Free Republic

TEHRAN, Iran — Iranian state radio says Tehran will give the United States a model of the American surveillance drone captured by the Islamic Republic. The report Tuesday said the toy model of the RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drone will be sent to the White House in response to a formal request from Washington last month asking Iran to return the aircraft that went down over Iran in December.

A California solar-panel manufacturer once touted by President Barack Obama as a beneficiary of his administration's economic policies — as well as a half-billion-dollar federal loan — is laying off 1,100 workers and filing for bankruptcy. Solyndra LLC of Fremont, Calif., had become the poster child for government investment in green technology. The president visited the company in May 2010 and noted that Solyndra expected to hire 1,000 workers to manufacture solar panels. Other state and federal officials such as former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Energy Secretary Steven Chu also visited the company's facilities. But hard times have hit the...

EXCERPT In agreeing to Boehner's schedule, Obama's address will compete with the opening game of the National Football League season — a conflict the White House wanted to avoid.

hmmmmmmmmm

Imagine our surprise when reading media reports today that the “One Nation Tour” has been cancelled. Why didn’t anyone tell me? Oh, wait, that’s because it hasn’t been cancelled. (Good ol' media... you never cease to amaze!) As I said myself at the end of the east coast leg of the tour, the summer is long, and I’m looking forward to hitting the open road again. The coming weeks are tight because civic duty calls (like most everyone else, even former governors get called up for jury duty) and I look forward to doing my part just like every other...

A federal judge ruled in favor of a defendant who reposted an entire article in a copyright case on Monday, Wired reports. The lawsuit was brought by Righthaven, a Las Vegas-based “copyright litigation factory,” according to Wired, that has sued more than 200 websites, bloggers, and commenters for copyright infringement. This particular lawsuit targeted Wayne Hoehn, who posted an entire editorial from the Las Vegas Review-Journal and its headline, “Public Employee Pensions: We Can’t Afford Them” on a website medjacksports.com. Hoehn was not an employee of the site.

As the media swarms over Sarah Palin’s emails has anyone thought to ask why the personal information of those who wrote emails critical of Palin was not redacted? Some very ugly things are going to come out of these emails and not against Sarah Palin. Frankly I’m very disturbed by her legal team’s choices in what I’m reading. Sarah Palin and her legal team spent two and half years combing these emails for pages they wanted to withhold and for redactions to protect the privacy of some people. But you want to know whose information they left in? Any person...

President Obama, In your speech to the people of the Middle East, you referred time and again to the principle of liberty. It is on this principle that you aim to base US policy in our region; a region that you rightly defined as the cradle of human culture. Your words reflected your understanding that it is not only humanity's past that is bound up with this area, but its future, as well. The instability in the Middle East generates great danger for humanity, perhaps the greatest danger since World War II. The fate of humanity is inextricably linked to...

'If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." Federal Judge Roger Vinson opens his decision declaring ObamaCare unconstitutional with that citation from Federalist No. 51, written by James Madison in 1788. His exhaustive and erudite opinion is an important moment for American liberty, and...

Police in Hutchinson say a 71-year-old woman used a frying pan to knock out a man who attacked her. Police Sgt. John Moore say a 25-year-old man talked his way into the woman's home shortly after 7 a.m. Saturday, claiming he was homeless and had nowhere to go. Moore says when he tried to attack the woman, she fought back and "beat him down with a frying pan." When police arrived, he was unconscious on the floor. Kevin Scott Funderburk remains jailed on $55,200 bond on suspicion of attempted rape, aggravated battery, criminal restraint and criminal damage to property. He...

On Nov. 30, about a dozen moderate Christian leaders gathered for a meeting in Washington, D.C. Their colleagues on the religious right had been delivering a potent new message about God and country, of fear and domination, that was resonating among Christians and conservatives nationwide. Among those assembled last month were Jim Wallis, who has advised President Obama on matters of faith and politics; Joel Hunter, pastor of Northland church in Orlando, who has been an outspoken critic of public incivility; and Tony Campolo, a sociologist, pastor, and confidant of President Bill Clinton. Their purpose was tactical and forward-looking: how...

Trying to get a copy of the Skyfire browser for your iOS device? You may not have much luck, as the pseudo-Flash-capable browser has just disappeared from iTunes App Stores around the globe, mere hours after its splashy debut. When we try to download it for ourselves in the United States we get the message immediately above, and RazorianFly readers are chiming in with reports that the app is no longer available in Greece, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Australia, Canada, Switzerland, Norway, Spain and the UK.

LOL !!! Gotta Love it... Chris Matthews is PWNED big time ! QUOTE: By Chris Matthews! "4.1 TRILLION is only .3% -- 3/10ths of 1 percent of the budget deficit" LOL !! "Hardball Matthews" is such a GOOFBALL .. Does he really believe his own words? Really?

As UN mulls sanctions, Beijing fills void left by European firms. SINGAPORE — A state-owned Chinese refiner plans to ship 30,000 metric tons of gasoline to Iran after European traders halted shipments ahead of possible new UN sanctions, according to Singapore ship brokers. Beijing has growing commercial and political ties with Iran and has resisted US pressure for sanctions to press Teheran to abandon its nuclear program. Chinese officials say the country is entitled to energy trade

Sea Shepherd announced yesterday that the Ady Gil, formerly known as the EarthRace, was struck by the Japanese fleet while it was dead in the water, slicing off the bow of the craft, and forcing the rescue of the six souls aboard. In fact, Captain Watson was quoted as saying that this event was captured on film, and will show the Japanese ship turned strongly and suddenly, attacking the small boat.

As Mahmoud Ahmadinejad entered the Caracas airport in Venezuela, they received him by playing the Pahlavi-era "Sorood e Shahanshahi" instead of the Islamic Republic's anthem! (See video at link above)

First there was Frist (sort of). Then Thompson. Then Bloomberg. And today Arnold Schwarzenegger will become the latest high-profile (non-Senate) Republican to sign on to the health care plans pushed by President Obama. Here's the statement: For Immediate Release: Tuesday, October 6, 2009 Governor Schwarzenegger Issues Statement on National Push for Health Care Reform Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today issued the following statement urging the passage of health care reform at the national level: “As Governor, I have made significant efforts to advance health reform in California. As the Obama Administration was launching the current debate on health care reform, I...

POLK COUNTY (Bay News 9) -- A Polk County man shot at two robbery suspects Tuesday morning when he thought they were going to run him down. One of the suspects was hit in the head and died, and the other is still at large. The incident happened near a citrus grove on Rifle Range Road in the Wahneta area of Winter Haven. Property owner Jamie Jones heard a commotion outside while working inside his shed just before dawn. Jones told detectives a man and woman were driving away in his Land Rover. He said after they saw him, they...

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1078640272&play=1Rick Santelli this morning on CNBC takes on Ariana Huffinton. The intelectual vacuum of Ariana was on full display as she was totally exposed as a mental midget before the common sense real world observations and questions of Santelli. It was not a rebel yell, it was a surgical crushing. Santelli was asking the right questions and hitting the right points and Ariana was clueless in trying to push the usual left wing empty memes. Huffinton was 100% mentally unarmed. I have seen this with all her appearances. She is never prepared to hold her own in a contest of...

Not bipartisan? Try telling that to Sen. Olympia Snowe. On CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday, Sen. John McCain scoffed at the notion that the support President Barack Obama’s stimulus proposal has received from Snowe, Sen. Susan Collins, Arlen Specter, constituted bipartisanship. “[T]his agreement is not bipartisan,” McCain told moderator Bob Schieffer. “I've been in bipartisan agreements, many. This is three Republican senators. Every Republican congressman voted against it in the House, plus Democrats. And all but three Republicans stayed together on this. That's not bipartisanship. That's just picking off a couple of senators.” On Monday, Snowe took issue with that...

It’s official: Marian Robinson, the 71-year-old mother-in-law of President-elect Barack Obama, will be moving into the White House, transition officials said on Friday. In fact, Mrs. Robinson is already in town, helping to smooth the family’s personal transition as Mr. Obama, his wife, Michelle, and their two daughters prepare for new lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

HONOLULU (AP) - Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle says there's no politics in her decision not to attend a National Governors Associatoin meeting next week with President-elect Barack Obama. The Republican governor says her primary responsiblities are at home. She plans several meetings with department heads on challenges facing the local economy. The conference in Philadelphia would have taken her away Monday through Wednesday. Lingle says, "Politics played absolutely no role" in her decision. Obama invited all 50 governors to discuss the nation's economy. Forty are expected, including Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Obama's Hawaii campaign director, Andy Winer, accused Lingle of...

Lingle responds to crticism for not meeting with ObamaBy KHON News Governor Linda Lingle was a no show today in Philadelphia when President-elect Barack Obama met with more than 40 of the nation's governors. Hawaii Democrats are criticizing Lingle, a Republican, for not attending. This afternoon, Lingle defended her decision. Governor Lingle says her decision was not politically motivated, rather it had to do with timing. SNIP But some island Democrats are upset over Lingle's decision, saying it doesn't make sense. Governors from across the nation convened at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, for a historic face-to-face meeting with President-elect Barack...

I just wrote about the albatross about to form involving the Treasury Bond and the bailout(s). The Treasury Bond is at record levels and only giving an interest rate of 2.67% on the ten year benchmark. At the same time, we are trying to borrow several trillion Dollars. In other words, we are asking debtors to lend us several trillion dollars even though they would only get 2.67%, at least currently, as their rate. The Treasury bond, especially the ten year, is the pre cursor to most long term rates like mortgages, car loans, student loans, etc. so it's uncontrolled...

Video here.

Wealth redistribution

Larry Sinclair's press conference today at the National Press Club ended with the surprise appearance of US Marshalls, who presented a warrant for Sinclair's arrest. The DC police arrested and led Sinclair away in handcuffs. UPDATES UPDATE at 6:32 pm Wednesday June 18, 2008: Sinclair was indeed arrested by DC police immediately after his press conference and is being held, at present, by the Washington DC Police Department. Sinclair's being held at the 1st Division, 415 No. 4 Street SW. No charges have been announced. According the The Mitch and Nan Show blog: After a phone call to the Washington...

Proving just how important Barack Obama’s new rumor-busting Web site could be, a Tennessee Democratic Party member told a local newspaper that the presumptive nominee of his party “may be terrorist connected.”

Prostitution Case Features Prosecutors of Corruption BY JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN - Staff Reporter of the Sun March 10, 2008 URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/72574 Prosecutors specializing in government corruption cases are leading the investigation into what authorities say was a prostitution service that charged up to $5,500 an hour — suggesting that the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan may have evidence that a public official hired a prostitute. Federal prosecutors here recently unsealed a criminal complaint charging four people with running Emperors Club VIP, which advertised itself as an escort service. Prosecutors say the Emperors Club employed more than 50 high-end prostitutes. During a...

Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA), also known as Congressman Hollywood, is one of the most powerful members of the House when it comes to intellectual property issues, so when he muses aloud about "revisiting" the DMCA, people listen. Unfortunately, Berman wants to reform the DMCA because it doesn't go far enough, and his ideas sound like they're ripped right from the pages of the Big Content playbook. Berman chairs the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, and this morning oversaw a hearing on the PRO-IP Act, a bill that could boost statutory damages for copyright infringement and create...

Albert Snyder of York, Pa., the father of a Westminster Marine who was killed in Iraq, today won his case in a Baltimore federal court against members of Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church who protested at his son's funeral last year. The jury of five women and four men awarded Snyder $2.9 million in compensatory damages. The amount of punitive damages to be awarded has not yet been decided. The jury deliberated for about two hours yesterday and much of today.

WASHINGTON - Oh, Canada! The USA is closer than ever. The Bush administration appears to have annexed a major Canadian landmark as part of a slick new campaign to promote U.S. tourism and welcome foreign visitors to America. A Disney-produced promotional video released last week by the departments of State and Homeland Security highlights majestic American landscapes, from New England's colourful fall foliage and the Grand Canyon to the Rocky Mountains and Hawaii's pounding surf. Backed by a soaring orchestral soundtrack, shots of those attractions are interspersed with the smiling images of people of all creeds and colours. The video,...

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry has taken up a new battle against pirates, but this one is different than previous legal pursuits. The UK-based organization acts as the worldwide arm for the music recording industry, but as widely reported, it apparently forgot to renew its .com top-level domain in time before it got snatched up by one of its top targets, The Pirate Bay. While the IFPI still retains control of ifpi.org, ifpi.com now points to a Pirate Bay page that reads: "International Federation of Pirates Interests." The two sides are now preparing for a fight over the...

When it comes to launching online attacks, criminals are getting more organised and branching out from the Windows operating system, says eBay's security chief. eBay recently did an in-depth analysis of its threat situation, and while the company is not releasing the results of this analysis, it did uncover a huge number of hacked, botnet computers, said Dave Cullinane, eBay's chief information and security officer, speaking at a Microsoft-sponsored security symposium at Santa Clara University. Cullinane, who one year ago downplayed the role of organised crime in phishing ("It's not the Sopranos," he said), believes that online attackers are indeed...

Michael Goldfarb in the Weekly Standard has just broken news on the Weekly Standard that can only result in the firing of, at the minimum, Franklin Foer, editor of the once-respected New Republic. You simply cannot publish anti-military stories, inflammatory and controversial on their face, without subjecting the wild claims to the most strict fact-checking measures possible. Yet Mr. Foer, it now appears, did just that. Scott Thomas Beauchamp, the husband of a New Republic staffer who previous to his military service posted anti-war material on a weblog, volunteered to recant the stories that were published in The New Republic...

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned from a military source close to the investigation that Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp--author of the much-disputed "Shock Troops" article in the New Republic's July 23 issue as well as two previous "Baghdad Diarist" columns--signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods--fabrications containing only "a smidgen of truth," in the words of our source. Separately, we received this statement from Major Steven F. Lamb, the deputy Public Affairs Officer for Multi National Division-Baghdad: An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by PVT Beauchamp...

It's in a subscribers only link at the Wall Street Journal. The Congressman wants $8,000,000.00 to pay for marketing of wild American shrimp and $2.3 million to fund research into shrimp-fishing. These are but two of the Congressman's 65 earmarks sought thus far this year to the tune of $400,000,000.00. HIs chief spokesman pulled a Tom DeLay and said "Reducing earmarks does not reduce government spending, and it does not prohibit spending upon those things that are earmarked," the spokesman said. "What people who push earmark reform are doing is they are particularly misleading the public -- and I have...

Description on main page of website: "Some of us — hopefully most of us — are trying to understand and appreciate the effect our recent election will have on you, the citizens of the rest of the world. As our so-called leaders redouble their efforts to screw you over, please remember that some of us — hopefully most of us — are truly, truly sorry. And we'll say we're sorry, even on the behalf of the ones who aren't."

For a hearty lunchtime chuckle: Check out my interview with Ron Ott of Coptix, one of the masterminds behind the April Fools' joke that caused a Rove Derangement Syndrome feeding frenzy.

Tomkat, Bradgelina Get Pwned In Annual Banned Word ListPOSTED: 12:24 pm EST December 31, 2006 UPDATED: 12:44 pm EST December 31, 2006 DETROIT -- Online video gamers inadvertently stumbled onto a pop culture phenomenon when they began championing the use of "pwn," a misspelling of "own." Now, linguist police around the globe say it's high time to bury the cryptic term, which means to dominate or soundly defeat. "This word is just an overly used Internet typo," said Tory Rowley, of Corunna, Mich. "It has been overused to the point that people who play online games are using it in...

I really, really hope Rush Limbaugh sees and picks this up today. COURIC: CBS 'EVENING NEWS' RATINGS DISASTER Monday, Oct. 16, 2006 NEW YORK CITY WABC 7.1 WNBC 5.3 WCBS 3.7 LOS ANGELES KABC 5.9 KNBC 3.1 KCBS 1.5 WASHINGTON, DC NBC 9.3 ABC 7.8 CBS 2.5

(S10E09) Almost immediately after the events of 9/11, conspiracy theories began to crop up, and probably faster than ever before now that we had the internet and a way to instantaneously transmit gross misinformation and conclusions rife with logical fallacies. I think Cartman best summed up this episode with a line from his song about finding the truth behind 9/11: "I can't base my logic on proof." While Mr. Macke tries to find out which boy took a crap in one of the urinals, Cartman decides to finally get to the bottom of 9/11. He presents his finding in class,...

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BOSTON (Reuters) - A prostitute forced repeatedly into having sex with a Boston policeman said she feared the abuse would never stop -- until she stole his badge. When the officer, Michael LoPriore, telephoned her to get it back, the FBI was tuning in to their conversation, the 19-year-old's lawyer, John Swomley, said on Wednesday. LoPriore, 37, was charged in federal court on Tuesday with depriving the woman of her rights by using his position as a police officer to force her to perform sex in his car in September 2004. Under a plea agreement, the 12-year veteran of Boston's...

Today's Democrats are nothing like Presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy, who with courage and decisive action kept on top of their jobs and aggressively confronted one national defense crisis after another. Jimmy Carter, elected during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, and (1) believing Americans had an inordinate fear of communism, (2) lifted U.S. citizens' travel bans to Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia and (3) pardoned draft evaders. President Carter (4) also stopped B-1 bomber production, (5) gave away our strategically located Panama Canal and (6) made human rights the central focus of his foreign policy. That led...

AP 7-Eleven Dropping Venezuela-Backed Citgo Wednesday September 27, 12:16 pm ET 7-Eleven Dropping Venezuela-Backed Citgo As Its Gasoline Supplier DALLAS (AP) -- Convenience store operator 7-Eleven Inc. is dropping Venezuela-backed Citgo as its gasoline supplier at more than 2,100 locations and switching to its own brand of fuel. The retailer said Wednesday it will purchase fuel from several distributors, including Tower Energy Group of Torrance, Calif., Sinclair Oil of Salt Lake City, and Houston-based Frontier Oil Corp.

I quake in fear in my bed each night, shivering with the thought that a Mooooslim is about to blow me up with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Then I realize that George W. Bush is in charge, and will personally stop such things. Then I can sleep for one more night. What wll we ever do when he leaves office? I suppose we all will just die.

With the Burning Man art festival in the Nevada desert starting Monday, a group of San Francisco scientists is busy calculating how much the event contributes to global warming. Encouraged by the resurgence of the green movement, the scientists are taking a hard look at all those sacred flaming temples, gas-powered scooters shaped like cupcakes, and hundreds of rumbling RVs that converge for a week on the dry Black Rock Desert lakebed. With an idea that would make Al Gore smile, the scientists have created Cooling Man, an online calculator that determines how many tons of greenhouse gases each of...

BREAKING NEWS: The Red Sox have lost to the New York Yankees, 2-1, as the Bronx Bombers completed a five game sweep of Boston