Free Republic

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., second from left, accompanied by fellow members of the Senate Democratic Caucus, getsures during a news conference at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, Thursday, April 28, 2005 to discuss the Republican campaign to change Senate rules on filibustering judicial nominees. From left are, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nev., Schumer, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

If nothing else, Ted Nugent isn't going to have to relinquish his "Motor City Madman" nickname any time in the near future. In a speech given to the National Rifle Association's national convention in Houston, Nugent brandished a pair of assault rifles while urging NRA members to recruit other gun-packing nuts into the gang. He went so far as to urge NRA members not to associate with non-members, and to become "hardcore, radical extrimists." Siezed by a Second Amendment furor, Nugent then whipped up the crowd condoning shoot-to-kill vigalante justice. The spectacle, urged members to pull their heat and kill...

It's official. Your passport is going high-tech. Biometric passports have made it out of the discussion and testing phase. The State Department's Office of Passport Policy, Planning, and Advisory Services recently announced that it is ready to begin issuing biometric passports. These passports, which feature an RFID chip, will bring about speedier and more secure entry into and exit from the United States, the government says. However, critics say the technology behind the passports is flawed and puts your personal privacy at stake. The New National ID According to the State Department's proposed implementation rule, the agency plans to issue...

Sofia Vergara

The New York Civil Liberties Union is filing a lawsuit against the city that alleges two eighth-graders were forced to undergo intrusive medical exams after they cut school. Administrators told the girls, who skipped class in May to go to a party, would have to take tests for pregnancy and sexually-transmitted diseases before they could return to school, according to the NYCLU. The suit claims the girls were humiliated. Since the girls weren't putting anyone else at risk, the school had no right to order the exams, the NYCLU says. The Department of Education said it hasn't seen the lawsuit...

The Virginia-based missionary group WorldHelp has dropped its plans to place 300 Muslim "tsunami orphans" in a Christian children's home, the group's president, the Rev. Vernon Brewer, told news agencies Thursday. The children were still in the Muslim province of Aceh and had not been airlifted to Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, according to an electronic mail message under Brewer's name circulating among his supporters. In an interview Tuesday for an article published in Thursday's editions of The Washington Post , Brewer said that the children already had been airlifted to Jakarta and that the Indonesian government had given permission for them...

Alongside U.S. 59, several miles north of the Loop, sits the appropriately named 59 Gun Range. Run-down homes, vacant lots and a fireworks emporium line its block. Immediately adjacent is Pancho's Mobile Homes, a makeshift sales lot marked by a hand-painted sign, where dented trailers teeter on cinder blocks like derailed train cars. In the smoky gun shop, which forms the lobby of the range, a wispy teenager with long, oily hair and a dimwitted but lively gaze drawls about the thrills of gun recoil. His sidekick affirms with a crooked smile. At one of the shadowy shooting lanes, Marie...

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!

U.S. and Iraqi forces patrolling Fallujah have discovered a weapons cache large enough to supply a nationwide “insurgency.” The weapons were found in central Fallujah’s Saad Abi Bin Waqas mosque, where Sunni cleric Abdullah al-Janabi preached hatred. How many times have Coalition forces been shot at from mosques or found weapons stockpiles hidden in them? Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi Army used Shiite Islam’s most holy shrine, the Imam Ali mosque, to wage their campaign of murder and mayhem in Najaf. Just how are all we infidels supposed to believe that Islam is truly a “religion of peace?” Just when...

Sharp tuition increases and tight state budgets have not stopped salaries from continuing to climb for higher education leaders at top public and private institutions nationwide. This year, even as wages for many faculty and staff members and stagnate, the number of public university presidents or chancellors who earn more than $500,000 a year is rising. An annual report released today by the Chronicle of Higher Education found that 17 such leaders out of the 131 public institutions surveyed will exceed that mark this school year, compared to 12 last year and six the year before that. The leaders of...

Who needs expensive pollsters and political pundits? Certainly not the folks at 7-Eleven. They nailed the presidential election with an unabashedly unscientific, tongue-in-cheek poll based on coffee- cup sales. When the national convenience store chain closed its "precincts" on Monday, its month-long promotion showed that 51.08 percent of its customers nationwide preferred coffee in a Bush cup, and 48.92 percent picked Kerry containers. Margin of error: zero. To heck with reading tea leaves. Jim Keyes, 7-Eleven chieftain, is sticking to coffee. "Our popular vote was absolutely right-on," he says, adding that the accuracy was slightly spooky but hardly surprising. "We...

Click on the link above. Answer the questions. Get your number. (One HUGE surprise to me - stopping Sosha Security payments to the 'rich'.) http://www.presidentmatch.com/Main.jsp2?cp=main

Welcome to Operation: Take a Soldier to the Movies Operation: Take a Soldier to the Movies is a national grassroots program to support our troops in Iraq by “taking a soldier to the movies” for Thanksgiving. Caring families, friends or members of the public can contribute movie-related items that will be forwarded to soldiers serving in Iraq. Let it be your way of saying “thank you” to those serving our country. Background: Bernie and Kathy Hintzke of West Allis, Wisconsin (near Milwaukee) have a 22-year old son, Adam, serving in the U.S. Army near Tikrit, Iraq. Conditions are hot, dirty...

Ah, the travails of a tiny country caught at the crossroads of greater powers. Sound familiar? Lithuania? Armenia? Israel? There have been so many holocausts that we could easily pick one out of a hat and discuss it. But because of recent developments in Damascus and Beirut, we’ll discuss Lebanon today. In a move I found quite surprising, the U.N. Security Council voted Friday in, support for a free and fair electoral process in Lebanon's upcoming presidential election, conducted according to Lebanese constitutional rules devised without foreign interference or influence. The new U.N. resolution also called for, the restoration of...

So where is Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi Army now? After taking serious losses against American and Iraqi forces and cynically hiding behind Shiite Islam’s most holy shrine in Najaf, these cowards have melted back into Iraqi society. Or have they? There are many questions to be answered regarding al-Sadr’s future, as he most certainly will oppose the growth of democracy in Iraq. Will al-Sadr and his thugs be held accountable for the violent crimes they committed in Najaf? During their reign of terror, they apparently held a kangaroo court. After Iraq’s top Shiite, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, pressured al-Sadr to...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Republican Party is presenting a moderate image at its national convention but conservatives who dominate the party say they are happy to stay in the background, confident that President Bush (news - web sites) will take care of their interests if he wins the election. "The speakers at the convention may be thought of as moderate but their message is a strong conservative message. They are not going to be speaking about abortion rights or same sex marriage -- that would go down like a lead balloon," said Gary Bauer (news - web sites),...

State Police Seize Marijuana Plants, Take DNA Samples By Dina Kaplan (CAMPELLSBURG, Ky., July 28th, 2004, 11:30 a.m.) -- State police found more than $200,000 worth of marijuana Tuesday, thanks to an unusually large batch spotted from a police helicopter. But because troopers are so aggressive in finding marijuana, the growers are getting much better at hiding it. WAVE 3's Dina Kaplan reports. Besides a helicopter ride, finding weed in Kentucky involves offroading through an Old Country Farm, then a rough walk through the wilderness. That's because police say growers try to plant patches as far away from people as...

Harare - The exodus of Zimbabwe's small and anguished white population is under way with record numbers leaving their homeland, mostly for Britain or Australia. Few have the R30 000($5000) they need in foreign currency to transport their goods to new countries, and most are starting new lives with 22kg of clothes and a few photographs. They say they have hung on during the past four tumultuous years hoping President Robert Mugabe's "hate" campaign against them would ease, but it did not, and two months ago when he shut down private schools for a week for raising fees, they lost...

Sexual dysfunction affects both men and women and can potentially ruin relationships but now a new hormone may be able to help. Dr. Stephanie Ash, a gynecologist at Bay Regional Medical Center in Bay City, Mich., says that lack of labido is wreaking havoc on women and that nationally 43 percent of women suffer from a low sex drive. "Many women are distraught about it,"said Ash,"... and actually I would say at least 50 percent are reduced to tears in discussing it." However a drug on the market is working to change all that, it is nicknamed the "Barbie pill"...