Free Republic

SO far: Do you think that same sex marriages should be legal? Yes 40% No 55% Don't know 5% Poll is near the bottom of the screen, right hand side.

The "flying imams' " federal lawsuit, filed this week in Minneapolis, has made headlines around the country. The imams are demanding unspecified damages from US Airways and the Metropolitan Airports Commission, both with deep pockets. But their suit includes other defendants, as yet unnamed. These people, unaffiliated with the airline industry or government, are among the imams' most vulnerable targets. Recall the November 2006 incident that gave rise to the suit. The imams engaged in a variety of suspicious behaviors while boarding a US Airways flight, according to the airport police report. Some prayed loudly in the gate area, spoke...

November 3, 2006 Kerry's Remark: Right either way Seattle Post-Intelligencer Editorial Board Republicans evidenced their election desperation by braying about an offhand comment that Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., made at a California college rally. "Education" Kerry said "-- if you make the most of it and you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." Was Kerry making fun of the president, or warning students against the pitfalls awaiting the undereducated in general? It doesn't matter. Kerry was right either way....

FOR MOST OF THE last four decades, liberals have been in retreat. Since the election of Richard Nixon in 1968, Republicans have controlled the White House 70 percent of the time and Republican presidents have made 86 percent of the U.S. Supreme Court appointments. In many quarters, the word "liberal" has become a pejorative. Part of the problem is that liberals have failed to define themselves and to state clearly what they believe. As a liberal, I find that appalling. In that light, I thought it might be interesting to try to articulate 10 propositions that seem to me to...

Illegal immigrants made their point Monday: Without them, Americans would pay higher prices and a lot of work wouldn't get done. As nationwide demonstrations thinned the work force in businesses from meat-packing plants to construction sites to behind the counter at McDonald's, economists said there can be no dispute within the context of the contentious immigration issue that the group wields significant clout in the U.S. economy. "If illegal immigration came to a standstill, it would disrupt the economy," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. "It would lead to higher prices for many goods and services, and some...

Senator Specter Says T.O. Is Being Blacklisted By KYW's Tony Romeo Pennsylvania U.S. Senator Arlen Specter says he is looking into the Terrell Owens situation, saying the former Eagles receiver is being "blacklisted" from football. Senator Specter, like fellow Philadelphian Governor Ed Rendell, is a huge Eagles fan. As to the impact Terrell Owens has had on the Eagles’ season, Specter says he’s "madder than hell." But, he says, Owens has not committed a crime, and that the punishment being imposed on Owens is "vindictive" and "inappropriate." "And I believe a man or a woman has a right to undertake...

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. military officials say no guard at the Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects flushed a detainee's Quran down the toilet, but they disclosed that a Muslim holy book was splashed with urine. In other newly disclosed incidents, a detainee's Quran was deliberately kicked and another's was stepped on. On March 25, a detainee complained to guards that "urine came through an air vent" and splashed on him and his Quran. A guard admitted he was at fault, but a report released Friday evening offering new details about Quran mishandling incidents did not make clear whether the...

WASHINGTON - Terror suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison told U.S. interrogators as early as April 2002, just four months after the first detainees arrived, that military guards abused them and desecrated the Quran, declassified FBI records say. "Their behavior is bad," one detainee is quoted as saying of his guards during an interrogation by an FBI special agent in July 2002. "About five months ago the guards beat the detainees. They flushed a Quran in the toilet." The statements about guards disrespecting the Quran echo public allegations made many months later by some detainees and their lawyers after prisoners'...

Flames of hate By Luke David, Evening Standard 20 May 2005 Muslim protesters today called for the bombing of New York in a demonstration outside the US embassy in London. There were threats of "another 9/11" from militants angry at reports of the desecration of the Koran by US troops in Iraq. Some among the crowd burned an effigy of Tony Blair on a crucifix and then set fire to a Union flag and a Stars and Stripes. Led by a man on a megaphone, they chanted, "USA watch your back, Osama is coming back" and "Kill, kill USA, kill,...

SAN FRANCISCO - Law enforcement officers from two northern California counties were found liable Thursday for using excessive force by swabbing pepper spray in the eyes of logging protesters in 1997. A jury awarded eight plaintiffs $1 each. It was the third trial in the case; the first two ended in deadlocked juries in 1998 and 2004. The plaintiffs laughed and hugged outside the courtroom — and applauded when jurors left their chambers. "They did the right thing," said Terri Slanetz, a 42-year-old naturalist from Oakland. "We've been trying all along to get a statement that this was illegal. It's...

ORLANDO, Fla. - Mayor Buddy Dyer, a judge and two campaign workers surrendered Friday on felony charges that they violated a state law barring payments for the collection of absentee ballots. Defense attorneys quickly denied the allegation against Dyer, Judge Alan Apte, Dyer campaign manager Patti Sharp and Ezzie Thomas, a campaign consultant to Dyer and Apte. The indictments were issued a day earlier by a grand jury looking at whether Thomas illegally collected absentee ballots in predominantly black neighborhoods for Dyer's and Apte's campaigns before last year's election. The successful campaign, which cleared the threshold that triggers a runoff...

DUBLIN, Ireland - The only man convicted in connection with Northern Ireland's deadliest bombing walked free from prison Friday after winning an appeal and posting bail, an outcome that disgusted survivors of the 1998 blast. Three years ago, Colm Murphy, 52, received a 14-year sentence for allegedly supplying two cell phones to Irish Republican Army (news - web sites) dissidents who detonated a car bomb in the town of Omagh, killing 29 people and wounding more than 300. But last week, appellate judges threw out his conviction after finding that two detectives who interrogated Murphy in 1999 rewrote their interview...