Free Republic

<p>A Berkeley hills homeowner asked for police to respond quickly to deal with an intruder on his property about 15 minutes before the stranger allegedly bludgeoned him to death with a ceramic pot, according to records released Monday.</p> <p>No officers showed up before Peter Cukor, 67, was killed in the driveway of his home Feb. 18, as the department deployed officers to handle what turned out to be a small Occupy march. Police Chief Michael Meehan has defended his department's actions ..</p>

The ink was barely dry on President Barack Obama’s nomination for Secretary of Commerce before congressional Republicans promised to oppose the pick. California Rep. Darrel Issa, chairman of the House oversight committee, took aim at John Bryson, the nominee, calling him a “green evangelist.” Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe promised to work “actively” to defeat Bryson’s nomination. Inhofe, ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, said Tuesday that Obama’s choice shows “that he has no intention of backing down from his job-killing agenda.” In a statement, Issa decried Obama’s choice to head the Department of Commerce,...

The brains of elite soldiers can respond faster to signs of anger than normal, which could help them detect threats and make the difference between life and death when under fire. The differences in the brains of those who excel in extreme circumstances are poorly understood. Such research might help improve military performance, explained neuroscientist Alan Simmons at the University of California at San Diego. To investigate the brains of elite soldiers who face extreme circumstances all the time, psychiatrist Martin Paulus with Simmons and their colleagues scanned the brains of 11 off-duty members of the elite Navy SEALs (SEa,...

SACRAMENTO – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday said his administration will sue the Environmental Protection Agency if it fails to act more quickly on California's request to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles. Schwarzenegger said he called EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson on Wednesday and told him his agency was moving too slowly on California's 2005 request for a waiver to the federal Clean Air Act. The waiver, if granted by the EPA, would allow California to more aggressively regulate greenhouse gases as air pollutants. “If we don't see quick action from the government, we will sue the U.S. EPA,” Schwarzenegger...

This is the second in a series following a media event at the Intelligence Center on Fort Huachuca on Wednesday. Herald/Review FORT HUACHUCA — Interrogator training on this post has gone from fewer than 300 students a year in 2002 to an expected high of more than 1,500 in two years. The critical need for human intelligence collectors, commonly called interrogators, has increased since the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. That day of terror began the Army’s need “to significantly increase the size of its humit (human intelligence) capabilities,” said Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, who...

Iraqi Police search a mosque suspected of being a safe haven for insurgents in the Adhamiyah district of Baghdad, Aug. 27. Department of Defense photo by Navy Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Eli J. Medellin. FOB LOYALTY -- Two Iraqi kidnap victims were freed Wednesday by U.S. Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division in the Adhamiyah district of eastern Baghdad. U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces are in the area as part of the expansion of Operation Forward Together.Describing the scene, Soldiers from 1st Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment, said they observed an Iraqi man running from a house nearby their...

WASHINGTON, March 13, 2006 – The Defense Department acted as rapidly as law would allow in providing assistance to civil authorities coping with Hurricane Katrina, which hit the Gulf Coast late last August, a senior DoD official told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee March 10. Army Sgt. Daniel Loeffler, a team leader with Company C, 2nd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, and his team tread their way through the flooded streets of New Orleans Sept. 9 during a patrol of the French Quarter. Photo by Sgt. Michael J. Carden, USA    "Our department provides military support...

Nigeria 'must act quickly to avoid bird flu' By David Rennie in Brussels (Filed: 13/02/2006) The chances of a global influenza pandemic will be increased unless swift action is taken by Nigeria, the site of Africa's first outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, experts suggested yesterday. Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, is cursed by one of the world's most corrupt and ineffective governments. A swan found dead on a beech in Greece Dr David Nabarro, the United Nations bird flu chief, said that the arrival of the virus in Nigeria increased the prospect of it spreading worldwide, because...

SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq, Oct. 21, 2005 – Take a design engineer, a project manager and a construction company. Drop them into Iraq's mountainous north and hand them a "mission, impossible": Turn a relic of an old military fort into an internment facility ready to receive 1,000 detainees within eight weeks. That's the task that faced the Air Force Center for Environmental Excellence and contractor ECC International. "We and our contract partner were up to the challenge," said Tom Russell, AFCEE's director of worldwide installation support. The team got the order to proceed in August, but the challenge began months earlier, when...

10/17/2005 - TYNDALL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. (AFPN) -- When thrust into a surreal situation, three Airmen here stepped up and showed that people can do extraordinary things. It was around 1 a.m. Oct. 16 when Senior Airmen Brooke and Marc Llafet and Matt Ritchie were driving home from Fort Walton Beach, Fla. In the car with them were Airman Marc Llafet's sister and her friend. Before they got to Highway 98, Airman Ritchie saw a large truck ahead of them swerving all over the road. He pointed it out to the others. "This guy was driving recklessly," said Airman...

Michael Aguirre's relationship with the San Diego City Council began eroding his first day as city attorney when he said a financial crisis won't end until "a new generation of leadership takes hold of our city government." If that line was a jab at current leadership, Aguirre's action last week was an assault. He accused all but two council members of breaking federal securities laws in a report dropped Wednesday an hour after City Hall closed. Tensions between Aguirre and the City Council escalated quickly from his Dec. 6 inaugural speech to heated exchanges he had two weeks later with...

NOAA scientists acted quickly when a warning was issued about the powerful undersea earthquake in the Indian Ocean that triggered a devastating tsunami. Within minutes following an alarm signaling the strong earthquake, the NOAA Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii issued an information bulletin to nations in the Pacific at 8:14 p.m. EST Saturday, indicating that a magnitude 8.0 earthquake (later upgraded to magnitude 9.0) had occurred off the west coast of Northern Sumatra, Indonesia. Because the earthquake, reported to be one of the strongest in the world in the past 40 years, occurred in the Indian Ocean, not the...

Gov. McGreevey Should Go, Quickly By Paul Schindler A number of straight journalists told me that they were confused by the emotional high point of New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey’s resignation speech last Thursday in Trenton. “And so my truth is that I am a gay American,” the governor said, in a line replayed over and over again on television. The moment I heard that statement—days before I learned that McGreevey had sought advice from the Human Rights Campaign on his choice of words—I instinctively understood its rhetorical power. With one artful phrase, the governor was joining his experience to...