Free Republic

Wondering if anyone else having problems with FR. I'm logged in, but no new articles and jumbled time on dates are coming up on threads posted from as early as Friday AM.

In response to the charge the conservatism is not providing answers to the troubles of the moment—and in response to the “reform conservatives” who are trying to fix that, Andrew Sullivan writes: Conservatism is not, to my mind, about solving problems, which is why it remains a very problematic governing philosophy for modern Americans. It is about a modesty toward what problems government can ever solve. Its responses to emergent questions will not be an attempt to "solve" them, but to ameliorate them with a narrow set of tools. And the narrower the better. The particular charge Sullivan is answering...

Proposed Law Looks to Wipe Out Problem TALLAHASSEE (CBS4.com) ― A proposed law currently making its way through the Florida legislature might help you with what can be an embarrassing problem. Here's the bottom line, the bill would be a mandate that all eating establishment must have enough toilet paper when you go into the restroom. The only problem is the bill doesn't dictate how much toilet paper is "enough." State Senator Victor Crist, a Republican from Tampa, felt the problem was so important, a law must be passed to protect the backsides of anyone in Florida. The measure will...

SACRAMENTO - As the nation prepares to celebrate Problem Gambling Awareness Week, the head of California's small program is preparing to move on. Steve Hedrick, director of the state's Office of Problem Gambling, will be joining the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in its division of addiction and recovery services. Hedrick presided over the formative years of an operation that has subsisted on a meager, $3 million budget and drawn persistent criticism for being ill-equipped to deal with a problem believed to afflict more than 1 million California adults and their families. On Hedrick's watch, the office conducted the...

So, John McCain has a conservative supporter warming up the crowd for him who takes some shots at Obama Bill Cunningham, who hosts “The Big Show” with Bill Cunningham, a local program here that is also syndicated nationally, was part of a line of people lauding Mr. McCain and revving up the crowd before his appearance here before several hundred people at a theater here. He lambasted the national media, drawing cheers from the audience, for being soft in their coverage of Mr. Obama compared to the Republican candidates, declaring they should “peel the bark off Barack Hussein Obama.” He...

It's a hard thing to pin down, Barack Obama's Jewish problem. But in the halls of the AIPAC Policy Conference yesterday, there was no denying that the members of the pro-Israel group -- largely Democrats, though they tilt right -- feel a real, if kind of inchoate, skepticism about the Illinois senator. Now, an Iowa Democrat and AIPAC member, David Adelman, has written Obama a letter asking for clarification of Obama's remark to the Des Moines register that "nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people," a statement Adelman writes he found "deeply troubling." Adelman, a Des Moines lawyer, said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7WJeqxuOfQ This is a MUST SEE video for anyone interested in the immigration debate, whether you are a citizen, an illegal alien or a Congressman. ... all » This clip from the longer video, Immigration by the Numbers, features Roy Beck demonstrating the catastrophe of the huge numbers of both legal and illegal immigration by Third World people into the modern nations. He uses standard statistics and simple gumballs to show this disaster in the making. Video was done by roy beck: http://www.answers.com/topic/roy-beck Full video on google: http://video.google.com/videoplay?doc...

Fred Thompson gives "a very incoherent and not very concise stump speech," peaked months ago, and is the campaign's "biggest dud." Mitt Romney has "an authenticity problem"; he is "almost too mechanical about the issues." John McCain faces "enormous hurdles," and the "irony" of his quest is that he may just be repeating 2000. Mike Huckabee has "the obvious problems--being from Hope, Ark., and quite frankly having the last name Huckabee." The craven Republicans are "terrified about losing the presidency after losing Congress." All this comes from Terry McAuliffe, longtime Democratic Party mover, maven and moneyman, who's obviously hoping for...

Michael Moore's riveting new film "Sicko" is about to become the X factor in California's health care debate - casting an unforgiving spotlight on all those proposals from Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger and some legislators who think we can solve the health care crisis by handing over more money to the insurance companies. Lack of insurance is not the problem - it's the insurance industry itself. A Zogby/UPI poll in February found that 42 percent of Americans said their insurer had refused to pay a medical bill. A USA Today/ABC poll in March found one in four Americans had trouble paying...

U.S. growers produce nearly $35 billion worth of marijuana annually, making the illegal drug the country's largest cash crop, bigger than corn and wheat combined, an advocate of medical marijuana use said in a study released on Monday. The report, conducted by Jon Gettman, a public policy analyst and former head of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, also concluded that five U.S. states produce more than $1 billion worth of marijuana apiece: California, Tennessee, Kentucky, Hawaii and Washington. California's production alone was about $13.8 billion, according to Gettman, who waged an unsuccessful six-year legal battle to...

On May 14, 2005, PAX-TV's Faith Under Fire broadcast a debate that I took part in against Mahdi Bray, the executive director of the Muslim American Society's (MAS) Freedom Foundation. Bray had selected the debate topic in advance, and chose to argue about "The United States of Islam?" -- that is, whether American Muslims wanted to see Islamic law sharia) implemented in the United States. While I unwaveringly agreed that most American Muslims don't want to see the United States ruled by Islamic law, I nonetheless jumped at the chance to debate this topic against Bray. After all, the Chicago...

The farm-produced fuel that is supposed to help wean the United States from its oil addiction is under scrutiny for its potentially corrosive qualities. E85, a blend of 85 percent corn-based ethanol and 15 percent gasoline, could be eating away at metal and plastic parts in gas station pumps, Underwriters Laboratories, the private product-safety testing group, said this month. BP, the British oil company, said Thursday that it would delay the expansion of E85 at its U.S. outlets until the laboratories certified an E85 dispensing system.

Cosmic rays may solve global warming problem By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 04/10/2006) Cosmic events could help soften the impact of global warming by triggering cloud formations, suggests research published yesterday. A team of Danish scientists concluded in the Proceedings of the Royal Society that making clouds is plausible, using the Sun's magnetic field. The Sun has been at its strongest for more than 60 years and a period of high solar activity could be approaching its end. "This would produce a cooling effect that could counter part of the global warming predicted for the next century," said Dr...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 11, 2006 -- A group of American seamstresses is working to apply an old-fashioned skill -- sewing -- to help today’s wounded veterans. The nonprofit group “Sew Much Comfort” includes more than 2,000 people who sew specially made clothing for wounded servicemembers, who often find clothing off the rack doesn’t accommodate a variety of medical devices. Sew Much Comfort is a member of the Defense Department’s America Supports You program, which highlights grassroots and corporate efforts to support U.S. troops and their families. Several of the groups set up tables at the end of the America Supports...

WASHINGTON - Capturing the immigration debate in political ads this campaign season — without upsetting Hispanics — is proving tricky for the parties and candidates. An ad criticizing Stephen Laffey, who is challenging incumbent Sen. Lincoln Chafee (news, bio, voting record) for the Republican nomination in Rhode Island, set off grumbling in the Latino community. The ad criticized Laffey, mayor of Cranston, for allowing city police to accept ID cards issued by the Mexican government as identification. Chafee's spokesman had no comment about the ad. Laffey's campaign called it an insensitive attack on the mayor's attempt to empathize with "people...

SAN FRANCISCO The majority of Californians view illegal immigration as a "very serious" problem, although most say they oppose deporting those already living in the United States, according to a new statewide poll released Thursday. The Field Poll showed that 53 percent of voters in the state see illegal immigration as a very serious problem, and another 30 percent see it as somewhat serious. Republicans tended to take a stronger view, with 69 percent seeing it as a very serious problem, compared to 46 percent of Democrats and 43 percent of nonpartisans, according to the survey. An overwhelming majority, 80...

Meth still No. 1 drug problem, study findsBy SAM HANANEL, Associated Press Writer 28 minutes ago A pouch containing crystalized methamphetamine and a homemade pipe are shown March 21, 2006 in Window Rock, Ariz. A survey says Meth abuse continues to fuel an increase in crimes like robbery and assault. (AP Photo/Matt York, FILE) WASHINGTON - Meth abuse continues to fuel an increase in crimes like robbery and assault, straining the workload of local police forces despite a drop in the number of meth lab seizures, according to a survey Tuesday. Nearly half of county law enforcement officials consider methamphetamine...

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is "part of the problem" of illegal immigration into the United States. That according to Rep. Tom Tancredo, a fellow Republican, who blasted Schwarzenegger's reluctance to secure the California-Mexico border with additional National Guard troops, despite such a request from President Bush. Appearing on "The Big Story" on the Fox News Channel, the Colorado congressman and author of the just-released book "In Mortal Danger" was asked by host Julie Banderas, "What do you think about Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger not upholding the president's wishes?" "I'm very disappointed in it, of course," responded Tancredo. "Disappointed in the fact...

MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (June 28, 2006) -- When many people think of a field hospital, often scenes from the popular sitcom “M.A.S.H.” come to mind. For the sailors of Bravo Surgical Co., 2nd Medical Battalion, 2nd Marine Logistics Group, a field hospital is serious business. “We are setting up an mock (Surgical/Shock Trauma Platoon) you would see set up as a quick reaction force,” said Petty Officer 1st Class Michael D. Whaley, the lead petty officer for Bravo Surgical Co. “This SSTP can provide everything from surgical to basic care and ancillary services such as X-ray and...

SALT LAKE CITY - Kicking off a four-day, three-state tour, Mexican President Vicente Fox said Tuesday that his nation wants to be part of the solution in the immigration debate, not the problem. "We don't set up walls, and that's not the way you're going to fix this situation," Fox said in Spanish to representatives of groups active in Utah's Mexican community. "It's not with fences that we are going to solve this problem." There were cheers of "Viva Mexico" as Fox shook hands before leaving for an official dinner at the governor's mansion. Earlier in the day, at a...

This is Europe's problem too, says Madrid By Mike Elkin (Filed: 19/05/2006) Spain has issued its most urgent international appeal for help in coping with illegal immigrants flooding into the Canary Islands. Madrid announced it will dispatch diplomats to several countries in western Africa, where the migrants come from, while a European parliament delegation will arrive next month to assess a problem that the Spaniards say is not just theirs but Europe's. Over 2,000 migrants have reached the Spanish coast this month The calmer seas of early summer have seen a sharp rise in the numbers reaching the holiday islands,...

NEW ORLEANS - A foundation problem — although not the one targeted by earlier studies — caused the 450-foot-long break in a floodwall and levee on New Orleans' western edge when Hurricane Katrina hit, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Friday. A naturally occurring, 20-foot-thick layer of clay that helped support the floodwall was too weak for the job, according to a report by a Corps task force set up to find out why the levees broke. Had the floodwall and levee held, much of the western half of the city would have escaped flooding. Previous analyses by other...

In December, the FBI was worried that Border Patrol agents' lives were in danger. But many of those officers never got the memo. Instead, agents say, they first learned of the threat -- that smugglers planned to hire gang members to murder Border Patrol agents -- when a Daily Bulletin reporter called to ask for their opinions. The fact that many officers didn't know about the threat, described in an "Officer Safety Alert" disseminated by the Department of Homeland Security, shows how poor communication among law enforcement agencies can be. The warning is "proof that we're being targeted," said a...

The disciplinary arm of the N.C. State Bar dropped charges of felonious misconduct against two former Union County prosecutors Friday because of a 1999 clerical error at the state Supreme Court. The State Bar had charged Kenneth Honeycutt and Scott Brewer with lying, cheating and withholding evidence in a 1996 death penalty case. The ruling Friday marks the second time that Honeycutt and Brewer won on procedural grounds before the bar's Disciplinary Hearing Commission, which sits as judge and jury in disciplinary cases. . . . Prosecutors around the state are concerned that the case is damaging their reputation and...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will face a hugely difficult problem tomorrow when he delivers his annual State of the State address: the Grand Canyon-sized gap between the lazy conventional wisdom about California's problems and reality. When Schwarzenegger ran during the 2003 recall campaign, his analysis of Sacramento's dysfunction was acute: Gov. Gray Davis and the Democratic-run Legislature had gone on a four-year binge in which spending grew much faster than population and inflation. This binge occurred both during the windfall years of the tech boom and as revenues plunged when the stock market tanked after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Only...

The Scribe’s Problem I found Robert McHenry’s recent piece (http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=121305E) on the superiority of Britannica over Wikipedia to be fascinating, for I think he’s allowed himself an error of logic that we more usually encounter in economics. It was also a little unkind of the publishing gremlins to schedule his piece the day before Nature came out with that research ( SEE: http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/online-encyclopedias-put-to-the-test/2005/12/14/1134500913345.html) into the relative accuracies of the two approaches. The, umm, research that showed roughly comparable levels of errors in the amateur thing thrown together on the web and the one expensively and carefully produced by multiple levels...

Everyone agrees that California has a chronic fiscal problem - five straight years of deficit budgets being graphic proof. The state, which had experienced serious budget problems in the early 1990s, thanks to a severe recession, was recovering nicely until 2000, when then-Gov. Gray Davis and the Legislature blew most of a one-time tax windfall on billions of dollars in tax cuts and new spending. --snip-- The budget crisis eventually cost Democrat Davis his job and propelled Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger into the governorship on his promise to clean up the mess in Sacramento. But while Schwarzenegger has made some incremental...

God Causes the Problems—And all along you thought it was President Bush Rabbi Daniel Lapin September 28, 2005 Once upon a time in St Louis, there lived a husband who yearned to vacation in Los Angeles while his wife craved a few days in New York. Averaging their desires and finding the midpoint, the couple went to Kansas City. Averaging doesn’t always work. Averaging doesn’t work when you are dealing with two very different things like Los Angeles and New York or like traditional Americans and those of the secular fundamentalist persuasion. Now, in one of the best examples of...

Dean’s immigration view too simple for problem By Joseph Dolman, Newsday Published: Sunday, Aug. 21, 2005 Poor Howard Dean. The Democrats keep looking for their breakout moment. They keep searching for a way to show skeptical Americans they aren’t just hand puppets for a cast of familiar interest groups. They keep struggling to develop some fresh ideas. Yet there was Dean – the party’s national chairman – on “Face the Nation” last Sunday, whiffing away at a fine chance to show Americans a smart Democratic mix of thoughtful policy and savvy politics on the crucial matter of immigration. Host Bob...

Chris Core, WMAL Radio to Broadcast Live from Herndon, (VA) Town Council Meeting on Day Laborer (Illegal Alien) Shelter.... ..(Tonight), the Herndon Town Council will vote on public funding for a day laborer shelter that would serve a large number of illegal aliens..... 630 WMAL's Chris Core will be there in person to deliver blow-by-blow coverage of what promises to be a contentious meeting..... The Chris Core Show will broadcast live from Herndon Town Hall beginning at 6:00pm (Eastern Time, 3:00 p.m. Pacific). How do you feel about this issue? Come out and make your opinion known, or call...

He's a movie star now. Yes, Arizona senator and aspiring presidential candidate John McCain recently made his cinematic debut in this summer's bawdy romantic comedy "Wedding Crashers." The cameo appearance may create a big-screen problem for McCain, though, and it doesn't have anything to do with his Clinton-defending cameo co-star James Carville. It has to do with the flick's thoroughly warranted R rating. In the movie, Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn portray divorce mediators who crash weddings and seduce bridal attendants. There's a fast-moving montage in the film, done in the style of a music video, where Vaughn and Wilson's...

<p>Few Islamic countries have taken steps to tackle the pandemic as the death toll continues to mount.</p> <p>''I just pray that God ends my life before more symptoms show. I don't want to create problems for my family.''</p> <p>Before his HIV-positive diagnosis in 2001, the Egyptian engineer who spoke these words thought that AIDS was a faraway disease that afflicted only foreigners. He had no idea that the global AIDS pandemic had reached his country. Now he says he would rather kill himself than be rejected along with his family by neighbors and friends, who regard HIV as synonymous with sin and shame.</p>

SACRAMENTO – Staring at potential payouts in the billions of dollars, the U.S. oil industry is maneuvering to escape responsibility for cleaning up after MTBE, the now-banned toxic gasoline additive that has seeped into drinking water across the country. If the campaign is successful, critics say taxpayers will be forced to pick up the unpaid bill. Oil producers have attached so much importance to immunity from liability that the issue has taken a place right alongside opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and tax breaks as Congress crafts a broad new energy policy. The House has already approved legislation sponsored...

Bush says global climate change 'serious' problem 34 minutes ago WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush said global climate change is a "serious long term" problem and insisted that the United States, which rejected the Kyoto protocol, was leading research into finding solutions. Climate change was one of the key issues to be raised by British Prime Minister Tony Blair during a summit with Bush at the White House. Bush told a press conference afterwards, "I've always said it's a serious long long-term issue that needs to be dealt with, and my administration isn't waiting around to deal...

I have been Macified. After not owning a Macintosh for more than 12 years I finally decided that the undeniable coolness and beauty of the hardware and particularly of OS X meant that it was time to get religion! The beast, which arrived a couple of weeks ago, is a Power Mac G5 with dual 2-GHz processors and 1.5G bytes of RAM running OS X Tiger. What a gorgeous piece of engineering! It is an elegant design even under the hood: When you need to take off the side to, for example, add extra RAM, one latch frees the panel....

As the Koran-flushing-in-Cuba episode becomes old news, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) has helpfully found a way to keep Koran desecration in the public eye. It does so – and I draw on MPAC's two press releases (here and here), plus reports from the Associated Press and Los Angeles Times – by promoting the story of one Azza Basarudin, who bought a copy of the Koran, Oxford University Press edition.A doctoral candidate at the University of California at Los Angeles specializing in Middle East studies, Basarudin ordered the volume in early May from Bellwether Books, a used book store...

This summer's Sacramento budget debate will be more like a return to the old days of 2000. Instead of agonizing over multibillion-dollar cuts, as has been the featured event of recent years, this time legislators and the governor will be debating how to spend $4 billion in unexpected revenues. Typically in the past, state politicians would swarm over any surprise windfall like sharks in a feeding frenzy. One-time revenue growth would be carved up by the Legislature as if budget cash flow would never decrease again. This destructive mistake cannot be allowed to happen again. Our first look at the...

President George W. Bush traveled April 5 to Parkersburg, West Virginia to visit the so-called Social Security Trust Fund: a filing cabinet filled with paper. "There is no trust fund — just IOUs," backed by no economic assets whatsoever, Bush noted. Senator Jon Corzine (D., N.J.) called the president's remarks misleading. In a conference call with journalists, Corzine said: "U.S. Treasury securities have the ability to be paid under any circumstances based on the ability of the government to print money." While Corzine's press secretary denies this comment was a concrete proposal, at this writing, the senator proudly highlights this...

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell and state education officials are wiping egg off their faces. O’Connell’s Department of Education has claimed that 87 percent of California high school students graduated in 2002. A recent Harvard study, however, finds that only 71 percent of California high schoolers graduated in that year. It also reports that only about six out of 10 black and Hispanic high-school students received their diploma. Faced with the Harvard data, state education officials have admitted that their statistical methodology is flawed, relying on undependable data from local schools. The Harvard study says that because of...

For the fiscal year that will begin on July 1, state budget revenues are projected to increase by 6.8 percent, or more than $5 billion. This healthy growth in tax receipts is due to California's strong economy, which now is humming along very nicely following the anemic years of 2001-2004. Why, then, is Sacramento staring once again at a huge budget shortfall of $5 billion to $10 billion? Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger offers a succinct explanation. "We have $83 billion in revenues coming in. That is $5 billion more than last year, which is terrific news," the governor says. "But the...

http://netwmd.com/articles/article849.html Baghdad, Iraq — Half past ten in the morning on Monday, January 3, an Iraqi National Guard unit, escorted by a dozen uniformed U.S. military, pulled up to Abdul Karim Muhammadawi's headquarters in the Hay al-Jamiah section of Baghdad. Muhammadawi, known to the Iraqis as Abu Hatem, is renowned among Iraqi Shia as "the Robin Hood of the marshes." Hailing from al-Amarah, during Saddam's rule, he led a persistent Shia resistance which harried local Baathist commanders and protected political opposition. A member of the now-defunct governing council, he has since joined the Iraqi National Alliance (al-Ittilaf al-Watani al-Iraqi), the...

To Any Person Who Suspects They May Have a Drinking Problem, I have written this to describe my experiences of the past 14 months as I have worked to resolve my drinking problem. Everyone is different and I do not propose to be an expert on this topic, but I have my own personal experience and I am sharing it in the hope that it might help someone else to solve this problem and change their life. I have now been sober for 14 months without a drop of alcohol. This is not a long time as compared to over...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

I was just thinking about the Jeremy Glick episode. O'Reilly may be moderate politically, but that doesn't mean unbiased these days. His problem is that he isn't neutral when it comes to the United States. He is pro-American. To the left, that's biased.

A private plane crashed near Houston's Hobby Airport Monday. And it was a plane that was coming to Houston to transport former President Bush to a conference in Equador. The plane went down Monday morning near Highway 288 and Beltway 8. Former President Bush suspendeded his trip to Ecuador because of the crash. A conference organizer says the plane should have flown the ex-president from Houston. Houston District Fire Chief Jack Williams said that the twin-engine Gulfstream jet arriving from Dallas Love Field apparently clipped a tall light tower at a Beltway 8 toll plaza, shearing off a wing. He...

Editor's note: Readers may also be interested in Holland: Portent of Things to Come? and Dutch Center-Right Coalition Stands up to Islamism."Education by murder" describes the slow and painful way people wake up to the problem of radical Islam. It took 3,000 deaths to wake up Americans, or at least to wake up the half of them who are conservative. Likewise, it took hundreds of deaths in the Bali explosion to semi-wake up Australians; it took the Madrid assault for Spaniards, and the Beslan atrocity for Russians. Twelve workers beheaded in Iraq awoke the Nepalese.But it took just one death...

The media's trust problemCal Thomas (archive)  September 29, 2004 | Print | Send "The traditional media in this country is in tune with the elite, not the people." - Rupert Murdoch, Chairman, News Corporation, in the Sept. 26 Wall Street Journal.That sums up the public perception of the definers and disseminators of what is called "news" in this country. The media perform mostly for themselves and their elite friends, not the people they presume to serve. This attitude is responsible for the loss of viewers and readers. The media appear willing to go down with the ship, rather than...

WASHINGTON - Iran, a country that has bedeviled the United States for decades, could prove to be the biggest foreign policy challenge facing whoever is the next president. The messy Iraq war and a spy scandal linking Pentagon and Israeli officials could complicate U.S. hopes of halting Iran's nuclear ambitions. Both President Bush and Democratic nominee John Kerry say they want to use diplomacy — although with different approaches — to prevent what could be a nightmare scenario for the United States: a nuclear-armed, hostile Islamic state in the volatile Middle East. But the United States' ability to sound an...

The Christmas Eve truce of 1968 was three minutes old when mortar fire exploded around John Forbes Kerry and his five-man crew on a 50-foot aluminum boat near Cambodia. “Where is the enemy?” a crewmate shouted. In the distance, an elderly man was tending his water buffalo — and serving as human cover for a dozen Viet Cong manning a machine-gun nest. “Open fire; let’s take ‘em,” Kerry ordered, according to his second-in-command, James Wasser of Illinois. Wasser blasted away with his M-60, hitting the old man, who slumped into the water, presumably dead. With a clear path to the...

The Problem With Bashing The Rich August 2, 2004 The clear implication of the Democrats' message is that the rest of us would somehow be better off if the rich were worse off ... they've already received their wish. Why are they still complaining? (National Review Online) This column from National Review Online was written by Bruce Bartlett. A key theme of the Kerry- Edwards campaign is "us-versus-them," where "us" includes the poor and middle class and "them" indicates the greedy rich. Edwards famously characterized this dichotomy as "two Americas" during his run for the Democratic nomination. The clear implication...