Free Republic

Helicopter Ben Bernanke passed his reconfirmation vote in the Senate Banking Committee this week. But he passed by 16 to 7. Most of the Republicans voted against Bernanke, as did one Democrat, Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon. The reconfirmation now goes to the floor of the Senate, where it’s going to be held up for a while. (Sen. Jim DeMint and others are insisting that a vote on the Government Accounting Office’s audit of the Fed occur first.) But when the final vote happens, I think Bernanke could be in trouble. Mirroring the Banking Committee vote, most of the 40...

It dawned with the warmest winter on record in the United States. And when the sun sets this New Year's Eve, the decade of the 2000s will end as the warmest ever on global temperature charts. Warmer still, scientists say, lies ahead. Through 10 years of global boom and bust, of breakneck change around the planet, of terrorism, war and division, all people everywhere under that warming sun faced one threat together: the buildup of greenhouse gases, the rise in temperatures, the danger of a shifting climate, of drought, weather extremes and encroaching seas, of untold damage to the world...

The government paid more than $47 billion in questionable Medicare claims including medical treatment showing little relation to a patient's condition, wasting taxpayer dollars at a rate nearly three times the previous year. Excerpts of a new federal report, obtained by The Associated Press, show a dramatic increase in improper payments in the $440 billion Medicare program that has been cited by government auditors as a high risk for fraud and waste for 20 years. It's not clear whether Medicare fraud is actually worsening. Much of the increase in the last year is attributed to a change in the Health...

I have long been mystified as to why Americans and Canadians do not understand Islam. It is very simple. While most Christians and Jews pay only lip service to their bibles the Muslims believe in the koran with every part of their being. They rise before dawn to pray and they pray five times a day. They mean business in their worship of the false god allah. They believe in every verse of the koran and the Hadith. But Americns have never read the koran so they are shocked by such carnage as was caused at Fort Hood. So let...

This is the "Crown Jewel" of socialism. Bachmann is asking people to come to DC next Thursday at noon for a housecall on Nancy Pelosi to tell her what she can do with this ILLEGAL healthcare BILL. Join Bachman to parade up and down the halls to confront Congress. This is our liberty and tyrrany moment!

PROOF THAT WE ARE ENGAGED IN A SPIRITUAL WAR THE MUSLIM MIRACLE thelastcrusade.org Miracle or hoax? Russians puzzled as phrases from the Koran start appearing 'spontaneously' on baby's skin By Mail Foreign Service A baby is sparking a wave of speculation in Russia after phrases from the Koran allegedly began appearing on his skin.Sayings from the Muslim holy book are said to appear on nine-month-old Ali Yakubov's back, arms, legs and stomach - before apparently fading away and being replaced with new sayings.Russian medics claimed they are puzzled over the cause of the marks on a baby's skin, which...

Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell is criticizing statements by FCC Chief Diversity Officer Mark Lloyd that he says are “troubling” indications of a penchant for regulating free speech. In his 2006 book “Prologue to a Farce: Communication and Democracy in America,” Lloyd wrote that public broadcasting outlets should be funded at a level “commensurate with or above those spending levels at which commercial operations are funded.” He said the funds should come from “license fees charged to commercial broadcasters” – the same “commercial broadcasters" that would have to compete with these public broadcasting outlets, CNSNews.com reported. “I find such ideas...

The "Homecoming Queen" at a traditionally black US university has sent a letter to President Barack Obama, complaining that her win had been questioned on campus because she is white. "It would be much easier to say that possibly some were not accepting of the news because I wasn't the most qualified contestant; however, the true reason for the disapproval was because of the color of my skin. I am not African American," the nursing student wrote to the president. She asked the president for help, suggesting that he visit Hampton University to convince students to "stop focusing so much...

DALLAS — Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Thursday that politics did not influence the decision to spend millions of dollars in stimulus money on little-used border checkpoints while passing over higher-priority projects. Members of Congress have asked for answers after The Associated Press showed that the Obama administration did not follow its internal priority list when handing out money to repair border stations nationwide.

Is any one really surprised? The soap opera begins.

Garth A. Wilson, “The Mulekites,” Ensign, Mar 1987, 60 This Jewish remnant plays a greater role in Book of Mormon history than many realize.A serious reader of the Book of Mormon will at some point likely ask himself how much is known about the Mulekites and about the role they played among Book of Mormon civilizations.The thirty verses which comprise the Book of Omni, although written by five lesser-known authors, provide answers to many questions.Just prior to his death, Amaleki completed the Book of Omni by briefly recording the account of King Mosiah’s discovery of the people of Zarahemla—the...

WASHINGTON – The White House says President Barack Obama has been "moved" by the television images of people in Iran taking to the street in protest.

Joshua C from Arizona asks about a pre-Fall role for the immune system, given that God created everything “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Medical doctor Carl Wieland responds...

Questions remain after fathers annihilate their entire families Perpetrator might kill family because he wants to save them from perceived doom CNN) -- ln April, a Maryland man wrote six suicide notes expressing his love and sorrow for his family, and then shot his wife and three children, before killing himself with a shotgun.. This month, a man killed his wife and two sons in their home near Tampa, Florida. Troy Bellar chased after his teenage son with a high-powered rifle, but the 13-year-old escaped. Bellar later shot himself.

Strata Data Axes Asteroid Dinosaur Demise by Brian Thomas, M.S.* In 1980, a theory was proposed that an asteroid or comet impact was primarily responsible for the mass dinosaur extinctions that were observed in the fossil record. But while the impact tale has become widely accepted in popular culture, critical questions remain unanswered. Further scientific investigations have revealed geological and fossil evidence that is inconsistent with a single-impact extermination.[1,2] And recently, geologists catalogued even more data that is incompatible with the asteroid story...

Planetary Quandaries Solved: Saturn Is Young by Brian Thomas, M.S.* NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has been on a mission to gather information on the structure and composition of Saturn, its rings, and its moons. Conventional cosmology holds that the planets of the solar system are billions of years old. But the more that scientists learn about Saturn’s systems, the more they uncover evidence of a young planet...

Re: Mark Traugher, "Peripheral Canal No Drought Lifeline, Contra Costa Water District Finds, Contra Costa Times, April 24, 2009 - Synopsis: A $10 billion plan to build a canal around the Sacramento Delta would not deliver significantly more water to cities and farms if it were in place this year, new data shows. It would divert water around the Delta for delivery to farms and cities. But numbers developed by a state-run planning group seeking to build the canal show it would not deliver more water in dry years, the Contra Costa Water District stated this week. Link: http://www.contracostatimes.com/search/ci_12221166?IADID=Search-www.contracostatimes.com-www.contracostatimes.com RESPONSE:...

Haven't seen so much media-generated hysteria since forever. But it's all bull. Smoke. All of it. Every. Single. Year. 30,000 Americans are killed by this exact same Flu. Type A. How many Americans have succumbed to this one? (that's a rhetorical question) I suspect, this is all an elaborate ruse. To cover up our "dear leader's" plummeting approval numbers. Someone, has been doing some polling. That's what I think.

President Obama marked Earth Day Wednesday by announcing a new initiative to lease federal waters for the purpose of generating electricity from wind and ocean currents. The president announced the initiative, to be administered by the Interior Department, while reiterating his pledge to push for a comprehensive energy plan that encourages the development of alternative fuel sources, cuts dependence on foreign oil, addresses climate change, and creates new jobs. Wind power can generate 20 percent of the country's electricity by 2030 and support 250,000 jobs, Obama said during a visit to a wind turbine tower manufacturing plant. It is part...

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, whose critical writings on the ambiguities of sexual identity in fiction helped create the discipline known as queer studies, died on Sunday in Manhattan. She was 58. The cause was breast cancer, her husband, Hal Sedgwick, said. Ms. Sedgwick broke new ground when, drawing on feminist scholarship and the work of the French poststructuralist Michel Foucault, she began teasing out the hidden socio-sexual subplots in writers like Charles Dickens and Henry James. In a 1983 essay on Dickens’s novel “Our Mutual Friend,” she drew attention to the homoerotic element in the obsessive relationship between Eugene Wrayburn and...

Rain is pelting down on Doña Porcela's treatment room in Puerto Cabezas, the main town on Nicaragua's Northern Caribbean coast. The room is barren except for a few plastic chairs, a wooden table and some old plastic bottles balanced precariously on timber beams. Doña Porcela is a respected traditional healer here and the bottles are filled with her secret medicinal potions. Her patient today is a teenage girl asleep on a piece of cardboard, serving as a mattress on the dirt floor. "Grisi Siknis turns people into witches and they go crazy," she said. Last year there were 65 cases...

'Did five, or even six, of the republican prisoners who were on hunger strike in the Maze prison in 1981 die to advance the political strategy of Sinn Fein? Did Gerry Adams and other members of the IRA kitchen cabinet snub a conciliatory offer from Margaret Thatcher, then the British prime minister, which met the substance of the prisoners’ demands, just to ensure that Sinn Fein would win a crucial by-election to Westminster? These are the explosive questions raised for Sinn Fein by papers released to The Sunday Times under the Freedom of Information Act.'

Not long ago Presbyterian congregations that promoted conserving resources were considered progressive. Now, in a time of soaring energy costs and a declining economy, such actions might be seen more as conservationist — as in conserving the environment and sometimes even protecting church budgets. From small congregations (of which there are many) to big-steeple churches, Presbyterians are becoming more interested in “going green.” It’s a term that some critics say is over-used, but whatever the motivation, more churches are doing it. “Presbyterians are getting involved, asking questions, asking for resources at a much higher rate,” says Rebecca Barnes-Davies, former coordinator...

Thank God winter is almost over. It has been another cold one. I hope Al Gore wore his hat and brought along his galoshes whenever he made an appearance against global warming....scientists have not been able to measure any increase in global warming since the end of 1998....Over the last two years temperatures have actually dropped by more than 0.5 degrees Celsius. Button up! I mention all this because (1) it is always amusing to kid Mr. Gore and (2) the price tag for Prophet Obama's climate plan has just jumped to $2 trillion. That is 3 times the White...

Immigrants Can Help Fix the Housing Bubble By RICHARD S. LEFRAK and A. GARY SHILLING The Obama administration should seriously consider granting resident status to foreigners who buy surplus houses in this country. This makes more sense than the president's $275 billion housing bailout plan, which Americans greeted with a Bronx cheer. The federal bailout forces taxpayers to subsidize overextended homeowners who bet on ever-rising house prices and used their abodes as ATMs, and it doesn't get to the basic problem -- the huge inventory of excess houses. We estimate that 2.4 million houses over and above normal working inventories...

The government has come under fire after banning a Dutch MP from entering the UK over anti-Islamic remarks. Former Conservative cabinet minister Michael Portillo said by turning away Geert Wilders, ministers had made a "populist twit and bigot" world famous. The Freedom Party MP had been invited to a House of Lords screening of his film, linking the Koran to terrorism.

The TV and the written press keep referring to the attack on the USS Cole as having been a “terrorist” attack. Any definition of the word “terrorist” insists that the attack described be against a civilian target with an aim of resulting in a political change. I do believe that this word is being used so as to elicit sympathy and, to some, fear and therefore urge the public be skeptical when they come across it in the press. Recently, I came across the use of “victims,” referring to crew members on the Cole that were killed, instead of “casualties”...

In Japan, "What's your type?" is much more than small talk; it can be a paramount question in everything from matchmaking to getting a job. By type, the Japanese mean blood type, and no amount of scientific debunking can kill a widely held notion that blood tells all. In the year just ended, four of Japan's top 10 best-sellers were about how blood type determines personality, according to Japan's largest book distributor, Tohan Co. The books' publisher, Bungeisha, says the series — one each for types B, O, A, and AB — has combined sales of well over 5 million...

Sarah Palin, the Governor of Alaska, has come under pressure to respond to the discovery that staff members in her state's government had received and forwarded racist emails about President-Elect Barack Obama. One of the emails asked about the outcome of the Democrat's victory and concluded: "Another black family living in government housing!" Another, entitled "Night Befo Crizzmus," was forwarded dozens of times, according to the state's information technology division. Administration commissioner Annette Kreitzer said: "It's embarrassing to the state." Mrs Kreitzer said she alerted the office of Mrs Palin, the failed Republican vice presidential candidate in the recent election,...

There has always been a desire to maintain credibility and integrity on Free Republic. That is eroding with each new, Obama, birth certificate story. Many of those creating this ruckus claim are flying a false flag of Constitutionality when it is actually an effort to paint all Conservatives with the broad brush of conspiratorialism of the most dangerous kind. Thank you.

If Barack Hussein Obama II is Malcolm X's biological son, it would explain the mystery of why he was so generously helped by so many Arab and communist "friends in high places" long before he was a "somebody." ..."There are said to be photos of Ann Dunham on Waikiki Beach taken in or about July 1961, when she is supposed to have been in her third trimester, in a bikini, taken by a fellow female student. AD is clearly not pregnant...[The] CIA did a DNA test on the grandparents, using saliva from glasses, which conclusively rules out any relationship between...

Eating less meat is one of the most effective steps any of us can take to fight climate change, as Nicholas Read points out in his insightful article in The Vancouver Sun last week. However, as he demonstrates, despite evidence that intensive meat production contributes significantly to global warming, and to further threats to public health and environment such as water pollution, most citizen and environmental groups play down the issue. They ask people to walk more and turn off lights, but usually steer clear of the meat question. As an educator working on this issue, I can concur that...

Now are rough times. For all of us. This is where we stand: Liechtenstein/Saudi Arabia: Business as usual, minor sources of irritation Venuzuela: INRI - IN a moRon CommunIst we trust, that'll do the trick! Germany/Switzerland/Austria: High tax, some captial, medium sized car, can't afford fuel, decent house, nothing left of our former empires. USA: Moderate tax, nice eating out, nice car, heavy debt, some capital, some fuel, no home. Japan: Small tax, microscopic car, no future Italy, Spain: Heavy tax, small car + vespas, Fascist tradition, government debt, Catholicism, nice food Norway: Heavy tax, small car, dried cod (lutefisk),...

Is Halloween Harmless? Every year at Halloween, well-meaning parents dress their children in grotesque and ghoulish costumes. Is Halloween really harmless? Who and what's behind this bizarre holiday? by Jerold Aust It all looks like so much fun and seems so harmless: jack-o'-lanterns, grotesque grinning masks, long black witch attire with pointed black hats, costumes painted like skeletons, outfits that represent demons and goblins, and children going door to door, soliciting treats from compliant neighbors. But when Halloween comes around, do you find yourself yearning for the hours to pass until the whole trick-or-treat farce is over? If you don't,...

For more than a half a century, those few humans who knew about the time Milton Torres battled a giant UFO had only his word as proof. Yesterday, after British officials released previously classified Ministry of Defense 'X-files', the world found out the secret that Milton — now a retired civil engineering professor living in Miami — was ordered never to reveal. According to the documents, on the night of May 20, 1957, the former U.S. F-86D Sabre pilot was told by his U.K. commanders to unload all 24 of his rockets on a mysterious object moving over the sleepy...

It saddens me when I see a member of my profession go over to "the dark side," that is, to politics. Politics replaces voluntary action with compulsion, private contract with coercion. Government intervention imposes distortions, inefficiencies, and extra costs on society. In essence, politics is "anti-economics," a nullification of economics, so for an economist to argue for more government control over private economic decisions and transactions, is anomalous, pathetic, and an abandonment of economic truth. We see frequent examples of economists mutilating economic principles during an election year. The latest example is an article, "The Great Debate," by Alan Blinder,...

Let's fill some trucks with books, drive them downtown and burn them in front of the Chicago Public Library. Let's drive other trucks to the regional libraries and burn them, too . . . I mean the books, not the libraries, though libraries are the source of the problem. If it weren't for the libraries, it would be hard for innocent young people to be corrupted by the filth pouring out of the country's printers. Instead of burning books or libraries, perhaps we ought to start smashing printing presses. They have served as tools of sin and the devil since...

For those who are or claim to be unfamiliar with the Larry Sinclair story, let me summarize it as briefly as possible. Larry Sinclair, who now lives in Duluth, Minnesota, claims to have spent parts of the evenings of Nov. 6 and Nov. 7, 1999 with Senator Obama in Chicago. At least as far back as 1986 Sinclair has been in trouble with the law, arrested for a variety of things (fraud seemingly at the top of the list), and had been up to that time in and out of prison. He is an openly gay man, and he seems...

The Annenberg Political Factcheck website has published photographs and an analysis of what it says is the "original birth certificate" of Barack Hussein Obama II. While the physical document depicted in the photos resemble the document image previously scanned and published by the Daily Kos website and Obama's own "Fight the Smears" site in June, FactCheck's case for authenticity and its claims to objectivity are undermined by a litany of process flaws, conflicts of interest and factual inconsistencies that raise doubts about its motives and methods of those of the Obama campaign. The Factcheck.org report, titled "Born in the USA,"...

Ethnic and racial minorities will account for a majority of the U.S. population in a little more than a generation, according to new projections from the Census Bureau. The Bureau calculates that by 2042, Americans who identify themselves as Hispanic, black, Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander will outnumber non-Hispanic whites. Four years ago, officials had projected the shift would not occur until 2050. The main reason for the accelerating change is significantly higher birthrates among immigrants, The New York Times reports.

Ethnic and racial minorities will comprise a majority of the nation’s population in a little more than a generation, according to new Census Bureau projections, a transformation that is occurring faster than anticipated just a few years ago. The census calculates that by 2042, Americans who identify themselves as Hispanic, black, Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander will together outnumber non-Hispanic whites. Four years ago, officials had projected the shift would come in 2050. The main reason for the accelerating change is significantly higher birthrates among immigrants. Another factor is the influx of foreigners, rising from about 1.3...

ON the afternoon of Nov. 7, 2006, pilots and airport employees at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago saw a disc-like object hovering over the tarmac for several minutes. Because nothing was tracked on radar, the Federal Aviation Administration did not investigate. Yet radar is not a reliable detector of all aircraft. Stealth planes are designed to be invisible to radar, and many radar systems filter out signals not matching the normal characteristics of aircraft. Did it really make sense to entirely ignore the observations of several witnesses? < > On Dec. 26, 1980, for instance, several witnesses at two American...

Barack Obama has never been shy about comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln. He did so when he announced his candidacy at the Illinois state capitol, where both he and Lincoln served in the legislature. "The life of a tall, gangly, self-made Springfield lawyer tells us that a different future is possible," Obama said. "He tells us that there is power in words ... He tells us that there is power in hope." That was, well, audacious, to say the least — and the comparisons have continued, on issues large and small. But the most important similarity, in Obama's mind, is...

For insights into healthy marriages, social scientists are looking in an unexpected place. A growing body of evidence shows that same-sex couples have a great deal to teach everyone else about marriage and relationships. Most studies show surprisingly few differences between committed gay couples and committed straight couples, but the differences that do emerge have shed light on the kinds of conflicts that can endanger heterosexual relationships. The findings offer hope that some of the most vexing problems are not necessarily entrenched in deep-rooted biological differences between men and women. And that, in turn, offers hope that the problems can...

ON RIGHT NOW! "Including references to "Whitey". There has been a race for Clinton operatives to aquire this tape, but I believe this tape is already in the hands of a major network." This JUST aired minutes ago on "Geraldo"... Geraldo prefaced by saying that Roger Stone was the same person who first exposed Spitzer's relationship with hookers.

The Texas megachurch pastor whose past comments about the Catholic Church have caused headaches for John McCain for over two months will issue an apology to Catholics later today, according a top Christian conservative. John Hagee, pastor of San Antonio's Cornerstone Church, will send a letter to Catholic League President William Donahue expressing "deep regret for any comments that Catholics have found hurtful." "After engaging in constructive dialouge with Catholic friends and leaders, I now have an improved understanding of the Catholic Church, its relation to the Jewish faith, and the history of anti-Catholicism," Hagee wrote in a letter running...

Like a marriage that has gone bad, I believe there are enough irreconcilable differences between those who want to control and those want to be left alone that divorce is the only peaceable alternative. Just as in a marriage, where vows are broken, our human rights protections guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution have been grossly violated by a government instituted to protect them. Americans who are responsible for and support constitutional abrogation have no intention of mending their ways.

Tiny plastic bags used to sell small quantities of heroin, crack cocaine, marijuana and other drugs would be banned in Chicago, under a crackdown advanced Tuesday by a City Council committee. Ald. Robert Fioretti (2nd) persuaded the Health Committee to ban possession of "self-sealing plastic bags under two inches in either height or width," after picking up 15 of the bags on a recent Sunday afternoon stroll through a West Side park.

Climate Skeptics Seize on Cold Spell By ANDREW C. REVKIN,The New York Times March 1, 2008 March 1) - The world has seen some extraordinary winter conditions in both hemispheres over the past year: snow in Johannesburg last June and in Baghdad in January, Arctic sea ice returning with a vengeance after a record retreat last summer, paralyzing blizzards in China, and a sharp drop in the globe’s average temperature. It is no wonder that some scientists, opinion writers, political operatives and other people who challenge warnings about dangerous human-caused global warming have jumped on this as a teachable moment....