Free Republic

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Bank of America, Verizon, Chipotle and other companies have pulled advertising from a Sacramento radio station after talk show hosts referred to transgender people as "freaks" with mental disorders. During a May 28 show, one of the three hosts on KRXQ's "Rob, Arnie & Dawn" show said he would hit his son with his shoe if he put on high heels. Another said he would tell a boy he was "a little idiot" if he asked to wear a dress. Officials with Bank of America Corp. and Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. said Friday their companies pulled...

Howdy Everybody. I wrote Attorney General McKenna’s office (Washington State) this week and got back a reply. Basically I was voicing my concern of possible voter fraud that I’ve been hearing about on the news, and how it’s affected past elections and this one. Here’s a response from his office: “Mr. Billeaudeau: I am responding on behalf of Attorney General McKenna to your message, which is copied below. You write about the coming general election, and mention in particular concerns about voter registration drives conducted by ACORN. In Washington, a criminal investigation was conducted in connection with the 2006 election,...

MISSISSAUGA -- Asqa Parvez, the 16-year-old allegedly strangled by her father, has died of her injuries. A man telephoned Peel Regional Police at 7:55 a.m. yesterday claiming he had killed his daughter. When police arrived at the posh Longhorn Trail home, where about a dozen people spanning three generations live, Aqsa was barely alive. She was transported to Sick Kids hospital, where she later died. Aqsa's father, Muhammad Parvez, 57, a driver with Blue and White Taxi, was taken into custody and appeared in Brampton court this morning.

For Seattle's biggest-spending liberal benefactor, bankrupt Air America was a costly flyer. Deep-pocketed political donor Rob Glaser undertook his biggest-ever political investment in 2004 when he handed over $10 million to prop up lefty talk-show network Air America Radio, giving him 36.7 percent ownership. But while the founder and CEO of Seattle-based RealNetworks Inc. successfully helped fund the 2006 Democratic revolt in Congress, he has been bloodied attempting a similar revolution in progressive talk radio. The network's challenge to Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talkers for the nation's hearts, minds, and ad revenues has ended up in bankruptcy, and Glaser,...

MEL Gibson once had close links to the Australian League of Rights, a Far Right group notorious for its anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial. The league claims the world is run by a secret society of Jews. The Hollywood star's foray into Far Right activist politics in Australia occurred in 1987 when he campaigned for a friend, Rob Taylor, who stood unsuccessfully for the northern Victorian federal seat of Indi. Charles Pinwill, a former Queensland state director of the League of Rights, said he knew Gibson's father, Hutton, and said Gibson was interested in the league's ideas. "They were...

Rob Reiner better watch his back. It now appears that an outside audit – at the least – will be done of the California Children and Families Commission because it used $23 million in taxpayer funds for TV ads touting “preschool for all” at the same time Reiner, a commission board member, was circulating petitions for his “preschool for all” initiative. And when investigators come to chat, the executive director of the commission just might not go along with the cover story that it was all one big “coincidence” that the TV ads ran at the same time as the...

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez said Wednesday that he signed an order to immediately expropriate the assets of Venepal, a bankrupt paper company that halted operations last month. Chavez met with former Venepal employees to sign the expropriation order. The workers vowed to rebuild the company with the help of the government and manufacture books and notebooks the government could use in public schools and other education-related social projects. Chavez, a self-described "revolutionary" and critic of unbridled capitalism, said Venepal's expropriation is a step in Venezuela's new economic self-development model. "We're at war against poverty and against misery in Venezuela," he...

When I was a boy, yep, I was a Scout, And whole time I was, no Scoutmasters came out. Nope, they stayed in the closet, if any were there, And no parents protested our Scout meeting prayer. We believed in our creed, truly honored our oath, Our duty to God in those years was not loathe. No, we pledged our young lives that we’d do our best, To honor traditions behind our Scout crest.

Rob Reiner Named Democrat of the Year By ROSANNA MAH, The Independent Staff Writer 07.JUL.04 One of Hollywood’s leading political advocates Rob Reiner is being honored as “Democrat of the Year” by the West Hollywood Democratic Club for his outstanding contributions to Democratic Party causes. “Rob Reiner is a lifelong Democrat,” said club president Donald DeLuccio. “He wants to get Democrats elected and his goal is giving back to the community.” In an effort at mobilizing local interest in the upcoming presidential campaign, the liberal organization is also honoring Antonio Villaraigosa, Kerry campaign national co-chair, with the organization’s “President’s Award.”...

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. -- It's a story Independence police can't help cracking a smile about. A father and son, they say, could be the dumbest criminals they've ever come across. Independence police say the father and son team need to find an alternative way to make a living, because as criminals, they're just not gonna make it, KCTV5's Amy Anderson reported on "KCTV5 News at 5 p.m." Police said the father and son used a drill to try and rob a Pizza Hut delivery business off Truman Road. "It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud," said...

Rob Roy MacGregor is exposed as a tartan turncoat GRAHAM OGILVY AND KURT BAYER HE WAS romanticised by Sir Walter Scott and glamorised by Hollywood. But a new investigation by one of Scotland’s leading historians has revealed that Rob Roy MacGregor was not so much a tartan Robin Hood as a robbing hood. David Stevenson, emeritus professor of Scottish history at St Andrews University, will claim in a new book that the folk hero was a traitor, spy and fraudster. Stevenson’s most shocking claim is that Rob Roy betrayed his own side by selling Jacobite secrets to the English government....

Then there is the aforementioned Lt. Governor of California. The only reason he is running for governor, against his not best pal, but boss Governor Gray Davis, is, according to an article on MSNBC, “to keep the office in Democratic hands by offering himself as an alternative in the Oct. 7 recall election.” He’s doing it for the party and not for himself. That’s just the kind of guy he is.

CHECHEN REBELS ROBBING LOCALS UNDER PRETEXT OF JIHAD Federal forces have lately obtained a lot of facts proving that Chechen rebels rob locals under the pretext of the so-called jihad, a source in the regional operational headquarters in charge of the anti-guerilla operation in the North Caucasus told Interfax-Military News Agency on Wednesday. "The case of Shamsudim Sapiyev nicknamed Malysh (Baby) is among the latest confirmations of this. Sapiyev led the so-called Shali jamaat (rebel administration - Interfax-AVN) until his recent death during detention," the source said. Police in the Leninsky district of Grozny detained Tamara Bilayeva, born in 1960,...

Despite Overwhelming Vote in Support of Recall - Republican Party Spokesman Makes Disparaging Comments on Recall Gray Davis Effort Help make sure that some of the political operatives in Sacramento who don’t understand a grassroots efforts don’t smear our good deeds in the news media. Today, Rob Stutzman who serves as a spokesman for the California Republican Party, made the following comments about the recall effort: “So far it appears to be failing… They have not raised the necessary dollars to qualify the recall. The Internet appears to be yielding tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands of signatures. The...

Does the Bible teach that Christians are required to tithe to the Church?By Brian Knowles      The practice of tithing is common in Christian Churches. It has been since the Roman Catholic Church first declared it compulsory for Catholics and Jews many centuries ago (though most do not practice it today). The issue here is not whether Christians may of their own free will tithe – of course they may. A Christian is free to give any amount he or she wishes to the Church, to the poor, or to anyone else for that matter. But voluntary tithing is...

<p>Bill Simon's political team inadvertently accomplished what no one thought possible just two years ago: They ran a campaign against Democrat Gov. Gray Davis without mentioning the energy crisis.</p> <p>Team Simon tried to run the Republican candidate for governor as an ethical standard-bearer in moderate California. The strategy wasted four years of work by Republicans in the Legislature, who hammered Davis on energy missteps and then heroically sustained a budget debate until September even as it was obvious that Team Simon was doing nothing to take advantage of their efforts. Instead, the Simon campaign defied the wisdom of all its polling, its extensive focus groups and even recent California political history. It entered the ethics minefield.</p>

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A 14-year-old California girl has been charged with robbing a bank after police said she got money for crack cocaine by pretending to have a handgun under her sweater, police said on Thursday. The teen-ager, not identified by police because of her age, is accused of stealing an undisclosed amount from a Bank of America branch in Chino Hills, just east of Los Angeles, last November and then taking part in a second robbery later that day. Also arrested was her 32-year-old boyfriend who, police said, waited outside the bank for her in a getaway car....