Free Republic

While Disney artists bring their imaginations to life through animation, Disney executives are living a lifestyle that animators can’t even begin to imagine. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Disney chief executive Bob Iger received a 7% pay increase in 2007 for a total financial compensation of $27.7 million. According to the company’s proxy statement, the breakdown is as follows: $2 million salary, which remained the same as 2006; a $13.7 million bonus, which was a decrease from his $15 million bonus in ‘06; stock awards totaling $7.9 million, and $740,000 for personal air travel, security and a car...

EAST CHICAGO, Ind. — Parents say their children were strip-searched at a city-run day camp by counselors who were searching for $140 that disappeared from another worker's backpack. April Hinton said her 8-year-old son told her about the search that happened at the Martin Luther King Center last week. Snip Ivan Bodensteiner, a civil rights lawyer and Valparaiso University Law School professor, said even law enforcement officers have fairly limited powers to strip-search suspects. "Government would have a very difficult time justifying a strip search of kids just because they happened to be around when some money was stolen," he...

China pirates less softwareInTech News, 17 May 2007 The software piracy rate in China is down for the third consecutive year. That’s the good news. The bad news is about 82% of the software the Chinese use is illegal. The Wall Street Journal reported piracy has been declining for three years, according to new estimates from an industry group, creating hundreds of millions of dollars in new business in the world's second largest personal-computer market by unit sales. Software piracy is still high by international standards: The study, conducted by research firm International Data Corp. for the Business Software Alliance,...

For a while, the wireless Internet connection Christine and Randy Brodeur installed last year seemed perfect. They were able to sit in their sunny Los Angeles backyard working on their laptop computers. But they soon began noticing that their high-speed Internet access had become as slow as rush-hour traffic on the 405 freeway. "I didn't know whether to blame it on the Santa Ana winds or what," recalled Mrs. Brodeur, the chief executive of Socket Media, a marketing and public relations agency. The "what" turned out to be neighbors who had tapped into their system. The additional online traffic nearly...

There's no helping you. This site is now just a diversion -- like a train wreck. This site is inherently for and about raving egomaniacs, and Jim's site policies -- which amount to excluding reality and actual dialogue in favor of political/militaristic pornography -- is conducive to cognitive dissonance, which at the times your worldview is threatened leads you into psychotic breaks (on the political cognitive plane, that is, and just maybe in other realms too). Not to mention that your baseline politics is based in mythology about American demographics, science, economics, ethics etc. You spoonfeed each other in the...

WASHINGTON — A bill for busing evacuees from New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was $32 million more than it should have been, and the government paid it without question, the Transportation Department inspector general said Friday.

MIDI - THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND This land was your land...but you must be leaving And as we stole it...we saw you grieving Here's the bulldozer...it will be rubble This land is not yours anymore We want new buildings and bigger tax base So stop your whining...wipe the tears from your face Here's a little money...you have one more hour This land is not yours anymore With condemnation, we'll take what we're needing And we'll be deaf too all of your pleading Your memories you'll be taking with you This land is not yours anymore We make the...

y2k election totals for Philadelphia: 100,967 Bush 451,321 Gore 2004 election totals for Philladelphia: Bush 124,710 Kerry 517,040 Not bad considering Philly has been losing population http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/8398836.htm?1c The numbers were clear enough. The Census Bureau estimated the city's population at 1,513,684 four years ago, 1,499,758 three years ago, 1,488,780 two years ago, and 1,479,339 last year.

A few days ago I notified freepers that a website was copying swiftvets.com layout and name. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1196092/posts "We are an independent group with no relationship to the Kerry-Edwards and Bush-Cheney Campaigns " Is what is written at the bottom right hand corner of the webpage. The column to the left the very first link says "contribute to our cause" the link is to contribute to the kerry campaign. They provide many links to anti-Bush sites and anti-Bush orgs including Center for American Progress. To those of you who have been to swiftvets.com you will notice that swiftvets.org has an "uncanny"...

SALEM - He was the quiet, well-groomed man in the suit, who kept to himself in this neighborhood nestled at the edge of a bustling college, where almost everybody seemed to be from somewhere else and nobody stood out. But yesterday, a different Ahmed Fathy Mehalba was on display, this time in a federal court, where he appeared in jeans and an orange golf shirt, accused of possessing classified information he allegedly acquired at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he worked as a civilian translator. Just what route the Egyptian-born Mehalba, 31, took after his days...

Remember where you were 2 years ago tonight? 7-2, SCOTUS ruled the recount was unconstitutional. 5-4, the Court ruled that the Florida Kangaroos' needed to stop the recount altogether. Thank God.