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London (agencies) A Desperate dad last night begged medics for help because he is turning naturally into a woman. Pub singer Terry Wright said: “I am a man, not a woman. And I do not want to be a woman. “I just want to get my life back to normal.” Father-of-five Terry, 60, started losing his hair and beard ten years ago. Since then he has developed smooth skin, hot flushes. And kids living nearby taunt him by calling him “She-Man”. Blood tests have revealed Terry has abnormally high levels of the female hormone oestrogen. But doctors who have examined...

I use a prepaid calling card for long distance. Does anyone know of one where I do not have to press 1 for English? MCI-Verizon require it.

From the Phillies 2008 campaign: Libertarian Presidential candidate George Phillies today condemned claims that the Libertarian Party is a right-wing conservative Party. "Libertarians are not conservatives," Phillies said. "It is an act of fraud, a violation of our party's statement of principles, to lure conservatives to join by lying to them. Claiming our party is 'true conservative' is dishonest, and will wreck our party. "Yes," Phillies continued, "there are issues where we agree with conservatives. There are also issues where we agree with progressive liberals. For voters: If you agree with us on issues you care about, please vote for...

'The Day She Died, She Knew She Couldn't Talk To Police,' Mom SaysDELAND, Fla. -- A Central Florida woman whose 17-year-old daughter was killed in a murder-suicide apparently committed by her ex-boyfriend said the teen was told by police to stop calling for help or she'd be arrested. Police said Clay Coffner shot his estranged girlfriend, Natasha Hall, in the head outside her DeLand home Friday before turning the gun on himself. Hall's mother, Sherry, said her daughter was concerned about Coffner and informed police. In fact, Hall said her daughter called police so much that on Jan. 15 they...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 16, 2007 – The Marine Corps is reaching out to former Marines in its effort to grow the service, the Marine commandant said today. Marine Gen. James Conway said in a media roundtable that the increase of 27,000 Marines by fiscal 2011 will allow Marines to spend more time at home between deployments. He also said the corps will maintain the current quality of recruits. Part of the effort to grow the force is to contact noncommissioned officers who have separated from the service and offer them the option of coming back in. Conway is sending a...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 11, 2006 -- Success in Iraq will help protect the United States in the long run, President Bush said here today. “This is really the calling of our time -- that is, to defeat these extremists and radicals, and Iraq is a component part, an important part, of laying the foundation for peace,” Bush said following a meeting with State Department officials about the way forward in Iraq. Bush, who received the Iraq Study Group report Dec. 6, said all advice is helpful when crafting a new way forward in Iraq. Tomorrow, Bush will participate in a...

Banned: Police ordered to stop calling young tearaways 'yobs' By Ben Leapman, Home Affairs Correspondent (Filed: 01/10/2006) They are the menacing youths who hang about in gangs, causing trouble. For decades they have been known as "yobs". It has been rare for anybody to have a good word to say about them. But now, it seems, police officers are going to have to find a more "polite" way to describe the nation's troublemakers, because Scotland Yard has banned its officers from using the word "yob", for fear that it might alienate young people. The edict has the backing of Sir...

WASHINGTON – One of the architects of the Reagan Revolution is calling on fellow conservatives to withhold support of the Republican Party establishment – including most GOP incumbents in Congress this year. In "Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause," Richard Viguerie, the man who invented the idea of using direct mail as a means of going over the heads of what he considered to be a biased establishment press, says it's time for radical action to save the Republican Party from itself. His plan includes the following actions, which would spell...

Young conservatives in DC apparently like intellectual stimulation in a lecture format, but then again the free beer might have been on more than a few minds. Last Wednesday night, more than 80 young conservative intellectuals crowded into a back room of The Brickskeller on 22nd St, NW to listen to a professor talk about vocation, to eat and drink, and to meet their peers and colleagues. It was the first meeting of “Conservatism on Tap” presented by the ISI (Intercollegiate Studies Institute) Young Alumni group of DC founded by Princeton graduate Evan Baehr. The event was a success, with...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 24, 2006 – Some charities may see a lull in activity after the holidays, but one group has found ways to keep charging ahead to support deployed troops. Soldiers in Kuwait hold up pre-paid calling cards on Valentine's Day. The cards were sent by Cell Phones for Soldiers, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit group that uses money from recycling cell phones to purchase phone cards for deployed servicemembers. Courtesy photo   "Cell Phones for Soldiers" has taken advantage of its relationship with other programs and used its voice at sporting events to continue its mission collecting used cell phones and...

Rome paid tribute to the barbarians clamoring at her gates. It didn't do any good. Paying ransom only postponed the inevitable sacking, burning, and looting of the empire's capital. The UK's Neville Chamberlain sought to pacify Hitler, only to see Brits hiding in basements from the blitzkrieg a few years later. Instead of remembering history's lessons, the Washington Post today indulges in feel-good, intellectual rationalization of Muslim intolerance and hatred. In a 5-page manifesto entitled, "Anatomy of the Cartoon Protest Movement," authors Anthony Shadid and Kevin Sullivan exercise unlimited poetic license, calling Islamist hooliganism "a rare moment of empowerment among...

CAMP FALLUJAH, IRAQ (Jan. 17, 2006) -- The tall, bright eyed, 20-year-old Marine with an athletic build seems to be always smiling. Whether he is tasked out for a working party unloading mail from home or talking about his high school band days, his good nature and laughs keep on coming. “I was going to play football but band got in the way,” said Lance Cpl. Jonathan M. Fisher, a motor transportation operator of 7-ton military vehicles, trying to be serious but smiling about his seven-year commitment to grade school bands as a percussionist. “Go ahead, laugh it up!” What...

AL TAMAL, Iraq (Jan. 14, 2006) -- Seaman Bryan W. Stocks, a 20-year-old Kenai, Alaska, native and platoon hospital corpsman for 3rd Platoon, Company A, 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, had a tough choice to make when he was considering enlisting into the Navy: nuclear physics or medicine. One involves high mathematics and accounting for the behavior of atoms; the other, calculating medicinal dosages and accounting for the behavior of human beings. Two equally demanding and difficult jobs suitable for only the most trustworthy and intelligent of enlistees. Ultimately, though, the decision came down to a question of what Stocks...

RIDGEFIELD — Gabriel Galanski is disheartened that more students from Ridgefield High School aren't considering a career in the military.

Janeane Garofalo, left-wing actress-turned-Air America radio host, is a miserable woman. Last week before the holidays, she turned up on cable TV. No, not to count her blessings -- but to rant against conservative journalist Bob Novak, author Ann Coulter, and the Fox News Channel. She didn't have anything better to do for Thanksgiving? Accessorized by a permanent scowl (hard to believe she was once considered a comedienne), Ms. Garofalo accused conservatives of having "an anger management problem." Without a trace of irony, the frowning Garofalo griped about "right-wing partisan hacks" who "are always on the verge of punching somebody...

No longer centre stage, but Clinton leaves them calling for more By Philip Sherwell in New York (Filed: 18/09/2005) If there was any doubt that Bill Clinton still elicits the adoration of women, Barbra Streisand was on hand last week to squash it. As the former president laid out his agenda for world change from a podium flanked by Tony Blair, Condoleezza Rice and King Abdullah of Jordan, the singer-actress emitted a series of gentle but disconcerting squeals of approval, interspersed with admiring sighs. Bill Clinton and Tony Bennett Hers was typical of the audience reaction at launch of the...

After his adult son shot a man in the leg Wednesday and sheriff's investigators took his son to jail, James Loudon had many questions. Some were about the details of the shooting, which he and his construction worker son say was self-defense. Loudon, a retiree from Chicago, didn't see the shooting but he thinks he knows most of those details now. His remaining questions are mostly about a new Florida law. It was advertised as expanding the right to use firearms and deadly force when people think they are threatened with illegal violence. Loudon hopes that law, lauded by the...

The blood is in the water. The sharks are circling. Now it is time for the main course. Lower the tank and drop in the political corpse of Tom Delay. Democrats are whipping themselves into a frenzy — as are their allies in the press — over the impending political death of Tom DeLay. The Majority Leader is helping fan the flames by holding up rifles at NRA rallies while asking for more bullets. But if you are scoring this one at home sports fans, expect to see a flurry of revelations coming out about the Democratic leaders in the...

I actually want to bring you greetings today from the rest of the team from our church. A lot of you know some of our leaders and a few staff folk have been in Ethiopia this week. And I was with them earlier on, and so they asked me to bring you greetings from them. I am going to say a little bit more about what is going on in Ethiopia later on in this message. And for them, and just personally, I want to say thank you so much. So many people have been praying. We felt that and...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

SACRAMENTO -- Urging Californians to unite as bipartisan dreamers but firing partisan zingers like "girlie men" and "los ers," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has be gun providing glimpses into a 2005 agenda that's likely to take the state on a wild ride. With the general election over, the Republican governor said he has turned his attention to pressing matters, such as preparing another deficit-plagued budget proposal with no tax hikes, dramatically streamlining state government and heading off another energy crisis. The Herculean tasks will require the aid of a Democrat-dominated Legislature and Senate leader-elect Don Perata, an Oakland Democrat who's among...

"There's an old saying, 'Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks.'" George Bush's acceptance speech to the nation was brief. His inclusion of the sentence above exemplifies the man and shows why he received more votes for president than any other candidate in our nation's history. That simple statement reflects the humility, faith and calling of George Bush. It reflects his quiet confidence and the maturity of knowing that in order to live up to the task of being an effective leader of the free world, one cannot chart his...

William Booth (1829 - 1912) Founder of the Salvation ArmyOn one of my recent journeys, as I gazed from the coach window, I was led into a train of thought concerning the condition of the multitudes around me. They were living carelessly in the most open and shameless rebellion against God, without a thought for their eternal welfare. As I looked out of the window, I seemed to see them all... millions of people all around me given up to their drink and their pleasure, their dancing and their music, their business and their anxieties, their politics and their...

Hamas's Abdel Aziz Rantisi says he may have helped Israel target him last week by phoning a friend to arrange a meeting at a Gaza City hospital. In an interview published Monday by the Beirut-based daily al-Mustaqbal, Rantisi said of the thwarted assassination of June 10, which he survived with several injuries: "The story started with a mistake, that I fully acknowledge, when I called a fellow brother over the phone and told him that we will meet at 11 in the al-Shafa'a hospital and visit a sickly colleague." Not long afterwards, an Israeli helicopter fired a barrage of rockets...

Fatah's ideological platform, as it appears on the movement's new internet site, still calls for the destruction of the "Zionist entity" and the liberation of "all Palestine." Haggai Huberman reports that Fatah, the essential component of the Palestinian Authority, states, "The Zionist presence in Palestine represents Zionist aggression, essentially based on expansionist imperialism… The goal of the Palestinian struggle is to fully liberate Palestine and liquidate the Zionist entity economically, politically, militarily, and culturally… An armed popular revolution is the only way to liberate Palestine…"

A bullet hit the lock: the US was calling By Oliver Poole, with the US 3rd Infantry, Baghdad (Filed: 05/04/2003) A bullet fired through the lock on his front door was how Fawaz Alavan found out the Americans had arrived in Baghdad. Until then he had believed the propaganda of Saddam Hussein's regime that the US forces were no closer than Najaf, 100 miles away to the south. But as American troops conducted house to house searches to clear an enclave in the outskirts of the city, the chemical engineer learned they were literally on his doorstep. "I could not...

OTTAWA - A Liberal MP has apologized for saying about Americans: "I hate those bastards." MP Carolyn Parrish was speaking to reporters about Canada's diplomatic initiative on Iraq. At the end of her comments Parrish said, "Damn Americans ... I hate those bastards." A CBC reporter says Parrish then laughed as she was walking away. In a written statement issued Wednesday afternoon, Parrish says she made the comments in the heat of the moment in a private conversation. She says they do not reflect her opinion of the American people. "My comments do not reflect my personal opinion of the...

Called to Virtue "add to your faith, virtue..." 2 Peter 1:5 "Intellectual humility is the basis for all learning. Until you're willing to learn from the greatest intellect in the universe, you haven't even started education." -- Loren Cunningham, the founder of YWAM and president of U of N RELINQUISHING RIGHTS & REALIZING RESPONSIBILITIES Revealed faith, synonymous with the call of God, is essential to know God and to grow in relationship with Him. Knowing the nature and character of God is possessing a solid Biblical foundation which will authenticate the faith of the one God has called. Knowing God's...