Free Republic

At her final press conference as House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said, "Deficit reduction has been a high priority for us. It is our mantra, pay-as-you-go." The numbers tell a different story.

Summary: The Passport Office claims in a memo submitted with an affidavit in the Strunk case that in a 9-month period in 1984-85, 40 workers sorted through 125 million passport files and destroyed all the "routine" records from 1925-1961. Four big problems: 1) somebody was able to get routine records from that time period which were obviously not destroyed, 2) there appears to be no record of that destruction ever being authorized. 3) the sorting they claimed is physically impossible in the timeframe they claimed. 4) the Passport Office charges $50/person (or $150 for a third party) to search the...

Sometimes, a Washington whopper is just too big and juicy to resist. It absolutely begs to have a bite taken out of it. Such is the case with the interview David Axelrod gave during the most recent edition of the NBC News show Meet the Press. In trying to put forth his argument in defense of Obama, the shameless Chicago spin doctor botched the operation.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An unsettled political situation in Iran may be complicating efforts to seal a nuclear fuel deal between Tehran and major world powers, President Barack Obama said on Monday. Obama told Reuters in an interview that the United States had made more progress toward global nuclear non-proliferation in the last several months than in the past several years. "But it is going to take time, and part of the challenge that we face is that neither North Korea nor Iran seem to be settled enough politically to make quick decisions on these issues," he said at the White...

7-patty Whopper promo strikes chord By Alan J. Liddle TOKYO (Oct. 29, 2009) Responding to strong demand, Burger King in Japan has extended its Windows 7 Whopper cross promotion with Microsoft Corp. from seven days to 16, a Microsoft representative said. Miami-based Burger King, which fields just 15 stores in Japan, according to its Japanese website, marked the Oct. 22 worldwide launch of Microsoft’s new Windows 7 operating system by offering a seven-patty burger. The first 30 customers per day per store can buy the limited-time offer burger for 777 yen, or about $8.50 in U.S. dollars at recent conversion...

What has seven patties and a corporate sponsorship? This enormous Windows 7 burger. BY CHRIS GAYLORD America may be the home of the corporate tie-in and super-sized fast food. But Japan may have just outdone the US in both fields. In honor of Microsoft’s new Windows 7 operating system, Burger King has served up a seven-patty burger. This mighty monolith of meat, more than five inches tall, will only be available for seven days – and only in Japan.

PASADENA, CALIF. — The most massive black hole yet weighed lurks at the heart of the relatively nearby giant galaxy M87. The supermassive black hole is two to three times heftier than previously thought, a new model showed, weighing in at a whopping 6.4 billion times the mass of the sun. The new measure suggests that other black holes in nearby large galaxies could also be much heftier than current measurements suggest, and it could help astronomers solve a longstanding puzzle about galaxy development. "We did not expect it at all," said team member Karl Gebhardt of the University of...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama's budget suggests $17 billion in spending cuts for fiscal year 2010, but Congress already has rejected some of those proposals and the savings do little to dent a projected $1.17 trillion deficit. Obama on Thursday released details of the spending cuts, most of which were announced during or after the initial roll-out of his $3.5 trillion budget in February. Fiscal year 2010 begins on October 1. Here is a look at what some of the cuts mean for deficit reduction and the chances they have of getting approval from lawmakers:

Burger King Corp. said Tuesday it had parted ways with an employee who was recorded taking a soapy bath in a utility sink in one of its restaurants in a video that ended up on his MySpace page.

Possibly to avoid being one-upped on Indiana national security politics, former President Bill Clinton told a crowd in Columbus, Indiana, today that his wife had tried to join the Army. "I remember when we were young, right out of law school, she went down and tried to join the Army and they said 'Your eyes are so bad, nobody will take you,'" he said, after heralding her record on issues of concern to the military, such as body armor and access to health care. I assume this is a version of the "Hillary Clinton tried to join the Marines" anecdote...

A rather funny take off on those Burger King commercials. NOTE: rather salty language. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGTYb9Hu6iY

Energy: Bill Clinton's back, now touting tax hikes for ethanol to California voters. "If Brazil can do it, so can we," he said, claiming an ethanol switch ended Brazil's need for foreign oil. Once again, he's telling whoppers. (snip) No, he smashed a champagne bottle on the spaceship-like deck of Brazil's vast P-50 oil rig in the Albacora Leste field in the deep blue Atlantic. Why? Brazil's oil independence had virtually nothing to do with its ethanol development. It came from drilling oil. Which is the very thing Clinton, in his Proposition 87 television ads, seeks to pile taxes on....

Miserly Burger King charges hurt kid for ice By Jennifer Roy/ Daily News Tribune Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - Updated: 10:35 AM EST Ice does not appear on Burger King’s menu, but it should after a Newton teen limped into the Moody Street fast-food restaurant last week looking for some cool relief of a sore ankle. John Michael Jasset staggered into the restaurant about 5 p.m. last Thursday after being hit by a car. He was thrown from his bike and also scraped his knee, arms and hands, his mother, Cheryl Jasset, said. But when he asked for some ice...

PALMDALE, Calif. - And you thought Kobe beef was expensive. Four burgers at his neighborhood Burger King cost George Beane a whopping $4,334.33. Beane ordered two Whopper Jr.s and two Rodeo cheeseburgers when he pulled up to the drive-through window last Tuesday. The cashier, however, forgot that she'd entered the $4.33 charge on his debit card and punched in the numbers again without erasing the original ones - thus creating a four-figure bill. The electronic charge went through to George and Pat Beane's Bank of America checking account and left the couple penniless. Their mortgage payment was due and they...

Teen Accused Of Burglary, Assault DAVIE, Fla. -- A clerk at a Burger King was arrested after police say a disagreement with a customer turned into a brawl. Kevin and Dana Gillis of Pembroke Pines were in the Davie drive-through with their three daughters on March 18. Dana Gillis said that the clerk, 18-year-old Michael Perez, was rude and snatched the money from her husband's hand. Then when Kevin Gillis tried to hand Perez some extra change in exchange for bills, Perez said he didn't want the change, and the men exchanged angry words, according witnesses. At that point, the...

Scott Ritter is a former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq (1991-1998) and Marine Corps intelligence officer. He is the author of "Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the U.N. and Overthrow Saddam Hussein," published by Nation Books. He is speaking at Town Hall, Eighth Avenue and Seneca Street in Seattle, at 7:30 p.m. tonight. Guest columnistIraq: a solution to nothingBy Scott Ritter As the United States and Iraq approach the third anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, it might do all Americans well to take some time out and reflect on how we...

History of Cloning Cloning is not new. Experiments with frogs and toads date back to the 1970s . And experiments involving plants and animal embryos have been performed for years. But experiments involving human beings have never been tried or thought possible, until "Dolly." Her birth shocked the scientific community and has spurred discussion about the possibility of human clones. Dr. Lee Silver, a molecular biologist at Princeton University, is optimistic that "human cloning will occur," and that "it might take five years, ten years at the outermost." Lee notes that at this time, "no ethical doctor would do...

Hostettler mounting campaign to change the name of Interstate 69            By August Wayne, THG NewsJohn Hostettler, the Congressman representing the 8th district of Indiana, has been convinced by local religious groups to introduce legislation in the House that would change the name of an Interstate 69 extension to a more moral sounding number.There are plans to extend the interstate from Indianapolis through southwestern Indiana all the way through Texas into Mexico in the coming years.  While most believe this highway will be good for the state’s economy, religious conservatives believe “I-69” sounds too risqué and want to change the...

THE CBS document drama has generated a new wave of media reflection, with plenty of criticism to go around. No one, not even the paper's toughest critic, is suggesting the Globe did anything remotely as lamentable as CBS did when it broadcast unverifiable memos detailing George Bush's National Guard lapses in 1972 and 1973. But some readers say the Globe erred on a smaller scale by writing about the memos without first confirming they were real and, later, by being too slow to report inconsistencies and doubts as they quickly surfaced on the Web and in other papers. "As ABC...

Bush Vs. Kerry By The Editors An exclusive interview with the two presidential candidates on gun rights, conservation and other issues that affect your hunting and fishing. September 2004 OL: Do you support a renewal of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, a bill that outlawed certain models of semi-automatic firearms? Why or why not? Bush: The best way to reduce gun crime is to vigorously enforce existing gun laws, so that guns are kept out of the hands of criminals but are not denied to responsible and law-abiding citizens. I support reauthorization of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, but I...