Free Republic

So if the Republican party has shifted so far to the right, and the Democrats have shifted to adjust, doesn’t that mean the populace has as well? Those changes are not at all reflective of what the population believes

The National Climate Ethics Campaign is pleased to announce that the "Statement of Our Nation’s Moral Obligation to Address Climate Change" will be released Wednesday, November 30 from 1:00-2:30 p.m. in Room 406 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building (The Environment and Public Works Hearing Room). There are now over 1200 signers on the climate ethics statement. Please send the message pasted below to organizations, listservs, and people that might endorse it.

A Massachusetts law professor has created a campus firestorm with an email to colleagues that declares it would be “shameful” to send care packages to U.S. troops “who have gone overseas to kill other human beings.”

ZANESVILLE, Ohio (AP) — Amid expressions of horror and revulsion at the killing of dozens of wild animals in Ohio — and photographs of their bloody carcasses — animal rights advocates agreed there was little local authorities could have done to save the dangerous creatures once they began roaming the countryside after their owner released them before taking his own life. Sheriff's deputies shot 48 animals — including 18 rare Bengal tigers and 17 lions — after Terry Thompson, owner of the private Muskingum County Animal Farm near Zanesville, threw their cages open Tuesday and then committed suicide.

BOSTON (AP) — A Massachusetts man was arrested Wednesday and accused of plotting to destroy the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol by attacking the buildings with large, remote-controlled aircraft armed with lethal amounts of explosives.... According to a federal affidavit, Ferdaus said he wanted to deal a psychological blow to Americans, the "enemies of Allah," by hitting the Pentagon, which he called "head and heart of the snake."

Following in the footsteps of billionaire investor Warren Buffet, former Google employee Doug Edwards asked President Obama to raise his taxes at a town hall meeting in California Monday. "Would you please raise my taxes?" Edwards asked, a request that drew applause from the audience

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. (AP) — The western Pennsylvania site where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed after passengers confronted hijacking terrorists during the Sept. 11 attacks almost a decade ago is being marked by a gigantic boulder.

She said she knows she's a good teacher. But she still helped her students cheat. "What I did was wrong, but I don’t feel guilty about it," said a veteran Philadelphia English teacher, who shared her story with the Notebook/NewsWorks.

"We'd prefer if you skip Fox please," a White House broadcast media staffer advised a Treasury Department public affairs secretary ahead of the interview. In other emails during the same time frame, deputy White House communications director Jennifer Psaki called Fox News anchor Bret Baier "a lunatic" and boasted that "I am putting some dead fish in the fox cubby--just cause." In yet another email, another White House press officer wrote: "We've demonstrated our willingness and ability to exclude Fox News from significant interviews …"

TOKYO (Reuters) – Vast deposits of rare earth minerals, crucial in making high-tech electronics products, have been found on the floor of the Pacific Ocean and can be readily extracted, Japanese scientists said on Monday.

Fast forward to a day in Anbar Province, Iraq. Mr. Pottinger, now an intelligence officer supporting an infantry battalion, is standing over the body of a high level al Qaeda operative that his unit has just killed. It was an intense and lengthy manhunt. Mr. Pottinger is rifling through the man’s pockets, looking for additional documentation. Nearby is the mangled body of the man’s guard, who moments before detonated a suicide vest in a last, and failed, effort to kill the attackers. “I was standing over this guy’s corpse, looking down at him and thinking of all of the resources...

"Twice this week, President Obama suggested that he might become the first sitting U.S. president to support gay marriage. He said his views on whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry are "evolving"...."

Schwarzenegger, who counts legislation combating global warming as one of his signature achievements in office, suggested he might be interested in a post dealing with energy or the environment. "I'm a big believer in environmental issues," Schwarzenegger said, who added that he wanted a post where he could use his "celebrity power … knowledge and experience" to impact public policy. "I've traveled the world. … I'm very familiar with the world."

BERLIN – Heavy overnight snowfall disrupted air travel across western Europe Friday, forcing more than 800 flight cancellations and leading to major delays in Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Germany appeared the hardest hit by the snow, with more than 600 flights canceled, schools forced to close and highways clogged with traffic after scores of accidents that killed at least three people and injured dozens.

For connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them; for creating a new system of exchanging information; and for changing how we all live our lives, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is TIME's 2010 Person of the Year.

Together, the three government-employee unions will have spent nearly $172 million campaigning for Democrats in the course of this election cycle. That outstrips by more than $30 million what the Chamber of Commerce and the Rove network combined are pouring into the 2010 campaign.

WASHINGTON — Republican senators blocked Democratic legislation on Thursday that sought to provide medical care to rescue workers and others who became ill as a result of breathing in toxic fumes, dust and smoke at the site of the World Trade Center attack in 2001. The 9/11 health bill, a version of which was approved by the House of Representatives in September, was among several initiatives that Senate Democrats had hoped to approve before the close of the 111th Congress.

The US embassy cables are marked "Sipdis" – secret internet protocol distribution. They were compiled as part of a programme under which selected dispatches, considered moderately secret but suitable for sharing with other agencies, would be automatically loaded on to secure embassy websites, and linked with the military's Siprnet internet system. They are classified at various levels up to "secret noforn" [no foreigners]. More than 11,000 are marked secret, while around 9,000 of the cables are marked noforn.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh admits covering up US military strikes on Al-Qaeda in Yemen by claiming they are carried out by Yemeni forces, according to US documents leaked by WikiLeaks. "We?ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours," Saleh said in January talks with General David Petraeus, then commander of US forces in the Middle East, according to a leaked US diplomatic cable published by the New York Times.

Now he tells us. Al Gore says his support for corn-based ethanol subsidies while serving as vice president was a mistake that had more to do with his desire to cultivate farm votes in the 2000 presidential election than with what was good for the environment.