Free Republic

The immigration debate takes a technological turn with a new cell phone device that helps illegal immigrants crossing the desert into the U.S. find water. The Transborder Immigrant Tool was developed by UC San Diego prof and activist Ricardo Dominguez and UCSD lecturer Brett Stalbaum. Both believe it will save the lives of hundreds of people who die each year during their trek across "Devil's Highway." Here's how the tool works. The phone, loaded with free GPS software, displays a digital compass that locates water stations installed by John Hunter, founder of the Water Stations project. Stations that are too...

Tucson, Ariz. (AP) -- A judge has threatened to sentence an Arizona man to 25 days in prison for leaving jugs of water in the desert for illegal immigrants. A federal jury in June convicted Walt Staton of Tucson of littering in the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. . . . Staton is a member of the group No More Deaths, which supports humanitarian aid along the border. He was scheduled to be re-sentenced Friday after he told a U.S. magistrate last month that he objected to the court's punishment on moral and legal grounds.

Elizabeth Edwards always seemed like the yin - a genuine human being - to her smarmy husband's too-slick yang. No more. With the release of her memoir "Resilience" and self-flagellation book tour about her life with her cheating hubby, Mrs. E now seems about as believable as her husband. That is: Add the prefix "un." No one should expect the wife of a man with Edwards' hobbies to be completely forthcoming - which is why she never should have written the book. Unless she had decided to show him the door - or if she had come out and said...

[The following is the only known transcript of an interview last week by Independent Star reporter Bias Jones with International Brotherhood of Polar Bears President Grumbles the Bear about the union's dissention from the list of global warming enablers. The interview occurred on an ice floe somewhere north of an Inuit village on Canada’s Ellesmere Island.]

LAKE FOREST – The conversation dealt with transgendered individuals, homosexuality, and theology. Representatives of the gay community today shared their "coming out" stories and discussed religious attitudes toward homosexuality with Saddleback Church staff. "I feel the foundation is being built for other dialogue between Saddleback and the gay community," said Richard Finch... One person talked about being transgender and Christian, attendees said. Another individual talked about being in the brink of suicide because of his childhood church's views on homosexuality. ... Jeff Lutes, executive director of Soulforce — a gay rights advocacy group that organized the project — said the...

....Overall, the results presented in this paper suggest several important facts. First, the findings suggest that there is an explicit and quantifiable cost to public debate during wartime in the form of increased attacks. Based on these results, it appears that Iraqi insurgent groups believe that when the U.S. political landscape is more uncertain, initiating a higher level of attacks increases the likelihood that the U.S. will reduce the scope of its engagement in the conflict. However, the magnitude of the response by Iraqi insurgent groups is relatively small. To the extent that U.S. political speech does affect insurgent incentives,...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 31, 2008 – As Iraqi maneuver units continue to make great progress, coalition trainers must concentrate on “enablers” of the force, the general in charge of the effort to train Iraqi forces said today. Army Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik, commander of Multinational Security Transition Command Iraq, spoke to military analysts by phone from his headquarters in Baghdad. He said coalition and Iraqi planners understand that enablers -- combat service support functions for the military -- must make progress for the Iraqi military to be a balanced force. The combat units of the Iraqi army are doing well;...

A third homeless shelter near River Street has some business owners in the area upset and planning to move. Last week, a diverse group of religious leaders gathered outside an older commercial building just off Interstate 184, the Connector, to make an announcement they'd held back for months: Boise's Interfaith Sanctuary had secured funding and bought a building to shelter homeless men, women and families. Interfaith Sanctuary provides an alternative to traditional men's and women's shelters, which some people will not use because of religious affiliations. Sanctuary allows families to stay together and will take intoxicated people. For two years,...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Weak law enforcement and compliant Church authorities make Mexico a haven for U.S. pedophile priests fleeing justice, a victims' group said on Wednesday. The Survivors' Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, which helped bring a lawsuit this week against two of North America's top cardinals, said it knows of 46 mostly U.S. priests hiding out south of the border. "Mexico has really become a secure place because here judicial authorities don't track them down and nothing happens," said group spokesman Eric Barragan......."

ISLAMIST fanatics attacked us and yearn to destroy us. The Muslim civilization of the Middle East has failed comprehensively and will continue to generate violence. The only way to deal with faith-poisoned terrorists is to kill them. And the world's only hope for long-term peace is for moderate Muslims - by far the majority around the globe - to recapture their own faith. But a rotten core of American extremists is out to make it harder for them. The most repugnant trend in the American shouting match that passes for a debate on the struggle with Islamist terrorism isn't the...

Al-Qaida's list of favorite, least favorite Westerners Latest warning video from terror group names enemies, friends in U.S., Britain WASHINGTON – In the latest video from al-Qaida warning of an imminent terrorist attack on the U.S., five specific "Zionist crusader missionaries of hate" are named, while three Westerners, including one American, are actually praised for their efforts toward "peace." Those singled out as enemies of al-Qaida are Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer, Steven Emerson, Michael Scheuer and, of course, President Bush. The first three are WND contributors and outspoken media figures who warn about the growing threat of Islamo-fascism. Scheuer is...

US, French diplomats working on new formula that would lead to ceasefire in North; new proposal may be submitted to UN by Friday; sources say agreement based on French military deployment on northern border. Senior Israeli official: Revised UN Resolution will stop short of requiring peacekeepers to disarm Hizbullah Getting close to ceasefire? While the IDF is preparing to expand military operations, a French-American proposal for a cease-fire is being formulated Thursday evening and may be presented to the United Nations Security Council by Friday. According to various reports, the agreement is based on the deployment of French troops on...

Mel Gibson has become the designated Hitler-of-the-Month for August 2006, displacing both Saddam Hussein and Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the previous front-runners. However, conservative Christians, before rushing to condemn or defend their fallen hero, might ponder the incident for a moment, before presuming to form an opinion. To give credit where it is due, Zev Chafets, in his LA Times commentary “Slurring More than His Words”, makes several valuable points. To begin with, Mr. Gibson’s first line of defense—the Tequila made him do it—is absurd. As Chafets commnts, “Evidently Gibson wants people to believe that, although he personally loves Jews, the...

When Hezbollah guerrillas sneaked into Israel last month, killing and capturing Israeli soldiers and setting off the current crisis, their goal was to trade them for a Lebanese man held by Israel. The prisoner, Samir Kuntar, was part of a cell that in 1979 raided an apartment building in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya, terrorizing the Haran family. Mr. Kuntar shot Danny Haran in the head, killing him, while his daughter, Einat, 4, watched, then smashed the girl’s head in with his rifle butt, killing her as well. Mr. Haran’s wife, Smadar, hid in the attic with their 2-year-old...

MEL SAYS SORRY TO THE JEWS Tue Aug 01 2006 11:10:45 ET August 2, 2006 -- There is no excuse, nor should there be any tolerance, for anyone who thinks or expresses any kind of Anti-Semitic remark. I want to apologize specifically to everyone in the Jewish community for the vitriolic and harmful words that I said to a law enforcement officer the night I was arrested on a DUI charge. I am a public person, and when I say something, either articulated and thought out, or blurted out in a moment of insanity, my words carry weight in the...

From the outset, President Bush declared that the battle against Al Qaeda would be a war like no other, fought by new rules against new enemies not entitled to the old protections afforded to either prisoners of war or criminal defendants. But the White House acknowledgment on Tuesday that a key clause of the Geneva Conventions applies to Qaeda detainees, as a recent Supreme Court ruling affirmed, is only the latest step in the gradual erosion of the administration’s aggressive legal stance. The administration’s initial position emerged in 2002 only after a fierce internal legal debate, and it has been...

Illegal immigration is recognized by many U.S. Citizens to be a threat to our nation. It's is a balkanizing process. It disrupts communities. It places financial strain on regions of our nation. It costs our nation tens of billions of dollars a year, if not hundreds. It is destroying our health care system. It disrupts the education system financially and in the teaching process due to language problems. It can place English speaking children at a disadvantage, in that spanish children receive elevated resources while English speaking kids take a back seat in the early years. There are problems of...

Members of the Muslim community in a suburb of Ambilobe, Madagascar, have donated land to the Anglican Diocese of Antsiranana in the Province of the Indian Ocean. “I could not believe my ears,” the Bishop of Antsiranana, the Rt. Rev. Roger Chung, said in an official release published by the telecommunications department of the Anglican Communion Office. “But God’s ways are not our ways, and his thoughts are not our thoughts, says the Book of Isaiah.” According to the chairman of the new parish, Diogene Mahavavy, the Muslim community donated the land after becoming aware of the difficulties that the...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - International envoy James Wolfensohn told Middle East mediators the Palestinian Authority faces financial collapse within two weeks because of Israel's decision to cut off tax transfers after Hamas's election win. Even if the Palestinian Authority survives the coming month with emergency funding, Wolfensohn said "violence and chaos" could break out unless a long-term funding plan is developed for when a government led by the Islamic militant group is in place. Wolfensohn issued the warnings in a letter to the so-called Quartet of Middle East mediators -- the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia....

Haniyeh: 'Washington Post' misquoted Khaled Abu Toameh, THE JERUSALEM POST Feb. 26, 2006 Palestinian Authority Prime Minister-designate Ismail Haniyeh on Sunday denied that Hamas was prepared to make peace with Israel, saying he had been misquoted by The Washington Post. Haniyeh said his comments had been misunderstood. He said he was not referring to a peace agreement, only a "political truce." "I didn't talk about recognizing Israel during the interview with the newspaper," Haniyeh told reporters in Gaza City. "I only said that when Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, including Jerusalem, and releases all the prisoners and detainees, then...