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WASHINGTON - Cindy Sheehan and other peace activists plan to "die symbolically" for the next four days outside the White House to represent the American soldiers who have died in Iraq. Sheehan, whose son Casey died in Iraq last year, organized the vigil as the U.S. military death toll in the war neared 2,000. "I'll be laying down and not getting up," Sheehan said Tuesday to a small crowd in which the number of journalists exceeded the number of protesters. "When they let me out, I'll do the same thing if I get arrested."

In the gunner’s hatch of his Humvee, Spc. Dean Levy poses with fellow crew members (left to right): Staff Sgt. Herminio Rodriguez, Spc. Patrick Grubert, and 42nd Infantry Division Artillery Command Sgt. Maj. Dennis Flynn. The picture was taken on Levy’s first day back to work after recovering from burns he suffered in a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device explosion. Flynn is holding the leash of “Zappa�, a dual-purpose explosive detection dog. U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Raymond Drumsta U.S. Army Spc. Dean Levy Gunner Goes Head-to-Head with a V-Bed, Saves Crew By Staff Sgt. Raymond Drumsta, 42nd Infantry...

Third officer this year to face charges; Johnson accused of molesting girl, 15 A Columbus police officer was charged Saturday night with sexually abusing a teenage girl. Bruce Anthony Johnson, 41, of 1050 Farr Road, was charged with aggravated child molestation, aggravated sodomy, statutory rape, enticing a child for indecent purposes and two counts of furnishing alcohol to a minor. He is scheduled to appear in court this morning. Columbus Police Chief Ricky Boren said the investigation began Friday afternoon, and the allegations involved a 15-year-old girl. "We started the investigation Friday afternoon, and the investigation continued until Saturday evening...

On the flight home this morning, I was unfortunate enough to have a bleeder sit next to me. By bleeder, I mean he was invading my space because he was large and his body was spilling over into my seat. I've seen worse cases than what I had today but let's hear your experiences.

After his adult son shot a man in the leg Wednesday and sheriff's investigators took his son to jail, James Loudon had many questions. Some were about the details of the shooting, which he and his construction worker son say was self-defense. Loudon, a retiree from Chicago, didn't see the shooting but he thinks he knows most of those details now. His remaining questions are mostly about a new Florida law. It was advertised as expanding the right to use firearms and deadly force when people think they are threatened with illegal violence. Loudon hopes that law, lauded by the...

Note: where you see "a_ _ _ _ _ _", choose a 7-letter word beginning with "a" that you feel is appropriate for Pennsylvania Lt. Governor Catherine Baker Knoll (hmmmm....what word?...amateur?...artiste?...athlete?...hmmmm) MIDI - PROUD MARY They said goodbye to a hero Sgt. Goodrich served his nation selflessly Catherine Baker Knoll had not been invited Quite a spectacle they soon would see Anti-war stuff she's saying While mourners had been praying Knoll is...Knoll is...Knoll is such an a_ _ _ _ _ _ Knoll is such an a_ _ _ _ _ _ Why was this woman so heartless It was...

It’s down to the wire. The U.S. House of Representatives will vote on the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA)—the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement—by July 28. CAFTA is a regional agreement between the U.S. and six Central American countries: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic. CAFTA is another flawed trade deal that will sell out America's jobs and do nothing to pull people out of poverty in Central America and the Dominican Republic. Like its predecessor, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), CAFTA promises to “help” the United States economy and reduce...

http://soft-vision.com/only/ ( either join so you can post or when you get to the login screen click on : back to blog. ) Former PoW's from both sides of the issue are encouraged to post their view. But note, to say NO ONE was left behind is ludacrist ( what ever) and unproveable, yet below, in Sen. McCain's own words he admits ... just a "tiny hand full".. well I feel as a majority do, ONE is to many to leave, ONE is a father, a brother, an uncle and on and on.. who should have the right to the...

PROVO - There is a new coffee shop in town, but it's no Starbucks. The entry is framed with little white Christmas lights, there are half-a-dozen couches to go along with a few tables, and the walls are yellow, red, green and purple. Opposite a faux-brick wall there is a wall dedicated to nonsense. "Girls are like ladders," one customer wrote. Another scribbled: "I love yellow people." It's all the same to owner Christin Johnson. She's just happy the people who jotted down the messages wanted to stick around in her Vermillion Skies De-cafe and Lounge long enough to pen...

The House Government Reform Committee will hold an oversight hearing on the District's gun control laws at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday. The hearing will consider current gun control laws, current policies to combat violent crimes and - most controversial - the possible effects of repealing current D.C. gun laws. The committee will also discuss constitutional issues relating to the gun laws. This hearing will be in room 2154 of the Rayburn House Office Building. According to the House Committee on Government Reform, identical bills in both the House and Senate would curb the D.C. Council and mayor's authority to regulate...

WASHINGTON - Big Bird and National Public Radio won a reprieve Thursday as the House restored $100 million that had been proposed as a budget cut for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting The 284-140 vote demonstrated the enduring political strength of public broadcasting, whose supporters rallied behind popular programs such as “Sesame Street,” “Postcards From Buster” and “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.” The Public Broadcasting Service undertook a high-profile campaign to rescind the proposed cut. Lawmakers were flooded with letters and phone calls.

Pakistani politician got paid £1,000 a month in UK benefits By Daniel Foggo and Massoud Ansari (Filed: 12/06/2005) A prominent Pakistani politician has been receiving British state benefits to which he was not entitled while living in a palatial home in Karachi. As the governor of Sindh province in Pakistan, Dr Ishrat-Ul-Ebad Khan lives in a mansion in the state capital while being waited on by servants and chauffeured in Mercedes limousines. Dr Ishrat-Ul-Ebad Khan Yet, while enjoying the perks of his position, Dr Khan was for 10 months the recipient of money from the benefits system, including income support...

A teenager was back in class Friday after receiving a one-day suspension for wearing a T-shirt with slogans including "freedom of expression" and "don't drink and drive" that school administrators considered disruptive. Hanna Smith, 18, a junior at Tift County High School, said principal Mike Duck told her that if she wore the shirt again she would be suspended for the remainder of the year. The principal was arrested six years ago for DUI and running a stop sign, the Tifton Gazette said Friday in a story on Smith's suspension. Duck made a public apology for the DUI and was...

Every so often, in the hushed galleries of Congress, history unfolds in a manner that casts the momentous business of Capitol Hill in stark, even humbling relief. Then there are moments spent discussing the Whizzinator. Yesterday morning in Room 2123 of the Rayburn Building, Rep. Bart Stupak, a sober-voiced Democrat from Michigan, held up an advertisement for the "drug-test subversion device," which received national attention last week when it was learned that an NFL player had been detained at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport after authorities found the state-of-the-art prosthetic in his luggage (with a packet of dehydrated urine). The player...

I did it!!! For years I have been tying to post an article during normal freeping hours that nobody would comment on for over an hour. It is quite a challenge really. FR has a wide range of interests, and if an article is too weird, then people will comment on its weirdness. Anyway, every few weeks I have been trying to find an article just so totally boring that there would be no reason for anyone to comment on it, and at the same time not be too weird as to merit a comment based on its weirdness. I...

Pakistani killed for desecrating Koran A man in a small village in western Pakistan was shot and killed after a local cleric declared him an infidel for desecrating the Koran. Ashiq Nabi, who had been on the run since Monday after being accused of blasphemy, was shot Wednesday after begging for his life and then climbing a tree to escape an angry mob of about 400 villagers, the Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported. Ashiq, who lived in a village about 18 miles outside Peshawar, allegedly had desecrated the Koran Monday during an argument with his wife. After his uncle complained, police...

NEW IPSWICH - In the latest twist of his public battle against illegal immigrants, Police Chief Garrett Chamberlain has taken what may be a unique legal approach: He has charged a man from Mexico with criminal trespass because he was in town without legal documents. As defined in state law (RSA 635:2), a person is guilty of criminal trespass “if, knowing that he is not licensed or privileged to do so, he enters or remains in any place.” “If we’re going to have immigration, it needs to be controlled and we need to know what’s happening on our borders. Nobody...

Many argue that communism will never be possible because of "human nature". The essence of this false argument is the belief that a communist society would consist of an all-powerful central government that would tell everybody what to do--and would therefore undermine the creative initiative of individuals and the search for happiness. • This argument is based on two false assumptions: (1) It assumes that a communist society will look like the former Soviet Union, or the current China, North Korea, etc (ie: corrupt police states with a feudal-style ruling class) (2) It assumes that people will only work in...

When it comes to the law of unintended consequences, the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance "reform" is rapidly becoming a legal phenomenon. The latest example comes courtesy of the Federal Election Commission, where officials are being asked to extend the law to the very people it is supposed to empower: individual citizens. snip The problem facing the FEC is that McCain-Feingold broadly restricts coordination with, and contributions to, political candidates. So what is the agency to do with all those people who use their Web sites to praise a candidate? Computers and Web access cost money, which could be construed as a financial...

<p>When the tsunami disastrously struck Southeast Asia on Dec. 26, 2004, Las Vegas Libertarian Avan Perera happened to be in Sri Lanka -- the land of his birth -- visiting his parents. They recently retired back to Sri Lanka after living in the United States for 20 years.</p>

If you were neglected as a child or if your parents paid more attention to your siblings, take heart. It might not be your fault. It might be because you're ugly. That's what Andrew Herrell's research at the University of Alberta suggests. Herrell, the director of the population research lab in the university's sociology department, studied parents' behaviour in grocery stores, where children often suffer minor injuries. He was trying to understand what factors contributed to those injuries. What he found would stun most fair-minded parents - ugly kids were neglected more often than attractive ones. "They'll deny it," said...

CHICAGO, March 9 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Anti-Terrorism and Aviation Protection Act," (H.B. 1098), passed out of the Illinois House of Representatives Human Services Committee today, a homeland security bill to prevent a terrorist from using a .50 caliber sniper rifle to shoot down a civilian airliner during landing or takeoff. Rep. Elaine Nekritz (D-57th) and Rep. Beth Coulson (R-17th), the two main sponsors, have launched a bi-partisan effort to keep the most deadly and powerful sniper rifles on the market out of the hands of terrorists to protect Illinois aviation and vulnerable industrial targets. .50 caliber sniper rifles were designed...

Moving house is said to be one of life's most stressful experiences but, in Switzerland, it is made even more stressful by strict requirements on how you leave your old home. Imogen Foulkes moved house recently and describes the day the hygiene inspector came to call. I have to confess, I have always been a bit intimidated by the Swiss devotion to cleanliness. Women in Switzerland spend a couple of hours a day cleaning the house It all began not long after I arrived in Switzerland when, as a new mother, I was invited for coffee by a woman who...

George Rogers Clark High School junior arrested Tuesday for making terrorist threats told LEX 18 News Thursday that the "writings" that got him arrested are being taken out of context. Winchester police say William Poole, 18, was taken into custody Tuesday morning. Investigators say they discovered materials at Poole's home that outline possible acts of violence aimed at students, teachers, and police. Poole told LEX 18 that the whole incident is a big misunderstanding. He claims that what his grandparents found in his journal and turned into police was a short story he wrote for English class. "My story is...

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Billboard creator Citizens United, a group that advocates return to traditional values, has purchased the use of 3 billboards near the Kodak Theatre(home of the Academy Awards) for the month of February which includes Oscar night....

A malicious script that spies on Apple Mac users was discovered over the weekend. The malware, which has been dubbed ‘Opener’ by Mac user-groups, disables Mac OS X’s built-in firewall, steals personal information and can destroy data. Security experts say these traits are common among the thousands of viruses targeting Microsoft’s ubiquitous Windows operating system but are virtually unheard of amongst the Apple Macintosh community. Paul Ducklin, Sophos’ head of technology in the Asia Pacific, told ZDNet Australia that the malware, which Sophos calls Renepo, is designed to infect any Mac OS X drives connected to the infected system and...

Why We're A Divided Nation by Walter E. Williams Recent elections pointed to deepening divisions among American people but has anyone given serious thought to just why? I have part of the answer that starts off with a simple example. Different Americans have different and intensive preferences for cars, food, clothing and entertainment. For example, some Americans love opera and hate rock and roll. Others have opposite preferences, loving rock and roll and hating opera. When's the last time you heard of rock and roll lovers in conflict with opera lovers? It seldom if ever happens. Why? Those who love...

There is an entire bookshelf (10 feet, 6 inches long) in Roy G. Jinks's home office that contains every firearms patent issued in the United States from June 29, 1832, to May 17, 1921. They were compiled and bound first by Daniel Baird Wesson, who died in 1906, and then his sons. D. B. Wesson, as he was known, together with his business partner Horace Smith founded Smith & Wesson, a company that holds a special place in American industrial history. Roy G. Jinks in his home office, which mirrors the office of Smith & Wesson co-founder D. B. Wesson,...

After three years in litigation, the Isla Vista Recreation and Park District has found itself on the losing end of a lawsuit filed by the Santa Barbara Libertarian Party — a lawsuit that has already taken a $250,000 bite out of the IVRPD’s modest budget. The lawsuit began in November 2001 when Robert Bakhaus, secretary for the local office of the Libertarian Party, sued the IVRPD Board of Directors for committing several violations of the Brown Act, California’s law requiring all meetings of local legislative bodies be open to the public. In a Dec. 23, 2004 decision, Santa Barbara County...

I have a chance to go the the 2005 SHOT show in Las Vegas, and I'm not missing it. My Buddy Dave is a cop. He's a sniper, among other things, for the Coral Springs (FL) Police Department's SWAT group. Dave has been working for about a year with some cool guys from a group called "Adopt-a-Sniper" http://adoptasniper.orgFrom the Adopt a Sniper website: "Snipersonline UA and Sniper's Paradise have several members and Sniper friends actively engaged in the battle against terrorism. Our friends are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the number of snipers deployed around...

I just had the pleasure of watching game 1 of the 1975 Red Sox - Reds World Series at Fenway.

I Am A Conservative Christian, And The Religious Right Scares Me by Chuck Baldwin For those readers who are unfamiliar with my biography (http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.sketch.html), let me here provide a thumbnail sketch of my conservative bona fides: I attended, graduated, or received degrees from fundamentalist Christian schools such as Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan, Thomas Road Bible Institute (now known as Liberty Bible Institute at Liberty University) in Lynchburg, Virginia, Christian Bible College in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and Trinity Baptist College in Jacksonville, Florida. I am currently in my thirtieth year as the Senior Pastor of the Crossroad Baptist...

It has been noted that there has been a grievous and unprovoked attack on Great Britain on these pages http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1295524/posts which THE MANAGEMENT, in their wisdom, have seen fit to leave in situ. Therefore, here is the British response. [Note to Mr Moderator, please feel free to remove this thread (I'm sure you will anyway) and indeed ban me from these boards (once again) However, if you do choose you that path, please display your lack of bias and sense of fair play by removing the "40 Reasons why the US is Better than Britain (humor)" thread which I have...

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!

why do people keep banning me everytime I put up interesting articles? I work for a website I think some of you are familiar with called phantirath weekly world news and each time we put somthing up on FR no matter how conservative it is it keeps getting banned. Whats the matter with it?! Damn man what are you marxist socialists communists? I just got a call this mroning from a Juwish friend of mine who said that you banned an important article about Zionism and Noam Federman and about how we were to support israel. I thought you guys...

Others may have sympathized on learning that Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Middle East studies at Columbia University, felt threatened by a graduate student at his own university, but not me. The incident began late on Sept. 27, 2004, when Victor Luria, a Ph.D. candidate in genetics and a former soldier in the Israel Defense Forces, wrote Dabashi an e-mail taking strong exception to what Dabashi had written about the IDF in an article, "For a Fistful of Dust: A Passage to Palestine," he published in the Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram. In response, Luria wrote to Dabashi: I have rarely seen...

I was in Maui at YWAM in 1988 and 1989, as was my husband, and both of us were under the leadership of the Bauers and Mark Okazaki. We found them to be loving, mature and compassionate in their leadership styles. Cindy certainly did not mollycoddle the staff and students, but I never witnessed any manipulation or abuse. Cindy and Tom were loving and loyal and truly wanted to meet the needs of the students. I was considered “least likely to succeed,” in the DTS and to be honest, considered a bit of a rebel. However, every concern I brought...

The retail giant has given the Salvation Army the cold shoulder this holiday season. Perhaps they should read Dickens.by Hugh Hewitt 11/24/2004 12:00:00 AM ON THE CUSP of the season of Thanksgiving, Hanukah, and Christmas--the days of generosity--there are two great passages from Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol which deserve rereading, especially by the executives of Target Corporation: "Scrooge and Marley's, I believe," said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list. "Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?" "Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years," Scrooge replied. "He died seven years ago, this...

NEW YORK (Nov. 14) -- For some New Yorkers, a shoe sale is an incidental thing, a chance to pick up a pair of loafers, or rummage through racks of heels. For Lorraine Koppell, shoes are a matter worth suing over. Ms. Koppell, a lawyer and the wife of G. Oliver Koppell, a city councilman and a lawyer himself, is part of a class-action lawsuit filed in Manhattan Civil Court this month. Her adversary is Bloomingdale's. The suit, filed by a neighbor who went to the same Bloomingdale's sale, claims that the store misled shoppers in a sale flier last...

Yasser Arafat's widow, Suha, is expected to receive a sum of $22 million a year out of the Palestinian Authority budget, according to the Italian newspaper Corriere De La Serra. The paper said Suha reached an agreement about the money during a meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, the PLO's newly elected chairman, who visited while she was staying next to her husband's bed in the French military hospital outside Paris. It said Abbas personally promised Suha that she would receive $22 million a year to cover her expenses in Paris. The paper noted that in July Arafat transferred to his wife...

GENEVA, Aug 21 (AFP) - Two Yemeni nationals arrested this year in Switzerland are linked to key Al-Qaeda figures with ties to the October 2000 bombing of a US aircraft carrier off Yemen and to a suicide strike in Riyadh last year, the Swiss public prosecutor was quoted as saying on Saturday. The pair, who were detained in Geneva and Bern in January, have been linked to "several core members of the (Osama) bin Laden movement," said a report on an inquiry by public prosecutor Claude Nicati, obtained by Le Temps newspaper. A spokesperson at the federal prosecutor's office declined...

PHILADELPHIA - (KRT) - A group of Vietnam veterans that is challenging Sen. John Kerry's claims of heroic war service says it received a flood of donations in recent days after advertising its contentions on television in three states. The group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, said it hoped to use the money to monitor Kerry's campaign travels and run ads in cities where he appears. "That's our goal," said John E. O'Neill, a Houston attorney who's one of the group's leaders and co-author of "Unfit to Command," a 251-page book being distributed this week by the conservative Regnery Publishing...

While anti-Bush activists in New York are adopting new techniques to try and disrupt the Republican party convention later this month, the police have got some new strategies of their own, writes Michelle Goldberg If you're a delegate attending the Republican national convention at Madison Square Garden later this month, Jamie Moran knows where you're staying. He knows where you're eating and what Broadway musical you plan on seeing. For the past nine months, Moran has been living off savings earned as an office manager at a nonprofit and working full-time to disrupt the RNC. His small anarchist collective, RNCNotWelcome.org,...

This request was made earlier, but it bears posting again. The soldiers and their families need our support. While listening to Lucianne Goldberg on the Laura Ingraham show, a caller requested help for the soldiers again. She specifically mentioned this site. During the call, she said that soldiers that are injured during duty number over 10,000. Also, she said that a number of the families who travel to medical facilities to be with their loved ones are forced to sleep in their cars as they cannot afford lodging anywhere else. Sounded like this site and the post was worth a...

A horrifying hypothesis France's adherence to its republican ideals has left it blind it to its most pressing problems, Jon Henley argues Friday July 30, 2004 Followed closely by a battery of mainly foreign TV cameras, a chartered El Al jet took off from Paris this week carrying some 200 French Jews emigrating to Israel. The event attracted zero attention in France because it was not news: each year for the past couple of years, some 2,000 French Jews have made the same journey (the number is rising, but remains pretty insignificant compared to the size of the community, estimated...

To All: First of all I posted something that appeared to be in favor of our President. As far as the validity of the story, well that has to be approved or disproved. I didn’t think that by posting this story would generate such negative feelings against me. As far as the one who called me a coward I beg the differ with you My posting some of my reply’s was not to hide my comments but to reply directly to the individual without getting everyone else involved that shared other than negative opinions .I did not deserve all the...

After reportedly calling off the illegal immigrant roundups in Southern California, the Under Secretary for Border & Transportation Security at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Asa Hutchinson drew the fire of John & Ken. After hearing from several moderately displeased listeners, Asa called the show and offered to come on the air to explain himself. What he failed to do was to answer John’s simple question…”Yes or no, will the illegal alien roundups continue?” You could almost hear Asa praying for a commercial break. It didn’t come.

WHAT A DAY!

While most of the media and the off-center Americans are grinding their teeth over the Condi Rice flap and the body count;US vs Ragheads....a simple little piece of Americana took place today;the Master Tournament's at August, GA. Arnold Palmer is playing in his 50th Masters. Kids and adults who weren't even born when he started on the Tour are sitting behind the ropes applauding. We need to ask ourselves some questions. Arnie won his first Masters in April, 1960 ( in tribute, I'm sure to the love of my life marrying me in May,) Since then he has been what...I...