Free Republic

And David Plouffe said Obama considered this guy for Vice President

PHOENIX — A young Iraqi woman whose father allegedly hit her with his car because she had become too Westernized died from her injuries Monday after lying in a coma for nearly two weeks. Noor Faleh Almaleki, 20, underwent spinal surgery and had been in a hospital since Oct. 20, when police say her father ran down her and her boyfriend's mother with his Jeep as the women were walking across a parking lot in the west Phoenix suburb of Peoria. The other woman, Amal Khalaf, is expected to survive. Faleh Hassan Almaleki, 48, fled after the attack but was...

NEW YORK (AP) - Sting isn't a religious man, but he says President Barack Obama might be a divine answer to the world's problems. In an interview, he jokes that Obama was "sent from God," but in a serious tone, he also said that Obama was the best person to handle the world's "mess."

Jeffrey Alan Wagner, doesn’t have a traditional resume for a politician. He works as a baggage handler for Delta Airlines at the airport and runs a video-production company. The Loring Park resident attended his first city council meeting last Friday and says he initially jumped into the race on a lark after drinking too much alcohol on the day of the filing deadline. “Do you have to be able to spell Minneapolis to be a city council member?” he laughs. Wagner has not raised any money or sought any political endorsements. But the 42-year old insists he is running a...

Obama/Waxman push $3,100 per-family tax by Memorial Day! From the Desk of: Steve Elliott, President, Grassfire.org Alliance Our sources are telling me that President Obama and Rep. Henry Waxman are pushing for a key vote on the Carbon Tax BEFORE Memorial Day -- a tax that studies show will cost each family $3,100 each and every year. Last week, Obama met behind closed doors with House Democrats to pressure them to pass the Carbon Tax. Now, Waxman is even contemplating skipping the Subcommittee hearing on the $2 trillion Carbon Cap and Trade Tax and fast-tracking this new tax straight to...

A church in Ashland, Ore., can import and brew a hallucinogenic tea for its religious services, under a federal court ruling issued March 19. Judge Owen M. Panner issued a permanent injunction that bars the federal government from penalizing or prohibiting the Church of the Holy Light of the Queen from sacramental use of "Daime" tea. The church, which blends Christian and Brazilian indigenous beliefs, uses tea brewed from the ayahuasca plant in their services. The tea contains trace amounts of the chemical dimethyltryptamine, or DMT. According to the church's lawsuit, the tea is the central ritual and sacrament of...

In today's Huffington Post is Joseph A. Palermo's "Cheney, Rove, and Fleischer and the Importance of Net Neutrality." Net neutrality, you see, is yet another way the Left hopes to silence their opposition -- and Palermo calls on Obama's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to do exactly that. I guess he gets partial credit for honesty. And if this latest example of the Left's rush to suppression via Obama's FCC makes you think of the old Censorship Doctrine or any of the new ones -- "localism," "diversity in media ownership" and serving the "public interest" -- well, it should.

EVEN in a culture in which sex toys are a booming business and Oprah Winfrey discusses living your best life in the bedroom, a coed live-in commune dedicated to the female orgasm hovers at the extremes. The founder of the One Taste Urban Retreat Center, Nicole Daedone, sees herself as leading “the slow-sex movement,” * * *

PETA, the animal rights activist group, has targeted the DS and Wii franchise, Cooking Mama, in its latest campaign against animal cruelty. The groups browser-based game, Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals, features a likeness of the character brandishing a kitchen knife, plucking the feathers and taking out the giblets from a turkey, presumably in preparation for the US holiday, Thanksgiving, of which it is the traditional meal. "Why is PETA picking on poor Mama?" the company explained in a statement. "Because the games are so heavy on dishes made from dead animals that the only things missing are the blood...

DEMOCRATS: MoveOn.org claims to have “bought” your political party. What are you going to do about it?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, there is no consensus outside the United States that Islamist militants from al Qaeda were responsible, according to an international poll published Wednesday. http://www.newsmeat.com/news/meat.php?articleId=32140442&channelId=2951&buyerId=newsmeatcom&buid=3281

Ramsey County sheriff's deputies found weapons and devices to disable buses - among other items - in searches in the Twin Cities last night and today. Authorities said the items came from "key members of the RNC Welcoming Committee," a self-described anarchist group. Five people have been arrested and four properties have been searched, according to the sheriff's office. At 8 a.m. today, the sheriff's office executed search warrants at three Minneapolis homes - 2301 23rd Ave. S., 3500 Harriet Ave. and 3240 17th Ave. S. The FBI, Minneapolis police and the Hennepin County sheriff's office assisted them. "The 'Welcoming...

Saudi Arabia's religious police have announced a ban on selling cats and dogs as pets, or walking them in public in the Saudi capital, because of men using them as a means of making passes at women, an official said on Wednesday. Othman al-Othman, head of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in Riyadh, known as the Muttawa, told the Saudi edition of al-Hayat daily that the commission has started enforcing an old religious edict. He said the commission was implementing a decision taken a month ago by the acting governor of the capital,...

Group wants Wi-Fi banned from public buildings A group in Santa Fe says the city is discriminating against them because they say that they're allergic to the wireless Internet signal. And now they want Wi-Fi banned from public buildings. Arthur Firstenberg says he is highly sensitive to certain types of electric fields, including wireless Internet and cell phones. "I get chest pain and it doesn't go away right away," he said. Firstenberg and dozens of other electro-sensitive people in Santa Fe claim that putting up Wi-Fi in public places is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The city...

A major airline is under fire from environmentalists for flying an aircraft across the Atlantic with only five passengers on board. American Airlines has been accused of reckless behaviour It led to American Airlines being accused of reckless behaviour by green lobby groups. The latest “eco- scandal” flight took place on February 9 after American was forced to cancel one of its four daily services from Chicago to London. While it was able to find places for nearly all the passengers on the fully-booked flight, five still had to be accommodated. Those who did fly were upgraded to the business...

Rasmussen Reports is looking at the impact of Michael Bloomberg and Ron Paul as potential third party or independent candidates in the 2008 elections. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that roughly 15% of voters would currently vote for one of these two candidates in general election match-ups. When the two candidates are mentioned as independent options in match-ups between Mitt Romney and the two Democratic frontrunners, Paul and Bloomberg attract roughly the same level of support. When John McCain is mentioned as the Republican candidate in a match-up with Barack Obama, Ron Paul earns 11% of the...

In May 2001, members of a Northwest group used arson to advance its agenda. They set fire to the Center for Urban Horticulture at the University of Washington because they believed one of the researchers was genetically engineering poplar trees. He wasn't. The arsonists destroyed plants and the research of several people other than the man whose work they targeted. None of their goals was served by the violence. "Misguided" is the word, I believe. I'd even call them ecoterrorists. The crime is back in the news because a woman accused of acting as a lookout for the Earth Liberation...

<snip>Paul's electoral success has befuddled Democrats. They say he routinely opposes bills that would help his sprawling 14th Congressional District, a mostly rural swath of coast that stretches from the northern outskirts of Corpus Christi to Galveston.Last year, Republican appropriators zeroed out millions of dollars in funding for several dredging and port improvement projects in the district - a casualty, Democrats say, of Paul's opposition to government pork even if it benefits his own constituents.Democrat Shane Sklar, a rancher who lost to Paul last year, said the congressman's supporters either didn't believe or didn't care that his votes had made...

Rosie O’Donnell, who abruptly left “The View” on ABC last spring after drawing attention and ratings for her opinions on everything from the Iraq war to her co-hosts, is in serious discussions to return to television atop a new soapbox: a prime-time show on the cable news channel MSNBC, according to executives on both sides of the negotiations who have been briefed directly.

Tonight at Daily Kos, the new mainstream voice of the Democratic Party, they’ve found a new angle from which to attack General Petraeus: Hey, MoveOn! Petraeus Wore Fraud Medal At Testimony.Examining General Petraeus’s medals, his official bios and then comparing three reports of events on 3/30/2003 in Najaf, Iraq - two by prize-winning embedded journalists and one understood to be by Army personnel (which document this diarist will produce to a responsible party at any time) - this diarist cannot conclude other than that General David Petraeus wore a medal for combat valor in his testimony before Congress that was...

Something truly shocking happened on Friday's "Real Time" on HBO. Host Bill Maher called 9/11 truthers "lunatics," and demanded they stop requesting him "raise this ridiculous topic on this show and start asking [their] doctor if Paxil is right for [them]."I kid you not.During Maher's "New Rules" segment, he actually stated video available here, (relevant section begins at 1:46): "Crazy people who still think the government brought down the Twin Towers in a controlled explosion have to stop pretending that I'm the one that's being naïve."The full transcript of this astonishing "New Rule" follows: New Rule: Crazy people who...

Moonbats. Lunatics. Boobs. Bong smokers. Left-bots. Those insults and more are being heaped on the populace of Telluride after the Telluride Town Council became the first in Colorado to vote for an ordinance to impeach President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The council hasn't even approved the symbolic measure on second reading, but that hasn't slowed a furious flurry of e-mails to the town and its newspapers and the cancellation of Telluride vacations by those who have no desire to schuss through politically tinged powder or share high-altitude air with "loony liberals."

SLAY THREAT BY TALIBAN Reuters June 25, 2007 -- KABUL, Afghanistan - The Taliban says it will kill 18 Afghan mine-clearing experts if an investigation shows they're working for U.S.-led forces, officials and the insurgents said yesterday. The 18 "deminers" were taken captive at gunpoint, along with four mine-sniffing dogs on Saturday.

We share common cause with the Islamist terrorists: Far from being unreasonable fanatics, the terrorists fight for the same things we do. We have a common enemy. Ian Buruma, writing in the Financial Times, reveals that “suicide bombers and jihadis” are by their very nature unreasonable. “There is nothing to negotiate with people who wish to kill as many infidels as they can to establish a divine realm of the faithful,” he instructs us. They see “mass murder as an existential act,” he adds. What source is Buruma drawing on to make these extravagant conclusions? I have been paying...

A federal Green party candidate in Vancouver-Kingsway is standing behind a controversial editorial he wrote more than four years ago in which he describes the falling of the World Trade Center twin towers as "beautiful.".... "When I saw the first tower cascade down into that enormous plume of dust and paper, there was a little voice inside me that said, 'Yeah!' When the second tower came down the same way, that little voice said, 'Beautiful!' When the visage of the Pentagon appeared on the TV with a gaping and smoking hole in its side, that little voice had nearly taken...

WASHINGTON -- White House Advisor Karl Rove was the target of a protest on the American University campus Tuesday night, NBC 4 reported. Rove was on the campus to talk to the College Republicans, but when he got outside more than a dozen students began throwing things at him and at his car, an American University spokesperson said. The students then got on the ground and laid down in front of his car as a protest. The students said security officials picked them up and carried them away so Rove could leave. Police said they have dealt with a lot...

A new book climbing the New York Times Bestseller List warns Americans of a minority of religious fanatics who are hijacking a great religion and working to destroy the United States Constitution and set up a theocracy in America. Nonbelievers will be discriminated against or even summarily killed. Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Muhammad Atta? No, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, and Tim LaHaye. ...

"A U.S. based environmental magazine that both former Vice President Al Gore and PBS newsman Bill Moyers, for his October 11th global warming edition of “Moyers on America” titled “Is God Green?” have deemed respectable enough to grant one-on-one interviews to promote their projects, is now advocating Nuremberg-style war crimes trials for skeptics of human caused catastrophic global warming."

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced their alliance against the United States and Britain. The two leaders denounced British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George Bush as “evil.” “We will co-operate to put an end to US and British dominance in the world,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said. “With Iran to the north of the U.S. and British invaders of Iraq and Zimbabwe to the south, we have the enemy encircled.” Mugabe said Iran should be hailed for helping arm the insurgency fighting for the independence of Iraq from the foreign oppressors. “Iran and...

A sampling of the comments at Huffington Post about Saddam’s death sentence. (Hat tip: Right Brain.) Behold, the Democrats’ base. Saddam is a far better man than George W. Bush ever thought about being. By: shrike on November 05, 2006 at 07:58am[...] wow are bush, cheney, rumsfield and rice next?seems to me the killed about as many innocent iraqis as saddam did, and about as many innocent , trusting troops as civilians we lost on 9/11 By: stamper on November 05, 2006 at 07:35am[...] Now how about going after George Bush. By: waxxx on November 05, 2006 at 07:36am[...] The...

A Kansas church group that planned to demonstrate at the funerals of five Amish girls killed in an attack on their one-room schoolhouse has dropped the picket plans, a reversal that came hours after Pennsylvania's governor offered the Amish police protection. Members of the Westboro Baptist Church issued a statement today saying a representative will appear on a nationally syndicated radio talk show hosted by Mike Gallagher instead of picketing the funerals. Gallagher's website indicated the group was offered an hour of airtime tomorrow in exchange for dropping the planned demonstration. In preparation for the demonstration, Governor Ed Rendell said...

The Senate Armed Services Committee defied President Bush on Thursday, with four Republicans joining Democrats in approving a plan for the trial and interrogation of terrorism suspects that the White House has rejected as unacceptable. The Republican rebellion was led by Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, the committee chairman, with backing from Senators John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine. The White House had said their legislation would leave the United States no option but to shut down a C.I.A. program to interrogate high-level terrorism suspects. The vote came on a frantic...

It's been a long summer. The workload has increased as the hairline decreased. There is a change in the weather this week that seems to mark the start of autumn. Time to push aside the paperwork, the reports, the bills, and the everyday world of life. Time to start something nutty... Friday Silliness Begins Now Silly Songs: I Love My Lips

For several days, your Radio Equalizer has been intrigued by a conversation that took place between Bill O'Reilly and syndicated radio talker Laura Ingraham on July 18th's O'Reilly Factor. When asked whether so- called "smear websites" serve to intimidate the opposition by bullying them right off the 'net, Ingraham took issue with O'Reilly, maintaining that a strong backbone is needed to enter the political fray. Today, however, a redesigned hate site truly seems to bolster O'Reilly's case. More on that in a moment.

Americans and others in the West cannot comprehend why anyone would blow themselves up to kill, as often as not, other Muslims. Even if you were convinced that 72 virgins awaited you in paradise, committing suicide for the purpose of murder is so foreign to the Western mind that it remains, for most, outside the realm of any discussion. Clearly, though, the West has witnessed and been victimized by a religion and culture for which this is a perfectly acceptable way to wage war and Islam is all about war, the conquering and reduction of an enemy to submission. The...

EXCLUSIVE More Home Office lunacy Broadmoor ... the grim home of Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe     By GEORGE PASCOE-WATSON Political Editor COPS are desperately hunting FIVE HUNDRED foreign prisoners set free from mental hospitals, it was sensationally revealed yesterday. The shock figure — on TOP of the 1,019 who have been released from jails without being booted out of Britain — sparked uproar last night.Dangermen who have gone free are believed to include murderers, rapists and child-sex perverts.   Bleak ... Rampton, where baby killer Beverley Allitt is heldPicture: REUTERS   They had been held at maximum-security hospitals such...

Vienna - A row erupted on Thursday over plans by animal protectionists to symbolically "crucify" three activists with animal masks in a Good Friday protest outside Vienna's St Stephan's Cathedral. The militant pro-animal group PETA said the activists would be suspended from crosses with crowns of thorns on their heads. The slogan of the protest action would be "We suffer and die for your sins of nourishment." PETA said its aim was to catch the attention of consumers who ignored the suffering of animals. Head of Vienna's central 1st district, conservative People's Party (VP) politician Ursula Stenzel, condemned the plan....

Sometimes it is hard to avoid the crap that's put on television these days. Now, a team of psychics will travel to John Lennon related places, including to India where they will talk to a spirit reader that believes he can contact Lennon from the great beyond for an iN DEMAND Pay-Per-View special. If that's not enough to make your eyes roll, the plan is to not only have this Indian spirit reader contact him, but somehow get John Lennon's spirit to write a new song. The new song will then be composed by a producer in Los Angeles. Infra-red...

Do You Suffer From Bush Derangement Syndrome? Created by Erik Axelson If you think you might have Bush Derangement Syndrome, or BDS, just take this simple self-administered test: 1. Do you interject non sequiters about President Bush, Vice President Cheney or Karl Rove into ordinary conversations without warning? 2. Is the Kerry-Edwards sticker still affixed to your car? 3. Did you replace a faded Kerry-Edwards sticker or an Al Gore/2000 sticker with a new one? 4. Did you vote twice in the 2004 election, once from your primary residence and once from your country home? 5. In the past 60...

An anti-war group that belongs to the umbrella organization United for Peace and Justice (UPJ) has announced that it intends to topple the Bush administration during a March 15 Washington, D.C. protest. In a message headlined "Storm the White House" that appears on the UPJ Web site, the group Political Cooperative is urging its members: "TAKE THE WHITE HOUSE BY STORM, Stop Genocide, Torture and Occupation." The message goes on to explain: "We will not allow the Slave Holders that Still Prevail in this Country to Rule us any longer . . . The Administration is Criminal and if they...

A SAUDI-owned pan-Arab newspaper printed a full page apology from Jyllands-Posten, the Danish daily that first published cartoons of Prophet Mohammed unleashing a wave of fury from Muslims worldwide. "These drawings apparently hurt millions of Muslims around the world, so we now offer our apology and deep regret for what happened because it is far from the paper's intention," said the statement titled "Apology" in big bold letters addressed to Muslim citizens and printed in Asharq al-Awasat. It was signed by the paper's editor-in-chief Carsten Juste and was also posted in Arabic on Jyllands-Posten's website under a link titled "A...

I am an independent journalist who just got a good laugh over the latest "courageous stance" adopted by your student senate. Growing up in Oregon, I was always puzzled by why the lovely neighboring state of Washington seemed so heavily influenced by what I thought was a lunatic fringe. On the one hand William Gates and his baby boy Bill had produced two obscene monopolies, Boeing and Microsoft, and on the other your assorted elected officials seemed more at home in 1960s Communist Albania than the Wobblies "One Big Union" of sainted memory in the Northwest. Now I know what...

12:27 P.M. EST MR. MCCLELLAN: Good afternoon, everyone. Let me begin with one update on the schedule today. The President will today -- or today is submitting his 2006 Economic Report to the Congress. The Council of Economic Advisors will be hosting a press briefing here shortly, at 1:30 p.m. today. Our economy is strong and growing stronger. The U.S. right now is experiencing a very healthy job market, with nearly 4.8 million jobs created since the summer of 2003. And for 2006, the Council of Economic Advisors projects a steady growth rate, in the range of 3.4 percent, which...

THE 12 cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published by a Danish newspaper which have caused outrage in the Muslim world are to be used as a teaching aid in schools, an educational publisher said in an interview published today. They may also be displayed in a museum. "What is happening at the moment has so great a significance that you cannot brush them under the carpet," Peter Mollerup, head of the academic section of the Danish publisher Gyldendal, told the newspaper Politiken. "It is essential that future generations know about these drawings," he said. He said it was not Gyldendal's...

British embassy attacked in Iran capital Wed. 08 Feb 2006 Tehran, Iran, Feb. 08 – Hard-line radical Islamists attacked the British embassy in Tehran on Wednesday, smashing several of its windows, a day after British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned Iran not to make the “mistake” of thinking that the international community would allow it to develop nuclear weapons. The demonstrators who were affiliated to the Revolutionary Guards threw stones and sticks at the embassy while chanting, “Death to Britain”. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors adopted on Saturday a resolution sponsored by London, along with Paris and...

If anyone in the United States questions the propriety of the federal government funding gay snuff films for distribution to schoolchildren, America’s entire mainstream media is there immediately, screaming like scalded monkeys about the end of “freedom of speech.” Why, think of the chilling effect such defunding could have on the whole snuff film industry. And from there it is a steep slippery slope to Orwell’s 1984 and then … death camps for everybody. “I may not agree with what you say,” they often misquote Voltaire, “but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” But when...

The City of Arcata has announced a 2006 New Year’s resolution calling for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard B. Cheney for breaches of constitutional and international law. “I am hoping that it will raise consciousness over the fact that the president has violated the Constitution and I’m hoping that it will inspire other cities to pass similar resolutions,” Arcata City Councilmember Dave Meserve said. Meserve and Arcata City Councilmember Harmony Groves wrote the resolution to reaffirm an earlier one passed in October 2004 that demanded Bush’s impeachment over the administration’s policy regarding the war...

Montreal (CNSNews.com) - Environmental groups attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference have demanded that the U.S. and the other industrialized nations pay a "climate debt" to the poor nations for contributing to catastrophic, human-caused "global warming." "Let's face it, [the developing countries] are not responsible for the problem and yet they are the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change," said Catherine Pearce, international climate campaigner for Friends of the Earth International (FOEI). Pearce spoke with Cybercast News Service at the 11th annual U.N. Climate Change Conference in Montreal. "It is total over-exploitation by the North[ern Hemisphere] and...

Try as Skinner might, there is no way he can shield the overall LOONINESS of DUmmieland from the outside world. Yes, he tries by forbidding 9-11 threads from being posted in the DUmmie GREATEST section but that sure doesn't prevent us from seeing the asylum that is DUmmieland. And the topic about which the DUmmies are nuttiest about are bizarre 9-11 theories. Of course, in the world of DUmmieland the terrorists are NEVER at fault. No. It is the EVIL Bush Regime that Made It Happen On Purpose (MIHOP). A "moderate" in DUmmieland would be those few who think...

The debate over climate change evolved into a battle of the sexes Monday at the 11th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference in Montreal. The spokesman for a feminist-based environmental group accused men of being the biggest contributors to human-caused "global warming" and lamented that women are bearing the brunt of the negative climate consequences created by men. "Women and men are differently affected by climate change and they contribute differently to climate change," said Ulrike Rohr, director of the German-based group called "Genanet-Focal point gender, Environment, Sustainability." Rohr, who is demanding "climate gender justice," left no doubt as to...