Free Republic

You won't find cola, cigarettes or packs of gum in the lonely vending machine on the third floor of the capital's central bus station. Instead, you'll find siddurim, machzorim and other religious books on sale for just NIS 10-15. A vending machine at the Central Bus Station offers travelers Judaic books for sale. Photo: Nadia Beidas The vending machine is there because of Meoros HaDaf HaYomi, an organization dedicated to spreading the study of Judaism in general and Gemara in particular. HaDaf HaYomi has more than 500 classes around the country and publishes books, videos and audio clips on the...

"Criminal Chicago Machine" has filled the state with UAW,"acorn cheats", lawyers & other thugs, spending millions for adds and "encouragement" to elect "their choice" in Georgia. Goons from the north are Intimidating and threatening too. They stole the election in OHIO. With the help of "friends" in state gov't, and got away with it. "OBAMA'S-CHICAGO" TAKE-OVER MUST BE STOPPED! They are stealing the Senate election in Minnesota RIGHT NOW Every states right. Every individual right. Is at risk. Now they intend to control the results of Georgia's election process. DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS MUST COME TOGETHER AND FIGHT It doesn't matter...

Conservative columnist David Frum makes a clear point: It doesn't matter whether Barack Obama is a Marxist, or how well acquainted he is with Bill Ayers. What matters is that he has risen to national prominence from the political and cultural sewer that is The Democratic Machine of Chicago. A Political Sewer: Democratic corruption in Chicago is legend: The Democratic Machine has raised voter fraud to an art form. Dead people voting, shady real estate deals, and the famous patronage system that punishes government job seekers for belonging to the wrong political party. The illegal diversion of taxpayer money and...

NISKAYUNA, New York (AP) -- On a bank of the Mohawk River, a windowless industrial building of corrugated steel hides something that could make floor lamps, bedside lamps, wall sconces and nearly every other household lamp obsolete. It's a machine that prints lights.

Look what I found in the Claw Machine?

In the 1939 classic movie "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington" Frank Capra shows the inspirational story of Jefferson Smith. Here's the capsule from the website (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031679/plotsummary) written by James WU: "Naive and idealistic Jefferson Smith, leader of the Boy Rangers, is appointed on a lark by the spineless governor of his state. He is reunited with the state's senior senator--presidential hopeful and childhood hero, Senator Joseph Paine. In Washington, however, Smith discovers many of the shortcomings of the political process as his earnest goal of a national boys' camp leads to a conflict with the state political boss, Jim Taylor....

The government's star witness in the corruption trial of Antoin "Tony" Rezko took the stand Tuesday and in just 48 minutes laid out a stunning personal tale of bribery, treachery, rampant drug abuse and a precipitous fall from grace. In a brief but vivid prologue to what is expected to be days of testimony, one-time political insider Stuart Levine said he had illegally greased contracts to sell tires to the city's Streets and Sanitation Department and supply school buses to the Chicago Board of Education and even health insurance to members of a postal workers union. Levine, 62, identified one...

LANSING - Michigan jumped ahead of the primary fray Tuesday when Gov. Jennifer Granholm signed a bill setting the primary date for January 15. Despite public statements from most leading Democratic presidential contenders to skip Michigan if the primary date came before the traditional early states, Granholm believes every credible candidate will campaign in the state. "An early Michigan primary can lead to greater emphasis on issues that matter to all Americans," Granholm said in a statement released to the media. "We want candidates to talk about how they plan to enforce trade policies that are so critical to our...

Labor - A mechanical grape harvester could be the answer to a shortage of farmworkers in Oregon's vineyards Surrounded by shiny new tractors, Carl Capps spends most days talking about horsepower, hydraulics and transmissions. He paid little attention to anti- and pro-immigrant-legalization activists who marched at the state Capitol. Then the immigration debate came to him last fall, after he sold a quarter-million-dollar machine that harvests wine grapes -- the first in the Willamette Valley. The New Holland Braud grape harvester can do the work of 40 handpickers in a fraction of the time. Suddenly, vineyard owners were calling Capps...

Dumbest poll question ever.... Go to: http://www.nbc5.com Scroll down to lower right. Do you think corruption is a big problem in Cook County politics? Yes No

By unwittingly angering Muslims with his comments on Islam, Pope Benedict XVI has shown that he has yet to shake off his academic theological roots and master the global media machine with the same deftness as his predecessor. In clinging to theology and orthodoxy, the bookish Benedict has shown little regard for media management in getting his message across, unlike the communications-savvy John Paul II. Benedict railed Muslims when he quoted a 14th-century Christian emperor who said the Prophet Mohammed had brought the world only "evil and inhuman" things, portraying the Islam he founded as a religion which endorses violence,...

Convoy of fear driven out by war machine By Tim Butcher, in Tyre, southern Lebanon (Filed: 21/07/2006) It was the terrified faces of the children pressed against the car windows yesterday looking up for Israeli aircraft that showed this was no ordinary seaside drive. Thousands of Lebanese fled in fear up the country's Mediterranean coast road, pathetically waving white towels and pieces of clothing as if that could protect them from the force of the Israeli war machine. A family flee their village in southern Lebanon Bumping past craters ripped deep into the road by Israeli bombs, the stream of...

The explosion Saturday blew off the door to a laundry room in the man's apartment in the Summit-University neighborhood, Deputy Chief Mike Hogan said. There was no damage to the six apartment units in the building or other injuries. The 49-year-old man had what appeared to be second-degree burns on up to 5 percent of his lower legs, Hogan said. Paramedics took him to Regions Hospital. Described by neighbors as a

HOUSTON - The automated signature machine did it. Attorneys for Kenneth Lay suggested bank loan documents containing terms he allegedly violated actually were signed by an automatic signature device in the Enron Corp. founder's office and not by him. Lay went on trial Thursday on one count of bank fraud and three counts of making false statements regarding personal banking issues. The trial, expected to wrap up as early as Tuesday, got under way the day after jurors began deliberating the nearly four-month-long fraud and conspiracy case of Lay and former Enron Chief Executive Jeffrey Skilling. Lay is charged with...

IT MIGHT SURPRISE you that Chicago, known for its rough-and-tumble futures pits and passionate support for free-market capitalism, has been slowly morphing into a borderline socialist society where every aspect of private life is tightly controlled by the state. We first noticed it a few years ago, when we outlined the Chicago City Council's attempt to ban smoking at all bars and restaurants. Of course, smoking in any large buildings and workplaces had already long since been outlawed. Score one for the socialists. Thanks to opportunistic local politicians and an aggressive lobbying effort from liberal think tanks, the smoking ban...

The Stanford University Symbolic Systems Program and the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence announced today the Singularity Summit at Stanford, a one-day event free to the public, to be held Saturday, May 13, 2006 at Stanford Memorial Auditorium, Stanford, California. The event will bring together leading futurists and others to examine the implications of the "Singularity" -- a hypothesized creation of superintelligence as technology accelerates over the coming decades -- to address the profound implications of this radical and controversial scenario. "The Singularity will be a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its...

Options for a coming singularity include self-destruction of civilization, a positive singularity, a negative singularity (machines take over), and retreat into tradition. Our urgent goal: find (and avoid) failure modes, using anticipation (thought experiments) and resiliency -- establishing robust systems that can deal with almost any problem as it arises. In order to give you pleasant dreams tonight, let me offer a few possibilities about the days that lie ahead—changes that may occur within the next twenty or so years, roughly a single human generation. Possibilities that are taken seriously by some of today's best minds. Potential transformations of human...

Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson this morning, saying an investigation is needed to get to the bottom of a recorded conversation in which Johnson said Supreme Court justices had assured him they would not overturn state law to allow same-sex marriage. Senators Claire Robling, R-Jordan and Mike McGinn, R-Eagan, both assistant minority leaders, said in a statement released this morning that "the facts have been elusive. Sen. Johnson's story has been constantly evolving. The integrity of the Minnesota Senate and the Minnesota Supreme Court has been diminished."

An electronic voting machine was stolen from the home of a Dallas County elections judge over the weekend. Sgt. Don Peritz, a Dallas County Sheriff spokesman, said the judge notified sheriff's dispatchers Sunday afternoon that the iVotronic touch-screen machine was stolen from his home in the 200 block of East 5th Street.