Free Republic

OTTAWA - Canada's new Liberal government said on Monday it was delivering a "tough message" to Israel as a good friend after expressing concern about Israeli-Palestinian violence, Israeli settlements and unilateral Palestinian moves. The statement came a day after Foreign Minister Stephane Dion was criticized for saying Palestinian initiatives toward statehood in international forums and continued Israeli settlements were unhelpful. "We're steadfast allies and good friends, and good friends can occasionally deliver tough messages, but it's by no means to suggest that we're somehow retreating from any kind of support of Israel," said Joe Pickerill, Dion's spokesman. Dion on Sunday...

Neurosurgeon Ben Carson should withdraw from the presidential race for his comments that a Muslim shouldn't be president a prominent Muslim-American group said Sunday. "I think his remarks should be repudiated by everyone on the political spectrum and that he should withdraw," Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation's largest Islamic advocacy group, told the Washington Examiner on Sunday. Carson, who is third in the Washington Examiner's presidential power rankings, spoke on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday and said that he wouldn't "advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation."

The Skinny On Skin Tweet Mon, 2015-05-04 11:56 -- llancaster Collagen in its twisted, curly form with no skin stress. Image credit:  The Jacob School of Engineering at UC SD What makes skin so tough? Originally published:  May 4 2015 - 11:45am By:  Lisa Marie Potter, Contributor (Inside Science) -- Skin has to be flexible enough to jump, crawl, and kick with us. It also has to be resilient enough to withstand our falls, scrapes, and cuts. Scientists have marveled at skin's strength for years without knowing why it's so durable.Now, scientists have identified the mechanical properties that give skin...

President Obama seemed a little off his teleprompter game Wednesday in Kansas City. His usual stirring comments about roads and bridges, economic patriotism and lambasting Republicans for their terribleness were beset by a lot of pauses, stutters and stammers.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's prime minister headed to Washington on Sunday for a high-stakes meeting with President Barack Obama about U.S.-led Mideast peace efforts, vowing to maintain a tough line in the face of heavy international pressure to begin making concessions to the Palestinians. Benjamin Netanyahu's defiant tone set the stage for what could be a difficult meeting Monday with Obama. But with the clock ticking toward an April target date for a preliminary agreement, the Israeli leader could soon be forced to begin laying out a clearer vision for a future peace deal with the Palestinians. Shortly before takeoff,...

8th grade exam- 1895Posted on July 22, 2012 by churchandson Thanks Rick;I had to share this one; This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 in Salina, Kansas, USA . It was taken from the original document on file at the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, and reprinted by the Salina Journal.8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, KS – 1895Grammar (Time, one hour) 1. Give nine rules for the use of capital letters. 2. Name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications. 3. Define verse, stanza and paragraph 4. What are the principal parts of...

Donald Trump gives the GOP nominee advice before the presidential debates, the state of the White House race and the government's risk on solar energy

WASHINGTON (AP) — One year to go until Election Day and the Republican presidential field is deeply unsettled, leaving President Barack Obama only to guess who his opponent will be. But the race's contours are starting to come into view. It's virtually certain that the campaign will be a close, grinding affair, markedly different from the 2008 race. It will play out amid widespread economic anxiety and heightened public resentment of government and politicians. Americans who were drawn to the drama of Obama's barrier-breaking battle with Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the up-and-down fortunes of John McCain and Sarah Palin, are...

Not many presidential candidates would break into a gospel song of forgiveness and redemption for a packed room of reporters who have spent the day doggedly inquiring about allegations of sexual harassment. But not many candidates are Herman Cain. The Republican presidential contender spent a whirlwind Monday grappling with potentially devastating reports that he behaved in an inappropriate sexual manner toward two women who worked for him when he was president of the National Restaurant Association. Both women were reportedly offered, and accepted, settlement proposals that included five-figure payouts and confidentiality agreements, according to reports. But that news, which would...

Car alarm installer Charles Montes was almost done for the day. It was just after 7 p.m., his boss was locking up, and he was finishing up his last installation for the day. All of a sudden, Montes felt a gun in his back. The gunman announced he and his boss "were gonna get jacked and don't do nothing stupid," Montes testified Wednesday in Pima County Superior Court. Moments later, a man lay dead, felled by a bullet fired by Montes, and three accomplices were on their way to jail. Wednesday was the first day in the trial of Carlos...

Imagine a Republican president, giving a speech on tough economic times in which he claimed that the plight of Americans who are hurting is what is on his mind every day as he walks to the Oval Office. Imagine that same Republican president, in that same speech, bragging that he has "a better plane" and "a bigger entourage" than when he was a candidate. Now imagine the howls from the MSM about such president's vainglory and insensitivity. President Obama gave just such a speech today.

Techniques that reliably erase hard disk drives don't produce the same results for solid state drives, warn University of California at San Diego researchers.Solid state drives (SSDs) have a small security problem: they're tough to erase. That warning comes from researchers at the University of California at San Diego. "Sanitization is well-understood for traditional magnetic storage, such as hard drives and tapes," said the researchers' in their study summary. "Newer solid state disks, however, have a much different internal architecture, so it is unclear whether what has worked on magnetic media will work on SSDs as well." Accordingly, the researchers...

Sexual reproduction is likely to be impossible in space due to cosmic radiation bombarding the human body, according to Nasa scientists.Researchers at the agency's Ames Research Centre in California found that without effective shielding on spacecraft, powerful proton particles would probably sterilise any female embryo conceived in deep space They also concluded that male fertility was likely to be negatively affected, with the particles damaging the sperm count. Given that travel to distant planets is likely to take decades, centuries or longer, this could make any mission to colonise other environments a non-starter.

Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich is throwing the book at dozens of people arrested during recent political demonstrations — a major shift in city policy that has him pressing for jail time in types of cases that previous prosecutors had treated as infractions. Some of the activists arrested, including eight college students and one military veteran who took part in a Westwood rally last year in support of the DREAM Act, face up to one year in county jail. Trutanich's aggressive stance is the latest episode in the city's decades-long legal struggle over the rights of protesters.

WASHINGTON — Nobody got fired — at least, not outright — when William M. Daley arrived in Nashville in the summer of 2000 to impose order on Al Gore’s foundering presidential campaign. Aides were bickering, the candidate seemed demoralized and strategy sessions had deteriorated into what Chris Lehane, a Gore adviser, called a “salon-like atmosphere” of endless talk and no decisions. In marched Mr. Daley as campaign chairman, with his crisp suits and management style to match, fresh from Washington, where he had stepped down as commerce secretary to President Bill Clinton. Suddenly, strategy sessions topped out at 30 minutes

The Recession hits everybody..... I got a pre-declined credit card in the mail. Wives are having sex with their husbands because they can't afford batteries. CEO's are now playing miniature golf. Exxon-Mobil laid off 25 Congressmen. A stripper was killed when her audience showered her with rolls of pennies while she danced. I saw a Mormon polygamist with only one wife. If the bank returns your check marked "Insufficient Funds," you call them and ask if they meant you or them. McDonald's is selling the 1/4 ouncer. Angelina Jolie adopted a child from America . Parents in Beverly Hills fired...

A new public opinion survey for NPR shows just how difficult it will be for Democrats to avoid big losses in the House this November. Democrat Stan Greenberg and Republican Glen Bolger conducted the first public battleground poll of this election cycle. They chose the 70 House districts experts regard as most likely to oust incumbents this fall. What they found was grim news for Democrats. For this poll, Bolger and Greenberg chose the districts where incumbents are considered the most vulnerable, and, in the case of open seats, the ones most likely to switch party control in November. Sixty...

Senate Democrats spent Thursday night hammering away at Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) for single-handedly holding up action in the upper chamber – but he blurted out a message to one of them on the Senate floor: “Tough s—t.” In an unusual display in the normally sleepy chamber, Bunning – without the support of GOP leadership – has blocked efforts to quickly approve a series of extensions to measures that would otherwise expire Sunday, including unemployment insurance and the Cobra program that allows people who lose their health benefits to continue getting coverage. And that has led to a furious exchange...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 22, 2010 – With U.S. forces entering the second week of a 12- to 18-month campaign in Afghanistan, the general in charge of U.S. forces in the region acknowledged yesterday that the way ahead will be tough. “I have repeatedly said that these types of efforts are hard, and they’re hard all the time,” Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Likening operations in Afghanistan to the surge in Iraq, the general pointed out that when U.S. forces go on the offensive to take away Taliban safe havens, they...

An interview of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio conducted by reporters from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University in Phoenix Monday night ended prematurely due to disruptive protests. Arpaio, has faced criticism among the media and charges of racial profiling during his illegal immigration sweeps. Arpaio was chosen by ASU because he is “powerful, popular and controversial” said Cronkite dean Christopher Callahan, who pointed out that interrupting the protests eliminated the effectiveness of the three journalists’ questions. “The scenario is you don’t want public scrutiny of this man,” Callahan told the protestors. “You don’t want reporters...