Free Republic

I heard on Bill Bennett this morning that we still have the medical device tax thanks to Democrat/Obama/MitchMcConnell Care. I thought that part of the beast had been ripped out, but apparently it was tabled like so many other conservative efforts thanks to McConnell not using Harry Reid's "nuclear option" to get the bill to the floor for a vote. Bills only takes 51 to pass the senate, but Reid's buddy Mitch won't let them come to the floor for a vote. What good is he for us?

BRUSSELS -- Radical Muslims in France's housing estates are waging an undeclared "intifada," or uprising, against the police, with violent clashes injuring about 14 officers each day. As the Interior Ministry announced that nearly 2,500 officers had been wounded this year, a police union declared that its members were "in a state of civil war" with Muslims in the most depressed "banlieue" estates. Banlieue, which means outskirts, is the commonly used euphemism for the low-income housing projects heavily populated by unemployed youths of North African origin. The police union said it had asked the government to provide police with armored...

AP) All those "Star Wars" geeks, who've been waiting for weeks outside movie theaters with their Yoda sleeping bags and their homemade lightsabers, finally have a film that's worthy of their perseverance. The Force is strong with "Episode III — Revenge of the Sith," the sixth and final piece in George Lucas' galactic saga, which represents a welcome return to the ideas and the spirit that made his original "Star Wars" a pop-culture juggernaut 28 years ago. The circle is now complete, as Lucas' characters are fond of saying, and much of the film's joy comes from watching these familiar...

Revenge of the Republicans Star Wars' Lucas draws parallels between U.S. politics and rise of the Empire CANNES -- Star Wars is a wake-up call to Americans about the erosion of democratic freedoms under George W. Bush, George Lucas said yesterday. Lucas, responding to a question at a Cannes Film Festival press conference, said he first wrote the framework of Star Wars in 1971 when reacting to then U.S. president Richard Nixon and the on-going events of the Vietnam War. But the story still has relevance today, he said, and is part of a pattern he has noticed in his...

PARIS (Reuters) - Nearly nine out of ten French people would back John Kerry if they could vote in the U.S. election, according to an opinion poll on Friday which showed deep distrust of President Bush (news - web sites) since the Iraq war. The poll, published after Kerry and Bush battled over Iraq in a television debate, came as no surprise in the country which led opposition to the U.S.-led war and whose people were dubbed "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" by American Republicans. But it underlined concern abroad over U.S. policies and highlighted the gulf that has opened with France...

Nazis murdered millions of unarmed people. They put them in ovens. They made soap out of them. They carted off children in boxcars to die and used some of the kids for medical experiments, including injecting dyes into their eyes to see if they could improve their looks. Lower on the list of charges, the Nazis enslaved millions and launched wars for territorial and egotistical gain (and sent many of the conquered populations to death camps as well). Lower still, they banned books and burned them too. They expropriated homes and businesses, banned religions, etc. An intelligent person wouldn't normally...

President George W Bush's personal chef has been humiliated by a team of French practical jokers who tempted him with a job offer to desert his employer and go to work for President Jacques Chirac.The stunt, which is threatening to spiral into a diplomatic incident, happened when Walter Scheib visited Paris in his capacity as president of the Chefs des Chefs d'Etat, a club for those who cook for the world's heads of state.On Wednesday evening he was due to attend a party at the Elysee Palace given by the French leader's wife, Bernadette. That afternoon a French television company...