Free Republic

Raven Brooks is making his Christmas list, but he is less concerned with what to buy than where to shop. Brooks is one of a small group of frustrated Democrats who met while commiserating online after President Bush defeated Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.). Disenchanted and desperate for a voice, they started BuyBlue.org. The two-week-old Web site lists the political contributions of major companies to encourage people to shop at stores and buy products from businesses that supported Democratic candidates. "If you are a progressive or a liberal, you won't be represented adequately by this administration, or this Congress," Martha...

Thursday, October 3, 2002 GREAT FALLS, Montana (AP) -- Montana's Libertarian candidate for Senate has turned blue from drinking a silver solution that he believed would protect him from disease. Stan Jones,a 63-year-old business consultant and part-time college instructor, said he started taking colloidal silver in 1999 for fear that Y2K disruptions might lead to a shortage of antibiotics. He made his own concoction by electrically charging a couple of silver wires in a glass of water. His skin began turning blue-gray a year ago... ...He does not take the supplement any longer, but the skin condition, called argyria, is...

Study Reveals Why Blue Frescoes Fade Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery NewsKeeping Blue Bright Oct. 13, 2006 — Medieval and Renaissance Madonnas will no longer risk their vibrant blue mantels turning into yellowish grey robes, according to U.S. researchers who have discovered why natural ultramarine blue sometimes fades in frescoes. Known as "ultramarine sickness," the irreversible form of discoloration has been observed in frescoes at the Church of Saint Augustine in San Gimigniano, near Siena, and in the Basilica of Assisi. "Our studies explain for the first time the process of fading in ultramarines and may lead to the design of proper...

Families are Red, Singles are Blue: Marriage, Fertility, and the Mid-Term Elections After the 2000 election, the terms "Red state” and ‘Blue state” became a popular shorthand for describing the political and cultural divide that separated Democrats and Republicans. The flawed but useful metaphor implies that idealogical leanings and political affiliations are clustered around geographic areas. But a recent analysis by Census data by USA Today reveals a pair of factors that are even more determinative of political affiliation than race, income, education or geography: family and fertility. In fact, when it comes to Congressional representation, marriage and parenthood are...

Democrats and liberal judges say terrorists have the same rights as you. Democrats will impeach President Bush for spying on terrorists. Democrats will cancel the Patriot Act, terrorists surveillance and missile defense programs. Stop obstruction and the filibuster. Vote for a Republican majority! If you're not an extremist, you're not a democrat. Take the red pill (R). Take the blue pill (D). VOTE!

Friday will be a week since former President Bill Clinton's angry, finger-pointing reaction to Chris Wallace's questions about his record on fighting terrorism. It's a story that continues to have legs — which Wallace considers a compliment. We talked briefly with the host of Fox News Sunday to find out more about what went on behind the scenes during the interview, which was taped Friday and telecast Sunday. Q: Chris, are you tired of talking about this? A: Yeah, I'm getting tired of me. Q: There seems to be a consensus that the interview did Clinton some good. What's your...

The division of America into red and blue is a totem of our times. The red states voted for Bush, the Blue for the Democrats. The blue states are on the coasts, the red states are flyovers. More importantly to Republicans, and invidiously to Democrats, the red states are -- at worst -- no less prosperous than the blue states, and probably a good bit better off if we pay attention to migration patterns. The Democrats know they are in real trouble if they don't start turning some of those red states, because the electoral college will shift away from...

Blue sky tinkering (Filed: 17/09/2006)Page 1 of 5 Scientists fighting global warming are now considering wacky ways of deliberately manipulating the environment to control the world's climate. Philip Sherwell in New York reports on the schemes that were once dismissed as the work of crackpots Trillions of tiny sunshades orbiting in space; a mirror 150 miles high stationed between Earth and the sun; clouds sprayed with seawater; planes pumping sulphates into the stratosphere. They may sound to a layman like the weird and wacky fantasies of an eccentric bunch of boffins, but such ambitious plans for cooling the planet are...

Iraqi Soldiers wait to board a C-130 heading to Baghdad. Department of Defense photo by Army Sgt. Jeff Lowry. “Here we go into the wild blue yonder” is a familiar U.S. Air Force refrain. Now with the help of U.S instructor pilots, Iraqi Air Force pilots are also taking to the skies. “Flying is universal,” said U.S Air Force Capt. Mike Joluton, Coalition Air Force Transition Team, an instructor pilot for the C-130 cargo plane. The instruments are basically the same, he said.Language barriers aren’t really a problem since most pilots speak English, he said, although in some instances the...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Lonely? Feeling low? Try taking a walk -- down the aisle. Getting married enhances mental health, especially if you're depressed, according to a new U.S. study. The benefits of marriage for the depressed are particularly dramatic, a finding that surprised the professor-student team behind the study. "We actually found the opposite of what we expected," said Adrianne Frech, a PhD sociology student at Ohio State University who conducted the study with Kristi Williams, an assistant professor of sociology. They expected to find that one spouse's depression weighed too much on the marriage, but "just mattering to...

The Silicon Valley Young Republicans Federated would like for you to attend this event this August.This is a funraiser to help raise funds for many Pro Troop causes. SVYRF Club Socials SVYRFC Annual BBQ Location: Sanborn Skyline County Park, Saratoga When: August 12, 2006 Registration: starts at 3pm Food: 4pm Program/Speakers: 5pm Clean-up: 8pm Confirmed Speakers: Claude Parrish, BOE member and Republican candidate for State Treasurer Mike Wasserman, Los Gatos town councilman, former Los Gatos mayor Elsie Gufler, Republican candidate for CA Assembly District 19 Larry Hileman, Republican candidate for CA Assembly District 24 Rob Smith, Republican candidate for CA...

The Silicon Valley Young Republicans Federated would like for you to attend this event this August.This is a funraiser to help raise funds for many Pro Troop causes. SVYRF Club Socials SVYRFC Annual BBQ Location: Sanborn Skyline County Park, Saratoga When: August 12, 2006 Registration: starts at 3pm Food: 4pm Program/Speakers: 5pm Clean-up: 8pm Confirmed Speakers: Claude Parrish, BOE member and Republican candidate for State Treasurer Mike Wasserman, Los Gatos town councilman, former Los Gatos mayor Elsie Gufler, Republican candidate for CA Assembly District 19 Larry Hileman, Republican candidate for CA Assembly District 24 Rob Smith, Republican candidate for CA...

Iran is denying reports that it has passed legislation requiring its Jews to wear yellow cloth strips to single them out, its Christians to wear a red version and Zoroastrians a blue one. Some are unpersuaded. The Simon Wiesenthal Center's Rabbi Marvin Hier, for instance, is adamant "that the national uniform law was passed and that certain colors were selected for Jews and other minorities." But Teheran is adamant and scandalized. The reports of such Nazi-echoed branding "are slanderous accusations… a smear campaign," according to an outraged Iranian government spokesman. So that's all right then? We can all relax? Hardly....

MONTREAL -- Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is making surprising inroads in Quebec, a left-leaning province that could become the key to his Conservative Party's effort to win an outright majority in Parliament. The Conservatives emerged from January's federal election with a minority government -- a fragile situation that typically leads to another election within 18 months or so, depending on how the government and opposition parties play their hands. Quebec is an unlikely card to play for a Conservative prime minister from Alberta, where many of the party's grassroots supporters were turned off by Ottawa's past efforts to appease...

MOUNTAIN BROOK, Ala. Some parents are asking for answers after their children sang a popular marching song of the Confederacy during a Civil War history lesson. At least five black students sang, along with other fifth-graders, the lyrics of "The Bonnie Blue Flag" at the closing of last Friday's program at The Highlands School in Mountain Brook. The 1861 song was written in honor of the blue flag with the white star that Mississippi flew over the state Capitol upon seceding from the Union. Some are the lyrics are --quote-- "We are a band of brothers and native to the...

Stupid Investment of the Week If you treasure your money, steer clear of this stock,(Brolin haha!) By Chuck Jaffe, MarketWatch Last Update: 9:06 AM ET Apr 28, 2006 BOSTON (MarketWatch) -- Uncovering new, tiny companies with the potential for success is a bit like hunting for treasure. You need to read the map of financials, understand the landscape of the business and do the right calculations or you are just going to wind up throwing a lot of money away with nothing to show for it. So when a company promises to be a treasure, literally and figuratively, investors should...

My husband jokes that I should have been an electrician. In this age of outsourcing and job insecurity, the trades seem to us to be the best professions of the future. To be sure, most aren't glamorous and are often physically demanding. But a number seem to have financial security and stability, and their job portability doesn't hurt, either. Many of us white-collar employees don't get to choose where we will live; we must go wherever our employer requires us. Many folks in the trades can command a good income, choose their own hours, and put down roots in a...

BATON ROUGE, La. (Army News Service, March 17, 2006) – Another chapter in what has become one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history came to a close as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, along with the Federal Emergency Management Agency closed its Blue Roof program for victims of the devastation caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. A team of more than 700 engineers and other volunteers from throughout 41 Army Corps of Engineers districts worldwide wrapped up a seven-month mission to provide temporary repairs to both residential and public building roofs damaged by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita,...

EMIDJI, Minn., March 14 (UPI) -- Babe, Paul Bunyan's blue ox companion, a concrete statue built in 1937 by the Bemidji, Minn., Rotary Club, will be getting $100,000 worth of repairs. Bunyan and Babe have been featured twice in Life magazine. Kodak has said they're the second-most-photographed statues in the United States, right behind Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. Babe developed a one-inch-wide crack from the neck to the hindquarters that city officials have annually fixed with caulking and blue paint, but the crack continued to widen, reported the Grand Forks Herald. The Rotary Club raised more than $53,000 and...

/20/2006 - SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFPN) -- Six thousand miles away from her native country of China, Yi Liu knew she wanted to make a name for herself in America. She grew up in a small copper mining town in the province of Canton and immigrated to the United States in 2003. At the age of 21, she lived with her family in a “box-sized” apartment in San Francisco’s Chinatown. “I was thrilled to be in the United States,” said Airman 1st Class Yi Liu, who is assigned to the 379th Expeditionary Services Squadron “Grab and Go” flight kitchen. “We waited...