Free Republic

Nine months after Sen. Paul Wellstone's fatal plane crash, some DFLers are outraged by what they consider disrespectful bumper sticker messages printed in Wellstone's green and white. One spotted on a car parked near the State Capitol reads: "It's time to park the bus," a reference to Wellstone's campaign vehicle. Another spotted around town said, "He's dead, get over it."

Chief Wiggle's, a 30+ year veteran of the guard, is furious at the reports from Amnesty International and the Red Cross. He has decided to set them straight, and this is a guy in the know considering he is a Chief Interrogator for the US Army! A quote from what he says: "This is a prisoner of war camp, now transitioning over to being a prison. If you were to look at a list of why these men are being detained you would see that most of them are here because they have either committed some violent crime or have...

Duncan of Fairfax, Va., wants my thoughts on Rush Limbaugh being added to ESPN's Sunday NFL Countdown. "Personally, I'm getting ready to break out the pitchfork and find me a couple of torches," he writes, "but I suppose I'll have to make do with just not watching the show." Careful about hints of terrorism, Dunc. Not only the FBI, but the Justice Department monitors columns such as these for any hints of terrorist threats. To say nothing of the Department of Agriculture and the Attorney General's Office, which is exactly what I'd like to say about them. Not that I...

Being offended is a substitute for thinking http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- BEING OFFENDED means never having to answer an argument. The conversation went something like this. Caller: "I want you to know your column on drug legalization offended me." Me: "Let me get this straight. Because I said drugs are soul-deadening and far too lethal to legalize, you were offended?" Caller: "That's right. It made me want to hurl." Charming, the way these Gen-Xers express themselves. I don't hear this more than a few dozen times a week: "I'm offended." "I'm deeply offended." "I was really offended." "I found your column very...

In July 2002, after decades of dieting, Jerrold Nadler, (aka the Waddler, Jerry the Hut) US Representative from New York's 8th Congressional, weighed 338 pounds. Then, as now, he was 5 '4" tall. In August 2002, Mr. Nadler underwent gastric surgery, a "sleeve job" that reduced his stomach to a small pouch. By mid-November 2002, he had lost 61 pounds. In the nine months following, he lost an additional 14 pounds. That's an average of 1.5 pounds per month. The likelihood is that he lost no weight at all for some months. He now weighs about 263 pounds and is...

In the four days since U.S. forces succeeded in tracking down and killing Uday and Qusay Hussein, elected Democrats have been noticeably reluctant to praise President Bush for a job well done. But at least one Democrat has now stepped up to the plate to give credit where he says credit is due - to former President Bill Clinton.

However, Johnny loves “France and [to] be living in a tiny village with nothing around. There is still the possibility to live a simple life. You can go to the market, walk about, buy fruits and vegetables -- the things they did 100 and 200 years ago. We have moments when we're sitting in our house and our kids are playing, and we look at one another and think, 'Thank God we escaped.’” For Johnny, buying a cucumber or a cabbage from a market is primitive living and living and being in America is a place and state of being,...

The publication of evidence from the BBC journalist at the heart of the David Kelly affair was delayed yesterday following a personal plea from the corporation's chairman that publication might affect the journalist's health. In a surprise move, the Commons foreign affairs select committee said it would not publish the transcript of last Thursday's evidence session with BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan that ended with the committee expressing serious doubts about his reliability as a witness. Although the committee had pledged to publish the evidence this week, it reluctantly decided not to do so after Gavyn Davies, the BBC chairman, privately...

BRUNSWICK -- If there's one thing an armed pilot cannot do, it is allow a terrorist to take the gun away. That's why 12 pairs of sweaty airline pilots punched, grabbed and pulled at each other at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center here Wednesday. They were learning how to ward off an attacker trying to get their pistols. The pilots are part of the latest group of 44 training for federal approval to carry guns in the cockpit to deter terrorist attacks -- and defend their planes and passengers if one occurs.

I stand behind the yellow line at the Fry's pharmacy because Hipaa says so. Hipaa is not a large store greeter or immigrant pharmacist from Uzbekistan. The Feds have been at it again, regulating their little hearts out on medical care, something they will tinker with until we have a quality health care system like our neighbors to the North, one in which we wait six weeks for an appendectomy, the expedited schedule for surgery due to pain. This time the Feds developed the Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act - Hipaa. Hipaa does many things, including lots of boilerplate notices...

The city of Las Vegas has concluded that a local company’s claims that it was charging men up to $10,000 to “hunt” naked women with paintball guns was a hoax, it was reported Friday. “IT WOULD APPEAR from all sorts of admissions ... that the purported Hunt for Bambi was a scam, that it was all staged, that there were actors and actresses and there wasn’t even the real shooting of paintballs,” Mayor Oscar Goodman told the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Thursday. City officials told the newspaper that the mastermind of the scam, Michael Burdick, acknowledged that some hunts were...

Twice this week, the alert sounded in the Houston area that a child had gone missing. That meant a busy week for Bob and Gay Smither, who are ever ready to spring into action and mobilize a search.....

Limp 'Biscuit' - 'Seabiscuit' pulls up lame, courtesy of a director who should have reined in the sentimentality By Christopher Kelly Star-Telegram Film Critic [Review of movie snipped to avoid plot giveaway - last paragraph of review follows:] Considering the heartless alternatives out there, I suspect this kind of big, sloppy treacle will probably go over big. All that proves is that no one ever went broke by pandering to white, middle-class audiences. Indeed, from its stately pace to its gleaming photography to the fact that the only African-American character seems to have stepped out of a regional theater production...

Someday in the not too distant future, Iraqi parents will tuck their children into bed at night and, like Scheherazade, tell them tales of Uday and Qusay, the notorious sons of Saddam. This is how people talk about them even now. Uday, 39, was the loud, preening one. Qusay, 37, was the quiet, calculating one. Both were pampered sons of a murderous tyrant, handed the power to inflict pain and demand pleasure at will from an early age. What could anyone expect? They learned to abuse their power with pathological glee and unbridled egotism. Wouldn’t anybody? Here’s a small example:...

A Thrilling Return To Quality Movie Making-MALCOLM JOHNSON-Courant film critic Few sights deliver more heady visual excitement than a horse and rider....

PARIS When two virulent opponents of American involvement in Iraq like President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad of Malaysia get together, the language of disapproval of U.S. policy normally gets a full workout. But this was a notch above standard. Chirac, in Putrajaya on Monday to receive the Kuala Lumpur World Peace Award from Mahathir, said, according to Agence France-Presse, that the world could no longer submit to the law of the jungle and needed to create an international organization that could eliminate unilateralism. For Chirac, what was required instead, according to the report in AFP's French-language...