Free Republic

Elena Kagan will fit right in on the Supreme Court. That is not a compliment: Kagan will become yet another Justice too willing to interfere with necessary administrative decision-making. Kagan specializes in administrative law, but appears never to have been inside an administrative agency. She has limited practical experience, as her legal writing on administrative law amply demonstrates. This is a huge problem, because administrative law has to be practical and easily understood. Most law affecting American individuals and business is administrative law--in the form of regulations and rulings made by administrative agencies.

Was the Bush administration’s Terrorist Surveillance Program a violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which forbids domestic wiretapping without a warrant? And was the New York Times’s decision to reveal the existence of the highly classified program, against warnings that it would gravely damage national security, an act of journalistic heroism and a powerful blow on behalf of civil liberties? Affirmative answers to both questions have been the standard liberal line ever since the Times broke the story of the NSA wiretapping program in December 2005. With a verdict on March 31 in the al Haramain Islamic...

"Moderate Muslim head of UK TV channel held on terror claims" "U.K. Islamic TV head held on terror claims," from UPI, January 26 (thanks to Block Ness): SNIPPET: "PRETORIA, South Africa, Jan. 26 (UPI) -- The head of Britain's popular Muslim television station was arrested in South Africa and faces deportation to Tunisia on terrorism claims, officials said. Mohamed Ali Harrath, the force behind Britain's Islam Channel, was arrested Sunday in what some said was a security clampdown in South Africa in the months leading up to the 2010 World Cup soccer championship, The Times of London reported Tuesday."

A man wanted by Interpol for his links to an alleged terrorist organisation has been advising Scotland Yard on countering Muslim extremism, a Times investigation has discovered. Mohamed Ali Harrath has been the subject of the Interpol red notice since 1992 because of his alleged activities in Tunisia, where he co-founded the Tunisian Islamic Front (FIT). Tunisia has accused Mr Harrath, the chief executive officer of the Islam Channel in Britain and an adviser to the Scotland Yard Muslim Contact Unit, of seeking help from Osama bin Laden. It says that the FIT wants to establish “an Islamic state by...

Plastic toys may have subtle effects on the male reproductive system, as chemicals found in products ranging from plastics to cosmetics may slowly reduce testosterone production in newborn boys, a new study has found. Danish paediatric endocrinologist Professor Niels Skakkebfk, of the Rigs hospitalet in Copenhagen, and team report their study of newborn exposure to phthalates in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. "It gives a small piece of information that the newborn testis may be fragile to such toxins," Skakkebfk, was quoted by ABC Online, as saying. "Whether the effects will persist we can't tell but we were quite surprised...

Treasures Fit For The KingsA spate of spectacular discoveries could completely change our view of the Thracians, one of history's most mysterious peoples By JUMANA FAROUKY TCVETAN TOMCHEV / AFP GOLD RUSH: Thracian artifacts, like this piece of horse's armor, reveal Bulgaria's past Sunday, May. 29, 2005 They had been digging for 12 years, 4 months a year, 18 hours a day. Since 1992, Georgi Kitov and his team have been searching through Bulgaria's Valley of the Kings, a 100-km, heavily forested region in the center of the country. The valley is dotted with ancient burial mounds erected by the...

A new take on the Presidential race! Received this in my e-mail via Matt Furey's e-mail newsletter. Who Is Most Fit To Be President? I can hear it now. A few members of this daily email list are cringing. Oh no, don't do it again Furey. You'll lose HALF your customers. You'll lose HALF your business talking politico mumbo. You'll offend people who would otherwise like you. You'll create an enemy out of a friend - yada, nada, schnada. Please, I'm begging you, another will warn me (after the fact of course) . veer away from politics and stick to...

Student prank that gave the Chinese a fit of the willies Jonathan Watts in Beijing Saturday November 1, 2003 The Guardian (UK) In the history of comical flops, few pranks can have gone down quite so badly as the fake-genital skit performed by three Japanese students in China's Northwest University. Camping it up in red bras and knickers bulging with paper cups, the performers must have been expecting guffaws or at least shy giggles from the freshmen and faculty they were entertaining at a welcoming party for new students. Instead, they sparked an anti-Japanese demonstration by thousands of fellow students,...

We will rally outside the Fashion Institute of Technology, 27th Street and 8th Avenue, NYC, to show our patriotism and our support of our military, on June 1, 2002. This rally is sponsored by the Tri-State (New York, New Jersey, Connecticut) Chapter of FR and is part of Operation Enduring Freedom. It is in response to an all-day conference at FIT sponsored by the International Action Center.Cacique has done a wonderful flyer, which he handed out last night at the Young Republican club meeting, and he will soon have it in PDF format so that we can copy it and...

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Available soon: You step into a booth where a 3-D body scanner sends more than 300,000 data points from your body to a computer. Then you select style, fabric and design features from a clothing manufacturer on the Internet and e-mail your body scan. Soon you receive a custom-fitted garment. Thanks to a major donation of software, worth as much as $600,000, from Lectra Systems, Inc., apparel students at Cornell University are the first in the country to produce automated custom patterns for garments. They use a sophisticated body scanner, which generates an individual's detailed measurements from...

Exercise pill a possibility It may be one day be possible to pop a pill to build up muscle tone without the need to take exercise. Scientists say they have discovered how to stimulate muscles in the way that exercise does. An inability to exercise complicates many chronic medical conditions and makes those conditions worse Dr Sanders Williams The breakthrough may offer a way to help bedridden or disabled people get some of the benefits of exercise. However, the researchers are adamant that they are not setting out to create an exercise pill for couch potatoes. The crucial chemical is...