Free Republic

There was cleavage on display Wednesday afternoon on C-SPAN2. It belonged to Sen. Hillary Clinton. She was talking on the Senate floor about the burdensome cost of higher education. She was wearing a rose-colored blazer over a black top. The neckline sat low on her chest and had a subtle V-shape. The cleavage registered after only a quick glance. No scrunch-faced scrutiny was necessary. There wasn't an unseemly amount of cleavage showing, but there it was. Undeniable.

To Muslims the Koran is the very word of God, who spoke through the Angel Gabriel to Muhammad: "This book is not to be doubted," the Koran declares unequivocally at its beginning. Scholars and writers in Islamic countries who have ignored that warning have sometimes found themselves the target of death threats and violence, sending a chill through universities around the world. Yet despite the fear, a handful of experts have been quietly investigating the origins of the Koran, offering radically new theories about the text's meaning and the rise of Islam. Christoph Luxenberg, a scholar of ancient Semitic languages ...

Iran has announced that it is actively recruiting members of public to become suicide bombers, provides training camps across country for 'suicide column.'As the world deals with suicide bombers and radical Islamists, Iran has, once again, upped the terror ante. Iranian government officials have long denied media reports about a long suicide bomber recruitment program -- until now. '40,000 time bombs in Iran'According to the London-based daily Asharq Al Awsat, Ayatollah Muhammad Taki Misbah Yazari, a senior figure in Iran's leadership and spiritual advisor of President Muhammad Ahmadinejad, has issued a call in an Iranian newspaper for the public to...

Presenting...The top 20 home remedies A witches' brew of elixirs and potions that work! For more than 25 years, Joe and Teresa Graedon have provided lifesaving medical advice and health commentary through their King Features nationally syndicated newspaper column, "The People's Pharmacy," and their radio show. Here are their top 20 home remedies. Hot Water for ItchesModerate itching (the sort you get from a mosquito bite or mild case of poison ivy without blisters) often responds to a hot water application. The water needs to be hot enough to be slightly uncomfortable but not so hot it burns (120-130...

If Sen. John F. Kerry [related, bio] had his way, he'd be lobbying foreign leaders, leaning on Congress and mapping a new Supreme Court from the White House wings. Instead, his government interaction last week was limited mostly to the arcane world of City Hall and the Beacon Hill Architectural Commission. Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, won initial approval Dec. 16 - only after a lengthy debate and contingent on a rash of future paperwork - to build twin railings on the front steps of their Louisburg Square mansion. To bolster their case, the Kerrys laid out everything...

Teresa Heinz Kerry hardly suffered from a lack of media attention during the presidential campaign. But if a lengthy, behind-the-scenes Newsweek piece is on the mark, press accounts failed to reflect the degree to which she was a disruptive force in her husband's campaign who often looked "sullen," was deemed a "hypochondriac" by the staff and had a knack for "silencing a cheering crowd." "On the campaign bus," Newsweek reports, "there had been constant talk of marital spats between the candidate and his wife. . . . Though they kept Teresa's sometimes erratic behavior out of their copy, when they...

Teresa Heinz Kerry was at the Neil Road Recreation Center [Reno, NV] this afternoon pitching her husbands proposals for improving health care and shoring up Social Security...She drew laughs talking about a treatment for arthritis she had heard about: eating gin-soaked raisins.

'You get some gin and get some white raisins — and only white raisins — and soak them in the gin for two weeks. Then eat nine of the raisins a day'...

<p>The Valley's raisin growers and packers want to pull out grapevines on some 8,000 acres as an unprecedented late-season step to cut the size of their crop.</p> <p>The U.S. Department of Agriculture must approve the pullouts recommended by the Raisin Administrative Committee as a way to reduce the size of what is expected to be another huge crop at a time when there is a glut of raisins and a shortage in demand. Both have meant a low price for growers, $880 per ton for the 2001 crop and still less after raisins are taken out for reserves.</p>