Free Republic

Congressman Murtha On Iraq War, Barack Obama Web Extra: Uncut Interview With Congressman John Murtha Reporting Jon Delano PITTSBURGH (KDKA) When Vietnam War veteran and local Congressman John Murtha, a strong defense advocate, turned against the war in Iraq two years ago, it made national headlines. Murtha, D-Johnstown, hasn't backed away one step, but today he acknowledges that the war effort is going a bit better - even if it will take a president named Barack Obama to end the war the way Murtha wants. The war in Iraq is off the front pages as American casualties drop and that...

The Philadelphia Inquirer's former editor, Chris Satullo, says we should not celebrate Independence Day because we sinned as a nation. I respond to his arrogant holier-than-thou screed by pointing out his hypocrisy, among other things. Here is the link or click on the Bulletin link near the title http://www.thebulletin.us/site/index.cfm?newsid=19826547&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=8

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey lowered a lighted match to a test tube filled with saltwater. An orange flame instantly erupted from the mouth of the tube. "I'm two for two at igniting the saltwater," Casey said with a smile. Casey spent part of Wednesday afternoon at Industrial Sales and Manufacturing Inc., watching a demonstration of Millcreek Township inventor John Kanzius' radio-frequency device. He is the latest on the list of high-ranking public officials who have trekked to the yellow-brick laboratory on West 15th Street to see the device. Gov. Ed Rendell and U.S. Rep. Phil English, of Erie, R-3rd Dist.,...

The Coatesville Police Department continues to receive reports of black city residents robbing, assaulting and raping Hispanic immigrants, according to Police Chief William Matthews. And, if the activity is not stopped, police say it could trigger the formation of violent Hispanic gangs as a type of cultural protection. With the city's black community, growing immigrant population - many of whom do not speak English - combined with the city's social issues, "It's not long before you have black-on-brown crime," said Matthews. "And we're seeing the beginning of that." Matthews, who first spoke publicly about the problem last fall, spoke candidly...

Five Republican congressional candidates will travel to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to promote drilling there to reduce the U.S.’s dependence on foreign oil. “With gas prices at an all-time high, we need to take steps now to reduce our dependence on foreign oil,” said trip participant Craig Williams, who is challenging Joe Sestak (D-Pa.). “We have energy resources available to us domestically that can cut our dependence on foreign oil and provide a bridge to tomorrow when we can more heavily rely on renewable energy resources such as hydro-electric, solar and wind power.” Due to accompany Williams...

An independent arm of the Republican National Committee plans to air its first political ad of the 2008 presidential campaign with a spot that contrasts the two candidates on energy issues. The group, which was set up by the national committee but is not limited by the same rules that govern the RNC's direct spending, plans a $3 million expenditure to run the television spots in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The ads will begin running on Sunday. The advertising program will be run by Brad Todd, a partner in an Alexandria, Va.-based firm called On Message, Inc. Todd had...

John Kanzius couldn’t tell his wife what he was doing. He’d been diagnosed with a rare form of B-cell leukemia in 2002, and he’d endured months of chemotherapy. But still the cancer persisted. As he tells it: “I go into a partial remission or whatever. In another six or eight months, it’s back again. So, I go back into some more chemotherapy.” Then one late night in 2003, unable to sleep and energized with an idea, the chemo-battered Kanzius began to tear apart the couple’s vacation home on Sanibel Island. “Of course, I couldn’t say at that point that I’m...

Just over a year ago several media outlets reported that John Kanzius, an amateur inventor from Erie, Pa., had discovered a seemingly impossible phenomenon: a way to burn salt water by exposing it to radio waves. Videos of the experiment became YouTube sensations, though they garnered as many critical comments as favorable ones. Now that the initial fervor has waned, we checked in with Kanzius, a collaborator and some critics to see how the technique has progressed, or if it's just another example of Web-propelled junk science. Kanzius' concept is simple: expose salt water to 13.56 MHz radio waves and...

Put the fireworks in storage. Cancel the parade. Tuck the soaring speeches in a drawer for another time. This year, America doesn't deserve to celebrate its birthday. This Fourth of July should be a day of quiet and atonement. For we have sinned. We have failed to pay attention. We've settled for lame excuses. We've spit on the memory of those who did that brave, brave thing in Philadelphia 232 years ago. The America those men founded should never torture a prisoner. The America they founded should never imprison people for years without charge or hearing. The America they founded...

Woman In Trouble For Flying American Flag In Neighborhood ROBINSON TOWNSHIP, Pa. -- A local member of the Air National Guard is in trouble with her condominium complex for what she says is a show of patriotism. Master Sgt. Denise James has been fighting her condo association over the right to fly an American flag. She lives in a condo complex on Kenzie Drive in Robinson Township. On Memorial Day, she put up small American flags in her yard to honor past and present veterans. As July 4 approaches, she is still flying the flags, but her condo association says...

WASHINGTON — Politically speaking, Susan Speakman is a different kind of evangelical. Mrs. Speakman, 59, a pastor and educator at Bethany Presbyterian Church in Bridgeville, Pa., an activist evangelical church southwest of Pittsburgh, backs Senator Barack Obama in the presidential race. Along with her 23-year-old son, Stephen, she supports Mr. Obama because of his stands on the Iraq war and matters of social justice. The two of them plan to spread the word in their community and beyond. “What caught my attention early on was his comment that we don’t want red states and blue states, but we want to...

Within the next four weeks, Luzerne County Sheriff Michael Savokinas will begin to sign off on federal applications for machine guns, short barrel shotguns and silencers. Savokinas said he intends to make the background checks, required as part of the application to purchase the arms, as uniform and rigorous as possible. It will also allow law enforcement to check for poor personal judgment such as a problem with alcohol or a poor temper. The sheriff’s approval will be a compliment to checks performed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the FBI. According to Savokinas, ATF has the...

Sen. Barack Obama did patriotism yesterday, today it is faith and by the end of the day both speeches will have been done in back-to-back states that swing: Missouri and Ohio. The Obama campaign said the Illinois senator plans to go to Zanesville, located in eastern Ohio, to visit a church program that provides food and clothing assistance to those in need.

MANDOZI, Afghanistan - Army Pvt. Justin Fillmore has some family military history. Yet he didn't really know what to expect in his first overseas combat mission. He is here in Afghanistan, he says, because he wanted to give a break to other soldiers, some of them on their second, third or fourth combat deployments. "I'm young enough, I can handle it," Fillmore, 23, of Latrobe says as he sits by a Humvee, smoking a cigarette. "I'm happy it happened, that I got to go while I still had the mind-set for it."

The House Judiciary Committee, which is investigating whether certain public corruption probes were politically motivated, has subpoenaed the Justice Department for documents related to the prosecutions of Dr. Cyril H. Wecht and former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr., the committee chairman, sent a letter Friday to Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee promotes himself as the political Messiah, as one who will bring "hope" and "change" to Washington, D.C. and American politics. His legion of adoring fans includes wealthy patrons of the entertainment and mass communications industry as well as billionaire stock manipulator George Soros whose group MoveOn.org has vowed to make the Democratic Party their own and to rule the United States. This is not change Americans want. Besides, Mr. Obama is not really offering change, he just offers more of the same politics of personal destruction that became an art form during the Clinton years. Indeed,...

HARRISBURG -- State legislators sometimes say the darnedest things on the floor of the House and Senate. Two weeks ago, Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Cranberry, refused to vote for a resolution saluting Muslims because, he said, they "do not recognize Jesus Christ as God." Last week, Rep. David Levdansky, D-Forward, offended the Spanish firm that's buying Kennywood Park, referring to Spanish leaders as "our good allies that have turned tail and run in the war in Iraq." Four years ago, Sen. Vincent Fumo, D-Philadelphia, lost his temper during a debate and called a Republican Senate leader a "faggot," which wasn't smart...

By all accounts, Barack Obama should win this election. He and his brand control the image, the message and, to a large extent, the media of this election cycle. Yes, the media. He has enough money to buy ads every day from now to election day, glossy magazines cannot wait to put his image on their covers, Hollywood types are so smitten that they wear his image on their clothing and YouTube is bursting at the seams with homages to him. It is definitely his to win -- or to lose. It all hinges on two things: likability and character.

An estimated 10 percent of middle and high school students in the Delaware Valley School District are infected with a sexually transmitted disease. About two dozen teenage girls in the district have tested positive for pregnancy. And officials say there's one confirmed case of a student with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stepped in to track down students at risk for HIV, since the infected student is reported to have had multiple sex partners in the district, officials say. School officials released the alarming figures in a letter sent home...

Michael Smerconish is thinking of voting for Obama. The Philly talk show host made the admission in the course of subbing for Dan Abrams on tonight's "Verdict" on MSNBC. He actually did so, chatting with Ron Reagan, while criticizing Obama's flip-flops. But the bottom line is the bottom line. SMERCONISH: I want to think big picture, and I want to do so by showing you a piece of that which was published in today's Washington Post by Charles Krauthammer, if we can put that up on the screen: The truth about Obama is uncomplicated. He is just a politician ....

I was able to get a great deal of FACTUAL information about oil leases - although it was not easy. The industry is not very good at communicating. I keep trying to link this. If this doesn't work just click on the Bulletin link. http://www.thebulletin.us/site/index.cfm?newsid=19809681&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=8

Later this year, a plant in China will begin churning out liquid fuel made from coal, a technology that -- if all breaks right for the coal industry -- is headed to American shores. From the CTLtec Americas 2008, which begins today at the Omni William Penn Hotel, Downtown, to Capitol Hill, coal-to-liquids is a popular topic, spurred by rising gasoline prices and this country's ever-present need to wean itself from oil imports. Coal-to-liquid proponents insist that the technology would strengthen national security and be a cheaper alternative than current petroleum. Estimates vary widely, but Richard Bajura, director of the...

An Episcopal bishop was found guilty by a church panel of covering up his brother's assaults of a teenage girl in the 1970s. Charles E. Bennison Jr., 64, was convicted of two counts of engaging in conduct unbecoming of a member of the clergy, according to his attorneys and the church verdict, dated Tuesday and released Thursday. He could be reprimanded, suspended or ousted from the church. The victim, now 50, testified during a four-day ecclesiastical trial this month that the abuse by the bishop's brother, John Bennison, happened three to four times a week for several years. She testified...

Sen. Barack Obama began a panel discussion at Carnegie Mellon University this morning with a bunch of really smart panelists from MIT, General Motors, AOL and the SEIU. Today marks Obama's first visit to the Steel City since April 21, the eve of the Pennsylvania primary; Obama won the city of Pittsburgh proper in the spring primary, but not the state.

All that is needed to stop the violence is to legalize drugs. How often do you hear this canard repeated by libertarians, George Soros' Open Society Institute acolytes, communists, and others who want to legalize marijuana and related substances? They would have you believe that the reason people are killing each other is not because they are mean-spirited, evil, ruthless, greedy people; no, they reserve such adjectives for oil company executives. They would have you believe that what causes the violence is that drugs are illegal. This is just sophistry. It is usually the type of speciousness one finds emanating...

During a May 14, 2008, preliminary hearing for two men accused of a convenience store robbery, the Honorable Nazario Jimenez, Jr., a judge of the Court of Common Pleas, Philadelphia County located in the at the 8th Police District, made the following comment: "... let's hope that if anybody is going to rob any place, that it's done this way. Let's give credit where credit is due. No weapons were used..." Is this the state of affairs in Philadelphia now? Has the criminal justice system deteriorated so badly, the expectations of the judges so meager, that they express, in open...

You've probably gotten angry when you think some big company did you wrong. The NBC 10 investigators spoke with one local man who decided he had enough and he was going to tell the world about his experience. He was angry and wasn't going to take it anymore, but instead of going to his window and yelling, the Fishtown man decided on another way to let everyone know. "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore," Avi Oslick said. In 1976, a fictional broadcaster in the movie "Network" told people to go to their window when...

Who knew that newbie Democrat congressman Jason Altmire (4th District) and Republican congressman Tim Murphy (18th District) would ever "town hall" together? The reason there are no answers is because there were none to be found. Today Murphy and Altmire sent out a news release announcing that they would host two joint town hall meetings together:

A Horsham car wash company and three of its managers have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the government, harbor illegal immigrants, and commit identity theft. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia said Car Care managers operated a scheme between 2000 and March 2006 that allowed car washes to hire illegal workers by giving them false names and a way to cash their checks at local banks without identification. The banks were given a list of employees who were authorized to cash paychecks without showing identification other than clothing bearing the company logo. Car Care is a wholly owned subsidiary...

Obama ends swing state tour in the 'Burgh Pittsburgh Tribune-Review By Salena Zito Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama will conclude his three week swing-state-road trip in Pittsburgh Thursday by holding an "America's competitiveness in the global economy" summit at Carnegie Mellon University. An "A" list of attendees will participate in the summit, some of these brainiacs include: Richard Wagoner, chairman of General Motors, AOL founder Steve case, MIT president Susan Hockfield and Andy Stern president of SEIU, whose union committed to dropping over $85 million to be parsed out in states like Pennsylvania for the November election. While...

LITITZ, Pa. — Dorothy J. Merritts, a geology professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., was not looking to turn hydrology on its ear when she started scouting possible research sites for her students a few years ago. But when she examined photographs of the steep, silty banks of the West Branch of Little Conestoga Creek, something did not look right. The silt was laminated, deposited in layers. She asked a colleague, Robert C. Walter, an expert on sediment, for his opinion. “Those are not stream sediments,” he told her. “Those are pond sediments.” In short, the streamscape...

Five years to the day that President Bush appointed him press secretary, Scott McClellan testified at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee to tell what he knew about the Bush administration's efforts to go to war in Iraq and about the leaking of the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to the news media - all of which he revealed in his recently published book. However, what this hearing actually revealed were two things unintended by the committee's chairman, John Conyers (D-Mich.). First, it revealed more about what Mr. McClellan does not know than what he does know. Mr....

Commentary School Fact Fudging by: Cliff Kincaid, June 24, 2008 What happens when the “fact-checkers” don’t check facts and the “watchdogs” don’t watch? Consider the case of those who claim to be watching politicians for lies and deceptions and pretend to analyze Senator Barack Obama’s new patriotic “Country I Love” television ad, airing in 18 states. The Annenberg Political Fact Check, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, and Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz have written analyses of the Obama ad. But they are as flawed as the ad itself. The Obama TV...

Philadelphia has one of the most backward and incompetent city governments in America. It suffers from a combination of failed civic institutions, a deeply embedded racial paranoia that undermines law enforcement, and a local culture that has come to shrug at the urban chaos this produces. In 2006, the one-or-two-a-day-and a-dozen-on-weekends murder spree that earned "Killadelphia" its rap as an urban abattoir resulted in 406 people dead. It's clearly not all about poverty. Miami, America's poorest major city, saw 79 homicides in all of 2006. In March 2006, more Americans died violently on the streests of Philadelphia than in Iraq...

Hey, swing state Florida, I will not offshore drill The Sen. Barack Obama press machine issued this statement that Obama will deliver at his media avail this afternoon, in which he pledges (where have we heard that word before?) to keep the federal moratorium against offshore drilling in place: "When I am president, I will keep the moratorium in place and prevent oil companies from drilling off Florida's coasts," the statement reads. "That's how we can protect our coasts and still make the investments that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and bring down gas prices for good."

Religion and the Candidates Rachel Paulk, June 20, 2008 Religion remains a point of interest regarding the presidential candidates in the upcoming 2008 election, with significant media attention devoted towards both Senator Barack Obama’s and Senator John McCain’s religious preferences. Both endorse Christianity in some form, yet both stray from widely accepted Christian viewpoints on specific social issues. Between McCain and Obama, Obama has been more vocal about religion, especially given the heightened concentration on his 20-year membership at the Trinity United Church of Christ under the controversial Jeremiah Wright. Obama stated at The Compassion Forum, an event held at...

Congressman Altmire hearts McCain PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW By Salena Zito Rep. Jason Altmire, whose congressional district went overwhelmingly for Sen. Hillary Clinton in the six-week primary that was Pennsylvania, kind of likes Republican presumptive nominee Sen. John McCain’s proposal to invest in nuclear energy and clean coal. Here is the statement that he released today on McCain’s proposal to construct 45 nuclear reactors by 2030 and spend $2 billion a year in federal funding on clean coal. “I have always been a strong supporter of nuclear energy and clean coal technology, and I welcome Senator McCain’s announcement today that he is...

He told a pro-Israeli group the right things in a recent speech. But his acts tell another story. The day after securing the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama addressed the preeminent pro-Israel group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). This mostly Jewish organization, which is largely liberal and Democratic, would seem to be the perfect pushover crowd to launch his fall campaign. By all accounts, he wowed the crowd with rhetorical flares, saying he "had grown up without a sense of roots" and consequently had always "understood the Zionist idea, that there is always a homeland at the center...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama is leading Sen. John McCain in the crucial swing states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, according to a new survey. Obama lost the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania by 9 percentage points. But a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday shows him leading McCain by 12 points, 52 to 40 percent. In Ohio, a state Obama lost to Sen. Hillary Clinton by 10 points in March, he's leading McCain 48 to 42 percent. And in Florida, where he did not campaign this primary season and lost an unsanctioned Democratic contest, he leads McCain 47 to 43...

The neighbors who are divided over a growth of bamboo at a Mt. Pleasant residence came face to face Tuesday night, and neither side appeared to blink. A hearing convened by an appeals board of the Central Westmoreland Council of Government heard from Myra Posner, who has grown bamboo in her yard for the past 22 years, and her next-door neighbors, Tara Greenawalt and Dan Gelzheiser, who say the bamboo has invaded their yard and is a nuisance. Defining bamboo as a grass which cannot exceed 10 inches seems to be a serious overreach by the ne

WASHINGTON (AFP) - For the first time, White House hopeful Barack Obama leads his Republican rival John McCain in three of the biggest battlegrounds of November's election, according to a new poll Wednesday. The surveys by Quinnipiac University also found independent voters are opposed to defeated primary contender Hillary Clinton running as Obama's running mate on the Democratic ticket. Another poll out Wednesday by Zogby had Obama leading McCain by 47 percent to 42 nationally, with a 22-point lead among all-important independents. The Quinnipiac polls had Obama besting McCain 52-40 percent in Pennsylvania, 48-42 percent in Ohio, and 47-43 in...

"Security depends upon a sophisticated intelligence apparatus and the ability of our armed forces to act and to interdict. There are further considerations, however. Security subsists, too, in fidelity to freedom's first principles." Advertisement So wrote U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, in his majority opinion, of the 5 to 4 ruling in Boumediene v. Bush. While no one could dispute Justice Kennedy's principled phrasing, this may be one of the worst Supreme Court decisions since the 1857 Dred Scott case. As the rationale for granting habeas corpus rights to enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Justice Kennedy appealed...

...In 1976, Washington became the first major American city to ban handguns. But since that day, handgun technology has changed dramatically. In fact, the editor of Shooting Sports Retailer, a gun industry magazine, observed in 1997: "Firepower is increasing. So is the killing potential as guns shrink in size and concealability." We hope the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court will take that fact into account when they decide this month whether the District's handgun ban is constitutional. Here in Philadelphia, the deadly shift can be measured by the rate of violence in 2006, which resulted in more than 2,000...

Obama gets his bounce Posted June 18, 2008 8 :57 AM The Quinnipiac University poll released this morning shows Sen. Barack Obama ahead of Sen. John McCain in three critical battleground states: Pennsylvania -- Obama 52 percent, McCain 40 percent Ohio -- Obama 48 percent, McCain 42 percent Florida -- Obama 47 percent, McCain 43 percent These numbers finally give Obama the bounce that he and his team were looking for since Sen. Hillary Clinton left the race. Historically, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania have been "must win" states for the competing candidates in the general election -- the poll today...

In February, 24-year-old Rodney Phath was allegedly peddling assault rifles and the drug Ecstasy on Mifflin Street near 19th in South Philadelphia. One of the rifles was an SKS, the same type of high-powered gun that killed police Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski on May 3. After Phath was arrested for weapons offenses, conspiracy and possession on Feb. 11, Bail Commissioner James O'Brien set bail at $25,000. Phath posted bail the next day and was free to go. And early yesterday morning, he was found about a mile south of where he allegedly had sold weapons committing his latest crime, police said....

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Jack Murtha alert, big news, ladies and gentlemen: "A military judge has dismissed charges against a Marine officer accused of failing to investigate the killings of 24 Iraqis. Col. Steven Folsom dismissed charges Tuesday against Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani after defense attorneys raised concerns that a four-star general overseeing the prosecution was improperly influenced by an investigator probing the November 2005 shootings by a Marine squad in Haditha. The charges were dismissed without prejudice, meaning they can be refiled, but Folsom excluded Marine Forces Central Command from future involvement. Chessani was the highest-ranking officer implicated in the...

Does anybody think that the new mayor will keep his campaign promise about initiating action to stop the horrendous murder rate in Philly? Follow this link: http://www.thebulletin.us/site/news.cfm?newsid=19779492&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=580169&rfi=6

WILKES-BARRE – U.S. Rep. Paul Kanjorski on Monday blasted members of OPEC and the U.S. petroleum industry and asked the public to “dump the pump” and refrain from pumping gas and driving on Thursday unless absolutely necessary. Kanjorski said that by cutting down the consumption of petroleum products by a few percentage points, Americans would send a message that “we’re aware of the fact that we’re being taken advantage of, and that this $135-a-barrel oil and $4-plus gasoline has to cease.” Joined by Luzerne County Transportation Authority Director Stan Strelish at a press conference on Public Square, Kanjorski promoted public...

PITTSBURGH - A stiff drink comes with a stiff tax in Pittsburgh and surrounding towns these days, and that has made the county executive public enemy No. 1 in some quarters, reviled by name in song and on bar bills. Even comedians have gotten into the act, complaining that rising drink tabs meant fewer people coming to see them perform and pouring wine and liquor into a river in a mock restaging of the Boston Tea Party. The 10 percent drink tax, in effect since January, was pushed along by Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato to subsidize public transit. The...

READING, Pa. -- Police said a 61-year-old Reading woman beat her 16-year-old granddaughter severely after finding her in bed with another girl. Joyce Beddell is charged with aggravated and simple assault, recklessly endangering another person and endangering the welfare of a child. Police said Beddell's granddaughter suffered serious bruises to her legs and buttocks during Thursday's assault with a cane and a belt. The other girl fled from the house before the beating began. Beddell told police she had done nothing wrong. She told police she should be allowed to discipline her granddaughter as she wishes. Beddell was jailed in...