Free Republic

Six days from the Iowa caucuses and the battle over experience has not subsided. Barack Obama insists his experiences traveling and having family living overseas brings more to the table than, let's say, the job of a former first lady. "It's that experience, that understanding, not just of what world leaders I went and talked to in the ambassadors house I had tea with, but understanding the lives of the people like my grandmother who lives in a tiny hut in Africa," Obama, D-Ill., told a crowd of would-be voters in Coralville, Iowa, on Friday. The veiled shot at Senator...

updated 14 minutes ago RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Over 200 al-Qaida linked suspects belonging to different cells and involved in different plots against the kingdom have been arrested in recent months in the kingdom's largest anti-terror sweep to date, the Saudi Interior Ministry announced Wednesday. The ministry first reported the arrest of eight men, said to be linked to al-Qaida and allegedly planning to attack oil installations in the kingdom. An interior ministry statement, carried by the Saudi Press Agency, said the eight were part of a terrorist cell led by a non-Saudi man, who was one of the arrested....

Missouri: Police Roadblock Harassment Caught on TapeSt. Louis County, Missouri threaten to arrest a teenager for refusing to discuss his personal travel plans. A teenager harassed by police in St. Louis, Missouri caught the incident on tape. Brett Darrow, 19, had his video camera rolling last month as he drove his 1997 Maxima, minding his own business. He approached a drunk driving roadblock where he was stopped, detained and threatened with arrest when he declined to enter a conversation with a police officer about his personal travel habits. Now Darrow is considering filing suit against St. Louis County Police. "I'm...

WASHINGTON - The man who recently departed as director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ordered his staff to help with his nephew's high school homework, wasting the agency's time and violating ethics rules, an inquiry found Wednesday. The nephew's project — a documentary about the ATF that took 10 months to complete — was one of a half-dozen examples of lapses in judgment Carl J. Truscott committed before he resigned in August, says the report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. The report found that only the high school project demonstrated mismanagement by Truscott,...

As the case against John Mark Karr disintegrates, attention turns to CU prof Michael Tracey, who's fingered false suspects in the past. While the case against John Mark Karr disintegrates by the minute, New Times has learned that this isn't the first time Colorado University Professor Michael Tracey has caused a stir by fingering a "prime suspect" in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case — only to be proved wrong. In 2004, Tracey, a British expatriate journalism professor and documentarian, produced a film about the Ramsey murder that aired on British television but not in the United States. By then, however,...

The Daly City murder defendant who avoided trial for seven years from the time he allegedly shot a 22-year-old woman four times in the head, sliced up the body and hid it inside a storage barrel pleaded no contest to manslaughter just hours before a jury was to hear opening statements. In return for pleading no contest in the death of Xiu “Erica” Jiang, Bobby Tran, 31, will receive 30 years in prison with credit for 15 percent of time already served. Tran must serve 85 percent of the sentence and faces deportation back to Indonesia or Vietnam when released....

(The following is an excerpt from NRA-ILA's Fact Sheet entitled 'Gun Laws, Culture, Justice & Crime In Foreign Countries'.): ... While America is quite different from certain countries in terms of firearms laws, we are just as different from those countries in other respects which have a much greater influence on crime rates. Attorney David Kopel explains, "There is little evidence that foreign gun statutes, with at best a mixed record in their own countries, would succeed in the United States. Contrary to the claims of the American gun-control movement, gun control does not deserve credit for the low crime...

NEW YORK (CBS.MW) - Blue chips rallied and the Nasdaq hit a four-month high Tuesday as oil prices held steady and investors bought on hopes for a clear-cut victory for either candidate in the presidential election. Traders and investors said a clear victory by either President George Bush or Senator John Kerry may set the stage for end-of-year gains for the market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI - News) was recently up 64 points at 10,118 after posting a fifth straight session of gains on Monday. Within the benchmark index, Verizon (NYSE:VZ - News) was a notable gainer, up...

"What's happening to John Kerry?" Columnist J. Jesus Esquivel spoke for the most of the international online media when he asked that question in this week's edition of Proceso (in Spanish), a leading Mexican newsweekly. Kerry, Esquivel said, "is the hope of the world to put a stop to the imperialist ideas and belligerent crusades of the Bush government." Opinion polls show people in many countries agree with Esquivel, supporting Kerry by margins of up to two to one. Yet in U.S. opinion polls, Kerry is lagging behind President Bush just days before their first face-to-face debate in Miami on...

1984 Debate

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Computer Inc.'s quarterly net income more than tripled, fueled by surging sales of its iPod digital music players as shipments of its signature Macintosh computers rose 14 percent, it said on Wednesday. Shares of Apple, which also reported a strong performance by its 80 retail stores, rose almost 7 percent in after-hours trade on the news. Apple gave a forecast for its current quarter that was largely in line with consensus Wall Street estimates, a relatively strong outlook given that many analysts had not yet factored in the delay of the next-generation iMac personal computer,...

VANCOUVER (CP) - A mysterious substance found on a transit bus sparked a quarantine Tuesday in a downtown area that initially captured several reporters and TV camera operators. The problem started early in the afternoon near the Vancouver waterfront when a transit bus driver discovered a substance and immediately became sick. Two other people on the bus also became ill. A woman on the bus said that as a man was leaving the bus he asked the driver how his day was going. The driver said it was fine and the witness said the man told him it wouldn't be...

Allow me to preface my remarks by stating that I am not one of those Freepers opposed to the basic idea of homosexual marriage. I couldn't care less about two other people of any type living together in whatever manner they choose. I live in a committed heterosexual relationship: I'm the man, she's the woman. ... Now, with that out of the way: I work for a Silicon Valley tech company that by San Francisco county law must allow employees with 'domestic partners' to be covered under the primary employee's selected health/vision/dental insurance. Currently, I am paying taxes on approximately...

California Board of Elections now showing publically-funded TV show 'Race To The Recall' going through all candidates on the ballot giving each candidate one minute to speak their piece. Running the gamut from the pathetic, absurd, hilarious, and the likely winners. Must-See TV! Check your local channels for this broadcast.

MSNBC reporting breaking news -- 'Sniper-style' shooting in W. VA area.

By CONSTANT BRAND, Associated Press Writer BRUSSELS, Belgium - His country now leading the European Union (news - web sites), Italy's Silvio Berlusconi provoked an uproar Wednesday at the EU parliament by telling a German lawmaker he should star as a Nazi concentration camp guard in a movie. AP Photo   Berlusconi's remark confirmed some critics' fears that the Italian president was not fit to be the international face of Europe. Italy's richest man has been dogged by legal problems and accused of having conflicts of interest arising from his vast media holdings. Some also question his commitment to EU...

As conspiracy theorists get into a lather about the lack of weapons of mass destruction, they should consider that Western intelligence has consistently underestimated Iraq's capabilities, writes Tony Parkinson. The last time I looked, Hans Blix was not a foaming-at-the-mouth neo-conservative. In fact, the United Nations chief weapons inspector has been profoundly sceptical of many aspects of US strategy in Iraq.But in his presentation to the UN Security Council on Thursday night, Dr Blix remained perplexed by one simple question: why, if Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, did Saddam Hussein persist in putting his nation through the misery...

'Smart' weapons no substitute for old-fashioned war fightingBY SHEKHAR GUPTA (NEW DELHI) 30 March 2003 ONE OF the most memorable, and most repeated, scenes of the ongoing war so far was the one showing the "fierce" resistance put up by a small band of Iraqis hiding in a small building on the outskirts of Umm Qasr. A large body (at least a company, if not more) of British Royal Marines, with tanks, lay pinned down, around it.Journalists embedded with the unit spoke, for hours, on the deadly resistance being put up by the Iraqis. Marines crawled and manoeuvred themselves...

Boy, you know your regime is in trouble when they're selling your vaunted elite soldier's captured uniforms on eBay. Let the bidding begin, Hamid!

Freeper Registered's Iraqi gag bill is being handed out on the streets of Baghdad. MSNBC reporter just held one up printed in monochrome and said that he was given this by an Iraqi down in the square. I was too slow to get a screen cap of this.