Free Republic

I thought guns were evil. Then a tiny red bird came to call, and I had to rethink everything. Feb. 12, 2007 issue - Guns are evil. This inviolate "death and taxes" truth sustained me—a peace-loving granny, a tree-hugging liberal—through 64 years of protected, upper-middle-class subsistence. It was the one fixed point on a vacillating compass of relative morality until, one day, a tiny bird, the merest wisp of red plumage, tore away my comforting absolute and aligned me squarely with the NRA supporters, Second Amendment defenders and pro-gun crusaders I had reviled.

Dozens Detained In Immigration Raid POSTED: 8:32 am CST January 31, 2007 UPDATED: 5:59 pm CST January 31, 2007 HOUSTON -- Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained dozens of suspected illegal workers at a northeast Harris County business on Wednesday morning, KPRC Local 2 reported. Dozens of agents were at Republic Waste Services in the 2000 block of Wilson Road near Will Clayton Parkway before 7 a.m. Employees said agents were looking for people who were not legally working at the company. "They were checking for documentations and everything," Joe Rozema said. "A bunch of people were rounded up." Rozema...

3 Gitmo Detainees Reportedly Hang Selves (AP) WASHINGTON Three Guantanamo Bay detainees hanged themselves with nooses made of sheets and clothes, the commander of the detention center said Saturday. They were the first reported deaths among the hundreds of men held at the base in Cuba — some of them for up to 4 1/2 years and without charge. Two men from Saudi Arabia and one from Yemen were found "unresponsive and not breathing in their cells" early Saturday, according to a statement from the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command, which has jurisdiction over the prison. Attempts were made to revive...

The governor of Texas wants to turn all the world into a virtual posse. Rick Perry has announced a $5 million plan to install hundreds of night-vision cameras on private land along the Mexican border and put the live video on the Internet, so that anyone with a computer who spots illegal immigrants trying to slip across can report it on a toll-free hot line. "I look at this as not different from the neighborhood watches we have had in our communities for years and years," Perry said last week. Some say it is a dangerous idea and a waste...

AND so all good (and tense and terrible and exciting) things must come to an end. When I began in this job in December 2003, I had a list of about 20 topics I knew I wanted to address. [snip] 2. Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults. Maureen Dowd was still writing that Alberto R. Gonzales "called the Geneva Conventions 'quaint' " nearly two months after a correction in the news pages noted that Gonzales had specifically...

The countryside is plastered with slogans telling villagers that small families are the road to happiness and that daughters are just as good as sons but there is little evidence such sloganeering has changed the preference for boys. Government figures show 119 boys are born in China for every 100 girls. Beijing want to reverse the imbalance by 2010.

JIM CARREY TELLS '60 MINUTES': MORE GOD, LESS PROZAC Thu Nov 18 2004 16:29:15 ET Jim Carrey says the anti-depressant Prozac that he took may have helped him at one time, but he's better off without it now. In fact, says the actor, a no-drugs-or-alcohol policy and a spiritual life are the things that make him feel good. Carrey speaks frankly in a rare one-on-one interview with Steve Kroft to be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, Nov. 21 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. "I was on Prozac for a long time," he tells Kroft. "It may have...

Islamic leaders in the Middle East yesterday denounced the slaughter of children in Russia as 'unIslamic', as commentators asked unusually soul-searching questions about the region and terrorism. Even the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's biggest Islamic group, condemned the bloody siege in Beslan. Its leader, Mohammed Mahdi Akef, said that kidnappings may be justified but killings are not. He added: 'What happened is not jihad [holy war] because Islam obligates us to respect the souls of human beings; it is not about taking them away.' While some Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East have long supported fellow Muslims fighting in Chechnya,...

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Muslims worldwide are the main perpetrators of terrorism, a humiliating and painful truth that must be acknowledged, a prominent Arab writer and television executive wrote Saturday, as Middle East media and officials expressed horror at the bloody rebel siege of a Russian school. Unusually forthright self-criticism followed the end of the hostage crisis, along with warnings that such actions inflict more damage to the image of Islam than all its enemies could hope. Arab leaders and Muslim clerics denounced the school seizure as unjustifiable and expressed their sympathy. Russian commandos stormed the school Friday in Beslan,...

Al-Arabiya GM: Muslims are main perpetrators of terrorismThe Associated Press Egypt - Muslims worldwide are the main perpetrators of terrorism, a humiliating and painful truth that must be acknowledged, a prominent Arab writer and television executive wrote Saturday, as Middle East media and officials expressed horror at the bloody rebel siege of a Russian school. “Our terrorist sons are an end-product of our corrupted culture,” Abdulrahman al-Rashed, general manager of Al-Arabiya television wrote in his daily column published in the pan-Arab Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper. It ran under the headline, “The Painful Truth: All the World Terrorists are Muslims!” Al-Rashed ran...

Disbelief and anger greet arrest of devout Muslim Matthew Taylor Saturday November 29, 2003 The Guardian The image of Sajid Badat as an Islamist terrorist was met with disbelief and anger in his home town of Gloucester yesterday. Since the arrest on Thursday morning the authorities have described the man who was arrested as a potential suicide bomber with links to al-Qaida. According to some reports he was planning to blow himself up at a football match or target the royal family or the government's listening centre GCHQ, in Cheltenham. But as forensic specialists continued to scour the house in...