Free Republic

An Orange County Fire Department employee is supposed to protect people's privacy, but police say he violated a female employee by using a small web camera to spy on her. Now, the information systems administrator has resigned from his job. Police say Hector Ray Valle (photo left) used a web camera at the Orange County Fire Department to watch the female employee from under a desk. Fortunately, the employee noticed it. She was at her desk and she either dropped something or bumped her leg and looked underneath the desk. What she found was a camera and, when she took...

Discussing Iraq last month on Washington Journal, C-SPAN's live call-in program, two callers — one American and one British — telephoned to ask whether I was Jewish. I am and said so. Both suggested that Jews were responsible for sending American soldiers into harms way. This was ironic since I volunteered for duty in Iraq, and then lived outside the security parameters enjoyed by other Coalition employees. One questioned whether I was part of a secret cabal operating for other than American interests. At the suggestion that his question might be anti-Semitic, the caller insisted my religion was a valid...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A U.S. helicopter fired on a wedding party early Wednesday in western Iraq, killing more than 40 people, Iraqi officials said. The U.S. military said it could not confirm the report and was investigating. Lt. Col Ziyad al-Jbouri, deputy police chief of the city of Ramadi, said between 42 and 45 people died in the attack, which took place about 2:45 a.m. in a remote desert area near the border with Syria and Jordan. He said those killed included 15 children and 10 women. Dr. Salah al-Ani, who works at a hospital in Ramadi, put the...

Perhaps the most significant and underreported story of the past week: Ralph Nader was endorsed Wednesday by the Reform party. Presuming he accepts their nomination — and Nader spokesman Kevin Zeese told reporters, "he'll be on the ballot in Florida" — Nader will automatically get on the ballot in Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, Colorado, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, and South Carolina. The last four are shoo-ins for Bush, but the first three are swing states, and the Kerry campaign is spending $1 million in commercials in Colorado, suggesting they think they can pick it up. Those four are also among Nader's stronger...

To ensure that additional human rights embarrassments will not befall the United States, we must examine well-known, high-level and broad-based U.S. policies that have lowered our nation's commitment to basic human rights. Immediately after Sept. 11, 2001, many traumatized and fearful U.S. citizens accepted Washington's new approach with confidence that our leaders would continue to honor international agreements and human rights standards.

GERMANTOWN (AP) - More than 70 ducks in a basement pen were only part of the menagerie authorities found in a Milwaukee area apartment after other residents complained of the stench coming from the unit. "The smell was just unbelievable," said William Mitchell, a state conservation warden who found the ducks in the pen with droppings covering the floor. "It was really stinking. ... It made my eyes water." Others among about 200 live creatures in the apartment included snakes, rats, turtles, a pair of alligators, toads and scorpions. Animal carcasses were in a freezer, and decaying carcasses were in...

LOS ANGELES -- When you're Gray Davis, former governor of California, and you're going to the Lakers-Rockets playoff game, even the metal detectors and turnstiles that civilians find irritating, are a welcome novelty. "(As) governor, you never get to walk in through the front door," he laughs. "You're always going through kitchens and loading docks and going up back elevators. It's very disorienting." As he empties his pockets of his Blackberry and house keys and walks through the metal detector he offers, "You have no sense of reality, and you live your life in a cocoon. I understand why it...

Though I read them occasionally as a boy, I have never been overly interested in comic books, especially the American sort, the ones featuring superheroes dressed in super-tight costumes fighting super villains, none of whom ever seemed to receive super-long jail sentences for attempting, yet again, to destroy Our Way Of Life. A junior realist, I tended to read, instead, the British-produced, four-times-a-month Commando comics, which were generally set during the Second World War. Commando — whose fabulous titles included Hun Bait, Iron-Cross Yankee, Ghost Stuka, and the unforgettable Deserters Deserve Death! — abjured those pathetic ads one saw in...

NRO: Is this your first interview since the election? Rep. Pat Toomey: Yes it is. NRO: Given that you lost, what do you think your campaign accomplished? Toomey: Well I'm still sorting that out, Ramesh, and trying to figure out what if anything it accomplished. When you consider the obstacles we faced and how close we got, it makes it clear that there is a real interest in seeing the Republican party govern as a conservative party, certainly in Pennsylvania. NRO: What does the campaign say about the strength of the conservative movement, most of its institutions having backed you?...

When a student said he had consulted the great philosophers without finding evidence of God, Benjamin Jowett, master of Oxford's Balliol College from 1870 to 1893, replied, "If you don't find a God by five o'clock this afternoon, you must leave the college." Deadlines can be useful spurs. But they also can be foolish fixations. On June 30, the deadline for transferring "sovereignty" to something Iraqi, no such thing will happen. There will be nothing to receive sovereignty, and the United States, whose writ does not run throughout Iraq, does not possess real sovereignty to give away.

Herds of robotic traffic cones could soon be swarming onto a highway, closing down lanes and slowing the traffic. The new road markers have been developed by Shane Farritor, a roboticist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, in a bid to help reduce the $100 billion per year that the Department of Transportation estimates is lost to the US economy through accidents and delays caused by highway lane closures. The self-propelled markers take the form of robotic three-wheeled bases for the brightly coloured barrels that are set out to demarcate road repair zones. Farritor says they can open and close traffic...

Soso Whaley is a feisty not quite fiftysomething animal trainer based in New Hampshire, a champion roller skater (a silver medal for her tango!), the hostess of Camo-Country TV's Critter Corner and an adjunct fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank. (Oh, did I mention that she's a filmmaker with plans to make a documentary about camel-racing in Nevada?) When we ate together the day before Tax Day, in a drably functional midtown Manhattan McDonald's Express filled with surprisingly skinny teens, this is what she chose: six Chicken McNuggets, sweet 'n sour sauce, and two baked apple...

In recent weeks, even Senator John Kerry’s closest friends have been at a loss as to why the Democratic Presidential candidate has failed to communicate the most humanizing part of his biography: his war record as a decorated Vietnam veteran. "I know he’s quite capable of it," said Bob Kerrey, the president of New School University, former Nebraska Senator and fellow Vietnam veteran. "I don’t know why it’s not working now." But there seems to be a very clear reason why: Mr. Kerry is terrible on TV. "Abysmal," said John Weaver, the former strategist for Senator John McCain’s Presidential run...

Israel's assassination earlier this month of Hamas chief Abdel Aziz Rantisi stirred gusts of indignation from European governments. As in previous cases, the critics largely rested their case on international law, a refrain also heard often from the continent's critics of American counterterror measures and of the war in Iraq. British Foreign Minister Jack Straw asserted that "targeted killings of this kind are unlawful [and] unjustified." The French foreign ministry issued a statement saying that Israel's right to self-defense "should not be exercised against international law." The foreign minister of Ireland, which currently holds the presidency of the European Union,...

I'd held off writing about "Air America," the new liberal radio talk-show network, out of a mixture of contempt and prudence. But Frankenfreude compels me to share my views. For those of you unaware of this rare condition, Frankenfreude, a subset of schadenfreude, is a state of restrained glee at the failures or setbacks of Al Franken. Here's what set off my latest bout of FF. Air America is off-air in Chicago and L.A. because they bounced a check after only two weeks of broadcasting, according to Arthur Liu, the owner of Multicultural Radio Broadcasting Inc., who was essentially renting...

I wasn't worried about President Bush's reelectability over Iraq. I never stayed up late fretting over John Kerry or Richard Clarke. Prescription drugs, illegal aliens, the Defense of Marriage Act.... I figured these were all blips on the electoral oscilloscope that would be overcome by our beloved president, who cuts such a handsome figure in a flight suit. But now that Bush has lost the Blonde Vote, I'm bracing for President Kerry. The election was lost last week, when the president was addressing an otherwise friendly crowd in El Dorado, Arkansas. Bush, who must have been tired, inexplicably felt the...

The baby-faced, high-school yearbook photo of Ryan G. Anderson is deceptively mundane and seemingly innocent. On Thursday, the 26-year-old National Guardsman was arrested after allegedly trying to pass information about military capabilities to al Qaeda over the Internet. A Muslim convert, Anderson was a member of the 303rd Armor Battalion of the 81st Armor Brigade at Fort Lewis, Washington. He will be charged with "aiding the enemy by wrongfully attempting to communicate and give intelligence to the al Qaeda terrorist network," said base spokesman Lt. Col. Stephen Barger. Who is this suspected al Qaeda sympathizer with the boy-next-door looks? Is...

On those occasions when the Muse is elusive, when the words don't flow as I might wish, when the writer's demon, the blank page, stares me squarely in the face and says, "Now, what?" I often look to the justices of Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for inspiration. They have seldom failed me. The latest outrage to issue from this court is the stay of execution granted to convicted murderer Kevin Cooper, who was scheduled to die at California's San Quentin Prison at 12:01 Tuesday morning. Some background: On June 2, 1983, Cooper escaped from the California Institute for Men,...

Choosing a running mate will be the most important decision John Kerry makes between now and November — not only because vice presidents stand a reasonably good chance of becoming presidents, but because they are such a key part of electioneering. Kerry probably won't announce his selection until the summer, but with the Democratic presidential nomination all but clinched, the season of speculation may begin. The traditional rules of veep selection will apply. Most people base their vote on who sits at the top of the ticket, which means that the vice-presidential nominee is not likely to influence the outcome...

"In a surprising last-minute upset, all seven Democratic presidential hopefuls somehow lost the Democratic primaries Tuesday," The Onion — America's best satirical news source — reported the morning after the February 3 elections. "Primaries were held in Delaware, Missouri, Arizona, Oklahoma, and South Carolina, with no single Democratic candidate coming in higher than second place," it continued. "Experts are still unsure exactly how Kerry, whom many considered the frontrunner after strong showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, lost to, and along with, every other Democratic candidate." That's sort of how I feel about the Democrats in general these days. Yes,...