Free Republic

New Mexico is taking its fight against drunken driving to men's restrooms around the state. The state has ordered 500 talking urinal cakes that will deliver a recorded anti-DWI message to bar and restaurant patrons who make one last pit stop before getting behind the wheel. "Hey there, big guy. Having a few drinks?" a female voice says a few seconds after an approaching male sets off a motion sensor in the device. "It's time to call a cab or ask a sober friend for a ride home."

The honor code is carved into stone at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point: "A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do." The words express the integrity expected of those who lead our men and women into battle, and they have a purpose: Officers who cannot be trusted have no place in positions of responsibility, not when the consequences of such a character flaw can be death, not when the American people put such confidence in those in uniform. But somehow, it is hard to square that admirable code of honor with the Army's behavior...

Dada, or just gaga? Art vandal fined French court convicts 77-year-old man for taking hammer to Duchamp work PARIS -- A court has convicted a 77-year-old French man for attacking artist Marcel Duchamp's famed porcelain urinal with a hammer, rejecting the defendant's contention that he had increased the value of the art work by making it an "original." The court gave Pierre Pinoncelli a three-month suspended prison sentence Tuesday and ordered him to pay a $283,000 fine. Pinoncelli also was ordered to pay $20,318 to repair Fountain, a work worth millions of dollars that was chipped in the Jan. 4...

An editorial by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel suggesting Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is not a real black is being blasted by radio giant Rush Limbaugh, who is calling the newspaper's editors "bigoted" and "Stalinist."

Los Angeles -- Student journalists sued their Bakersfield high school district Thursday in an effort to keep the school's principal from censoring student newspaper articles on homosexuality. The suit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, requests an emergency order to allow the paper to publish the stories in The Kernal's year-end May 27 issue. "The Kernal staff, along with the gay students we interviewed, we have lost our voices," said the paper's editor in chief, Joel Paramo, a plaintiff in the case filed in Kern County court. East Bakersfield High School Principal John Gibson said he blocked publication because...

Belgians get scolding from Vito Photo stickers of Bush were placed in urinals in some ministry offices in Brussels Saturday, February 26, 2005 By TERENCE J. KIVLAN WASHINGTON -- Photo stickers of President Bush and the American flag placed in urinals in some Belgian ministry offices in Brussels right before the president's European tour have Rep. Vito Fossella mighty peeved. But the lawmaker's ire, expressed to the Belgian prime minister at the Belgian Embassy here, may have been misdirected. Although Fossella (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn) accused the prime minister of responsibility for the stickers, Serge Wauthier, an embassy spokesman, noted that the...

LONDON - A porcelain urinal is the most influential work of modern art, according to a survey released Wednesday. The poll of 500 arts figures ranked French surrealist Marcel Duchamp's 1917 piece "Fountain" — an ordinary white, porcelain urinal — more influential than Pablo Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," Andy Warhol's screen prints of Marilyn Monroe and "Guernica," Picasso's searing depiction of the devastation of war. Duchamp pioneered the use of everyday objects as art, an aesthetic that questioned the nature of art itself. Art expert Simon Wilson said the choice of Duchamp's urinal "comes as a bit of a shock."...

On November 12, a talk show host of a powerful radio station in Sacramento, California wrote the following as his grand finale punch line about the passing of Palestine Authority President Yasser Arafat: "The appropriate headstone over the stiff would be a working urinal." In the same Sacramento Union article, Williams wrote: “Get this straight: Yasser Arafat was a blood-soaked, sub-human, vile, reprehensible, murderous animal". And added: "If there is a crueler pile of camel manure than Palestine, then it has got to be the total fiction of a Palestinian 'people' ... " There is much more.

German men are being shamed into urinating while sitting down by a gadget which is saving millions of women from cleaning up in the bathroom after them.

German men are being shamed into urinating while sitting down by a gadget which is saving millions of women from cleaning up in the bathroom after them. The WC ghost, a £6 voice-alarm, reprimands men for standing at the lavatory pan. It is triggered when the seat is lifted. The battery-operated devices are attached to the seats and deliver stern warnings to those who attempt to stand and urinate (known as "Stehpinkeln"). "Hey, stand-peeing is not allowed here and will be punished with fines, so if you don't want any trouble, you'd best sit down," one of the devices orders...

March 16, 2004 - New York - KISSING IN THE MEN'S ROOM AT THE VIRGIN CLUBHOUSE Even though they allow for high-volume servicing and back-in-a-flash trips to the john, the point-and-shoot-a-stinky-deodorizer-cake oddity known as the men’s restroom urinal has been, for women, a constant enigma. But nothing will prepare you for the men’s room in the newly-designed Virgin Airways Clubhouse in New York’s John F. Kennedy airport, terminal 4: Urinals shaped like a woman’s mouth, dolled up with red lipstick, wide open and ready for business. “In anything that we do there has to be a smile, and that’s the...

<p>SANTA MONICA -- In the Robert Redford Building, toilets flush themselves with rainwater -- except for the urinals, which use no water at all -- the floors are made of bamboo and the carpets from hemp.</p> <p>All of which help make it, the actor said during a dedication ceremony in the Los Angeles suburb of Santa Monica on Thursday, one of the "greenest" buildings in America and a glimpse into the environmentally friendly future.</p>