Free Republic

The ethics complaints against Gov. Sarah Palin are dropping left and right — as in dropping dead. That’s an appropriate fate for most of them. The Alaska Personnel Board has dismissed 11 complaints against the governor as of Tuesday’s count. Many of these were based on creative interpretations of the state’s new Executive Branch Ethics Act. A few of the complaints to the board have highlighted circumstances that deserved a thorough review. Those circumstances — involving the governor’s removal of former Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan and the hiring of a transportation department employee in Fairbanks — received the proper...

CLICK ABOVE LINK AND HAVE FUN ( they're all real cases by the way ).

Resident of Palestinian village forced to empty his home to accommodate over 20 soldiers for some 15 hours supposedly to carry out observation. Palestinian claims soldiers 'just went to sleep' Ali Waked Published: 12.19.06, 15:00 A resident of the Palestinian village of Salem near Nablus was forced to accommodate 20 soldiers for 15 hours in his home, after they broke into his house in order to rest. The soldiers claimed that he had to empty rooms for them in his house, for a security mission. Mudayen Jbur, a resident of the village, told Ynet that "just before morning prayer, at...

SIERRA VISTA ? Nearly four-dozen entries are scheduled to take part in the Veterans Day Parade in this community, which is home to an active-duty Army post and to a number of military retirees. For the first time, the parade's grand marshal is a woman veteran ? retired Army Col. Virginia Gannon. She was named to the honorary position ? the eighth grand marshal ? by Sierra Vista Mayor Thomas Hessler. "Sierra Vista is a better place because of people like Virginia Gannon," Hessler said. "She is one of those rare and special people who make a difference every day."...

I keep seeing people drag public school teachers down. If you don't like what teachers are doing, direct conservative people--your children?--into the profession so that it can be changed. That was what the liberals did in the '50's and '60's.

KITTANNING - Borough Police Chief Ed Cassesse said his department received more than a dozen calls within five minutes regarding several box-van trucks that were driving through city streets with graphic anti-abortion posters on their sides. According to Kathy Knepshield, a staff member of the Armstrong County YMCA, several of the trucks rolled past the YMCA on North Water Street around noon and one of the drivers was allegedly taking photos of children in an outdoor day camp. Knepshield said the posters, bearing images of an aborted fetus, upset many of the children in the camp. "The first time a...

May 11, 2006 -- The 2004 Republican National Con vention presented New York City with an age-of-terror public-safety challenge of unprecedented scope - and the NYPD, with characteristic brisk efficiency, did Gotham proud. Not to hear The New York Times tell it, though. The paper's campaign to smear the NYPD's policing of the event is rising to new levels of absurdity - and now it's enlisted the Civilian Complaint Review Board into the effort. The paper yesterday published excepts from a CCRB letter to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly - a document leaked to the paper before it was even delivered...

LINCOLN PARK, Mich. (AP) — A chain of fitness centers has put up partitions in response to complaints by Muslim women about a lack of privacy while they work out. Fitness USA agreed to the changes at its Lincoln Park gym after meeting with a concerned Muslim member of the gym and Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Some Muslim members of the gym said they need to work out in single-sex rooms to meet Islam's standards of modesty. They said they joined Fitness USA because it accommodated this need. But the...

KFC advert breaks complaints record By David Derbyshire, Consumer Affairs Editor (Filed: 26/04/2006) A fast food commercial that featured call centre staff singing with their mouths full has become the most complained-about advert of all time. The ASA received a record 1,671 objections to the advert for Kentucky Fried Chicken The Advertising Standards Authority received a record 1,671 objections last year to the television advert for Kentucky Fried Chicken. Most callers said that it set a bad example to children, or ridiculed people with speech impediments. Some even claimed that it placed call centre employees in a bad light. It...

Former President Ford said Friday he is troubled by the efforts of retired generals to force the ouster of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Ford, who appointed Rumsfeld as his White House chief of staff and then chose him to be defense secretary during his administration, said in a statement that President Bush was right to keep Rumsfeld in his post. The statement was released by spokeswoman Penny Circle as Bush arrived in California for the weekend. Ford, 92, said the decision on keeping Rumsfeld is the president's alone. "Allowing retired generals to dictate our country's policies and its leadership...

Netherlands court bans complaining mom Copyright © 2005 AP Online This story was published Friday, October 7th, 2005 The Associated Press AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - A woman in the Netherlands has been banned from any contact with her daughter's school or teachers after complaining too much, a court ruled Friday. The woman, whose name was not released, "overloaded" the Borgh Elementary School in the northern city of Zuidhorn "with an incessant stream of questions, comments and complaints," a panel of judges at the Groningen District Court wrote in their judgment. "For causing an illegal hindrance ... she will be barred...

From the major Japanese TV network TBS, here is a short video clip from a segment of their evening news, broadcast coast-to-coast in Japan. Probably seen by nearly 10-30 million people over there. Cut, paste, and view in your browser (Windows Media format, 300k):http://www.bcast.co.jp/cgi-bin/yahoo/news.asx?cid=20050903-00000016-jnn-int-movie-001&media=wm300kAnd a slower link:http://www.bcast.co.jp/cgi-bin/yahoo/news.asx?cid=20050903-00000016-jnn-int-movie-001&media=wm56k(Or just hit the link above)

The terrorist attacks on London's transportation system place recent reports of American soldiers' abuse of detainees at Guantanamo in a new perspective: They illustrate the unintended consequences of absolute prohibitions and generalizations about the treatment of prisoners. The Pentagon's own investigations reveal that incidents at Guantanamo include the chaining of a detainee to the ground in an interrogation cell, another inmate silenced with adhesive tape over his mouth, and a female interrogator pretending to smear menstrual blood on a prisoner's face. The treatment of one important prisoner — Mohamed al-Qahtani, a Saudi who has admitted being the so-called 20th hijacker...

/begin my translation China: 4,000 college students rioted in Jiang-su Province 2005/07/01 4,000 students at Jiu-jiang University in Jiang-su Province of Southern China rioted, because the school demanded various fees on them, which they cannot pay. On the night of June 26th in Chinese local time, following the plan they hatched, the students staged the protest, destroying luxury cars parked at their campus, a school cafeteria, and a supermarket, while throwing thermos out of the dorm windows, it is reported. It went on until 5 am in the morning. It settled down a bit after Cai Xiao-ming, the university president, came to...

I was listening to Rush today, and he was playing excerpts from miscellaneous Dems' reactions to President Bush's speech on Tuesday night. They are outraged - outraged, I tell you! - that the president dared to connect the events of September 11, 2001 and the war in Iraq. It's just like their purported indignation at Karl Rove's comments about liberals not supporting aggressive (read "military") responses to 9/11. Well, they have to act outraged and indignant, now, don't they?! Because they know full well that Americans will rally behind whatever is necessary to avenge 9/11 and prevent another one. They...

The best defense is a good offense. Just Google this often used adage and you’ll find it is frequently applied to every conceivable walk of life…..sports, politics, medicine, business, warfare….you name it. Everyone agrees that you must go on the offense to win. Democrats have been on the offense now since the beginning of the second millennium, you know that era when the supreme court gave the presidency to W. A fair appraisal of the Democrat’s offense is simply, it stinks. In the sporting world you often hear another cliché, ‘Offense sells tickets, but defense wins championships.’ Well, the Democrat’s...

China says unfairly picked on for fakesTue Jun 28, 4:10 AM ET BEIJING (Reuters) - China, where pirated goods from golf clubs to DVDs are sold openly on almost every city block, complained on Tuesday that it was being unfairly singled out for copyright fraud by the United States. A senior official expressed "deep regret" over a U.S. decision to put China on a priority watch list in intellectual property right protection, saying it was unwarranted. Vice Commerce Minister Zhang Zhigang said that losses incurred by piracy in Europe and the United States outshone China, with "the per-capita loss" reported...

Karl Rove told New York conservatives June 22 that liberals had a wimpy response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, drawing harsh criticism June 23 from Democrats who demanded that President Bush either rebuke or fire his senior political adviser. “Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers,” Mr. Rove said at the annual dinner of the New York State Conservative Party. Mr. Rove also accused Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, of endangering...

Based on Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004, it is incontrovertible that Democrats will not be deterred by the evidence from promoting the incendiary propaganda that Republicans engage in systematic intimidation and suppression of black voters. Will we ever be able to have a presidential election again without Democrats claiming they've been robbed? All it takes is for some Democrat bigwig or race activist like the Rev. Jesse Jackson to make an unsubstantiated allegation of black voter suppression. Henceforth, the truth of such allegations will be accepted and believed by large numbers of people, including many blacks, who trust Democrat bigwigs...

Leaders make things happen. Liberals stop things from happening, and laggards wait to act until someone else acts first. Leaders, liberals, and laggards are all present in our nation’s Capital, where our elected officials are supposed to work on fixing our big issues. Unfortunately, the leaders are way out-numbered. As a practicing leader for thirty-five years as a business executive and author of three books on leadership, I have documented the three critical things that leaders do to solve problems. After further experience and analysis it is clear that liberals and laggards in Congress do the exact opposite of what...