Free Republic

Generation Rescue, Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey’s Los Angeles-based non-profit autism organization, today announced that the United States Government has once again conceded that vaccines cause autism. The announcement comes on the heels of the recently unsealed court case of Bailey Banks vs. HHS. The ruling states, “The Court found that Bailey would not have suffered this delay but for the administration of the MMR vaccine…a proximate sequence of cause and effect leading inexorably from vaccination to PDD [Autism].” In a curious and hypocritical method of operation, the mysterious Vaccine Court not only protects vaccine makers from liability but supports...

CNSNews.com Some Marines Question the Navy’s Decision to Honor Rep. John Murtha Monday, March 23, 2009 By Edwin Mora (CNSNews.com) – Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), who once accused U.S. Marines of killing “innocent” Iraqi civilians “in cold blood,” has received a Distinguished Public Service Award from the U.S. Navy, to the disgust of some Americans. Murtha, chairman of a House defense appropriations subcommittee, received the award on March 5 from Navy Secretary Donald Winter. The award is the highest form of public service recognition bestowed by the Department of the Navy for a non-employee. Murtha received the award for his...

A group of Catholic activists (including CWN editor Phil Lawler) has called upon the University of Notre Dame to reconsider an invitation for President Barack Obama to speak at the school's commencement, in light of Obama's aggressive advocacy of abortion. The Cardinal Newman Society reported that by March 23, over 18,000 people had signed a petition opposing the presidential appearance. But David Gibson notes that in a campus poll last year, 53% of Notre Dame students indicated a preference for Obama. Longtime Notre Dame philosophy professor Ralph McInerny poses a related question. If it is seriously wrong for a Catholic...

George Soros is having a very good crisis. Other investors are wilting, political power structures are being upended and market economists are scrambling to fashion new theories, but the world's most famous speculator is having a belated heyday. George Soros is now recognised as one of the most effective philanthropists, finding a new sense of purpose by spending billions to promote civil society in new democracies. "It is, in a way, the culminating point of my life’s work," the 78-year-old says in his heavy Hungarian accent during an interview at his London mansion. If Soros had retired from the money...

It pains me to have to do this. It truly does. But you need to know. There are no super heroes. There never were any. And while we know that there are no super heroes, we also know that there definitely are monsters. Oh yes. They walk amongst us every day, watching us the way that wolves watch over the flock. And we live in constant fear of the day that their gaze flicks to us.

We’re not going to mince words. Chris Dodd is a lying weasel. It is hard enough to swallow that the senator had no idea that he got preferential treatment on his home mortgages that saved him thousands of dollars. Or that, simply out of friendship, a wealthy New York man, who was later convicted in a huge stock swindle, picked up much of the cost of a condo Dodd bought in Washington; or that the stock swindler’s business partner out of a love of Ireland did the same for Dodd when the senator bought a waterfront house in Ireland. Now,...

Suicide attack on Iraqi funeral At least 25 people have been killed by a suicide bomber in the Iraqi province of Diyala, police say. Dozens of people are reported to have been hurt in the attack. Sources told the BBC the suicide attacker targeted a funeral in the town of Jalawla, 115km (70 miles) north-east of the capital, Baghdad. It was the second bomb attack in Iraq on Monday, with an earlier explosion near Baghdad killing at least eight people.

It appears that some legislators now want to make it illegal to tell legislators that their actions might result in the loss of jobs.   Isn’t that great? We love the First Amendment!             -- Toby P.S. the new language is subsection (g) at the end of the bill. _____________________________________________  HOUSE BILL 2316 _____________________________________________ State of Washington 61st Legislature 2009 Regular Session By Representatives Williams, Chase, Hasegawa, Nelson, Ormsby, Sells, Simpson, and Wood Read first time 03/20/09.   Referred to Committee on State Government & Tribal Affairs.      AN ACT Relating to lobbying restrictions; and amending RCW 42.17.230.BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE...

Barack Obama is the first president since Grover Cleveland to skip the Gridiron Club’s annual dinner. Somehow Joe Biden was sent instead to the formal press event where politicians essentially roast each other. True to form, the vice president hit a big nerve. He set up a joke by pointing out that California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was a speaker at the event, was born in Austria. He then explained that Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, also a featured speaker, was born in Canada. Biden’s preliminary punch line was, “This is going to be Lou Dobbs' worst nightmare.” Having broached the...

Congressman Norm Dicks has never been shy about accepting campaign donations from favor seekers. Now the FBI is investigating one of Dicks' most generous donors — the powerhouse lobbying firm PMA Group. Questions have been raised about whether some PMA-related campaign contributions were actually given by the people listed as donors. For example, thousands of dollars in contributions to Dicks, Washington Sen. Patty Murray and other lawmakers came from a sommelier and a golf-club employee who were identified as PMA officials on some campaign-finance reports. The investigation has prompted some lawmakers to distance themselves from the PMA-related contributions. Murray said...

One by one Barack Obama is alienating our closest allies. First, he snubbed Israel by making his phone call to the leader of the Palestinian authority his first official act as President on the morning of January 21. In that phone call he conveyed to the enemy of Israel that he could count on 'U.S. support for Palestinian goals.' This is not the only time he has brushed off Israel. His overtures toward Hamas and Iran's extremist Islamist government are but further indications of his deep disdain for the Jewish state. Anyone who claims we can have a relationship based...

WASHINGTON -- Since the fall, senior aides to Timothy Geithner have closely dealt with American International Group Inc. on compensation issues including bonuses, both from his time as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and as Treasury secretary. The extent of their involvement, which wasn't widely known, raises fresh questions about whether Mr. Geithner could have known earlier about AIG's $165 million in bonus payments. When the bonuses sparked a political firestorm last week, Mr. Geithner said he learned about their full scope in early March, just days before they were paid. Mr. Geithner and Federal Reserve...

Call it a condom conundrum. At a time when the federal government is spending billions of stimulus dollars to stem the tide of U.S. layoffs, should that same government put even more Americans out of work by buying cheaper foreign products? In this case, Chinese condoms. That's the dilemma for the folks at jobs, the government is switching to cheaper off-shore condoms, including some made in China. In a move expected to cost 300 American the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has distributed an estimated 10 billion U.S.-made AIDS-preventing condoms in poor countries around the world. But not anymore....

Six weeks after President Barack Obama appointed a blue-ribbon panel to help him dig America out of its economic crisis, the board has yet to hold an official public meeting. The White House initially said that the 16-member Presidential Economic Recovery Advisory Board, headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, would meet “every few weeks.” Last month, a spokesperson told POLITICO the group would meet monthly. And more recently, the White House said the high-powered board, set up to address what Obama has called the worst economic emergency since the Great Depression, would gather only about four times a...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama has held talks with Mikhail Gorbachev, a spokesman for the former Soviet leader said on Monday, in the latest sign of Washington's efforts to "press the reset button" on ties with Russia. Spokesman Konstantin Petrenko said Gorbachev met Obama and Vice President Joe Biden -- who coined the 'reset' phrase last month -- in Washington last Friday. He did not give any details of the discussion. Bilateral ties worsened sharply last year, with the two countries at odds over NATO expansion, U.S. plans for a missile shield in Eastern Europe, and Russia's war...

WASHINGTON — The United States must look for a way out of the war in Afghanistan, President Obama said, in a signal that the military build-up in Afghanistan will not be open-ended and will lead to the eventual withdrawal of American and NATO troops from the country. “There’s got to be an exit strategy,” Mr. Obama said in a wide-ranging interview shown Sunday on “60 Minutes” on CBS. “There’s got to be a sense that this is not perpetual drift.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama's aides say the administration will work with Congress on his budget proposal, but energy independence is not subject to wheeling and dealing. Obama planned to make the case Monday for a budget proposal that invests billions in research designed to reduce climate change and guarantees loans for companies that develop clean energy technologies. Obama has tied his first budget proposal as president to a renewable energy program to help the United States move toward energy independence.

SCHENECTADY, N.Y. -- Schenectady Police Chief Mark Chaires said, "This is unprecedented - all these officers getting in trouble at the same time for all these different reasons. Five Schenectady police officers recently accused of everything from driving drunk to beating up a man are leading city officials to look at taking drastic action to fix a department tainted by the few who may have acted illegally, like Darren Lawrence and Michael Brown who are accused of driving while intoxicated. Chief Chaires said, "Those two officers, we're definitely going to seek termination, and we're not ruling it out with any...

BAY CITY, Mich. – Police in Michigan say a 15-year-old boy has died after being Tasered by officers who were trying to break up a fight. ">snip<"

Three thousand motorists who were victims of a miscalibrated speed camera in the town of Lausanne, Switzerland were issued full refunds along with a letter of apology ... After innocent motorists began complaining to the local media, police began to look into whether the automated ticketing machine may have malfunctioned. The investigation concluded that a manufacturer's defect had caused a "technical problem" forcing the detected speeds to read high. Despite the false readings, the device had passed all of the standard calibration and approval tests required for issuing citations. Police insisted all other speed cameras in the area were perfectly...