Free Republic

“Drinking alcohol can reduce the severity of the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis,” according to the Daily Mail. The newspaper said that non-drinkers “are four times more likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis than those who drink alcohol on more than ten days a month”. The research behind this news used a questionnaire to ask people with rheumatoid arthritis and a group of healthy volunteers about how often they drank alcoholic drinks. The results showed that frequency of alcohol consumption was associated with both the risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis and the severity of the disease.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Treasury Department's inspector general is looking into the government's oversight of tax-exempt organizations like ACORN when they engage in political activities. The office of California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa disclosed the IG's decision on Thursday amid a controversy over videotapes of ACORN employees offering advice about how to establish a brothel with underage prostitutes.

The pastor of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the oldest and most prominent black congregations in Los Angeles, used church credit cards to pay for at least $122,000 in personal expenses over a three-year period, ... The spending came to light during the course of an independent audit and Internal Revenue Service investigation into the financial affairs of the pastor, John J. Hunter; his wife, Denise Brown Hunter; and the church, according to people connected with the church, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation. Earlier this year, field officials in the Los Angeles...

CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez said Monday that Venezuela should open the coffin of independence hero Simon Bolivar to examine the bones, saying there are sufficient doubts about his death in 1830 to warrant a full investigation. Although history books maintain Bolivar died of tuberculosis, Chavez said doubts exist because some writings suggest it is possible the South American "Liberator" might have been murdered. Chavez has raised this theory before, but went further during a speech on the anniversary of Bolivar's death. "Who knows if they even made Bolivar's bones disappear? We have to determine it now," Chavez said....

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The investigator accused of fabricating juror statements in a bid to win clemency for a man condemned to die Tuesday is under investigation for previous cases she worked on for a state agency that defends death row inmates. Investigator Kathleen Culhane, whose worked is being questioned in the case of Michael Morales, was employed by the Habeas Corpus Resource Center between 2001 and 2005, the agency said Thursday. Culhane generated what prosecutors believe were bogus juror declarations from six jurors saying Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger should spare Morales, who raped and murdered a 17-year-old Lodi girl in...

Less than a year and a half after California's historic recall election, Sacramento's wastelands are littered with the bleached bones of legislators and pundits who, unable to move beyond a cliche-ridden dismissal of a bodybuilder-movie-star-turned-governor, have underestimated the raw intelligence and honed intellect of the Austrian immigrant at California's helm. To examine the intellect of Arnold Schwarzenegger is to seek to discern the influences that have shaped — and continue to shape, however obliquely — his thinking, which is to say his mind. Let's begin with a necessary distinction between intelligence and intellect. --snip-- Those who know Schwarzenegger — and...