Free Republic

GUATEMALA CITY - Hundreds of protesters blocked lawmakers from voting on a free-trade agreement between Central America and the United States on Tuesday and authorities said they were prepared to send troops if the demonstrations continued. Col. Wilfred Estrada, a spokesman for the army, said he was ordered to ready 500 soldiers and military police who would be deployed if a new round of protests erupted Wednesday or Thursday. No one was hurt or arrested Tuesday. "There aren't enough lawmakers for quorum and when some who want to enter the building get close, they aren't allowed to," said Mariano Rayo,...

WASHINGTON - A federal judge has refused to block new campaign finance rules that an interest group contends will harm its ability to take part in state and local elections. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly denied a request by EMILY's List for a preliminary injunction against Federal Election Commission (news - web sites) regulations that took effect Jan. 1. The judge wrote that EMILY's List failed to show it would be irreparably harmed if the rules remained in effect. EMILY's List, which supports women Democratic candidates who favor abortion rights, is suing to overturn the new FEC rules, arguing that...

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit that sought to block random searches of passengers and vehicles using ferries that cross Lake Champlain. U.S. District Court Judge J. Garvan Murtha said the searches of people seeking to board the Lake Champlain Transportation Co. ferries were not intrusive and were reasonable given terrorism concerns. The lake forms part of the New York-Vermont border and extends into Canada. The searches are required under the National Maritime Transportation Security Act, which took effect July 1. The Coast Guard approved the company's screening protocol, which includes vehicle searches. In...

India to join US-led Security Initiative NEW DELHI, FEBRUARY 9: Having overcome initial qualms about joining the US-led Container Security Initiative, India is now moving fast and will be sending an inter-ministerial team to Washington in the first week of March to work out the modalities and confirm Indian participation. This is an excerpt. Read More India in US military block by 2008 24 November 2004: India will be part of an US-led Asia-Pacific peacekeeping force and security bloc to be established by 2008. Conceived by US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld three years ago but approved after the recent elections...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - County supervisor Mike Antonovich said Monday he received a fraudulent Mexican identification card with his own photo on it and wants the county to stop recognizing the consular cards as valid identification. Antonovich, who was the lone vote among the county's five supervisors against first recognizing the cards in 2002, said he was concerned that the card could be misused for criminal and even terrorist purposes. Antonovich said in a statement the card is "designed to give Mexican nationals, primarily those here illegally, a valid form of identification," and said he will bring a motion Tuesday...

Reporters Without Borders has called for the immediate release of journalist Arash Sigarchi who was arrested on 17 January 2005, after responding to a summons from the intelligence ministry in Rashat in the north of the country. He had been updating a weblog that has been banned by the authorities, Panhjareh Eltehab (The window of Anguish), in which he had spoken out against recent arrests of cyberjournalists and bloggers. The worldwide press freedom organisation also called on countries taking part in the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) to officially condemn these repeated breaches of freedom of expression. Iran...

As President Bush prepares for his second term, Democrats in Washington and around the country are organizing for a year of confrontation and resistance, saying they are determined to block Bush's major initiatives and thereby deny him the mandate he has claimed from his reelection victory last November. The Democrats' mood and posture represent a contrast to that of four years ago, after Bush's disputed victory over Al Gore. Then, despite anger and bitterness over how the 2000 election ended, Democrats were tentative and initially open to Bush's calls for bipartisan cooperation. Today, despite Bush's clear win over Sen. John...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - A California appeals court on Tuesday denied an effort by Christian activists to prevent a law that will grant same-sex couples nearly all the rights and responsibilities as marriage from taking effect on Jan. 1. The California Court of Appeal for the Third District rejected the groups' request for an emergency stay, but is allowing the legal challenges to the law itself to move forward. The groups, the Campaign for California Families and the Proposition 22 Legal Defense and Education Fund, are appealing a September ruling by a Superior Court judge in Sacramento that held that the...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to sell $929 million in bonds to cover the state's pension obligation this year violates constitutional mandates that voters approve all big loans, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday. The governor and the Legislature included the bonds in this year's budget as one of several loans the state took out to help close a funding gap that was once estimated at $17 billion. The move was made even though a similar pension obligation bond proposed last year by former Gov. Gray Davis was struck down by a state judge as unconstitutional. Attorney Harold...

Republicans in threat to block overseas aid By David Rennie in Washington (Filed: 27/11/2004) Republicans in the United States Congress have moved to block hundreds of millions of pounds in economic aid to foreign nations, unless they agree to shield American personnel and troops from any possible prosecution by the International Criminal Court. The economic threat was slipped, almost unnoticed, into a giant, £200 billion spending bill for 2005. Republicans are concerned that American personnel or even political leaders might find themselves dragged into politically motivated prosecutions before the ICC, an international court established by treaty in 1998 to hear...

WASHINGTON -- Southern California lawmakers who helped kill a post-Sept. 11 bill because it was too soft on illegal immigration vowed this week to smother any future intelligence overhaul that fails to control the flow of undocumented aliens. Prohibiting the use of matricula consular cards, permitting on-the-spot deportations of illegal immigrants and adopting national standards for driver's licenses top the list of measures that local lawmakers insist must be included in any intelligence bill next year. "These are not just immigration measures. They're national security measures," said Rep. Gary Miller, R-Brea. "You cannot have national security with open borders. It's...

SACRAMENTO - California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said Friday he will sue to block the federal government from proceeding with a far-reaching plan to manage 11.5 million acres of Sierra Nevada national forests. The head of the U.S. Forest Service approved the plan Thursday. U.S. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey has 15 days to decide whether to review the decision before it becomes final. Should Rey not act, Lockyer said he will sue in federal court contending the plan violates federal environmental protection laws, and will increase logging, endanger wildlife habitat, harm water quality and weaken grazing restrictions. Environmental groups said...

Title: GOP Sen. Specter Vows to Block Bush's Nominees Source: newsmax URL Source: http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/10/29/165559.shtml Published: Oct 29, 2004 Author: newsmax Post Date: 2004-10-29 20:42:24 by TLBSHOW 3 Comments Recall that alleged Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, upon winning the primary, immediately backstabbed President Bush, who had campaigned for him instead of actual Republican Pat Toomey. Turns out Specter was just getting started. We now see that the usually pro-Democrat Pittsburgh Post-Gazette endorsed the sharp-horned RINO in Tuesday's general election for this reason: "Before the Post-Gazette editorial board, he promised that no extremists would be approved for the bench." What...

David Koresh's Car To Go On Auction Block Words 'David's 427 Go God' Stamped On Engine POSTED: 3:51 pm EDT September 23, 2004 FREDRICKSBURG, Texas -- A 1968 Chevrolet Camaro once owned by former Branch Davidian leader David Koresh is expected to fetch up to $60,000 at auction this weekend. The black two-door Camaro was parked at the Davidian compound during a 51-day siege by federal agents in 1993 that ended with Koresh and nearly 80 followers dying as the complex near Waco burned to the ground. Auctioneer Daniel Kruse of Auburn, Ind.-based Kruse International said the 500-horsepower engine has...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 11 - A dozen Senate Democrats suggested Wednesday that they would not oppose President Bush's nomination of Representative Porter J. Goss as director of central intelligence, but they vowed to use his confirmation hearings to amplify their concerns over fatal intelligence failures under this administration. Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who is chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said he expected to open the confirmation hearings the first week of September. He also predicted that Mr. Goss, a Florida Republican, would be confirmed. In interviews, none of the Senate Democrats disputed that prediction. In fact,...

The rage to exploit all things quantum may have hit a snag. Quantum nanorods, atomic structures that have been heralded as the key to everything from super-efficient solar cells to an elusive white laser, appear to have an inherent surface charge that may tarnish their gleaming image, according to a report by University of Rochester scientists in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters. “This is not a positive nano-tech revelation,” says Todd Krauss, assistant professor of chemistry and principal author of the research. “We’ve found that while perfect nanorods have all this wonderful potential, in reality the current manufacturing...

<p>A federal judge refused to shut down more than $100 million in Yosemite Valley construction projects, saying environmental arguments for delay in a long-running lawsuit were unconvincing.</p> <p>But U.S. District Court Judge Anthony W. Ishii did order Yosemite National Park to decide a limit on how many people could visit the sensitive Merced River, which runs through the glacial valley.</p>

But then, the blocks that Wallace T. Wallington moves around near his home in a rural Flint area have weighed up to nearly 10 tons. And by himself, he moves these behemoth playthings, not with cranes and cables, but with wooden levers. "It's more technique than it is technology," Wallington says. "I think the ancient Egyptians and Britons knew this." Last October, a production crew from Discovery Channel in Canada came to Wallington's home to record him as he raised a 16-foot, rectangular, concrete block that weighed 19,200 pounds and set it into a hole. That taping was made into...

CAIRO, Egypt (Reuters) -- Egypt's ancient pyramids are probably a byproduct of a decision to build walls around the tombs of kings, a leading expert on early Egyptian royal burials said on Wednesday. Guenter Dreyer, director of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo, said he based his theory on similarities between Egypt's first pyramid, built at Saqqara south of Cairo for the Pharaoh Zozer in about 2650 BC, and the structure of the tomb of one of his immediate predecessors. The Saqqara pyramid, known as the Step Pyramid because of its unique shape, began as a flat mound about 25...

On Saturday, the Washington Post ran an editorial titled "End Run for Mr. Pickering," lamenting President Bush's decision to recess-appoint Judge Charles W. Pickering to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. His actions were a direct response to the Democrats' continued filibuster of Pickering's nomination. Instead of simply acknowledging that President Bush was fully within his right to make the appointment and that, even though they disagreed with Pickering's nomination, the President is right to circumvent a filibustering, stonewalling minority of Senators who won't allow a vote on the nomination to fill the vacancy classified as a "judicial emergency" by...