Free Republic

Health Care Systems: A return to private health care is rising from the grass roots north of the border. While we rush headlong toward socialized medicine, Canadians are saying, "No, thanks — been there, done that." We recently told the story of Ava Isabella Stinson, born 13 weeks premature at St. Joseph's hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. She weighed all of two pounds and had no time to be put on a waiting list. But there were no open neonatal intensive care beds for her at St. Joseph's or anywhere else in the entire province of Ontario it seems. Canada's perfectly...

A highly-anticipated hockey video game that features realistic fighting scenarios and black eyes is a useful tool to teach children that brawls are part of the game and in some cases can help you win, says a former NHL captain. Retired Vancouver Canucks player Trevor Linden, well-loved in the city and not known for getting into frequent dust-ups, endorsed "NHL 10" Monday prior to its next-day launch across North America. "Fighting in hockey is not something you necessarily want to promote, but at the same time, you want to make children understand that it is part of the game and...

In hopes of preventing terrorist attacks, 2010 Olympic organizers will deploy 8,000 security personnel, spend as much as $1 billion in Canadian government funds and elicit help from the North American Aerospace Defense Command. NORAD leaders are finalizing plans with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to provide fighter jets and radar support in Vancouver, where 5,500 athletes from 80-plus countries, including about 215 Americans, will converge in February. About 4,000 Canadian soldiers are expected to oversee ground operations, with air patrol handled primarily by CF-18 Hornets from NORAD and Canadian Forces helicopters. On the water, the U.S. will complement Canadian...

Medical Care: A leaked report shows that Vancouver's health authority is considering cutting thousands of surgeries to balance the budget. However organized, government-run health care inevitably leads to rationing.Defenders of ObamaCare continually point out that their plan is not like Canada's, that holding that country's system up as an example of impending medical doom is invalid. Canada's system is different. Instead of having a single national plan, Canada's national health insurance, a kind of public option, is composed of 13 interlocking provincial and territorial plans, all framed under the Canada Health Act. But based on a report leaked to the...

It started out with the Vancouver Sun, and it made it down to MSNBC's David Shuster and Dem Strategist Joe Trippi

Former Vancouver police officer Clyde Ray Spencer spent nearly 20 years in prison after he was convicted of sexually molesting his son and daughter. Now, the children say it never happened.Matthew Spencer and Kathryn Tetz, who live in Sacramento, Calif., each took the stand Friday in Clark County Superior Court to clear their father's name, The Columbian newspaper reported.Matthew, now 33, was 9 years old at the time. He told a judge he made the allegation after months of insistent questioning by now-retired Clark County sheriff's detective Sharon Krause just so she would leave him alone.Tetz, 30, said she...

The Daily Kos is scoring a lot of political points against Free Republic with the race and children cards. It was not our finest hour. But just how saintly and pure of thought are the Kossacks? Here’s the original Kos diary from Thursday that got the ball rolling against FR.The Kos diarist who posted the piece, Halfrican, closed his report on the FR thread with this wish for Freepers and their children:I hope all these Freepers have children that grow up to either marry black people or f*** them in high school. (asterisks added.)But we're the racists, right? I wonder...

Well, should've seen this coming: conservative blog Free Republic fired hate speech off at Malia Obama after this photo of her appeared, letting their commenters go to town. But the journalist who reported this as news isn't innocent, either. Chris Parry of The Vancouver Sun highlighted some of the comments on the mainstream, hard right-wing blog/news aggregator Free Republic. Among them, a picture of Michelle talking to Malia Obama with the caption: "To entertain her daughter, Michelle Obama loves to make monkey sounds." Classy. These mouthbreathing, borderline morons then kept piled on: "A typical street whore." "A bunch of ghetto...

-snip- *****Update II: Maybe before Shuster goes any further with this, he might want to investigate the Vancouver Sun writer's possible connection to Daily Kos (h/t NBer carolina09). "HollywoodOz" has written some pretty vile stuff at DailyKos during his tenure. These included playing a mnemonics game wherein "BUSH" was "Bloody Useless Sack Of Hatred" and CHENEY was "Can He Eat Negro Eyes Yet." He's also fond of creating Google bombs, including one in 2005 to make Bill O'Reilly look like a terrorist sympathizer. What's the connection to the Sun's Chris Parry? Well, Moxie Online has a member named HollywoodOz, real...

<p>Freepers, get the word out loud and wide. The Vancouver Sun "journalist" Chris Parry that defamed Jim Robinson and FreeRepublic is none other than radical left blogger "Hollywoodoz" at the Daily Kos. In addition to writting for the Vancouver Sun, Chris is a frustrated and failed internet entrepreneur, having launched many websites and blogs, all of which have virtually no traffic, following, or success. Chris also writes movie reviews, though these are pretty lame.</p>

Conservative Free Republic blog in free speech flap after racial slurs directed at Obama children By Chris Parry, Vancouver SunJuly 11, 2009 11:01 AM This photo of U.S. President Barrack Obama's daughter Malia, wearing a peace-symbol t-shirt touched off a storm of epithet-laced comments on the conservative 'Free Republic' blog "A typical street whore." "A bunch of ghetto thugs." "Ghetto street trash." "Wonder when she will get her first abortion." These are a small selection of some of the racially-charged comments posted to the conservative 'Free Republic' blog Thursday, aimed at U.S. President Barack Obama's 11-year-old daughter Malia after she...

The Lower Mainland in British Columbia has become a playground for up-and-coming gangsters in the drug trade. The innocent who get caught in the crossfire are often young too.The latest mayhem started at the end of March, when 21-year-old Sean Murphy, a popular former high school hockey player, drove into a withering blast of gunfire near Bateman Park. He was probably dead before his car coasted to a stop in the weeds. That same night, Ryan Richards, 19, abruptly left a friend's house after getting a cellphone call. His body was found the next morning behind a rural produce store....

A naked man robbed a woman of her french fries at a Vancouver-area drive-in restaurant on the weekend. RCMP said Monday the woman was at a Wendy's Restaurant drive-through in Langley at about 9:30 p.m. Saturday waiting for her order. When the attendant passed her fries through the window, a naked man in his 20s ran between her car and the window and took her food. He jumped into a silver van and sped away. The victim could not describe the man and police were not able to locate the van.

KIRO 7 Eyewitness News has learned that two passengers arrested at Sea-Tac Airport last weekend may be linked to a suspect's deadly plunge from a high-rise balcony in Vancouver, British Columbia during a raid. Federal sources both in British Columbia and in Seattle tell KIRO Team 7 Investigators the weekend arrest at Sea-Tac of two men on the terrorist "no-fly" list may be just the tip of the iceberg. We're told the FBI is very interested in trying to connect three separate — and recent — incidents involving Pakistani illegals. Federal sources told KIRO Team 7 Investigators that about a...

Federal agents have searched several Western Washington locations in an expanding investigation of two Pakistani men arrested at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Saturday after their names appeared on terrorism watch lists. Agents also have scrutinized passenger lists for possible associates of the men on the American Airlines and JetBlue flights for which they tried to buy tickets. The men, who bought one-way tickets with cash, have not been charged with a crime and have not been publicly identified. One, a 29-year-old with a New York driver's license, had been detained and released at an unnamed airport once before and had...

Prostitutes in training for Vancouver Olympics   They'll learn how to talk to the media   May 19, 2009 04:30 AM   THE CANADIAN PRESS VANCOUVER – Vancouver sex-trade workers need to know their rights when dealing with cameras and reporters and will be offered media training ahead of the 2010 Olympic Games, an advocacy group said. The Prostitution Alternatives Counselling and Education Society, located in Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside, will hold the session in November. "We just want our members to feel safe. ... Media attention to the area can be a little less than compassionate and we don't...

(1) Vienna (2) Zurich (3) Geneva (4) Vancouver and Auckland (tie) (6) Dusseldorf (7) Munich (8) Frankfurt (9) Bern (10) Sydney

The state Department of Ecology in 1996 officially declared Burnt Bridge Creek to be severely polluted with fecal coliform. The environmental regulators, it turns out, had unwittingly contributed to the problem. This week, Vancouver city workers made a startling discovery near the regional office shared by Ecology and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife at 2108 Grand Blvd. At some point in the building's history, a sewer pipe that was supposed to be connected to the city's sanitary sewer main had been incorrectly connected to a stormwater line instead. "The only thing that's supposed to be in the stormwater...

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 11 (UPI) -- Two more people have been gunned down in the violence-wracked western Canadian city of Vancouver, raising the region's death toll to 20 this year, police said. City police were called to an apartment above retail stores in the city's east end Tuesday morning, where they found the two victims, The Province newspaper said. The city has had a spate of gang- and drug-related shootings and attacks this year but Constable Lindsey Houghton said it was too early to tell if the double killing was part of the turf war. He said officers had...

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) – A surge in gang violence is hurting Vancouver's image as it prepares to host the 2010 Olympics, the city's mayor said on Friday. Police publicly acknowledged for the first time that the Vancouver area was in the midst of a "gang war" between several organized crime groups fighting over the illegal drug market. While the violence is still tame compared to that seen in other parts of the world, it is not something Vancouver is used to dealing with, Mayor Gregor Robertson said. "Vancouver has never been known for this, so in terms of our...