Free Republic

Next month, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who was once a driver for Osama bin Laden, could become the first detainee to be tried for war crimes in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. By now, he should be busily working on his defense. But his lawyers say he cannot. They say Hamdan, already the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, has essentially been driven insane by solitary confinement in a tiny cell where he spends at least 22 hours a day, goes to the bathroom and eats all his meals. His defense team says he is suicidal, hears voices, has flashbacks,...

CAMP PENDLETON, California (CNN) -- A U.S. Marine will serve no more than eight years in prison in connection with the killing of an Iraqi civilian, a Marine Corps spokesman said Saturday. Marine Lance Cpl. Robert Pennington was sentenced to 14 years' confinement but will serve no more than eight under a plea agreement, Marine spokesman Sean Gibson told CNN. Pennington pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges regarding the death of Hashim Ibrahim Awad, 52, in Hamdaniya, west of Baghdad. Pennington was among a group of seven Marines and a Navy medic charged in Awad's death. He and two other Marines...

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!

Dozens of rural Georgia legislators went on a political limb last year to support changing the state flag. Now many of them are getting a re-election boost from those who benefited from the change -- businesses. Coca-Cola, Georgia Pacific, SouthTrust Corp., the Georgia Business Political Action Committee and a hospitality industry PAC are spreading hundreds of thousands of dollars to candidates across the state who supported the flag change, according to campaign disclosure records. Charles Hood, who handles governmental affairs for Atlanta-based Georgia Pacific, said his company used a list of flag-change supporters to target nearly $43,000 it donated to...