Free Republic

Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota is still recovering from a December brain hemorrhage, but his office appears to be beefing up his staff for a 2008 re-election campaign. Drey Samuelson, Johnson's chief of staff, said Wednesday that the office has hired Steve Jarding as deputy chief of staff. Jarding, who will work for the senator's congressional office in Rapid City, S.D., is a veteran political consultant who served as a top strategist for James Webb, the Virginia Democrat who upset Republican Sen. George Allen last November.

Some of the guys and I are presently at the camping lodge and we’ve got a problem that requires the help of a sensible woman. My brother-in-law managed to get something in his hair this morning, and he wanted to wash it out. I can’t tell you what that something was, because he’s refused to divulge that to us thus far (I suspect that he fabricated the “tainted hair” theory to save himself some embarrassment.) My brother-in-law believes that his wife has, at some point, told him that peanut butter is a useful household hair cleaner / conditioner. His wife...

DES MOINES — Joseph Biden, the Delaware Democrat running for president, is a man of strong opinions. During a campaign event in a Des Moines backyard today, Mr. Biden had some choice words for President Bush and two of the Republicans running for the White House. “This guy is brain dead,” Mr. Biden said to surprised applause and laughter from the crowd. “I know I’ll be quoted, I’ll be killed for that.” “This is a guy who is on the balls of his heels, here’s a guy who is lower off in the polls than any president in modern history...

It's a long way from Washington, D.C., to Washington, Ind., where my father was born a century ago next January and where I am attending a Thomas family reunion. On the drive from Indianapolis, one passes towns that could fill a Norman Rockwell album. My favorite is named Freedom because, though the town has only a single flashing caution light, it displays many flags. If I don't slow down, I will miss both. Driving past miles of cornfields, listening to local radio stations that still play music, not syndicated political talk, and carry commercials for farm equipment and feed, I...

Paying taxes feels good, say researchers. The surprising discovery, based on brain scans, can also predict which people are most likely to donate cash to charity. Bill Harbaugh at the University of Oregon in Eugene, US, and colleagues gave 19 female university students $100, and told them some of this money would have to go towards taxes. ---- Snip --- Harbaugh says that people probably like paying taxes more than they admit. He believes the results of his new study help explain the widespread compliance with tax laws. "We like to complain about it, but based on what we do,...

LONDON (AP) - Keith Richards has acknowledged consuming a raft of illegal substances in his time, but this may top them all. In comments published Tuesday, the 63-year-old Rolling Stones guitarist said he had snorted his father's ashes mixed with cocaine. "The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father," Richards was quoted as saying by British music magazine NME. "He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn't have cared," he said. "... It went down pretty well, and I'm still alive." Richards' father, Bert,...

LONDON (AP) — Keith Richards has acknowledged consuming a raft of illegal substances in his time, but this may top them all. In comments published Tuesday, the 63-year-old Rolling Stones guitarist said he had snorted his father's ashes mixed with cocaine. "The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father," Richards was quoted as saying by British music magazine NME. "He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn't have cared," he said. "... It went down pretty well, and I'm still alive." Richards' father, Bert,...

Yesterday I posted this quote from Elizabeth from the Will Steger Foundation global warming expedition to the artic.............. It felt so good to be back on trail. The weather was relatively warm for this time of year, there was little wind and the sun was shining. The mountains plunge dramatically to the ice on all sides. The U-shape of the head of the fiord ahead of us gave us a clue to the glaciations that sculpted this land, grinding away the granite to leave sheer walls of bare rock. I felt like I was inside an I-Max movie. I couldn't...

Looking at the potential presidential frontrunners for both the Democrat and Republican parties reveals that virtually everyone of them would surrender America’s borders. Not one of the presidential frontrunners from either party would protect our borders against illegal immigration. Just the opposite. They would continue George Bush’s policy of wide open borders, including his determination to grant amnesty to illegals. In other words, when it comes to protecting our borders, there is not a nickel’s worth of difference between the two major parties’ leading presidential contenders. Democratic presidential frontrunners include John Edwards, Barak Obama, and Hillary Clinton. Republican frontrunners include...

Layton’s anti-bank campaign ridiculous By TOM BRODBECK Winnipeg Sun Tuesday, January 30, 2007 Federal NDP Leader Jack Layton must be running out of ideas on how to make his struggling party more relevant to average Canadians. How else to explain his most recent harebrained idea of banning banks from charging ATM fees for withdrawals? For starters, banks don’t normally charge customers fees for withdrawing money from their own accounts. They never have. So I don’t know what Layton is talking about. If you are being charged, you should change banks. I’ve had a bank card for more than 20...

... Now that plan is in chaos. Milorad Dodik, the premier of the Republika Srpska, the Serb part of Bosnia, wants the same right to self-determination as that exercised by Montenegro last year, and possibly by Kosovo soon. The latter analogy is a powerful one. If a province of Serbia can decide its own future, he argues, why not his fief? ...

... Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said that U.S. troops must defend themselves in Iraq but that the president needs congressional approval for any program that could "escalate this conflict" with Iran. Reid said Bush should be engaged in direct diplomacy with Iran and other countries in the region to avoid a widening conflict, rather than "sending battle carrier groups" to sit off the Iranian coast. ...

Kate Obenshain Griffin, chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia, announced her resignation Monday, just days after Sen. George Allen conceded to his Democratic opponent. In a statement, Griffin indicated she plans to serve as chief of staff to Allen for the remainder of his term and to assist in the transition. She also stated "when I became Party Chairman, I did so to help the Party through the storm it was weathering. I hope I have served in a manner that is worthy of this great party."

I don't usually do deep political analysis, particularly when it comes to getting down and dirty with demographics, but I'm fascinated by this story, and it seems particularly appropriate on Halloween: An analysis of state-wide records by the Poughkeepsie Journal reveals that 77,000 dead people remain on election rolls in New York State, and some 2,600 may have managed to vote after they had died. The study also found that Democrats are more successful at voting after death than Republicans, by a margin of four-to-one, largely because so many dead people seem to vote in Democrat-dominated New York City. In...

YEREVAN (YERKIR) - U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), a longtime supporter of Armenian American issues who is expected to become Speaker if the Democrats win a majority in the House this November, pledged today to support Armenian Genocide legislation next year during in the 110th session of Congress. In a statement released to Harut Sassounian, Publisher of the California Courier, Congresswoman Pelosi stated that: "I have supported legislation, including H.Res.316, that would properly acknowledge the Armenian Genocide. It is imperative that the United States recognize this atrocity and move to renew our commitment to eliminate genocide whenever and...

Some highlights from the Nonaligned Movement summit's final declaration. TERRORISM: Denounces the brutalization of peoples under foreign occupation as the gravest form of terrorism. Asks that terrorism not be associated with any religion, nationality or ethnic group and that it be recognized that the struggle of peoples under colonial or alien domination does not constitute terrorism. MIDEAST CONFLICTS: Strongly condemns "the relentless Israeli aggression launched against Lebanon." Promotes a revival of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Supports the Palestinian people's "inalienable right to self-determination in their independent and sovereign State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital." NUCLEAR IRAN: Defends...

We have always been told there is no recovery from persistent vegetative state - doctors can only make a sufferer's last days as painless as possible. But is that really the truth? Across three continents, severely brain-damaged patients are awake and talking after taking ... a sleeping pill. And no one is more baffled than the GP who made the breakthrough. Steve Boggan witnesses these 'strange and wonderful' rebirths For three years, Riaan Bolton has lain motionless, his eyes open but unseeing. After a devastating car crash doctors said he would never again see or speak or hear. Now his...

STOCKHOLM -- Idiots in the office are just as hazardous to your health as cigarettes, caffeine or greasy food, an eye-opening new study reveals. In fact, those dopes can kill you! Stress is one of the top causes of heart attacks -- and working with stupid people on a daily basis is one of the deadliest forms of stress, according to researchers at Sweden's Lindbergh University Medical Center. The author of the study, Dr. Dagmar Andersson, says her team studied 500 heart attack patients, and were puzzled to find 62 percent had relatively few of the physical risk factors commonly...

WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton excoriated Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at a Senate hearing Thursday, saying he is presiding over a "failed policy" in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Under your leadership there have been numerous errors in judgment that have led us to where we are," the New York Democrat said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. "We have a full-fledged insurgency and full-blown sectarian conflict in Iraq." The showdown between Clinton, a potential presidential candidate in 2008, and Rumsfeld, the public face of the Bush administration's war effort, included the strongest criticism of the Iraq war she has...

Illegals create a society and jobs in America for themselves. It is all about supply and demand. 20 million illegals need food, clothing, cars, housing, medical facilities, jails, prisons, courts and polices and gang units, schools and teachers, social services, etc. The businesses that produce these things need to produce more for the illegals and jobs are created for them. Americans are not using more products and need illegals to fill jobs and do not need to produce for Americans. Beside creating jobs for themselves they are taking jobs from American citizens, especially Black Americans. Illegals benefit themselves and corporations...