Free Republic

Barack Obama's primary-night results were strikingly underrecorded in several districts around the city - in some cases leaving him with zero votes when, in fact, he had pulled in hundreds, the Board of Elections said yesterday. Unofficial primary results gave Obama no votes in nearly 80 districts, including Harlem's 94th and other historically black areas - but many of those initial tallies proved to be wildly off the mark, the board said. In some districts getting a recount, the senator from Illinois is even closer to defeating Hillary Clinton. Initial results in the 94th, for example, showed a 141-0 sweep...

Fred Thompson acknowledged Saturday he's not especially fond of running for president, but he thinks he'd be a good choice for the White House. Asked at a town hall meeting in Burlington whether he had the desire to be president, Thompson said it wasn't his idea to seek the office, and he wasn't enamored with campaigning. "I am not consumed by personal ambition. I will not be devastated if I don't do it," he said. "I'm not particularly interested in running for president." But he said others convinced him to run. "I approached it from a standpoint ... of kind...

For years, the list of enemies targeting U.S. troops in Iraq has included Sunni insurgents, Shiite militia and, more recently, a group that calls itself al-Qaida of Mesopotamia. The enemies list in Iraq also includes outsiders such as Iran and Syria, who President Bush and Vice President Cheney have blamed for providing those combatant enemies with weapons that are used to kill U.S. troops in Iraq. Now there is one more, according to infuriating new intelligence. An investigation by the U.S. Government Accountability Office identified a new culprit who has been shipping into Iraq massive numbers of weapons that U.S....

Russian leader Vladimir Putin has made an astonishing bid to grab a vast chunk of the Arctic, giving himself claim to its vast potential oil, gas and mineral wealth. His audacious argument that an underwater Russian ridge is linked to the North Pole is likely to lead to an international outcry. Some commentators have already observed it is further evidence of growing Russian assertiveness under its authoritarian president. The Russian media trumpeted the findings of a Moscow scientific mission to the region which boasts "sensational" geological discoveries enabling the Kremlin to make the territorial claim. Populist newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda -...

Hello, I am a finalists in an online prize contest for a camera at WhoGets.com. The winner is determined by votes on who deserves to get it most. My reason is: This would be a great gift for my wife for our wedding anniversary on July 4th. Being a college student it is hard to keep the bills paid let along buy nice gifts. We have no camera now and have 2 nephews and a niece plus all sorts of family events that she would love to keep memories of. So if you can find the time to stop by...

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I recently formatted and reinstalled Windows to my computer, a Pentium 4 2.3ghz system. Before a reboot I installed Nvidia drivers and installed my HP printer. During the install of my printer it had a conflict with my external hard drive. I turned off the external hard drive and finished the install and went to reboot. Right before the reboot an error message with a red X symbol came up and counted down to 30 seconds to turn off. Once it turned off I went to reboot and it would not boot. I hear no POST beeps, the fans turn...

RAMALLAH, West Bank: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday declared Hamas' paramilitary militia in the Gaza Strip illegal, raising the stakes in the increasingly violent standoff between his Fatah party and the rival Islamic movement. Hamas condemned Abbas' statement, accusing him of giving a "green light" for attacks against its men and pledging to resist any crackdown. It defiantly announced plans to double the size of its force. Fatah and Hamas have been locked in a power struggle since the Islamic group defeated Fatah in parliamentary elections a year ago, gaining control over most government functions. The dispute has centered...

Ban Ki-moon Sworn In As Secretary General of UN

A lawmaker in this firearm-friendly state wants to help more people get the chance to shoot live animals _ even if those people can't see. A bill filed for the 2007 legislative session would permit legally blind hunters to use laser sights, or lighted pointing instruments. "This opens up the fun of hunting to additional people, and I think that's great," said Republican Rep. Edmund Kuempel, the bill's sponsor. Visually impaired people are allowed to shoot now with the aid of a sighted person, he said, a requirement that would continue if the sights were legalized. "I've seen this on...

Doctors treating former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, who is gravely ill, believe he was poisoned. It follows the death of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko from poisoning and the discovery of radioactive material at 12 UK sites as four BA planes were grounded. The call came as an aide to Mr Gaidar revealed doctors treating the formier Premier in Dublin believe he has been poisoned. "Doctors don't see a natural reason for the poisoning and they have not been able to detect any natural substance known to them" in Gaidar's body, spokesman Valery Natarov said. "So obviously we're talking...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - There is no "sex tape" involving pop star Britney Spears and estranged husband Kevin Federline, his lawyer said on Tuesday. After Spears filed for divorce from the fledgling rapper this month, reports surfaced in the tabloid press that Federline had in his possession a videotape of the couple having sex and was considering making it public. "There is not a sex video of Kevin and Britney in existence," said Federline's divorce lawyer, Mark Vincent Kaplan. Representatives for Spears had no immediate comment. "It goes without saying that the stories of Kevin attempting to sell such a...

The Bush administration must tell Iraq that U.S. troops will begin withdrawing in four to six months, the next chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Wednesday, as Congress began re- examining U.S. policy in the wake of last week's Democratic election victory. "We cannot save the Iraqis from themselves. The only way for Iraqi leaders to squarely face that reality is for President Bush to tell them that the United States will begin a phased redeployment of our forces within four to six months," Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said at the outset of a hearing featuring the top...

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Fox said Tuesday it will air a two-part interview with O.J. Simpson at month's end in which he describes the 1994 murders of his ex-wife and her friend that he says he didn't commit. The interview will be conducted by editor and book publisher Judith Regan. On November 30, her Regan Books is publishing a book Simpson wrote with the working title "If I Did It, Here's How It Happened." Fox said Simpson's book "hypothetically describes" how he would have committed the murders. The special will air at 9 p.m. November 27 and 29 on...

Campaigns are filthy. Not only in terms of last-minute smears and dirty tricks. But also as in germs, parasites and all the bacterial unpleasantness that is spread around through so much glad-handing and flesh-pressing. “You can’t always get to a sink to wash your hands,” said Anne Ryun, wife of Representative Jim Ryun, Republican of Kansas. Hands would be the untidy appendages that transmit infectious disease.

(CBS) Another apparent breach of classified material is under federal investigation at the nation's premier nuclear weapons laboratory: Los Alamos National Laboratory, sources tell CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson. The breach apparently was discovered when Los Alamos police recently conducted a methamphetamine raid on an area home. Inside the house, along with drug paraphernalia, police allegedly found classified materials apparently from the grounds of the Los Alamos Laboratory. How somebody involved in illegal drugs would also have access to classified materials from the nation's nuclear weapons facility is unknown but under investigation. The home is believed to belong to a...

Hello, I am trying to recall an old commercial for a college class on Consumer Psychology. In the first ad the camera stays looking at a crossroads in the a desert area. Near the end of the commercial a fork drops onto the crossroads. In the next commercial the ad shows a car, not sure what kind, and it says, "Take the fork in the road." It was for a luxury car i believe. Anyone remember this ad?

Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for grassroots efforts to lift millions out of poverty that earned him the nickname "banker to the poor." Yunus, 66, set up a new kind of bank in 1976 to lend to the very poorest in his native Bangladesh, particularly women, enabling them to start up small businesses without collateral. In doing so, he pioneered microcredit, a system copied in more than 100 nations from the United States to Uganda. "It's very happy news for me and also for the nation. But...

A bear struggles to retain its balance while gripping the two metal hoops, which look more like shackles than acrobatics equipment, as a wildlife park worker looks on and laughs. This is just the latest shocking picture to emerge from the Animal Olympic Games which is being held in China, a country with a shameful animal rights record. Chimpanzees are forced to play basketball and apparently lift huge weights, while a docile brown bear is dressed in a tutu while navigating a makeshift obstacle course in one of the strangest events ever to be staged. The photographs are published for...

The Hepworths knew the house would require some maintenance. But they never thought they'd need a snake charmer. Shortly after Lyman and Jeanine Hepworth began working on a rundown property outside of town, they experienced a trauma more fit for Samuel L. Jackson's character in "Snakes on a Plane" than a pair of eastern Idaho do-it-yourselfers. Snakes, perhaps thousands of them, fell on Lyman Hepworth's head when he opened the door to a pump house near the small house the couple planned to buy. "When it warmed up, we walked onto the yard and the whole yard moved," Jeanine Hepworth...