Free Republic

U.S. right-wing groups, militias surge: study 8 mins ago PHOENIX (Reuters) – The number of right-wing "Patriot" groups that see the U.S. government as their enemy more than doubled in the last year, fanned by anger over the economy and a backlash against the policies of President Barack Obama, according to a study published this week. The report by the Southern Poverty Law Center said 512 anti-government Patriot groups were active in the United States last year, a leap from 149 in 2008. The "Rage on the Right" report (www.splcenter.org) found that militias, the paramilitary arm of the Patriot movement,...

The lead story at DrudgeReport.com as of 11:30 a.m. this morning was "**REUTERS: Backdoor taxes to hit middle class." But Reuters withdrew the article last night. Drudge noted the change and wrote: "**REUTERS pulls tax story..." then added another link to the top left margin: "Largest-ever federal payroll to hit 2.15 million employees..." So what happened? According to a Reuters rep, the was withdrawn "due to significant errors of fact." "The story was wrong on multiple points and should not have gone out," she emailed us. A formal withdrawal will issued will address specific points that were incorrect later today....

Two Chicago men have been arrested and charged for allegedly plotting to attack a Danish newspaper that published cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed, the U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday. U.S. authorities arrested and charged David Headley on conspiracy charges to commit an act of terrorism and Tahawwur Hussain Rana on a single count of conspiracy, the Justice Department said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States blasted ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya for his "irresponsible and foolish" return from exile before a settlement was reached in the Central American country's political crisis. At an emergency meeting of the Organization of American States to discuss the Honduran face-off, Lewis Anselem, the U.S. ambassador to the OAS, also criticized Honduras' de facto government for its "deplorable" action in barring entry of an OAS mission and declaring a state of siege on Sunday. Anselem also criticized Zelaya for fueling violence by slipping back into Honduras last week and holing up in the Brazilian...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House called Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the "elected leader" of Iran on Tuesday when asked whether President Barack Obama recognized the Iranian president after the country's disputed election. "This was a decision and a debate ongoing in Iran by Iranians, they were going to choose their leadership," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. "He's the elected leader."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. employers cut 539,000 jobs last month, the fewest since October, according to government data on Friday that signaled the economy's steep decline may be easing. The unemployment rate, however, soared to 8.9 percent, the highest since September 1983, from 8.5 percent in March and job losses in March and February were a combined 66,000 steeper than previously estimated, the Labor Department said. A big 72,000 jump in government payrolls tempered the overall job-loss figure. Private sector employment fell by 611,000 in April after a 693,000 job decline in March.

The prospect of Britain repatriating the Libyan it jailed for blowing up a U.S. airliner is seen in Tripoli as a success ~snip~ ....Gaddafi's transition from international pariah once accused by the United States of building banned weapons ~snip~

MIAMI (Reuters) - Right-wing extremists in the United States are gaining new recruits by exploiting fears about the economy and the election of the first black U.S. president, the Department of Homeland Security warned in a report to law enforcement officials. The April 7 report, which Reuters and other news media obtained on Tuesday, said such fears were driving a resurgence in "recruitment and radicalization activity" by white supremacist groups, antigovernment extremists and militia movements. It did not identify any by name. DHS had no specific information about pending violence and said threats had so far been "largely rhetorical."

MIAMI (Reuters) - Right-wing extremists in the United States are gaining new recruits by exploiting fears about the economy and the election of the first black U.S. president, the Department of Homeland Security warned in a report to law enforcement officials. The April 7 report, which Reuters and other news media obtained Tuesday, said such fears were driving a resurgence in "recruitment and radicalization activity" by white supremacist groups, antigovernment extremists and militia movements. It did not identify any by name. DHS had no specific information about pending violence and said threats had so far been "largely rhetorical." But it...

The House of Wisdom By Jonathan Lyons Bloomsbury / 272 pages / $26 Dust will never gather on Jonathan Lyons' lively new book of medieval history - the opening page of his The House of Wisdom cites a cleric scandalized by the Crusader ladies of Antioch and their penchant for the plunging neckline and the bejeweled merkin. If this is the Middle Ages, thinks the reader, bring it on! But this pleasure gradually gives way to another beguilement, to be found in Lyons' subtitle: "How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization." That phrase suggests a brave viewpoint for a historian nowadays,...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. civil rights activist Al Sharpton weighed into a fight over an Arizona sheriff's immigration sweeps on Tuesday, accusing him of racially profiling Hispanics and urging him to step down. Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has dispatched deputies into Hispanic communities in the Phoenix area, where they stop people and arrest anyone who cannot prove he or she is a legal U.S. resident. Under a deal allowing them to enforce federal immigration laws, the deputies have arrested more than 1,500 people who they determined were in Arizona illegally, triggering street protests and condemnation from Latino activists...

BERLIN (Reuters) - German police have launched a nationwide search of more than 200 homes and businesses of people suspected of belonging to the country's extreme right, the Federal Crime Office (BKA) said Wednesday. "The primary aim of the concerted action by crime fighting authorities is to seize and confiscate prohibited items like music in order to move effectively and extensively against the spread of right wing extremism," the BKA said in a statement.

The United States will not attend a United Nations conference on racism that critics say will be a forum to criticize Israel and will no longer attend planning sessions for it, a U.S. official said on Friday. "We will not attend," the official said. A U.S. delegation attended consultations earlier this month on the World Conference Against Racism, scheduled for April in Geneva, Switzerland, although Israel has called for a boycott and Canada has said it will not attend.

Introduction: ...At the outset of a book chapter describing the 2001 analysis from this project (Paterson, 2005), I asked if media convergence and the migration of news consumers to the Internet democratise information flow - as conventional wisdom suggests - or simply disguise a steady reduction in information diversity. Here I seek to approach the problem more definitively. The hypothesis of reduction of information diversity saw preliminary support from my 1999 and 2001 data, and other academic and industry reports. And so I pose the following hypothesis for testing through longitudinal analysis: In the last five years, international news flow...

Abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has worsened sharply since President Barack Obama took office as prison guards "get their kicks in" before the camp is closed, according to a lawyer who represents detainees. Abuses began to pick up in December after Obama was elected, human rights lawyer Ahmed Ghappour told Reuters. He cited beatings, the dislocation of limbs, spraying of pepper spray into closed cells, applying pepper spray to toilet paper and over-forcefeeding detainees who are on hunger strike. The Pentagon said on Monday that it had received renewed reports of prisoner abuse during a recent review of conditions...

Between the end of Bennett Mornings and the beginning of the Laura Ingraham show, XM166 (America Right) ran AP Radio News with John Belmont. The last or next to last item was a live report with a female AP reporter at the Mardi Gras by the name of Foster. Belmont asked how parade participants could show up at 6 am and last till midnight. Foster laughed and responded that she had to get up at 4am at the hotel so that they could, "...put on our blackface and Afro wigs."

This is a bloody photo exhibit of the blood letting mourning ritual of the Shiites. The photos are graphic.

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, December 30, 2008 “I have not seen such hatred in this country since Selma. That was when I really just shuddered and thought–they (the pro-Hamas-niks) are taking away our country.” (See below for her report, just in). FT. LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA. December 30, 2008 “This is not Gaza, or London, or Paris, or even Detroit. This is downtown Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.” Tom Trento is describing the intense demonstration against Israel that just took place. He made the video by quietly and bravely circulating among the pro-Palestine demonstrators so that we can easily hear their chants. At red-hot levels...

HONOLULU (Reuters) - The resort and much of the island of Oahu where President-elect Barack Obama is vacationing was hit by a major blackout on Friday evening but it was not immediately clear if his compound had a backup source of electricity.

BERLIN (Reuters) - The odds of a "white Christmas" in temperate parts of the northern hemisphere have diminished in the last century due to climate change and will likely decline further by 2100, climate and meteorology experts said. Even though heavy snow this year will guarantee a white Christmas in many parts of Asia, Europe and North America, an 0.7-degree Celsius (1.3 Fahrenheit) rise in world temperatures since 1900 and projected bigger rises by 2100 suggest an inexorable trend. "The probability of snow on the ground at Christmas is already lower than it was even 50 years ago but it...