Free Republic

Campaigning may be difficult after Katrina By JEREMY ALFORD Courier Capitol Correspondent January 08. 2006 12:41AM BATON ROUGE -- While state officials have spent recent months devising a plan to hold elections in the hurricane-ravaged portions of Louisiana, those who run campaigns have been concocting new schemes for the actual campaigning process. It will certainly be a different picture from what voters and candidates find familiar. Deserted cities will complicate media launches, limited resources will make fund raising difficult, and hordes of displaced voters could forever change the face of get-out-the-vote efforts. Additionally, by all accounts, there will only be...

Should hip hop take the rap for rioting? (Filed: 08/12/2005) French politicians have called for legal action to be taken against hip hop musicians in the wake of the French riots. Joe Muggs reports The waves of riots that swept across France this year have had an unexpected consequence for the French music industry. Urban violence: hip hop has been blamed for the Paris riots Last week, 200 politicians backed a petition by MP François Grosdidier calling for legal action against several hip hop musicians for their aggressive lyrics. Although prime minister Dominique de Villepin immediately dismissed the idea, it...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 2, 2005 – All servicemembers and Defense Department civilians should take every opportunity to tell the media and the public about successes achieved in Iraq, the U.S. military's top officer said Dec. 1 during his address at the National Defense University here. During a question-and-answer session following his remarks on the president's "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" report, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, listened to an NDU student talk about a gap in perception between the media and the government in regard to how operations in Afghanistan and Iraq are going....

New Mexico, Arizona Governors Debate Borders By BARRY MASSEY Associated Press Writer August 30. 2005 1:56PM With just three words - "state of emergency" - border state Govs. Bill Richardson of New Mexico and Janet Napolitano of Arizona injected urgency into a simmering national debate over illegal immigration. First Richardson, then Napolitano, declared a state of emergency this month in portions of their states along the border with Mexico. In doing so, they freed state money for local governments and law enforcement to cope with what they describe as increasing border crime and problems related to illegal immigration. Politically and...

SHOULD THE QU'RAN BE IN THE COURTROOM? WEEK OF AUGUST 4-10, 2005 by CASH MICHAELS The Wilmington Journal Originally posted 8/6/2005 “The basic purpose of using sworn testimony is to assure that the information being provided is truthful and as correct as is possible.”--Special Agent Dick Searle, Iowa Division Of Criminal Investigation “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” Those who have testified in a court of law anywhere in North Carolina or across the country recognize these words to be the oath administered to witnesses prior to...

3m homes 'should be demolished' to cut global warming By Charles Clover (Filed: 30/05/2005) Some 3.2 million homes must be demolished over the next 45 years to fulfil the Government's aspirations for tackling global warming, academics have warned. The report, by researchers at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute and Heriot Watt University, is bound to re-ignite the controversy caused by the proposed demolition of 400,000 homes in the Midlands and the North. Households account for around 30 per cent of Britain's total energy use and the researchers conclude there is a "desperate need" for a clear strategy for housing stock...

Under the Hammer-May 5, 2005 By John Hammer This news is so shocking that it made the front page of The New York Times. The Public Broadcasting System has a liberal bias. It’s hard to believe, but according to the new Republican chairman of the board of the Public Broadcasting Corporation, National Public Radio and Television have a decidedly liberal point of view. It has shocked the employees at the national broadcasting system that a Republican would accuse them of not being nice to Republicans. According to a rumor, one senior producer even said he had invited a Republican over...

Poll: New Yorkers not sure Clinton should run for prez By MARC HUMBERT AP Political Writer April 12, 2005, 2:43 PM EDT ALBANY, N.Y. -- While Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's 2006 re-election chances look good unless Rudolph Giuliani challenges her New York voters aren't sure she should run for president in 2008, a statewide poll reported Tuesday. On the other hand, a slim majority of New York voters think Giuliani should run for president in 2008, according to the poll from the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. **SNIP** Fifty-one percent of registered voters polled by Marist said they definitely...

The Republic of the Philippines is an archipeligo of over 7,100 islands located north of Malaysia, Australia and Indonesia in the Pacific Ocean and south of Taiwan. The Philippine Islands became a Spanish colony during the 16th century; they were ceded to the US in 1898 following the Spanish- American War. In 1935 the Philippines became a self-governing commonwealth. Manuel QUEZON was elected President and was tasked with preparing the country for independence after a 10-year transition. In 1942 the islands fell under Japanese occupation during WWII, and US forces and Filipinos fought together during 1944-45 to regain control. On...

ASHINGTON, Dec. 19 - The continuing debate among Republicans over whether Donald H. Rumsfeld should remain as defense secretary grew more fractious on Sunday, as two prominent senators argued that removing Mr. Rumsfeld would disrupt the coming Iraqi elections, while a third, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, said he had "no confidence in Rumsfeld's leadership." Talk of the defense secretary's future dominated the television interview programs on a day when car bombs killed more than 60 people in the Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala. The debate was caught up in fresh accusations by both Democrats and Republicans about the...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

California's constitution is long, convoluted and filled with too much minutiae. But one section that deserves to be there, and is pretty clear, is the part that prohibits state government from borrowing money without a vote of the people. Article 16, Section 1 says that the state shall not create any public debt that exceeds $300,000 unless the money is for a "single object or work" and is approved by a majority of the voters in a primary or general election. The idea is that lawmakers and governors who come and go shouldn't obligate future generations to repay debts run...

The law of unintended consequences has produced a stampede of Indian casinos across California. And the collateral damage caused by this profitable business is causing many proponents of Indian gaming to have second thoughts. When Gov. Gray Davis urged voter approval of a ballot proposition on Indian gaming four years ago, he spoke of a "modest expansion." The explosion of casinos since then has been incredible. And the revised compacts between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and five more tribes – including San Diego County's tiny Ewiiaapaayp band, with its seven members – promises to raise the gaming stakes even higher. Should...

Republicans Say Governor Should Quit Immediately By GEORGE JAMES Published: August 14, 2004 A day after Gov. James E. McGreevey turned the political world in New Jersey upside down by announcing that he had engaged in a sexual relationship with another man and would resign on Nov. 15, a group of Republican officials gathered outside the State House in Trenton to repeat their call for him to step down immediately and allow for a special election on Nov. 2. Later in the day, Senator Richard J. Codey - the majority leader and the man who will take over when Mr....

Should John Kerry lose, more delegates prefer Clinton in '08 By GENARO C. ARMAS ~ Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- Delegates to next week's Democratic National Convention already have an idea about 2008 if presidential candidate John Kerry should lose this fall: They would favor Hillary Rodham Clinton over John Edwards as their next standardbearer. An Associated Press survey found that the first-term New York senator is the choice of more than a quarter of the delegates while Edwards, recently tapped by Kerry to be his running mate, was favored by some 17 percent. Clinton -- former first lady,...

Here's my latest poster in the "Freedom Matters" series. The linked URL for this thread opens the LARGE size artwork so you can "copy, paste & print." It's sized for 8.5"x11" paper (you may need to resize it for your printer... the proportion is correct, though).You can print out as many of these as you wish... just no commercial endeavors, please.

Why the Right Will Lose Conservative (right) or Liberal (left) are the terms given to the two opposing factions of society today. Neither one is accurate. The difference between the two sides is actually one of emotion. The left sees nothing as binary, except those who disagree with nothing being binary. There is no right and there is no wrong. There are no absolutes. The right sees nothing but binary, including those who disagree. There is right and there is wrong and there are choices every step of the way. Absolute choices. The reason for the difference is one of...

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration believes the best way to avoid an armed rebel takeover in Haiti is for President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to resign and transfer power to his constitutional successor, a senior U.S. official said Friday. Meanwhile, the Marine Corps indicated that it is preparing a possible mission to waters off the coast of Haiti. Any such deployment would be aimed at deterring a potential refugee crisis and to protect the estimated 20,000 American citizens in Haiti. Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) signaled that direction in administration policy in remarks Thursday night, said the U.S....

Oh, it's good to be the king. You float high above the law and plunder your subjects with impunity. Or so it seems in Routt County, where the local cops bring along a federal drug agent on their raids in hopes that his presence will immunize them from the sticky strictures of the Colorado Constitution. It's time someone told them they answer to state law, not the whims of a federal agent who happens to be hanging around. Last October a drug "task force" of nine, count 'em nine, agents, acting on a tip and armed with a warrant, raided...