Free Republic

I'VE had it with the bumper-sticker slogans that pop up in the debate over illegal immigration. You hear them all the time on ratings-driven television shows such as CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" and you see them on signs waved in protests at the U.S.-Mexican border. One of my favorites is: "Deport all illegals." See, thanks to Americans' insatiable appetite for readily available cheap labor, there are now about 10 million illegal immigrants in this country. And we're supposed to deport them all one by one? How many buses are we talking about? Simplistic solutions don't add a lot to the...

Dear XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX , We're writing with some important news. On May 20, 2005, Joi Internet will discontinue offering dial-up Internet access. In order to keep you connected, we've made a special arrangement with EarthLink, the nation's next generation Internet Service Provider (ISP).

NEW DELHI (AFP) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, whose country is the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, said that the world should get used to high oil prices. "The world should forget about cheap oil ... it won't happen," Chavez told a news conference in the Indian capital on Saturday, saying that the new price range for oil would remain between 40 dollars and 50 dollars. "That is the new band for oil," said Chavez, whose country is the only South American member of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Chavez, on the second day of a visit to India...

PHOENIX - Gov. Janet Napolitano is escalating her fight with the federal government after a top official at the U.S. Department of Justice refused to provide Arizona more money this year to house illegal entrants convicted of state crimes. Tim Nelson, the governor's chief legal counsel, said Friday that Napolitano is insisting on a face-to-face meeting with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. That comes after someone lower in the agency rebuffed the governor's demand for $118 million to cover the state's costs. But Nelson said if that meeting produces no better results - or Gonzales refuses to talk - the governor...

Afraid Microsoft's anti-spyware will muck up your hard drive, erasing your digital photos, music collection and work files? Don't worry, you've got a $5 rebate coming your way in this worst-case scenario--enough to buy five songs on iTunes. That is, if you read and take advantage of Microsoft's legal promise. According to the AntiSpyware Beta end-user license agreement (EULA), Microsoft will reimburse direct damages up to $5 for problems associated with the new downloadable tool that wards off spyware, adware and any other "potentially unwanted software." "It also applies even if Microsoft knew or should have known about the possibility...

A Castroite state-controlled media organ reports that El Barbudo is incensed about Cuba not having enough doctors in Cuba in this news item here. Oh really? It's enough to make me wonder if he's almost as oblivious to economics as El Supremo. Of course there aren't enough Cuban doctors, Castro! You sent them off to be spies in Venezuela! Cubans have noticed this. And so have Venezuelans! Daniel researched that Misión Barrio Adentro program and found quite a bit of evidence of such shenanigans here. You've got plenty of Cuban doctors, Castro. It's just that when you send them to...

STAMPEDE!! Injuries at IKEA opening By MICHAEL MCDONOUGH - Associated Press LONDON (AP) — A man was stabbed and five other people were taken to hospital after thousands of customers caused a stampede at the midnight opening of a new IKEA furniture store in north London, British authorities said Thursday. The Swedish retailer expressed regret at the incident. The stabbing victim, a man in his 20s, was attacked at around 1:30 a.m. near the IKEA store, a spokeswoman for London’s Metropolitan Police said, adding that his condition did not appear life-threatening. The new IKEA warehouse in the Edmonton district had...

Despite new evidence that Venezuela has become a sort of ''Club Med'' for Latin America's violent groups, the Bush administration is unlikely to start its second term taking major steps to isolate leftist-populist President Hugo Chávez. But, eventually, it will probably do so. Judging from what incoming Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Senate earlier this week and what I have heard in interviews with well-placed current and former U.S. officials, the U.S. strategy will be to wait until Chávez does something really obnoxious in the eyes of the world, which he probably will.

New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) has long been rumored as desperately seeking the democratic nomination for president in 2008. And while many political observers fully expect the power hungry former First Lady to hit the campaign trail within only a few months of being re-elected as a US Senator in 2006, US News & World report claims to have a confirmation of sorts. From USNews.Com's Washington Whispers: Hillary's in… You don't have to take it from us about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton 's desire to run for president. Her brothers, Hugh and Tony Rodham, say it's true. Friends...

Charities controlled by billionaire ketchup heiress Teresa Heinz have pledged a relatively modest $450,000 to tsunami relief in recent days, with Mrs. Heinz explaining she prefers to keep her charitable contributions local. Heinz Endowments announced Saturday that it would contribute $400,000 to tsunami relief, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. And the Washington, D.C.-based Heinz Family Philanthropies will add another $50,000. The Heinz money will go to the Brother's Brother Foundation, a local international relief group. In a prepared statement, Mrs. Heinz explained, "Obviously, our philanthropic focus is here in America and in Pittsburgh, but the astronomical proportions of this...

What is the worst gift you have ever received? This morning I opened mine...a white porcelain mouthwash dispenser. It was bad enough having one in the family, but my parents were lucky enough to get their own. My Worst Gift

At this time of the year, charities of every shape and size are hunting for the most generous donors. To find them, the Catalogue for Philanthropy has a counterintuitive suggestion: Look in the nation's poorest states. That's because the Catalogue's Generosity Index for 2004 shows that giving as a percentage of income is highest in states where folks have the least to give. Mississippi - the nation's poorest in terms of average household income - ranks No. 1 in generosity, followed by Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. By contrast, residents of the nation's richest states appear downright Scrooge-like. Connecticut claims the...

OTTAWA (Reuters) - The Canadian government signaled on Thursday it was ready to crack down on Internet pharmacies that send cheap medicine to the United States, often without Canadian doctors having seen the patients. The practice, which figured prominently in the U.S. presidential election campaign, has been seen as a way for American citizens and governments to save money. But it caused concern that it might lead to drug shortages in Canada. "This is a struggle to make sure that drugs for all Canadians remain safe and adequate in terms of supply, and for all Canadians there's a pricing regime...

Proponents of Drexlerian nanotechnology (MNT) often cite the disruption to the economy that they say will happen when MNT makes the cost of manufacturing everyday products negligibly small. But we’re not far off this situation already; only a fraction of the value in the goods we buy in the shops is added by the manufacturing process (as opposed to design, marketing, retailing and so on). Relentless incremental improvements in manufacturing technology, together with the economic pressures of globalisation, are already causing an unprecedented and sustained drop in the price of consumer goods. There’s rather poignant commentary on this process in...

In those desperate last days before the election, liberal advocacy groups even managed to sneak political propaganda into routine business news, of all places. In an article ostensibly reporting facts about economic growth, Washington Post writer Jonathan Weisman managed to insert the following tidbit: The liberal Center for Budget and Policy Priorities noted that the share of the economy going to wages and salaries has slipped from 49.5 percent when Bush came to office to 45.4 percent in the third quarter of 2004, even as corporate profits have risen as a share of the gross domestic product over that time,...

The heart of a minuscule atomic clock---believed to be 100 times smaller than any other atomic clock---has been demonstrated by scientists at the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), opening the door to atomically precise timekeeping in portable, battery-powered devices for secure wireless communications, more precise navigation and other applications. Described in the Aug. 30, 2004, issue of Applied Physics Letters, the clock's inner workings are about the size of a grain of rice (1.5 millimeters on a side and 4 millimeters high), consume less than 75 thousandths of a watt (enabling the clock to be operated...

CHEAP DATES: The San Francisco Examiner reports on a survey by Match.com showing that only 74% of (straight) San Francisco men said that they would pick up the tab on a date -- "making them," the Examiner says, "the least likely of the 18 cities surveyed." The reason for not reaching for their wallets, the men say, is not that they are cheap but that their respect for women is so high that they shun falling into traditional dating roles. As one defensive bachelor explains: "People come to San Francisco with the expectation that it is progressive."

It's often said that "charity begins at home". A review of John Kerry's donations to charity and personal history shows that he takes that saying very literally. We always knew that liberals like John Kerry treated our taxes as charity to fund their big government programs. We are also well aware of their constant whining about heartless conservatives whose policies break the back of the poor. In fact, in a January 2004 interview Sen. Kerry lamented the fact that as a nation "we have proven incapable of summoning enough charitable effort...to guarantee that we're doing what we need to do...

Palestinian businessmen have made millions of pounds supplying cement for Israel's "security barrier" in the full knowledge of Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader and one of the wall's most vocal critics. A damning report by Palestinian legislators, which has been seen by the Telegraph, concludes that Mr Arafat did nothing to stop the deals although he publicly condemned the structure as a "crime against humanity". The Israeli wall cuts through the Palestinian town of Baqa el-Gharbiya The report claims that the cement was sold with the knowledge of senior officials at the Palestinian ministry of national economy, and close advisers...

June 20, 2004Bill’s Big But Book“It’s the timing, stupid!” Bill Clinton’s memoir debut is already mirroring his presidency, with a virtual roller coaster of bumpy ups and downs this week ... ·        CBS’s Dan Rather gushes he read the book and rates it “five stars out of five stars.” ·        The New York Times trashes it, calling it, “sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull — the sound of one man prattling away, not for the reader, but for himself and some distant recording angel of history.”·        Bill Clinton declares, "The whole [impeachment] battle was a badge of honor. I...