didn't wait until the end of the flight to try to...

The Freeper Canteen Wishes Everyone Eve! **Click Here** NEW YEAR WISHES May peace fill all the empty spaces around you And in you, may contentment answer all your wishes. May comfort be yours, warm and soft like a sigh. And may the coming year show you that every day is really a first day, a new year. Let abundance be your constant companion, so that you have much to share. May mirth be near you always, like a lamp shining brightly on the many paths you travel. ~~Diana Krall - What Are You Doing New Years Eve~~ ~~Guy Lombardo...

After the Christmas Day near disaster in Detroit, it is time for Americans to demand effective anti-terrorist actions. Over eight years after 9/11 and 30 years after the Iranian illegal seizure of the United States embassy and the 444 day Iranian hostage crisis, Washington is still avoiding being intellectually honest about the war we are in. Our Politically Correct Government is Making Life More Miserable For the Innocent America is long overdue for a serious global strategy that includes targeting threats such as the terrorist killer at Fort Hood, the individuals recently arrested in Detroit, Denver and New York, and...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US telecom giant AT&T has asked US regulatory authorities to waive a requirement that it and other carriers maintain costly landline networks. AT&T, the oldest US telephone company, made the request in a filing last week with the Federal Communications Commission in which it also asked the FCC to set a "firm deadline" for phasing out wireline service. "The business model for legacy phone services is in a death spiral," AT&T said. "With an outdated product, falling revenues, and rising costs, the plain-old telephone service (POTS) business is unsustainable for the long run."

Surfing channels when FOX had a commercial break, landed on headline about Rush on NBC. They are using a "couch" and also have a blue background. It looks like they are trying to be FOX. HA ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha - If they ever start reporting the truth like FOX it will be they were bought by FOX

Texas Tech Coach Mike Leach has lost his job and his reputation because he didn't treat the subject of concussions with the appropriate cringing political correctness, or the son of an influential TV star with enough soft deference. You can hear the sound of a railroading in Lubbock, and it's not coming from the train station. At first it was easy to view Leach as just another backward brute of a football coach, based on the superficial news reports. Wide receiver Adam James, son of ESPN analyst Craig James, accused Leach of mistreating him after he suffered a mild concussion...

President Barack Obama continued his low-key holiday vacation, spending several hours at the secluded North Shore home of a high school friend. The day-long outing yesterday to the Mokuleia beachfront home of Punahou School classmate Bobby Titcomb came on a dark day, as eight Americans and five Canadians were killed in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan. World events are likely to interrupt Obama's holiday vacation again today.

This is a public service announcement from your friendly neighborhood Admin Moderators (Sidebar gave us some attitude so we shoved him in the closet for a while. He never recovered from the Yacht incident) For a while, we have noticed some things happening that we need your help with. The Free Republic community is strong; we are almost a family, albeit very dysfunctional at times. Like any community, we have new members joining us daily. Unfortunately, the air of suspicion and the desire to keep things “the way they are” has fostered a feeling of distrust with new members. Almost...

The original sin of the good-riddance decade came in December of 2000, when the United States Supreme Court intervened to stop a complete recount of the votes in Florida and then declared George Bush to be the president. This extreme judicial activism was not merely a devastating assault on American democracy. It set in motion the Bush presidency, and with it the pathologies that the Bush-Cheney administration imposed on the country in the form of unnecessary wars, failed economic policies, assaults on civil liberties and crudely divisive and hyper-partisan governance. Bush, Dick Cheney and aides are surely to blame for...

Let’s get it straight, behind all the hubbub and noise, the international trips and summits, the TV specials and constant addresses to the nation and any other nation that would let him in, the huge spending plans and the photoshoots—Barack Hussein Obama has accomplished only one thing in his first year in office. Obama’s only real accomplishment is that he took hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money, and directed them to his donors on Wall Street, in the unions and the insurance industry. Barry Hussein took in nearly 15 million dollars in donations from securities and investments companies,...

One of the most bizarre things that’s happened to us in the last two years were the occasions when Rush Limbaugh read things we wrote on the air and called us “those HillBuzz babes in Chicago”. One of our friends was driving in her car, listening to him live on the radio, and had to pull over, because she couldn’t believe her ears. Being lifelong moderate Democrats, people who DESPISED Limbaugh in high school, college, and most our adulthood, our friend realized at that moment how surreal things had become, with worlds colliding left and right. “Dear God in Heaven,...

As GOPers begin increasingly using the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner to score political points, 2 Dems are blaming the Bush admin for events that led directly to the failed attack. While many Dems stay silent and let the WH lead the way, DCCC chair Chris Van Hollen and Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) say the previous admin let down their guard. "In general, we are facing the consequences of the Bush administration's failures to deal with al Qaeda," Van Hollen told Hotline OnCall. "The Republicans have no business in pointing fingers at the Obama administration on terrorism and national...

The possible primary race for John McCain's U.S. Senate seat is getting more colorful. Former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, contending that former U.S. Rep. J.D. Hayworth is violating campaign laws by promoting his possible bid on his radio talk show. "There's no problem with someone in his position talking about the issues of the day and the issues that are important to the country, but essentially, you've got a situation where Hayworth is spending hour after hour, day after day, promoting his possible candidacy for the U.S. Senate while a...

Republican attorneys general in 13 states say congressional leaders must remove Nebraska's political deal from the federal health care reform bill or face legal action, according to a letter provided to The Associated Press Wednesday. "We believe this provision is constitutionally flawed," South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster and the 12 other attorneys general wrote in the letter to be sent Wednesday night to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "As chief legal officers of our states we are contemplating a legal challenge to this provision and we ask you to take action to render this...

UPDATE: Shreveport Police are still searching for a man who they believe is responsible for a deadly home invasion shooting in Cedar Grove Tuesday morning. 23-year-old Jerome Hughes is still on the run Wednesday and police need your help in capturing him. Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Jerome Hughes to call Shreveport Crime Stoppers at (318) 673-7373. SHREVEPORT, LA (KSLA) – Shreveport police have impounded a car believed to belong to the surviving suspect in Tuesday's deadly home invasion in Cedar Grove. Acting on a tip, police found the an '80s model blue Chevy Caprice in the 100...

The National Security Agency four months ago intercepted conversations among leaders of Al Qaeda in Yemen discussing a plot to use a Nigerian man for a coming terrorist attack, but American spy agencies later failed to combine the intercepts with other information that might have disrupted last week’s attempted airline bombing. The electronic intercepts were translated and disseminated across classified computer networks, government officials said on Wednesday, but analysts at the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington did not synthesize the eavesdropping intelligence with information gathered in November when the father of the would-be bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, visited the United...

No institution of modern life commands as much veneration as democracy. It comes closer than anything else to being the supreme object of adoration in a global religion. Anyone who denies its righteousness and desirability soon finds himself a pariah. One may get away with denouncing motherhood and apple pie, but not with speaking ill of democracy, which is now the principal icon of political and social life throughout the world. Many people are atheists, but few are antidemocrats. Worship of this particular political arrangement has emerged relatively recently, however, and in earlier ages political philosophers were more apt to...

Shots have been fired at a shopping centre in the town of Espoo, near the capital of Finland, Helsinki. An eyewitness said at least one person was left lying on the floor after shooting broke out, the national broadcaster YLE said on its website.

AT least three people have been killed in a shooting at a Finnish shopping mall. Reports by state broadcaster YLE, citing police sources, said four people were dead. Independent MTV3 television put the figure at three dead. Around six shots were discharged from about 08:20 GMT in the Sello shopping centre in Espoo, west of the capital Helsinki. One or more people were shot at the Prisma grocery store. At least one employee was seen lying on the floor on the upper level of the centre. A man, described as being in his late teens and dressed in black, was...

A Wauconda homeowner shot a 49-year-old man over the weekend after the man forced his way into the homeowner's house in an attempt to pick up his 11-year-old son from a birthday party that was actually held a block away, police said Wednesday. Wauconda police said the 49-year-old man went to an incorrect address in the 300 block of Indian Ridge Trail in the far north suburb about 5:45 p.m. Saturday with another son, 15. After the homeowner and his wife told him the 11-year-old wasn't there, police said the man didn't believe them and allegedly pushed his way in,...

LOS ANGELES - Los Angeles County prosecutors have decided no charges will be filed against a suburban police officer who kicked a surrendering suspect in the head after a dangerous car chase. Rodriguez, a parolee heavily covered in gang tattoos, was lying face-down on the ground during the May 13 incident, which was broadcast by a TV news helicopter. After four officers converged on Rodriguez, two of them did a "high five."

Notice: I've just been informed that a certain ex-poster is going to expose on a yet to be named MAJOR website somewhere on the Internet that FR is an anti-Catholic site. Of course, others have accused us of being anti-Mormon, anti-Jew, anti-Protestant, anti-Pentecost, anti-Baptist, etc, anti-atheist and anti-Darwinist among other things. Well, maybe we are anti some things. Knock yourself out, pal. Just make sure you spell my name and url correctly. Sincerely yours, Jim Thompson

<p>The Transportation Security Administration is going after bloggers who wrote about a directive to increase security after the incident.</p>

A few weeks ago, Houston immigration attorney Jay Aiyer started to see sure signs that the economy is rebounding: More of his clients requested work visas for professional foreigners and the government finally ran out of H-1B visas. “If we're seeing business visas start to be used up, it means that the overall economy is in a growth pattern,” Aiyer said. “They're not going to be bringing folks in from abroad during a recession.” For the last few years, it would have been futile for employers or their attorneys to submit H-1B applications past April, when U.S. Citizenship and Immigration...

The Christmas Day attack on a jetliner over Detroit, combined with technological improvements to protect people's sense of modesty, could lead to dramatically wider use of full-body scanners that can see through travelers' clothing.

28-year-old Christian man's funeral took a surprising twist at the Helsinki Malmi cemetery when the deceased's Muslim relatives arrived at the grave and took the lead in the funeral. - Upon reaching the gravesite all of a sudden Muslim men jumped out from the thicket and replaced the Finnish pallbearers and the Imam began to lead the service, "the pastor, Jukka Simoila said. The 28-year-old deceased became a Christian in December 2008 and got married last summer in a Christian ceremony. His father was a Muslim. The deceased died of serious illness in September and had hoped for a Christian...

In 2009, LA city workers saved the City of Los Angeles. Next year the hard work begins: figuring out how to provide the quality of public services the citizens of Los Angeles deserve without the hearts, hands and minds of the 2,400 workers retiring—stepping down so that their younger brothers and sisters can keep their jobs and support their young families. This will be difficult, but it will impact city services less than the 3,000 layoffs and up to 43 furlough days CAO Miguel Santana projected if the Early Retirement Incentive Plan hadn’t passed. Those 3,000 would have been the...

(snip) Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who's seeking a fifth six-year term, wrote in his own solicitation that "we may not be able to continue and expand our fight for reform if I am not reelected to the U.S. Senate." McCain, the losing 2008 Republican presidential nominee, should face meager Democratic opposition next November but could be challenged in the GOP primary by ex-Rep. J.D. Hayworth. (snip)

We're Screwed! ShadowStats.com founder John Williams explains the risk of hyperinflation. Worst-case scenario? Rioting in the streets and devolution to a bartering system. Comments (151) Thursday, December 31, 2009 By Phil Maymin Courtesy of John Williams Economist/statistician John Williams shifts through the government’s rose-tinted data Do you believe everything the government tells you? Economist and statistician John Williams sure doesn't. Williams, who has consulted for individuals and Fortune 500 companies, now uncovers the truth behind the U.S. government's economic numbers on his Web site at ShadowStats.com. Williams says, over the last several decades, the feds have been infusing their data...

(CNN) -- Investigators recovered the remains of more than 500 animals after executing a search warrant Wednesday at a home in the Feltonville section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, according to the city's chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The animals included "dozens of sheep, goats ... every type of farm animal you can think of," the Philadelphia SPCA's law enforcement director, George Bengal, said. The SPCA believes two sets of remains are those of small primates, possibly monkeys.

2009 was an extraordinary year in which ordinary people did extraordinary things not because they were the easy things to do, but because they were the right thing to do. The people ranged from young Hannah Giles who jump-started her journalism career by donning a hooker’s garb to bring down the racketeer influenced corrupt organization known as ACORN, to Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger III, who culminated the decades of his life that he worked toward airline safety simply by landing a engineless plane on the Hudson River. Michael Paul Mizzone, a carpenter’s business representative, pulled Josef R. Bruckuf, 82, out of...

Report: Traficant says 'beam me up' in 2010 By Jordan Fabian - 12/30/09 11:48 AM ET Former Rep. Jim Traficant (D-Ohio) will run for Congress in 2010, according to a media report Wednesday. "I’m going to run," Traficant said before about 35 members of The Biz Society, the Youngstown Business Journal reported Wednesday. The former lawmaker's words come almost four months after he was released from federal prison after he served part of a seven-year sentence on a racketeering conviction. Traficant was removed from Congress in 2002. Traficant, who used to represent Ohio's 17th district, said he has not yet...

Just up on Drudge.

Luck was with us on Northwest flight 253. Dumb luck.This terror attack could easily have been averted but for the Aloha, baby! attitude of the Obumblers regarding domestic terrorism. At Fort Hood last month, a couple of cops finally brought down an Islamofascist killer after he murdered twelve soldiers and left thirty wounded on the tarmac. On Flight 253 to Detroit it happened to be an alert Dutch filmmaker who jumped the would-be bomber when his pants started to burn. But the bomb was an ingredient of Semtex, and he was trying to inject a liquid detonator that could have...

Oprah Winfrey has been proclaimed the world's biggest giver -- again. For the seoncd year running, the day-time host topped a list of the 30 most generous celebrities for giving $50.2 million US last year through the Oprah Winfrey Foundation and Oprah's Angel Network, which fund education, health care and advocacy for women and children. The list, now in its second year, was compiled by The Giving Back Fund, a charity that aims to encourage philanthropy. Claiming the No. 2 spot was trumpeter Herb Alpert, who gave $13 million for education, including music lessons, through the Herb Alpert Foundation. Three...

In a letter to Rep. Bruce Braley, the Congressional Budget Office further explains some of its analysis regarding the effects of medical malpractice reform on health costs and health outcomes. The letter as a whole is worth reading for a number of reasons, but one point stuck out to me. Pessimists regarding malpractice reform have pointed out that it would save the federal budget only around $54 billion over ten years. I say “only” because this is nevertheless almost half as much as the entire Senate health bill would purportedly save, even leaving aside well-justified uncertainties regarding whether the Senate...

Rasmussen's health-care polling results since Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid orchestrated the Christmas Eve vote are full of undeniably bad news for Democrats. In roughly ascending order of bad news (if one is a Democrat)... Likely voters oppose Obamacare by more than the (18-point) margin by which Ronald Reagan beat Walter Mondale: 58 percent to 39 percent. There are far more likely voters who "strongly" oppose Obamacare (46 percent) than there are likely voters who support it even "somewhat" (39 percent). Only 24 percent of likely voters think that the quality of health care would get better under Obamacare, while...

HONOLULU -- Conservative radio talk host Rush Limbaugh was rushed to a Honolulu hospital on Wednesday afternoon with chest pains, sources told KITV. Paramedics responded to the call at 2:41 p.m. at the Kahala Hotel and Resort. Rush Limbaugh AP Image Rush Limbaugh Limbaugh, 58, suffered from chest pains, sources said. Limbaugh was sitting in a chair in his ninth-floor hotel room at the Kahala when emergency crews arrived, sources said. He told medical crews that he was taking medication for a back problem, sources said. Paramedics treated him and took him to Queen's Medical Center in serious condition. He...

Evangelical pastor Rick Warren is begging parishioners at his Southern California megachurch to cough up $900,000 before Jan. 1 to keep the parish out of the red. In an urgent letter posted on the Saddleback Church Web site on Wednesday, Warren says expenses are up because parishioners are out of work and "the bottom dropped out" when year-end donations dropped dramatically. He asks parishioners to donate before the new year to keep the Orange County church out of debt, The Orange County Register reports. A spokeswoman for Warren said the church does not release financial details, so it's difficult to...

COORDINATION CENTER FOR NATIONAL IRANIAN ARMED RESISTANCE FORCES DECLARES ITS EXISTENCE. This announcement was received via telephone from a high ranking Army officer of NIRU from Iran Start of announcement Saturday December 26th, 2009 In the name of God the Merciful & Forgiving Praise be to God and peace on the His Messenger (PBUH) and his family I take refuge in Allah from the accursed Satan The coordination center for National Iranian Armed Resistance Forces (NIRU) hereby declares its existence & accuses the current government and the leader of the Islamic Revolution, Mr. Sayyed Ali Khamenei of legal transgressions and...

More than six months after government officials seized his rare vintage military aircraft, Claude Hendrickson said he is still in the dark about why the airplane was confiscated and when and if it will be returned to him. Until the 1952 airplane -- believed to be one of only a handful of Douglas AD-4N Skyraiders in the U.S. -- is released from federal custody, Hendrickson said the aircraft will slowly deteriorate because he can't maintain it. In May, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents seized the Skyraider that Hendrickson purchased from a private collector in France. Hendrickson, a business owner...

This afternoon, on arguably one of the slowest news day of the year, the Obama White House released another document dump of “visitor records.” According to the White House, today’s batch total more than 25,000 records, covering meetings between September 16-September 30th. You can scroll through the list of records on the White House site OR you can download the raw data. Interestingly, the full download uncovers almost 30,000 records, including many from outside the mid-September time-frame detailed on the White House site. In other words, only the records from the specific two week time period are viewable on the...

That was quite a revealing -- and understandable -- public tantrum President Obama threw Tuesday. Understandable, because the president has every right to be livid over the "potentially catastrophic breach of security" that nearly saw a terrorist bring down an airliner with 289 people aboard. And revealing, because perhaps Obama has come to understand that he does not enjoy as much control over intelligence matters as he might have imagined. Also, that the Islamist threat to America won't be countered with mere words.

WASHINGTON - If the nation ever faces a large-scale attack by a biological weapon like anthrax, the U.S. Postal Service will be in charge of delivering whatever drugs and other medical aid Americans would need to survive. In an executive order released Wednesday, President Barack Obama put the Postal Service in charge of dispensing "medical countermeasures" to biological weapons because of its "capacity for rapid residential delivery." While most likely unrelated, the release of the executive order comes less than a week after a man with alleged ties to al-Qaida tried to bring down a Detroit-bound U.S. airliner. In recent...

President Obama offered rhetorical support Monday to anti-government protesters...

Earth first? Much else falls further down the list We face, then-Sen. Al Gore wrote in 1991, "a kind of global civil war" between those who properly see the Earth as on the brink of catastrophe and those who do not. We must, he wrote, "make this struggle the central organizing principle of world civilization." Gore liked the phrase so much that he repeated it in his Nobel Prize speech in 2007: Rescuing the environment must be "the central organizing principle of the world community," he said. It sounds appealingly bold, even if it didn't prompt Gore to give up...

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez scoffed on Wednesday at U.S. magazine Newsweek's predictions that he would be toppled by a military coup and his Cuban mentor Fidel Castro would die in 2010. In a list of 10 predictions for the world next year, Newsweek foresaw in Venezuela a year of soaring inflation, power blackouts, food shortages, spiraling crime and tumbling popularity for Chavez, with the mood on the street turning "mean" even among the poor who put him in power. "The military steps in to depose Chavez and restore order, as 21st-century socialism spins toward the familiar 20th-century...