Free Republic

Language changes. This cannot be denied. Due to one person's brave words we have a new change to our lexicon. Sheryl Crow, the 'one square wonder' has single handedly wiped the way clear the future of our communication. For instance; when things are getting shakey at work you should state that if everyone doesn't work together the "Crow's really gonna hit the fan." When someone startles you, tell them you nearly "Crowed your pants." Suppose you are playing poker. Your friend fails to disguise his glee at the hand you dealt to him. While holding your chips closer than your...

In today's episode of "More Weird Crap from Japan" we find our heroes encountered with a very strange machine. This vending machine is staffed by a real human who gives the desired product to the consumer, rather than having a series of mechanics do the job. If only it was a real human vending machine that actually gave out, uh, humans. Those wacky Japanese—what will they think of next?

A ROW has erupted over Muslim-only washrooms at La Trobe University that can be accessed only with a secret push-button code. Muslim students have exclusive access to male and female washrooms on campus, sparking claims of bias and discrimination. The university and Islamic leaders have defended the washrooms as vital to Muslim students' prayer rituals. ... Australian Family Council spokesman Bill Muehlenberg said concerns over the exclusive facilities were valid. "Do we have a Christian washroom or an atheist washroom?" he said. "The whole thing is madness." ... "If Muslims are saying 'we are good Australians and want to integrate',...

CEDAR RAPIDS, IA - At least 13 people were injured during a "Music as a Weapon" concert Thursday night, according to officials at two Cedar Rapids hospitals. The concert drew a crowd of 7,186 people, almost maxing out the U.S. Cellular Center, which can fit up to 7,500 people. Of the 10 people who were treated at St. Luke's Hospital for injuries suffered at the concert, one was taken into surgery, said Laura Rainey, director of marketing communications at St. Luke's. That patient was among two people who were admitted to the hospital. The others were treated and released. Rainey...

Kern County's sludge ban suffered another blow Wednesday from U.S. District Court Judge Gary Feess of Los Angeles. Last week, Feess issued a tentative ruling that stopped Kern County from enforcing the sludge ban while Kern fought off a legal assault from the city of Los Angeles, Orange County and the businesses that haul and farm sludge for them. Feess said in court that the Kern ban, enacted as Measure E by local voters on June 6, violated state recycling laws. On Wednesday, Feess issued a formal ruling that upheld those two previous decisions. But this new ruling went further....

WASHINGTON - The White House is bracing for guerrilla warfare on the homefront politically if Republicans lose control of the House, the Senate or both — and with it, the president's ability to shape and dominate the national agenda. Republicans are battling to keep control of Congress. But polls and analysts in both parties increasingly suggest Democrats will capture the House and possibly the Senate on Election Day Nov. 7. Democrats need a 15-seat pickup to regain the House and a gain of six seats to claim the Senate. Everything could change overnight for President Bush, who has governed for...

"Throw those babies overboard!" "Why?" "To protect the family." "Whose babies?" File photo A newborn infant is held in this 1998 photo. "I don't know. Maybe yours. Maybe mine. Maybe your best friends' babies. Maybe my best friends' babies." "This is crazy. What are you talking about?" "Don't ask questions. It's the law. Just throw those babies overboard." Sound insane? It's no more insane than Wisconsin's gay marriage ban amendment on the Nov. 7 ballot. The people in favor of this amendment don't seem to understand what they're doing. They don't comprehend that what they want will bounce back at...

DETROIT (Reuters) - U.S automakers face a widening gap in profitability per vehicle compared to their major Japanese rivals because of missed design opportunities, heavy discounting and high labor costs, a study released on Monday said. The study by the automotive consultant Harbour Felax Group marked an attempt to quantify the costs that have sapped earnings-per-vehicle for Detroit-based car makers relative to their major competitors in the American market. The study found that General Motors Corp lost an average of $1,271 for every car and truck it sold in North America last year. By contrast, Toyota Motor Corp <7203.T>, which...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Economists agree: It's time to shut off electronic devices, put up tray tables and return your seat to an upright position. And some say it might not be a bad idea to put your head down between your legs. The economy is coming in for a landing. Optimists say it will be the much sought after "soft landing" when the economy slows but doesn't skid into recession. But some economists now are forecasting a bumpy landing, or even worse.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has blocked release of a report that suggests global warming is contributing to the frequency and strength of hurricanes, the journal Nature reported Tuesday. The possibility that warming conditions may cause storms to become stronger has generated debate among climate and weather experts, particularly in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. In the new case, Nature said weather experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — part of the Commerce Department — in February set up a seven-member panel to prepare a consensus report on the views of agency scientists about global warming...

WASHINGTON - Less than two months until Election Day, the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that more than half of registered voters disapprove of President Bush's job performance, even more disagree with his handling of Iraq and a strong plurality prefer a Congress controlled by the Democrats — all suggesting that Democrats are still poised to pick up seats in the upcoming midterms.But the poll, which comes out more than a week after administration officials have made a series of speeches on terrorism and after gasoline prices have declined, also shows that Bush and the Republican Party have...

NEW YORK - Wearing just a small white towel and a smile, Bob prowls the dark halls of the East Side Club, looking into dozens of its closet-sized rooms and hoping eye contact with another man will lead to sex.

Elsewhere on the fake Middle Eastern news front, the Second Draft has two must-see videos (HT: Instapundit) that look at a famous "news" item from 2000 in which a young Palestinian boy is reportedly shot by Israeli soldiers while crouching behind a barrel. The footage was filmed by a Palestinian cameraman working for a French television station. Upon further examination, like many pictures from that part of the world, the video appears to not be what actually happened.

You would think that Reuters learned its lesson about publishing to the world photos doctored to create a false image. After all, they were caught with multiple false photos from Lebanon, and had to take down more than 900 images from one stringer. Reuters promised it would have "experienced editors" look at all such photos in the future.

It turns out that Osama bin Laden valued the western media so much that one of his media advisers had the pseudonym "Abu Reuters." Al Qaeda videos are specifically designed for play in the Western media, with its own production company providing English subtitles. Said one CNN producer, "The media meant and still means a lot to them.”

US brushes off 'crap' accusation Mr Prescott made "an honest and good point", Mr Cohen said The White House has made light of reports alleging that John Prescott said George Bush had been "crap" on the Middle East peace process. Tony Snow, a White House spokesman, said: "The president has been called a lot worse and I suspect will be." Mr Snow added that President Bush would have to face "piquant names" being hurled at him from time to time. The deputy prime minister said the reports of his comments in a private meeting with MPs were inaccurate. However, Mr...

The interesting thing about the scandal surrounding the use of fake photoshopped pictures from the fighting in Lebanon is that it is BIG NEWS everywhere EXCEPT in the Lamestream Media where there is barely a mention of it. On the Web, TECHNORATI shows "Reuters" as the #1 search item, "Lebanon" as #2, and Reuters fake photo photographer, "Adnan Hajj" at #3. So why the disconnect? One might as well ask why newspaper circulation is plummeting or why Network News viewership is steadily declining. In fact, this fake photo story probably wouldn't have even become big news had it not...

LONDON, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Reuters withdrew all 920 photographs by a freelance Lebanese photographer from its database on Monday after an urgent review of his work showed he had altered two images from the conflict between Israel and the armed group Hizbollah. Global Picture Editor Tom Szlukovenyi called the measure precautionary but said the fact that two of the images by photographer Adnan Hajj had been manipulated undermined trust in his entire body of work. "There is no graver breach of Reuters standards for our photographers than the deliberate manipulation of an image," Szlukovenyi said in a statement. "Reuters...

Fox News just reported that Reuters admits second photo was doctored. Here's the image:

Another photo by Reuters photographer Adnan Hajj has been shown to be doctored. The photo, which proports to be of an Israeli F-16 firing missiles on Lebanon has been doctored to make the photo seem more sensational. Here is the original Reuters photo along with its caption.

Vt. Dairy Farmers Use Manure for Energy By DAVID GRAM (Associated Press Writer) From Associated Press June 30, 2006 7:07 AM EDT BRIDPORT, Vt. - The cows at the Audet family's Blue Spruce Farm make nearly 9,000 gallons of milk a day - and about 35,000 gallons of manure. It's long been the milk that pays, but now the Audets have figured out how to make the manure pay as well. They're using it - actually, the methane that comes from it - to generate electricity. With the help of their power company, Central Vermont Public Service Corp., the Audets...

Rita Cosby is losing her year-old MSNBC show and will get her own specials unit for the cable channel effective July 10. The shuffle, which MSNBC announced Thursday, is the first big move of Dan Abrams' three-week tenure as MSNBC's general manager. "Rita Cosby: Live and Direct," which has been telecast at 10 p.m. (ET) weeknights and repeated at 1 a.m. (ET) since late spring, will be replaced by taped documentary programming, under the familiar label of "MSNBC Investigates." Ms. Cosby will serve as the primary anchor of "Investigates," which has been led by various rotating anchors over years. "Investigates"...

So Lois Lane is a single mother . . . and a slut. That's the most disturbing part of "Superman Returns," heavily marketed to kids and in theaters tonight. Or is that "Lois and Her Feelings," co-starring Supe? That's what this dull, 2-hour 33-minute long latest rendition in the Superman series seemed like. A better version would have been more relevant. It's great that new Superman Brandon Routh saluted America's troops as "the real Super Heroes," a tie-in with Warner Brothers Pictures' effort to send a million plus postcards of support to troops overseas. But put your money where your...

Washington, D.C. (CNSNews.com) - U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts on Tuesday told an audience at the liberal Take Back America conference that he was sorry for voting to authorize the war in Iraq, calling the entire mission "a mistake." "We were misled, we were given evidence that was not true," Kerry said. "It was wrong, and I was wrong to vote [for it]." Kerry, who led an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 2004, said it was necessary to admit mistakes because "you cannot change the future if you''re not honest about the past." He criticized supporters of the...

For more than six months, a few senators have been fumbling around in the dark, trying to write laws covering a domestic wiretapping operation that remains a mystery to most of them. Their ideas are far from radical; some just want to bring the White House back under the rule of law by making the spying retroactively legal. But Vice President Dick Cheney, who is in charge of both overseeing the spying and covering it up, has now made it crystal clear that the White House does not intend to let anything happen. It's time for the Senate to stop...

Now that George Bush and his co-president Vicente Fox of Mexico have their America-destroying “immigration” plan working its way through a “deballed” Senate, Bush is trying to throw his base dogs a bone with a homosexual “marriage” ban amendment to the Constitution. Bush has the wherewithal to fight to change the freakin’ Constitution, yet when it comes to stopping illegal aliens from crossing the border, he has no fight in him to execute laws already on the books? OK. Politicians are so transparent. The midterm elections are quickly approaching (can you believe 2006 is half over?), and Bush is trying...

RESEARCHERS who picked up and analysed wild chimp droppings said today they had shown how the AIDS virus originated in wild apes in Cameroon and then spread in humans across Africa and eventually the world. Their study, published in the journal Science, supports other studies that suggest people somehow caught the deadly human immunodeficiency virus from chimpanzees, perhaps by killing and eating them. "It says that the chimpanzee group that gave rise to HIV ... this chimp community resides in Cameroon," said Beatrice Hahn of the University of Alabama, who led the study. "But that doesn't mean the epidemic originated...

Okay, here is the latest in the Hoaxmas saga. TruthOut followed up their first Partial Birth Apology with a SECOND Partial Birth Apology in which they AGAIN said nothing except they were sticking by their Hoaxmas story through Hell or High Water. As for Pied Piper Pitt. He is still MIA and is suspected of hiding out in the Furorbunker in the desperate hope that he can beat back the Hoaxmas backlash. Rumor has it that he is deluding himself with fantasy scenarios in which Hoaxmax may still turn out to be true. And he might be getting some...

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- "The Da Vinci Code" banked an estimated $29 million at the box office on its first day in theaters, an industry official said Saturday, positioning the film to turn in the strongest opening weekend for any movie this year.

NBC’s The West Wing left office for good on Sunday night, airing the pilot episode at 7 and the show’s final episode at 8, but the TV audience didn’t vote it a ratings winner. The final airing of Wing scored just a 2.8 rating/7 share in the key 18-49 demo, according to Nielsen Fast Affiliate numbers, beating only The WB’s Charmed (1.5/4) in the time slot. Originally, a clip show was going to air in the first hour, but the retrospective was scrapped in favor of the re-airing of the pilot (which earned a 1.7/6), reportedly for financial reasons. Wing...

HAMPSHIRE, Ill.-Can the other white meat's manure make black gold?"We are the first to actually do this," professor Yuanhui Shang says proudly of his team's ability to turn swine manure into crude oil. He's a bio-environmental engineer at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who has led the 10-year research project that recently announced a breakthrough in porcine petroleum.

BURLINGTON, Vt. - A new technology being promoted by Green Mountain Power and the University of Vermont might clean up manure before it's spread on farm fields, reducing the chances for air and water pollution. The technology, being sold by a Colchester businessman, uses electricity to kill disease-causing bacteria in liquid manure. That nearly eliminates the odor from the manure by removing 20 percent or more of its phosphorous. Nonetheless, experts said, the manure retains what's needed for farmers to use it as fertilizer. "I always start by telling people this is not a silver bullet. It will not eliminate...

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Swedish geologists have found fossilized feces from a worm that lived some 500 million years ago, media reports said Wednesday. The tiny piles of feces were found embedded in rock-face near Malmo in southern Sweden by geologists Mats Eriksson and Fredrik Terfelt, newspaper Sydsvenskan reported. Eriksson told the newspaper they examined the level of phosphorus of the samples and that "we realized pretty soon that it could not be anything other than coprolites, in other words fossilized dung." Terfelt described the find as "unique." "Cambrian scientists will certainly find them very interesting," Terfelt said. The two are...

ATLANTA -- Comedy Central's "South Park" won its first Peabody Award on Wednesday, winning praise from judges as TV's boldest, most politically incorrect satirical series. "South Park" was praised as a show that "pushes all the buttons, turns up the heat and shatters every taboo," Peabody Awards Director Horace Newcomb said. "Through that process of offending it reminds us of the need for being tolerant."

Sirius has announced 4 million subscribers, and I haven't heard a word from the Howard Stern detractors. Even if he's only responsible for half of the increase since he signed on (600,000 then) and it stays where it is, that's worth more than a billion dollars over five years. That $500 million is a good investment.

(AgapePress) - A Christian evangelist known as "Dr. Dino" advocates a three-pronged approach to countering public school textbooks that use faulty evidence for Darwinian evolution. Dr. Kent Hovind says instead of trying to get intelligent design or creationism taught in public schools, the main objective of critics of evolution should be requiring accuracy in science textbooks. Hovind, the founder of Florida-based Creation Science Evangelism, notes many states already have laws requiring textbooks to be accurate -- and if they do not, he says, teachers should have the right to correct any inaccuracies in those books. "Jesus lived in the Roman...

Now for a few humble thoughts about the Oscars. I did not see every second of it, but my wife did, and she joins me in noting that there was not one word of tribute, not one breath, to our fighting men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan or to their families or their widows or orphans. There were pitifully dishonest calls for peace -- as if the people we are fighting were interested in any peace for us but the peace of the grave. But not one word for the hundreds of thousands who have served and are serving,...

While Air America Radio's loss of two affiliates in Phoenix and Missoula, Montana is generating news this week, the company itself probably hasn't been able to give either city a second thought. Why? In a development sure to rip the heart right out of the liberal radio network's already ailing body, it appears extremely likely their leased New York City flagship station WLIB-AM will soon abandon Air America programming. Even worse, litigation looks probable over the station's lease. While the network's last day on WLIB isn't known for certain, an internal source providing backing documentation points to the end of...

NEW YORK For nearly three decades, hip-hop relics such as vinyl records, turntables, microphones and boom boxes have collected dust in boxes and attics. On Tuesday, owners of such items _ including pioneering hip-hop artists such as Afrika Bambaataa, DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash and Fab 5 Freddy _ will blow that dust off and carry them to a Manhattan hotel to turn them over to National Museum of American History officials. The museum, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., is announcing its plans to embark on a collecting initiative, "Hip-Hop Won't Stop: the Beat, the Rhymes, the...

SAN FRANCISCO - City officials are hoping to harness the power of dog doo. San Franciscans already recycle more than 60 percent of their garbage, but in this dog-friendly town, animal feces make up nearly 4 percent of residential waste, or 6,500 tons a year — nearly as much as disposable diapers, according to the city. Within the next few months, Norcal Waste, a garbage hauling company that collects San Francisco's trash, will begin a pilot program under which it will use biodegradable bags and dog-waste carts to pick up droppings at a popular dog park. The droppings will be...

Mickey Kaus at Kausfiles.com says that the gay-cowboy movie Brokeback Mountain has the same marketing strategy as Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. Both, he says, have been hyped as blue-state movies that are reaching and changing minds in the cities of red America. He calls this the "Heartland Breakout Meme”. ("Meme" refers to a cultural copying unit that hops from brain to brain without much thought or any at all). What Kaus means is that the mainstream media keep reinforcing ideas liberals want to believe, whether they are true or not. But the alleged breakout of Fahrenheit appears to be myth,...

NBC White House correspondent David Gregory ate a little crow Sunday on this "Meet The Press," apologizing for his arrogant behavior during White House press briefings dealing with the shooting of a hunting companion by Vice President Cheney. Reacting to the storm of criticism leveled by the public at the Washington press corps for complaining that they were not told immediately about the incident, leaving the job of reporting it to a small-town Texas newspaper, Gregory apologized for his boorish behavior. "I think I made a mistake,” he told host Tim Russert. "I think it was inappropriate for me to...

Microsoft's Anti-Spyware program is causing troubles for people who also use Symantec's Norton Anti-Virus software; apparently, a recent update to Microsoft's anti-spyware application flags Norton as a password-stealing program and prompts users to remove it. According to several different support threads over at Microsoft's user groups forum, the latest definitions file from Microsoft "(version 5805, 5807) detects Symantec Antivirus files as PWS.Bancos.A (Password Stealer)." When Microsoft Anti-Spyware users remove the flagged Norton file as prompted, Symantec's product gets corrupted and no longer protects the user's machine. The Norton user then has to go through the Windows registry and delete multiple...

NBC Cancels Emmy-Winning 'West Wing' After Seven Seasons, Makes Several Midseason Moves PASADENA, Calif. Jan 22, 2006 — The new president on "The West Wing" will be a real short-timer: NBC announced Sunday it was pulling the plug on the Emmy-winning political drama after seven seasons in May. NBC, struggling to regain its footing after the worst season in its history, also outlined several midseason schedule changes including the moves of popular dramas "Law & Order" and "Las Vegas." "The West Wing" announcement wasn't much of a surprise. Although this season's story line with a presidential campaign involving a Democrat...

First-year ABC drama hits a series low of 2.4 Commander In Chief’s” Geena Davis may have walked away with the Best Actress in a Drama award during Monday’s Golden Globes, but among the American voting public she's sliding in the opinion polls that matter most, the ratings. They've been on a steady decline for the once-promising freshman show. “Commander” averaged a 2.4 rating on Tuesday night, an all-time low for ABC's political drama. That’s down 14 percent from the previous week’s 2.8 18-49 rating, its second lowest, for the show’s first original episode to air since Nov. 29. And it’s...

NBC'S "THE BOOK OF DANIEL" may be off the air soon--more because of Nielsen issues than sins against a higher power. Ratings for the controversial drama dropped 23 percent Friday among adults 18-49 versus its Jan. 6 premiere. With a 2.2 mark, the show lost 36 percent of its "Dateline" lead-in. (Viewers declined by two million, or 29 percent, compared to the week before.) A call to NBC on Monday was not returned; the network's Web site says the show is scheduled to air this Friday. The drama about a liberal Episcopalian priest who pops pills and has a gay...

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Jack Bauer‘s latest marathon workday got off to a good start Sunday, ratings-wise. The Fox drama "24" notched its most-watched episode ever with its fifth-season premiere as the first of two back-to-back episodes got a boost from a primetime overrun (in East Coast and Midwestern markets) of the NFL‘s NFC divisional playoff game between the Carolina Panthers and Chicago Bears. Airing from about 8:13-9:11 p.m. EST, the first episode of "24" averaged 17 million viewers and a 7.3 rating in the adults 18-49 demographic (demographic share data for Sunday were not available Monday because of...

President Bush's advisers are resigned to the Democratic capture of the White House in 2008, according to senior Republican sources close to the White House. GOP sources said White House strategists have attempted to persuade Mr. Bush that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Democrat and her party’s current front-runner to be the next presidential nominee, cannot be defeated in 2008. Bush strategists said the president should instead focus on seeking to retain the Republican majority in both houses of Congress in 2006 and 2008. "There is nobody in the White House that will openly say we lost the presidency...

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - NBC's limited-run series "The Book of Daniel" earned its share of advance scrutiny for its portrayals of contemporary men and women of the cloth, but that didn't translate to a large turnout for the drama's premiere Friday. The network had better news on Thursday with the debut of its remodeled 8-10 p.m. comedy block anchored by "My Name Is Earl." ABC also had a pulse for a change that night thanks to the return of its summer sensation "Dancing With the Stars." "Daniel," which stars Aidan Quinn as a conflicted Episcopalian priest grappling with modern-day...