Free Republic

Gettin' ready!!! Just as few more minutes!!!

Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy said yesterday that he is entering treatment for an addiction to prescription medications, an announcement that comes as police continue their investigation into a car crash involving the congressman near the Capitol. Calling his addiction a "chronic disease," Kennedy said he does not even recall the accident, which occurred early Thursday and raised questions about his behavior and how U.S. Capitol Police deal with members of Congress. The congressman's office has said Kennedy (D-R.I.) was disoriented behind the wheel because he had taken prescription medication to calm stomach inflammation and to help him sleep. No one...

Officers Claim Brass Interfered in Investigation of Rep. Kennedy Incident Thursday, May 4; 4:16 pm By John McArdle, Roll Call Staff Police labor union officials asked acting Chief Christopher McGaffin this afternoon to allow a Capitol Police officer to complete his investigation into an early-morning car crash involving Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.).According to a letter sent by Officer Greg Baird, acting chairman of the USCP FOP, the wreck took place at approximately 2:45 a.m. Thursday when Kennedy’s car, operating with its running lights turned off, narrowly missed colliding with a Capitol Police cruiser and smashed into a security barricade...

Let's kick it up!!!

Gettin' ready!!! Potential topics??? (1) Illegal marches? (2) Rush Limbaugh? (3) Joe Biden's Iraq partition plan?

Michael Berg has come to terms with his son's murderer. But to most Americans that man is still enemy No.1, writes Martin Daly in New York. In the darkness, when the pain becomes too great, Michael Berg pulls out a chair for the man who decapitated his son and talks to him about compassion and forgiveness. Michael Berg has cried publicly many times for his dead son but he has forgiven Zarqawi, considered by the Americans to be the premier threat to peace in Iraq, but who remains free despite a $US25 million ($33 million) bounty on his head, and...

He's dissing Schumer for his absence now on the second Dubai deal............

A Dorchester man named Santa gave his conflicted family the yuletide gift of contrition yesterday by ’fessing up to killing his cousin at a Christmas party two years ago. Torn between anguish and fidelity, Benjamin Santa’s tearful mother would speak no evil of her son, even as he was spirited away in chains from a Boston courtroom. “I couldn’t even hug or kiss him,” Luz Caban said of Santa, 24, the oldest of her four children. “There’s no Christmas for us.” Santa, wearing sunglasses, his braided hair pulled back in a ponytail, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to...

MADRID, Spain - Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan led a small protest Saturday outside the U.S. Embassy to denounce the war in Iraq. About 100 protesters carried banners criticizing President Bush. Sheehan, whose soldier son was killed in Iraq, called Bush a war criminal and said, "Iraq is worse than Vietnam." The protest also was called in memory of Jose Couso, a Spanish television cameraman killed on April 8, 2003, in Baghdad when a U.S. tank fired at a hotel where many foreign correspondents were staying. Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk, a Ukrainian, also was killed in that incident.

Suicide haunts Linda Marquez . Three of her loved ones took their own lives - her mother, her husband, her son. No death could be more devastating to the people left behind, Linda said. The people who kill themselves may think the world is better off without them, "but they don't realize that what they're doing is leaving people with a life sentence, especially the people that love them the most," she said. Her son's death finally drove her to speak out. "I thought, this is too much. People need to know," she said. Experts estimate 1 million people attempt...

Russia to help China oust the USA from Eurasia 07/02/2005 21:11 Russia de facto loses the status of the world's center of force, which jeopardizes the global stability The rapidly developing economy of China pushes the country to search for sources of raw materials and sales markets abroad. The USA is China's major obstacle in this respect. China and the USA have been sharing their spheres of influence since 1979, when a semi-secret US-Chinese agreement about the strategic coordination was brought to light after Dang Xiaoping's visit in Washington (the USA prefers to keep the document a secret). The significance...

Howard Dean must be the product of a Karl Rove plot. How else to explain the Democratic National Committee chairman who so often acts as an unpaid agent of the Republican party? Democratic governors and senators run from him when he visits their states; he is badly losing the fundraising race to the Republican National Committee; and he routinely produces new gaffes. Dean’s handlers have carefully kept him off national TV, until they unleashed him on “Meet the Press” this past weekend. Dean was returning to the forum of one of his signature triumphs in his presidential campaign. He appeared...

Runaway Bride's Defense Jennifer Wilbanks (Photo: CBS/AP) "She is very sorry for the pain that she's caused her family, her fiancé, the community at large." Lydia Sartian, attorney for Jennifer Wilbanks John Mason listens as family members speak to reporters in front of his home in Duluth, Ga., after learning his fiancé had been found alive, Saturday, April 30, 2005. (Photo: AP) (CBS/AP) Runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks issued an apology Wednesday for disappearing just before her wedding day, saying, "I had a host of compelling issues that seemed out of control." Wilbanks made her apology in a statement read by...

Jayson Blair, the disgraced New York Times reporter implicated in a plagiarism scandal the paper called a “low point" in its 152-year history, has turned up with a first-person column in the spring issue of bp, a magazine chronicling bipolar disorder. In it, Blair gives his account of being diagnosed as bipolar—a recovery that includes medication and speaking engagements—as well as his take on the May 11, 2003 “7,000-word above-the-fold, front page story (accompanied by a 6,400-word litany of corrections).” Blair writes: “As a team of Times reporters and researchers dug into my background pulling together loose threads for (the...

"Sometimes when talking to people, I'll tell them that I've just had a lot of coffee, even though it's not true, because I know I fire off in all directions, and I can talk to you about anything - literature, string theory, rock guitar - I once worked for Leo Fender - and one thing I say to people is that, of course, I live near the edge; the view is better." Laurence McKinney, 60, who lives near the edge of Boston, is a business consultant, a Harvard graduate and self-described polymath who has had a career that is every...

MIAMI-DADE Family: Police victim bipolar The shooting of Cesar Rada by a Miami-Dade police officer was the department's 17th shooting since 1999 involving a mentally ill person Cesar Rada -- aspiring actor and model, and a psychology student at Florida International University -- had bipolar disorder and was schizophrenic, his family says. Sunday night, he had his hands raised and was unarmed as he walked toward a Miami-Dade police officer who killed him during a tense confrontation in a Kendall yard, police and witnesses said. The officer, Jeffrey Price, 23, was placed on administrative leave Monday while Miami-Dade's internal affairs...

President Bush travels to Europe in February -- stopping first in the old continent's pint-sized capital city. Why Brussels, instead of London or Paris or Warsaw? Not for the chocolate. A small but increasingly prominent cluster of foreign-policy thinkers -- call them bipolarists -- believe they know the answer: Whether Bush likes it or not, there are two superpowers in the world, and the other is Europe. Unlike communism, the E.U. seems to represent not an enemy of liberal capitalism, but a new and possibly improved version of it. In 2002, Charles A. Kupchan, a professor of international relations at...

Let's go! This needs to be on the table. Would at least one Christian minister who has the President's ear ---- give him an earful????

I'm listening to Mike Savage, and earlier on his show he jolted me out of my daydreaming with the statement that he is seriously considering running in '08. heh. I missed whatever he said caused him to go back on his promise that he'd never run for any political office... anyone else listening tonight who can shed some light on this for me? BTW, I am a big fan of his, but I know this is just so much hot air from Mike ;)

By PETER PORCO Anchorage Daily News November 26, 2004 ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Sixteen-year-old Rachelle A. Waterman would appear to be any parent's ideal child - an honor student, an athlete, a gifted singer. But for months, she planned her mother's murder with two of her former boyfriends who are eight years her senior, according to Alaska State Troopers. Two weekends ago on Southeast's Prince of Wales Island, their plot ended in the death of 48-year-old Lauri Waterman of Craig, according to court papers. Lauri Waterman, a teacher's aide and community activist, was killed by one of the men using a...