Free Republic

September 3, 2007 By Mark Mix - After years of scheming, waiting, and investing forced dues into the campaigns of their handpicked politicians, Big Labor bosses believe they are just one step away from a big payoff. Their goal is simple: Ram the Police and Firefighter Monopoly Bargaining Bill (H.R. 980) into law by any means necessary. Just before the August recess, under suspension of the rules, union-label politicians succeeded in passing the Police and Firefighter Monopoly Bargaining Bill through the House. Thanks to the union bosses' propaganda machine, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ran into little difficulty. Misguided congressmen from...

Retiree Gene O'Brien hurried to the World Trade Center site after Sept. 11, 2001, as a volunteer helping to shuttle supplies to police and fire workers. Some days, his only ID to get into the disaster site was a tattoo on his forearm. "A couple times I showed them my Marine tattoo, and they said go ahead," recalled O'Brien, adding that he and other volunteers also came up with their own makeshift identification cards. "We didn't forge anything, we just made them up with our own pictures and at one point we copied a UPC code off a Pepsi can...

NEW YORK - As Rudy Giuliani campaigns around the country highlighting his stewardship of New York City after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he is widely hailed for bringing order to a traumatized city. But he has also raised the hackles of rescue and recovery workers by likening his experience to theirs. On at least three occasions, in responding to accusations that city officials failed to adequately protect the health of workers in the wreckage, he has boasted that he faced comparable risks himself. In one appearance he declared that he had been in the ruins "as often (as), if...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani said Friday that he misspoke when he said he spent as much time, if not more, at ground zero exposed to the same health risks as workers combing the site after the Sept. 11 attacks. "I think I could have said it better," he told nationally syndicated radio host Mike Gallagher. "You know, what I was saying was, 'I'm there with you.'" The former New York mayor struck a nerve with firefighters and police officers when he said Thursday in Cincinnati that he was at ground zero "as often, if not more,...

Rudy Giuliani drew outrage and indignation from Sept. 11 first-responders yesterday by saying he spent as much time - or more - exposed to the site's dangers as workers who dug through the debris for the missing and the dead. Speaking to reporters at a Cincinnati Reds ballgame he caught between fund-raisers, the GOP front-runner said he helped 9/11 families and defended himself against critics of how he managed the attack's aftermath. "This is not a mayor or a governor or a President who's sitting in an ivory tower," Giuliani said. "I was at Ground Zero as often, if not...

THE terrorists who attempted to bomb central London last week deliberately placed the second vehicle to catch rescuers attending the injured from the first explosion, Scotland on Sunday can reveal. The senior security source also said the primitive gas and petrol devices were most likely the work of determined terrorists struggling - because of the security crackdown - to get their hands on the ingredients needed to create high explosives. Yesterday, a huge police manhunt was under way for the terrorists responsible as forensic experts continued to examine the vehicles involved for clues. The attack was thwarted after fumes were...

Paramedics have told how they saved the lives of scores of people after spotting one of the car bombs in central London. A Mercedes packed with petrol, gas and nails was found abandoned outside Tiger, Tiger nightclub in Haymarket in the early hours of Friday morning. A two-man ambulance crew, one aged 27 and the other 37, alerted police after smelling gas coming from the vehicle. The 37-year-old, who was not named, said: "As we pulled up outside Tiger Tiger, we came to a stop behind a Mercedes car, which was parked rather badly, about three feet from the kerb....

Excerpt - April 15, 2007 -- Filmmaker Michael Moore's production company took ailing Ground Zero responders to Cuba in a stunt aimed at showing that the U.S. health-care system is inferior to Fidel Castro's socialized medicine, according to several sources with knowledge of the trip. The trip was to be filmed as part of the controversial director's latest documentary, "Sicko," an attack on American drug companies and HMOs that Moore hopes to debut at the Cannes Film Festival next month. Two years in the making, the flick also takes aim at the medical care being provided to people who worked...

COLLEGE STATION, Texas -- The acrid, awful, haunting smell of charred flesh still returns sometimes, without warning. They're phantom smells, five years old, but that doesn't make them any less real to Mark Dodge. Same with the nightmares, which are less frequent now but no less jarring. "Certain nightmares will always probably be there," Dodge said. When you have been where Mark Dodge has been, seen what he has seen, smelled what he has smelled, you don't forget. When you have bagged incinerated bodies and carried them to a morgue truck, the experience lingers. When you have spent days raking...

"As I sat and watched the horror unfold on 9/11, I could smell the acrid smoke drifting south from the Pentagon. There was a never ending line of cars heading away from Washington. With the rest of the world I watched the towers come down and among the victims were 343 New York firemen. I'll never be able to look at a fireman or woman again without knowing that he or she would lay down their lives for me without ever knowing my name. We can never thank them enough." The first plane hit the other tower Right after I...

The largest health study yet of the thousands of workers who labored at ground zero shows that the impact of the rescue and recovery effort on their health has been more widespread and persistent than previously thought, and is likely to linger far into the future. The study, released yesterday by doctors at Mount Sinai Medical Center, is expected to erase any lingering doubts about the connection between dust from the trade center and numerous diseases that the workers have reported suffering. It is also expected to increase pressure on the federal government to provide health care for sick workers...

(CBS) NEW YORK Nearly seven out of every 10 World Trade Center rescuers suffered lung problems during or after their work at Ground Zero, and high rates of lung "abnormalities" continued years after the 2001 terrorist attacks, according to a new health study. Days before the fifth anniversary of the destruction of the 110-story towers, Mount Sinai Medical Center on Tuesday issued the results of the largest study on 9/11-related health effects. The study focused mostly on the so-called "World Trade Center cough," a phenomenon that was little understood immediately after the attacks, but has become the chief concern of...

by Mark Finkelstein August 10, 2006 - 22:01 Hat tip to poster 'nutmeg' at Free Republic. Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News might have meant to praise the heroism and selflessness of our various service people. But he employed what was at best an incredibly awkward, at worst an inappropriate, offensive and simply wrong manner of doing it. On this evening's 7 PM ET edition of Hardball, Chris Matthews mused about the UK-born terrorists whose plot was foiled today: "Here we have maybe 24 people who have lived in London and England and the free world for all these years...

If your heart suddenly stopped, how long should rescue workers try to save you? Should you be taken to the hospital even if you can't be revived and are likely to die? Canadian researchers say they've devised a test that helps rescue workers spot those futile cases and save a frantic trip to the hospital. Some paramedics with advanced training — those who can give drugs and start IVs — already are allowed to stop giving CPR if their efforts fail and they have consulted a doctor, said lead researcher, Dr. Laurie J. Morrison of the University of Toronto. But...

  The Canteen Pays Tribute To The badge of a fireman is the Maltese Cross. This Maltese Cross is a symbol of protection and a badge of honor. Its story is hundreds of years old. The Maltese Cross is your symbol of protection. It means that the fireman who wears this cross is willing to lay down his life for you. The Maltese Cross is a fireman's badge of honor, signifying that he works in courage - a ladder rung away from death. Today, fire and rescue remains a mix of paid, call, and volunteer responders. While urban areas...

Paramedics are at an increased risk of suffering from post-traumatic stress, but not enough is known about how best to help them cope, an emergency medical services conference heard Friday. The first phase of a three-year study into the stress of first-responders was presented at the Emergency Medical Services Chiefs of Canada conference in Dartmouth, N.S., on Friday. The study is looking at prevention and management of post-traumatic stress disorder. While post-traumatic stress affects seven to eight per cent of the general population, it's up to three times more likely among paramedics, lead researcher Vince Savoia said. The Tema Conter...

David Osborne wants to let you know about AMW All-Star nominee Sheriff David Shoar. View the All-Star now: http://www.amw.com/allstar/2006/detail.cfm?id=721 AMW together with Sprint Nextel wants to honor the first responders who are All-Stars -- the law enforcement officers, fire fighters, EMTs and others who go above and beyond. One first responder will be voted the 2006 AMW All-Star and win the grand prize: $10,000 and a trip to the NASCAR Nextel All-Star race on May 20, 2006. Terms and Conditions: http://www.amw.com/legal/allstar_terms2006.cfm The AMW All-Star is presented by Sprint Nextel. Be sure to watch America's Most Wanted every Saturday at 9pm/ET...

America's Truth Forum’s symposium, The Underlying Roots of Terrorism: Terrorism’s Threat to World Peace and National Security, is set to take place April 29th.  Speaking at the event will be some of the biggest names in the counter-terrorism field.  While those involved in the symposium understand the reality of the terrorism threat, there are many that have, whether out of fear or ignorance, chosen to ignore it. The event was originally scheduled to be held in Connecticut on September 21st of 2005, but it was sidetracked by CBS/Infinity Radio, who at the last minute, refused to air paid advertisements from...

TERRIFIED survivors of the July 7 bombings in London last year sat in dark carriages for up to an hour desperate for help as bureaucracy stopped the emergency services from getting to them because of fears of a second explosion. The 11 survivors told the July 7 Review Committee in London how they thought they were going to die in a fire or be consumed by smoke and toxic fumes. The bombings killed 56 people, including the bombers. Many of the walking wounded were left to make their own way to hospital, in complete shock. Hospital staff were not aware...

For most of the past four years, they have been silent. But now some gravely ill New Jerseyans who toiled at Ground Zero after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 are sharing their stories with Millennium Radio. They are the men and women who could benefit from legislation inspired by reports on Millennium Radio and being crafted by State Senator Joe Vitale (D-Woodbridge). Vitale is working on a bill that would provide a presumption to 9/11 responders that their illnesses were caused by their exposure to the toxic air they breathed both at Ground Zero and the Fresh Kills...