Free Republic

This morning, Representative Tom Delay was indicted in an alleged conspiracy to funnel soft money into Texas state legislature races. While the charge may be without merit and politically motivated, the initial damage was done. Almost immediately, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert announced that David Dreier, a socially moderate amnesty supporting California Congressman, would be Delay'’s temporary successor. Since Delay and others knew of the pending indictment, it is clear that the House leadership and White House anointed the smooth-talking Drier. The House Republican Conference was supposed to accept the nomination. However, members voiced their dissent at the conference...

The people who have been transcribing the radio traffic at #interdictor-scanner are needing some relief. They need people who can type (>50wpm), who have an IRC client. If you are able and willing, please go to #nola-intel-help at irc.freenode.net.

Although I favor the abolishment of the IRS altogether, and that the IRC should be substituted by a flat tax or a national sales tax to fund our national defense and what should be the very limited functions of the federal government, while the IRS is still on the books, the tax base should be on a level basis for all U.S. Citizens. The U.S. Citizens of the Territory/Possession/Commonwealth/State (take your pick) of Puerto Rico already pay most federal taxes, such as Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment and income tax on non-Puerto Rico income. In 1952 the people of Puerto Rico...

For those who may like a "live chat" now and then, there is an IRC (internet relay chat) channel up on irc.freenode.net:6667 called #freepers.It's not part of free republic, nor owned or operated by anyone associated with free republic. It's just a place for freepers to "chat live" with each other.Some IM clients for windows can do IRC, as well as mIRC (stand alone client for windows), along with many IRC clients for Linux and Mac. (google "IRC" and "clients" to get more info on IRC and how it works)See you there!server: irc.freenode.net:6667, and /join #freepers

Early on the morning of March 16th, 1984, William Buckley left for work at the American embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. Officially, Mr. Buckley, a decorated veteran of the Special Forces, served as the political officer at the embassy. In reality, however, Mr. Buckley was the embassy’s CIA station chief. On his way to the compound, Buckley’s car was stopped by a group of masked men, who forced him from his car at gunpoint. His assailants would later be identified as terrorists from the group Islamic Jihad, which served as an alias for the real perpetrators, Hezbollah. The circumstances surrounding the...

Security experts are tracking a new malware variant, targeting the MySQL open-source database, which has likely infected thousands of Windows systems. According to a report posted on the SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center site by SANS chief technology office Johannes Ullrich, the attacking code is a variant of an existing strain of nework "bot" known as "Wootbot." This variant is especially notable, said experts, since it is one of the first to target MySQL. As with similar types of malware, the bot runs in the background, allowing MySQL to run normally while it contacts a remote Internet Relay Chat (IRC)...

A university in New York has been funded to keep tabs on IRC conversations with money channelled through the National Science Foundation by the CIA, documents have revealed. The CIA is quietly funding federal research into surveillance of Internet chatrooms as part of an effort to identify possible terrorists, newly released documents reveal. In April 2003, the CIA agreed to fund a series of research projects that the documents indicate were intended to create "new capabilities to combat terrorism through advanced technology". One of those projects is research at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., devoted to automated monitoring...

In case anyone else feels like hanging out on IRC tonight, fire up mIRC, connect to an EFnet server and type /join #freepers Liberals will be banned, of course. I hope this vanity is ok on General/Chat...

For more than a decade, federal authorities painstakingly built a criminal case against the man they suspected of being the main drug supplier to the Hell's Angels of Minnesota. After spending untold hours on surveillance, cultivating informants inside the outlaw motorcycle gang, digging through garbage for clues and unraveling cryptic financial transactions, prosecutors this summer prepared to take the case to trial. Then, on the brink of proceedings in U.S. District Court in St. Paul, veteran IRS special agent Jim Shoup came forth with a stunning confession: He was tangled in a romance with the wife of the alleged drug...

Fallujah, Iraq - A U.S. AC-130 gunship raked Iraqi insurgents Friday night after hundreds of women and children fled the besieged city Fallujah during a U.S.-declared pause in the marine offensive. On the anniversary of the fall of captive Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's regime, Baghdad and parts of central Iraq were chaotic. At a square in the capital where Saddam's statue was toppled a year ago, soldiers took down a new icon: pictures of the radical Shiite Muslim cleric whose followers have risen up against coalition forces in the south. Gunmen running rampant on Baghdad's western edge attacked a fuel...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (Reuters) - Her name is Susie. Her profile on Yahoo says she's a student in Australia, "single and looking." The problem is what she's looking for. If her profile is to be believed, Susie is just 13, yet she has been found freely surfing "adult" Yahoo chat rooms where, in some cases, the topics are often too twisted to list in a family publication.I worry about kids like her. I'll bet her parents don't know what she's up to.Keeping an eye on children as they surf the Internet has always been a challenge. Savvy kids know how to...

Recent intelligence information revealing dramatic progress in Iraq's nuclear- weapons program has given a new urgency to U.S. and British efforts to build international support for war with Iraq, according to Iraqi opposition leaders interviewed by Insight in London. The information, from recent defectors and other sources working with the broad-based Iraqi National Congress (INC), indicates that Baghdad has made "a recent breakthrough" in production of the fissile material needed to produce the bomb. It was buttressed on Sept. 24 when the British government released an "unprecedented" white paper based in part on classified intelligence information on Iraq's weapons of...

In the past weeks, Palestinian Arab towns and cities were the scenes of intense combat as Israeli forces fought to track down terrorists and destroy their hideouts and bomb factories. The vast stores of armaments, explosives and paraphernalia of suicide bombers, as well as the presence of the terrorists themselves, show that Israel was entirely justified in attacking these sources of terror. But in the aftermath of the fighting, the devastation of war has left many of the inhabitants of these places destitute and homeless. For those who think that Israel has no right to defend itself against terrorism, any...