Free Republic

The Senate has voted to confirm Elena Kagan.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell announced Monday at 5 p.m. that she will not seek re-election as governor in 2010. "After much soul-searching, and discussion with my family, I have decided not to seek re-election next year," Rell said in her Capitol office during a hastily called press conference with her family standing by. She said it has been "an honor" to serve. She cited accomplishments including ethics and campaign finance reform, noting that in 2004 she "came in at a troubling time in our state's history." That was a reference to her ascension from lieutenant governor on July 1, 2004,...

AMHERST, Mass. — Creationism is growing in the Muslim world, from Turkey to Pakistan to Indonesia, international academics said last month as they gathered here to discuss the topic. But, they said, young-Earth creationists, who believe God created the universe, Earth and life just a few thousand years ago, are rare, if not nonexistent. One reason is that although the Koran, the holy text of Islam, says the universe was created in six days, the next line adds that a day, in this instance, is metaphorical: “a thousand years of your reckoning.” By contrast, some Christian creationists find in the...

Friends and associates are encouraging Fox News chief Roger Ailes to jump into the political arena for real by running for president in 2012, top sources tell POLITICO. "Ailes knows how to frame an issue better than anybody, and that's what we need now," says one Ailes friend who is encouraging the Fox founder, chairman and CEO to seek the Republican nomination to run against President Barack Obama. Ailes, 69, has an aggessive, winning personality that made Fox News a huge success — and a huge target for liberal critics. Frank Luntz, the well-known Republican pollster, said Ailes could be...

In a statement, the Nobel Committee said it decided to award US President Barack H. Obama a second Nobel Prize, for his outstanding contributions to the field of chemistry."Did you see him on Ellen?" Nobel committee chair Hans Ericson said in a statement. "Man, that guy has great chemistry."

The John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation announced Friday that it was revoking the prizes previously awarded to MacArthur Fellows -- the half-million dollar prize commonly known as the "Genius Award.""In the Age of Obama, we need to redefine our definition of genius," the Foundation said in a statement.It was not immediately clear how the Foundation would go about re-collecting the prize money, valued at $500,000, but several Cleveland-area Repo Men reported being contacted by the Foundation.In a separate statement, the Foundation announced that President Barack Obama would be the recipient of all past and future Genius Grants for...

In a surprise move, Pope Benedict XVI crowned US President Barack Obama "Holy Roman Emperor" today in a rose garden ceremony.In a statement, the Pope said "Emperor Obama follows in the footsteps of Charlemagne and the Emperor Constantine."In other news, Chinese Premier Hu Jintao announced plans to restore the Qing dynasty, saying that Barack Obama -- a direct descendant of the last Manchu Emperor -- would be China's new Emperor.However, Turkish officials were quick to deny widely published reports of a restoration of the Byzantine Empire. "Turks wiped out the Byzantines in 1453. There are simply no Byzantines here for...

In Texas, they're conducting the first state-sponsored review of a capital punishment case. Specifically, they're looking into the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was convicted and executed for setting a house fire that killed his three children. An expert on fire science says there was "no basis" to rule the fire an arson, the Chicago Tribune reports. The state fire marshal on the case, Beyler concluded in his report, had "limited understanding" of fire science. The fire marshal "seems to be wholly without any realistic understanding of fires and how fire injuries are created," he wrote. The marshal's findings,...

In a first-of-its-kind study, the non-profit Rand Corp linked the rapid growth in U.S. health care costs to job losses and lower output. The study, published online by the journal Health Services Research, gives weight to President Barack Obama’s dire warnings about the impact of rising costs if Congress does not enact health care reform. The rate of growth in U.S. health care costs has outpaced the growth rate in the gross domestic product (GDP) for many years. In 1940, the share of GDP accounted for by health care spending was just 4.5%. By 1990, it had reached 12.2%, and...

Forty-two percent of Americans now say same sex couples should be allowed to legally marry, a new CBS News/New York Times poll finds. That's up nine points from last month, when 33 percent supported legalizing same sex marriage. Support for same sex marriage is now at its highest point since CBS News starting asking about it in 2004. Twenty-eight percent say same sex couples should have no legal recognition – down from 35 percent in March – while 25 percent support civil unions, but not marriage, for gay couples. As has historically been the case on this issue, liberals are...

(CNN) -- The Cuban government, long the object of a U.S. economic blockade, is prepared to meet with the Obama administration, Cuba's leader said.We've told the North American government, in private and in public, that we are prepared, wherever they want, to discuss everything -- human rights, freedom of the press, political prisoners -- everything, everything, everything that they want to discuss," Cuban President Raúl Castro said Thursday at a summit of leftist Latin American leaders in Venezuela. The response came days after President Obama lifted all restrictions on the ability of American citizens to visit relatives in Cuba as...

Throughout the past four days, White House officials played down Obama's role in the hostage drama. Until yesterday, he made no public statements about the pirates. In fact, aides said yesterday, Obama had been briefed 17 times since he returned from his trip abroad, including several times from the White House Situation Room. And without giving too many details, senior White House officials made it clear that Obama had provided the authority for the rescue. "The president's focus was on saving and protecting the life of the captain," one adviser said. Friday evening, after a National Security Council telephone update,...

WASHINGTON (CNN)– As Barack Obama takes off for his first overseas trip as president, a new national poll indicates that more than eight in ten Americans think he will do a good job representing the U.S. to the world. And seven in ten people questioned in the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey, released Tuesday, believe that leaders of other countries respect Obama. That last figure is in sharp contrast with George W. Bush. At the start of his presidency in 2001, only 49 percent believed that foreign leaders respected Bush.

MIAMI, March 16 -- Mauricio Funes, a former TV newsman who was recruited to run for president, declared himself the winner of El Salvador's presidential contest Sunday night, bringing into power a leftist party built by former guerrillas and ending two decades of conservative rule. Funes, a dynamic speaker and political outsider who compares himself to President Obama and pledged to be an agent of change in the small Central American nation, was leading the polls late Sunday night with 51.2 percent of the vote and more than 90 percent of the ballots counted. Turnout was high and election day...

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama’s aides say he is considering making a major foreign policy speech from an Islamic capital during his first 100 days in office.So where should he do it? The list of Islamic world capitals is long, and includes the obvious —Riyadh, Kuwait City, Islamabad — and the not-so-obvious — Male (the Maldives), Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), Tashkent (Uzbekistan). Some wise-guys have even suggested Dearborn, Mich., as a possibility. Clearly it would be cheating for Mr. Obama to fly to Detroit, talk to Dearborn’s 30,000 Arab residents and call it a day. And Male and Ouagadougou, while certainly...

Kadima beats Likud in new pollDahaf-Yedioth Ahronoth survey published Monday morning points to close race, as Livni takes the lead with 29 Knesset seats, Netanyahu follows with 26 seats. Labor plummets to 11 seats, while Shas may lose power Kadima Chairwoman Tzipi Livni appears to be enjoying the fruit of her declaration that she will not give in to extortion. A new Yedioth Ahronoth survey conducted by the Dahaf Institute and published Monday morning showed that had the Knesset elections taken place today, Livni would have led Kadima to victory with 29 Knesset seats, the same number of mandates it...

PRINCETON, NJ -- Jewish voters nationwide have grown increasingly comfortable with voting for Barack Obama for president since the Illinois senator secured the Democratic nomination in June. They now favor Obama over John McCain by more than 3 to 1, 74% to 22%.This is based on monthly averages of Gallup Poll Daily tracking results, including interviews with more than 500 Jewish registered voters each month.Support for Obama among all registered voters was fairly stable from June through September, but then rose sharply in October -- in apparent reaction to the U.S. economic crisis. By contrast, support for Obama among Jewish...

A new poll shows that Democrat Barack Obama could be edging ahead of Republican John McCain in Montana. Obama is at 44 percent and John McCain is at 40 percent in the Montana State University-Billings poll released Thursday. The poll reverses others from earlier in the fall that showed McCain with a lead in the state. The poll of 403 Montanans was conducted from Thursday though Monday and has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points. Both Obama and McCain did a pretty good job in the poll of holding their party's base, but Obama held...

Well, the great battle of the ballots in the poll of 10 million voters, scattered throughout the forty-eight states of the Union, is now finished, and in the table below we record the figures received up to the hour of going to press. These figures are exactly as received from more than one in every five voters polled in our country—they are neither weighted, adjusted, nor interpreted. Never before in an experience covering more than a quarter of a century in taking polls have we received so many different varieties of criticism—praise from many and condemnation from many others—and yet...

Ben Bernanke apparently wants four more years as Federal Reserve Chairman. At least that's a reasonable conclusion after Mr. Bernanke all but submitted his job application to Barack Obama yesterday by endorsing the Democratic version of fiscal "stimulus." While the Fed chief said any stimulus should be "well targeted," even a general endorsement amounts to a political green light. Mr. Bernanke certainly knows that Mr. Obama and Democrats on Capitol Hill are talking about some $300 billion in new "stimulus" spending, while President Bush and Republicans are resisting. And by saying any help should "limit longer-term effects" on the federal...