Free Republic

Even through the McCain campaign’s darkest days in 2007, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty remained a steadfast ally to the Arizona senator in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. As a result, with John McCain as the clear GOP frontrunner and insider talk turning to speculation about his possible running mate, party insiders are now buzzing about the 47-year-old, second-term governor’s vice-presidential prospects.

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More than 1,800 people were feared killed and hundreds more went missing when tsunamis triggered by a massive earthquake -- the biggest in four decades at 8.9 on the Richter scale, according to the US Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Centre -- near the Indonesian islands of Sumatra slammed into the southern peninsular coast of India on Sunday morning.Note: The toll is likely to change as the situation develops.At least 1,500 died in Tamil Nadu alone as the waves swept through the coastal areas, bringing in their wake death and destruction.In Nagapattinam district, around 700 people died, followed by Kanyakumari...

A hitch in bureaucracy threatens a woman's green card application - and the couple's life plans. TAMPA - Lynda and Michael Arazie had a new car, a new house, and they were expecting an adopted baby to arrive in a few months. But in early December, Lynda Arazie, 33, got a call that threatened to upend the life they were building. Her work permit had been yanked, her attorney told her. Worse yet, immigration officials canceled her application for a green card, or permanent residence visa, because she and her husband missed an interview in November. She could be deported...

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Killer whales in the Pacific Northwest's Puget Sound should be protected as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, government scientists said on Thursday. "Our recovery efforts are already under way for these killer whales," Bob Lohn, head of the National Marine Fisheries Service's northwest regional office, said in a statement. The orcas, a pod of 84 that spends several months of the year in the frigid waters of Washington state's Puget Sound, are currently protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Designating the pod as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act will extend...

JACKSONVILLE, FL -- When most parents have a baby, they spend months dreaming about what their bundle of joy will look like. Will she look like mom? Will he have dad's eyes? But for one local Navy family, the birth of their daughter didn't give them the answers to those questions. Their daughter was born without a face. When Tammy was pregnant, she knew something was wrong. At worst, they thought maybe their baby had a cleft lip. So Tammy, and her husband Tom, went to the hospital happy, until the birth. "The nurse is like, 'We got her stable,...

HULHUMALE, Maldives (Reuters) - Life can be cramped when you live on a remote cluster of tiny coral islands in the Indian Ocean, so the Maldives has plumped for a novel if seemingly extreme solution -- build a new island from scratch. Emerging from the sea where a turquoise lagoon used to sit, man-made Hulhumale is springing to life as an overflow to the congested capital, Male, a short boat ride away. Around 1,500 people now live in a first cluster of housing erected on the 465-acre island, a giant building site to which the government hopes around 15 percent...

MONTPELIER, Vt., Dec. 11 - Gov. James Douglas plans to remove a table lamp in his ceremonial office that depicts a nude woman. The lamp, added to his desk recently as part of a Statehouse restoration project, is a replica of a famous 19th century statue. "The governor does not object to the art," said a spokesman, Jason Gibbs. "It may, frankly, be awkward to explain why there is a nude Greek slave on the governor's desk to a third grader." The lamp is a replica of "The Greek Slave," an 1843 sculpture by a Vermont artist, Hiram Powers, that...

NEW DELHI: Signalling an early reconnaissance for US President George Bush’s visit to India, US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld will be visiting India next week. This is the first high level visit from the second Bush administration and it is being regarded with special significance in New Delhi. By all accounts, Bush-II promises to be even better for India than Bush-I. A political vote of confidence was delivered to India early on with a formal US offer to sell the Patriot missile defence system. India is in talks with Israel for its Arrow missile defence system, which is a joint...

The U.S. Supreme Court should leave it to voters to decide whether same-sex marriage or assisted suicide should become legal, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia said Tuesday during a speech at the University of Michigan. Scalia told an overflow audience at Rackham Auditorium that in the past 40 years a majority of the high court has interpreted the Constitution to create rights - such as abortion - that the framers never guaranteed. Scalia says he is an "originalist" because he tries to stick to what he thinks the Constitution meant to the society of the late 18th century, when it was...

Reid and Scalia I listen to NPR so you don’t have to. On yesterday’s Morning Edition, Senate Democrat Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) had this to say about Chief Justice nominees (it’s about 3:10 into the audio): In response to your question about the Supreme Court Justices, we’ll take a look, fairly, at who the president presents to us. If they, for example, gave us Clarence Thomas as Chief Justice, I personally feel that would be wrong. If they give us Antonin Scalia, that’s a little different question. I may not agree with some of his opinions, but I agree with...

LONDON (AFP) - A British schoolteacher, attempting to motivate her pupils into making the most of each day, told them a meteorite was about to smash into the Earth and that they should all return home to say goodbye to their families, a report said. The teacher at the high school in Manchester, northwest England, only realised her lecture was misjudged when many of the assembled teenagers started crying, the Sun newspaper said in its Friday edition. According to the report, the unnamed female teacher made the announcement to around 250 pupils at St Matthew's Roman Catholic High School during...

WASHINGTON: It was a Diwali without sparkle for many Indians who attended a White House event on Wednesday to mark the festival. President Bush was a no-show, First Lady Laura Bush did not turn-up, and there was little representation from the top echelons of the administration or the Republican Party - not even in the form of Karl Rove, Bush's chief political strategist who attended last year's festivities. This year's principal was Robert Blackwill, former US ambassador to India and White House pointman on Iraq, who resigned from the administration over the weekend and whose last day it was at...

Italian police said on Friday they had arrested two teachers and a caretaker at a primary school in the southern Puglia region on suspicion of classroom paedophilia. All three are suspecting of forcing 19 children in a class for four-year-olds to undress and simulate sexual acts, according to prosecutor Lydia Deiure, who has taken evidence from four of the children. Police began investigating behaviour in the class after complaints from worried parents in Gravina in Puglia, near the Adriatic port city of Bari. They said they had placed a married 53-year old woman under house arrest, while another teacher, a...

Students at a New Zealand secondary school have listed prostitution and drug dealing on a list of desirable careers. The job list, which also includes stripping and pimping, appeared in the year book at Kawerau College in the central North Island. The book featured students' hopes about what they would like to do when they leave school and included suggestions such as brothel worker, drug lord, dope dealer, dope packer, stripper, pimp, beneficiary, druggie and "living on the street". The Society for the Promotion of Community Standards, said Saturday that the legalising of prostitution in New Zealand earlier this year...

Indians will get a chance to learn Shaolin Kung Fu, considered the mother of all martial arts, when the country's first Shaolin Temple opens in New Delhi this November. Simultaneous with the November 20 groundbreaking ceremony, classes will begin in a temporary shed at the site, said Kanishka Sharma, who claims to be the first Indian to have trained in the fifth century Shaolin Temple in China in May 2002. "My masters, six of them, are coming from China and we will lay the foundation stone for India's first Shaolin Temple in New Delhi," Sharma, who teaches the art in...

DAYTON, Ohio, Nov 1 (AFP) - Voters in the battleground state of Ohio were poised to approve a measure banning gay marriage so sweeping it is opposed by prominent businessmen as well as the state's Republican governor and Republican senators. State voters on Tuesday will choose between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat John Kerry for president, and also vote on a state constitutional amendment forbidding gay marriage and same-sex civil unions. According to opinion polls the amendment has overwhelming support. The measure defines marriage as between a man and a woman -- but also bans any "legal status for...

Senators Tom Daschle and John Kerry, Governor Jim McGreevey, and many others in the Democratic Party have created hysteria on the issue of outsourcing. Most legislation to ban or restrict outsourcing in state legislatures or Congress have been introduced by Democrats. Yet, many Indian Americans know the outsourcing issue is one that has been created by Democrats for political gain at their expense. The economy has added 1.9 million jobs in 13 consecutive months, 49 states have added jobs in 2004, the unemployment rate has dropped in 45 states and nearly 140 million Americans are working, an all-time high. Our...