Free Republic

Consider nature...as Tennyson saw it, "red in tooth and claw." To glimpse a state of nature as Hobbes imagined it, where human life is "nasty, brutish and short," visit the Whole Foods store on River Road in Bethesda...you will see proof of this social equation: Four Priuses + three parking spaces = angry anarchy. Anger is one of the seven deadly sins. Therefore advanced thinkers are agreed that conservatives are especially susceptible to it. As everyone knows, all liberals are advanced thinkers and all advanced thinkers are liberals. And yet... Recently Paul Schwartzman, a war correspondent for The Post, ventured...

PORT ORCHARD, Wash. (WJZ) ― Baltimore Ravens preseason draft pick Tony Fein was found dead in his Washington State home Tuesday. Andrea Fujii reports he was supposed to be in court Wednesday to face a misdemeanor assault charge. In the pre-season, Fein, 27, looked promising as the Ravens next linebacker, but he was released in the team's final September cut. A month before that, Fein was arrested at Baltimore's Light Street Pavilion near Johnny Rockets. "They asked the subjects to stand up. One of the subjects resisted police, became belligerent. [The sergeant] then asked them to stand again. He resisted...

On Sunday October 11th at 1:00 PM there will be a dedication of the Veteran's Memorial Flag Court. Which has been constructed as the Eagle Scout project of Clifton Romer. The Public is invited as the Flag Court will be dedicated in ancient form be the Worshipful Master and officers of the Lodge. There will be representatives from various military and veterans organizations present.Odenton Masonic Temple, 1206 Stehlik Drive, Odenton, MD 21113

The Armed Forces recruiting center located at 14th and L Streets, NW, Washington, D.C., will be targeted by the SDS tomorrow afternoon as part of their 'Funk the War' protest aimed at undermining support for America in the war on terror.The demonstration will mark the eighth anniversary of the opening Afghan front in the global war on terror. SDS protesters have targeted the 14th and L recruiting center many times before, usually with rocks and paint bombs. At one protest they stormed and ransacked the front part of the center.This is what happened on March 19 last year:DC Recruiting Center...

An animal rights group has declared Baltimore schools the "Most Progressive Public School District of 2009" for going vegetarian in school cafeterias once a week. The "Meatless Monday" menu that Baltimore City Public Schools adopted this school year earned it a "Proggy Award" from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. "Proggy" is PETA shorthand for "progress." Tapping into a national campaign, the "Meatless Monday" program is intended to make lunches more healthful, stretch the district's food budget and raise awareness about the environmental impact of large-scale meat production, Tony Geraci, the district's food and nutrition director, has said. The...

ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, Md., Oct. 2, 2009 – Minutes after the hulking C-17 transport jet rolled to a stop on the tarmac, two oversized ambulances backed up to its rear loading ramp to receive its precious cargo: 23 wounded warriors and sick or injured servicemembers in need of advanced medical care. The 779th Aeromedical Staging Facility at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., transports a severely wounded soldier being medically evacuated from Iraq for advanced treatment care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. DoD photo by Donna Miles  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Most of the patients...

As we gathered Oct. 19 for Week 193, Post Commander Halsey came with the sad news. Another Legionnaire, Francis, had passed away the night before. He seemed in good health for a WWII vet but his heart just gave out. Francis was the Post treasurer for as long as any one could remember and a good supporter of our Saturday morning Support the Troops Rallies. He would come, spend about half an hour with us and then head out to see his wife. She had advance alzheimers and didn’t know Francis anymore. But off he went anyways to see her...

More than a thousand fans of former Maryland governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. are expected to turn out Saturday for a family corn roast, where kids will be able to take pony rides while their parents pose for pictures with the Republican and his wife. Proceeds will go to a campaign account Ehrlich has kept open since his 2006 reelection loss. The event in Reisterstown comes a week after he was the main attraction at a Republican spaghetti dinner in Cockeysville and another event just days before, where he was warmly received over cocktails and hors d'oeuvres by a GOP...

Given the raucous national debate over health care over the summer, it may come as a surprise that most Marylanders are not only solidly in favor of reform, they're also willing to pay for treating conditions that have long been matters of secrecy and shame. A poll released last week by the Open Society Institute of Baltimore showed that even in these tough economic times, 74 percent of Marylanders support including addiction treatment in health care reform, and 62 percent are willing to pay more in monthly health care premiums to make substance abuse treatment more widely available. Anyone who...

Maryland's unemployment insurance tax will more than triple — at a minimum — for Maryland businesses come Jan. 1, the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation said Thursday. Nonprofits and companies that have not laid off anyone in recent years will be billed $187 per employee, up from $51 per employee this year, said Liz Williams, a spokeswoman for DLLR. The tax could be much heftier for Maryland employers that have let workers go in the past three years, as mandated by state law. Williams was uncertain of a maximum amount. The Baltimore Business Journal , a sister paper of...

Earmarks are special instructions in spending bills directing money to projects in representatives' states and districts. Below the list of annual spending bills that follows is a map of earmarks. Select from the pull-down menus to review earmarks by state, by representative, and by status. Click on link for info, statistics and more...

From the point of view of businesses, the Catch-22 of unemployment insurance has always been this: When the economy is at its worst, they are taxed the most. Mark down 2009 as offering no exception to that particular rule. Based on calculations set today, Maryland is poised to raise unemployment insurance premiums to the maximum rate allowed by law in order to replenish a trust fund badly depleted by unemployment claims. In this, neither Gov. Martin O'Malley nor his Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation has any choice. The tax rates are set by a statute last amended four years...

Don’t get me wrong, while I love to see the leftist eat each other alive, we cannot let this leftist protest against Obama go unchallenged. The affect of the leftist protest will result in even stricter Rules of Engagement for our troops, the closing of Gitmo, and Obama looking more like a centralist then the extreme left winger that he is. Our message must reflect our support of our troops’ mission, the damage that will result from the closing Gitmo or from even releasing Gitmo detainees, and that Obama is still a leftist even if he blows off the protestors....

Veteran Washington Post reporter Daryl Fears, part of a two-person writer team, unmistakably wrote that filmmaker John O'Keefe had “said” he “targeted” ACORN, the advocacy group, for his candid-camera expose, because it registered voters to defeat Republicans. O'Keefe said no such thing. It was a non-quote made out of whole cloth by reporter Fears, and published as fact on Sept. 17. Making the falsehood exponentially worse, the Post story then was retailed worldwide by the Associated Press.

In the latest incident of violent rhetoric against the president, an anonymous user of Facebook posted a poll on Saturday asking if Barack Obama should be assassinated. Administrators of the online social networking website took down the poll on Monday, but not before it received 730 responses to the question, “Should Obama be killed?” The identity of the poll’s author is not known, nor are the responses to the poll, which was posted using third-party software unaffiliated with Facebook itself. The incident came to light after the Secret Service received a tip and contacted Facebook. Threatening the life of the...

Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said Monday he can't think of any reason he would stop the execution of Washington, D.C.-area sniper John Allen Muhammad. Muhammad is scheduled to be executed Nov. 10 for the October 2002 killing spree that left 10 dead in the nation's capital, Virginia and Maryland. "I know of nothing in this case now that would suggest that there is any credible claim of innocence or that there was anything procedurally wrong with the prosecution," Kaine said on his monthly call-in radio show on WTOP. Kaine said he would review Muhammad's petition for clemency when he...

A minor revolution, in the form of cheese lasagna, had come to the cafeteria at Hampstead Hill Academy, but the struggle had only just begun. Kitchen staff accustomed to heating pre-made meals had to wrestle with sticky pasta noodles, then brace for balky eaters on this, the first "Meatless Monday" for Hampstead Hill and other Baltimore public schools.

Here is the full text of the ACORN complaint against James O'Keefe, Hannah Giles, and Breitbart.com. ACORN is suing for over $3,000,000 plus litigation costs and requesting appropriate punative damages. They demand a jury trial. The complaint asks the court to enter a temporary restraining order, preliminary and permament injunctions requiring the defendants to cease distributing and broadcasting the oral communications intercepted in the Baltimore offices of ACORN in July 2009, and to make their best efforts to prevent others from distributing and broadcasting said communications. Hannah Giles has launched a legal defense fund. You can donate here.

Friday afternoon was supposed to be a big day for America’s Muslims. For months they planned to rally in Washington before their “big” day. They would meet on the lawn in front of the Capitol building. Naturally the media took dictation from the organizers and dutifully reported “It was estimated that the nation’s capital hosted some 50,000 Muslims for a traditional Friday prayer ritual.” “Our time has come.” Organizers billed it as a gathering of moderate Muslims coming together for a “Day of Islamic Unity” to “inspire a new generation of Muslims.” The said “our time has come.” So how...

Posted by Jason Here is the lawsuit Acorn filed, “Brown Goldstein, and Levy” is the main law firm defending Acorn. They don’t want to put the news of their new client, on their website for obvious reasons. Please do me a huge favor and post this Blog all over the Baltimore Craigslist, lets make sure that law firm’s community knows what they support. http://baltimore.craigslist.org/ [the document is posted at the link]

Chuck at 115 Linden Hall Lane worries about losing the monthly $9,000 infusions of a drug that keeps his lungs from collapsing. Martha, who lives at 113 and is expecting her second child, has had trouble finding a midwife. Thelma, residing at 109, fears being forced into a nursing home because insurance won't cover a home health aide. And Sarah, at 114, out thousands of dollars every year to pay for special services for her autistic son that her insurer won't cover, now faces the heart-stopping proposition of losing that coverage altogethe

Three Essex teenagers were charged Friday with first-degree murder in the strangulation last week of a 25-year-old man in a wheelchair. Baltimore County police identified the three suspects as Keon Torone Samuels, 18, of the 700 block of Walnut Grove Road; Andrew Minh Nguyen, 18, of the 1300 block of Kelly Case Lane; and Marlon Geovany Montes, 19, of the 1300 block of Elsing Road. The victim, Marin Jonathan Lendosky George, was found dead Sept. 18 in his Essex apartment by a maintenance man. Homicide detectives said he had been targeted by the three suspects and murdered in the course...

Experts say the insects are from Asia and first appeared in Allentown, Pennsylvania back in 1996. They then spread throughout our area and beyond. There are no known predators, so the bugs continue to creep into homes through cracks and crevices. Experts say while last year was bad, this year will be worse. "I thought I heard something rattling in the baseboard and there were hundreds in one window," Wade added. Residents say they are under attack inside and outside of their home. "I was battling them out of the way," Milhaupt said. Milhaupt says she snags them with tissue,...

On June 5, 2008, the Starr family's life changed forever. Patrick Starr, father of two and a softball fanatic, was playing his favorite sport when he collided with another player and fell backward, striking his head on the field. The impact caused brain damage that put the Pasadena man into a coma, in which he has remained ever since. Now his wife of 16 years, Beth, is prepared to let him go - but she wanted to be sure she and their children Ashleigh, 15, and Zachary, 8, are financially secure first. "That's what he would want," she said. Starr...

Ann Geddes doesn't want a "fair and balanced" workout. But the 49-year-old worker for a nonprofit agency is having no luck getting the channel changed in front of her favorite rowing machine at a Columbia gym. The television happens to be tuned permanently to Fox News. Geddes, a liberal Democrat and former legislative aide to a Howard County delegate, said she can't stomach the conservative lineup that appears nightly as she gets her exercise. Even though the sound is off, the words scrolling across the bottom of the screen infuriate her.

Rep. Henry Brown (R-S.C.) and his new primary challenger are wasting no time getting started. Kentucky Senate race outsider Rand Paul (R) has now raised more than $1 million, thanks to a more than $185,000 moneybomb yesterday, his campaign announced. Bloomberg holds a sizeable lead, 52-36, over new Democratic nominee William Thompson. New York Gov. David Paterson (D) fires an early salvo in a potential primary for his job, accusing state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo of being behind the White House’s request that Paterson not run for a full term. Maryland state Del. Herman Taylor eyes a primary challenge to...

ACORN filed suit today in Maryland against conservative filmmakers James O’Keefe, Hannah Giles and conservative Web site Breitbart.com for secretly taping the organization’s employees at its Baltimore office. In the complaint, ACORN alleges that the filmmakers entered into the organization’s offices in July with a “hidden camera and microphone” and taped employees Tonja Thompson and Shera Williams. Both employees are listed as plaintiffs on the complaint, filed in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City. ACORN is seeking $500,000 for each employee and $1 million for the organization in damages.

Virginia E. “Ginny” Dauses, the campus minister at St. Mary’s High School in Annapolis, will receive the Culture of Life Medal of Honor Oct. 4 at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Homeland, where Cardinal William H. Keeler, archbishop emeritus of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, will celebrate the Respect Life Mass at 11 a.m. Dauses is being acknowledged for her efforts in mobilizing the youth of the high school, her home parish of St. Mary’s and all of the archdiocese. According to the archdiocesan Respect Life office, 15 young people from St. Mary’s attended the annual March for Life...

While the FReepers from Olney were enjoying ourselves at the Capitol on 9-12, the Legionnaires were holding down the Patriot's Corner in Olney. In fact, they out numbered the Quakers in Olney, 7 to their 6. And No. 6 was iffy. He stood talking with the moonbats but never held a sign. This week’s honor roll call of includes Legionnaires Ed (Army, WWII), Glenn (USMC, WWII), Dave (Army, WWII) and friend, Janet, Halsey (USMC, Korea), Carl (Army, Vietnam) and Bill, (Army - Vietnam). The below pictures are from previous FReeps or this past Saturday’s FReep. BELOW LEFT: Halsey, Janet and...

<p>BALTIMORE — Community activist group ACORN is suing the makers of a hidden-camera video that showed employees of its Baltimore office giving tax advice to a man posing as a pimp and a woman posing as a prostitute.</p> <p>The liberal group contends that the audio portion of the video was obtained illegally because Maryland requires two-party consent to create sound recordings.</p>

Darryl Fears & Carol Leonnig being the Washington reporters who did their level best to make their story about James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles racial: Though O’Keefe described himself as a progressive radical, not a conservative, he said he targeted ACORN for the same reasons that the political right does: its massive voter registration drives that turn out poor African Americans and Latinos against Republicans. “Politicians are getting elected single-handedly due to this organization,” he said. “No one was holding this organization accountable. No one in the media is putting pressure on them. We wanted to do a stunt and...

The Maryland attorney general's office said Monday that it will investigate the local chapter of ACORN, a community organizing group that has come under fire with the release of secret recordings showing its employees advising a couple posing as a pimp and a prostitute. A spokeswoman for Attorney General Doug Gansler said the probe will "involve everything," although she declined to say whether it would include an examination of whether the recordings violated Maryland's law requiring consent from those being audiotaped. --- snip --- Typically, criminal investigations are conducted by local prosecutors. However, Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy has...

Police have filed charges against a Fairfield man who allegedly left three blind and deaf men in a locked car while he ate lunch Sunday at a Frederick, Md. restaurant. Brian T. Fleming, 47, faces three counts of neglect and abuse of vulnerable adults. Fleming worked as a resident assistant for MedSource, a Frederick, Md. company that offers care to people with disabilities. He was responsible for providing direct care to the three men in the car, and had done so for the entire eight years of his employment at MedSource, said Rebecca Guilday, MedSource program director. (snip) Fleming told...

On the eighth anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attack on America, a band of patriots were on a special mission at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in Washington, DC, with America’s wounded warriors. Their mission, the brainchild of 69-year old, decorated Vietnam veteran, George Samek, was to help the wounded warriors’ recovery by providing them with donated laptops with webcams.

Obama open to newspaper bailout bill By Michael O'Brien - 09/20/09 04:24 PM ET The president said he is "happy to look at" bills before Congress that would give struggling news organizations tax breaks if they were to restructure as nonprofit businesses. "I haven't seen detailed proposals yet, but I'll be happy to look at them," Obama told the editors of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Toledo Blade in an interview. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) has introduced S. 673, the so-called "Newspaper Revitalization Act," that would give outlets tax deals if they were to restructure as 501(c)(3) corporations. That bill has...

Metro Delivers Hundreds of Thousands to 9/12 Rally Posted September 15th, 2009 at 4.58pm in Ongoing Priorities. Much has been made over the attendance at the march and rally in DC on September 12. Reports varied, with many on the left clinging to an unofficial DC Fire Department estimate of 60,000 to 70,000. Some reports from overseas went as far as to say two million. However, one completely objective source of information is the number of people who rode Metro, Washington, DC’s mass transit subway system. Washington Metro measures and releases its ridership numbers and these numbers have been used...

A woman carrying a clipboard knocks on a door in Park Heights. Her pitch is direct: "I'm Michelle from ACORN. We're fighting for change in the neighborhood. I wanted to know what you want to see changed." The owner, who has lived in this well-worn rowhouse on Shirley Avenue for 50 years, lets her inside. Soon, Michelle Moore is talking rapid-fire about trash piles and abandoned properties and how elected officials would never allow this sort of thing to happen in stately Roland Park. SNIP Katzenberg and state officials say Maryland ACORN has never received state funding. The bulk of...

For FOUR weeks the patriots at Olney have supported our troops. With this “Home Run” of a report of four weeks, it is a GRAND SLAM of some real neat pictures. WEEK 188, Aug. 15 roll call of our 7 Patriots include Lurker Bill and FReepers Cindy_True_Supporter, Fraxinus, GunsAreOK, Sensei Ern, [Mrs] Trooprally, aka [Mrs] T, and myself, [Mr] T. WEEK 189, Aug. 22 roll call of our 8 Patriots include Legionnaires Dave (Army WWII) and his friend, Janet, Halsey, (USMC, Korea), Lurker Bill and FReepers 3DJoy, Cindy_True_Supporter, [Mrs] Trooprally, aka [Mrs] T, and myself, [Mr] T. WEEK 190, Aug....

As the housing market began booming in mid-2000, Wells Fargo & Co. teamed up with prominent African American commentator and PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley and financial author Kelvin Boston, the host of “Moneywise,”...to host something called “Wealth Building” seminars in black neighborhoods. Smiley was the keynote speaker, and the big draw...Smiley would charge up the audience — and rattle the Wells Fargo executives in attendance — by launching into a story about how he hated banks, and how they used to refuse to lend him money for his real estate projects in Compton, Calif., and elsewhere. After Hurricane...

Zina C. Pierre, a virtual unknown in Annapolis politics whose primary victory this week put her on track to become the city's first African-American mayor, dropped out of the race Friday evening in the wake of revelations of personal financial problems. Pierre was besieged with questions about the foreclosure of her Bowie home and several state tax liens. "Zina Pierre has decided that for personal reasons she will withdraw from the race for the city of Annapolis," said her spokeswoman, Michael Matthews, who declined to comment further. According to city code, the Annapolis Democratic Central Committee must choose a replacement...

Baltimore homicide detectives don't believe a Johns Hopkins University student had "the intent to kill" when he used a samurai sword to confront an intruder outside his home, a police spokesman said Thursday

"I remember thinking, as I kneeled at gunpoint with my hands bound on my living room floor, that there had been a terrible, terrible mistake."

To be sure that we had a parking space close to the Comcast Center, [Mrs] T and I arrived around 7:20AM. And our timing worked. We got a spot within 500 feet of our protest of Obama’s speech at this liberal bastion of “education”. Attendees had already lined up waiting for the doors to open. And the media was all around just waiting to “media” someone. We were there to oblige. By our count, there was at least 15 different media outlets (domestic & foreign) interviewing the groups that eventually showed up. BELOW: Several media outlets waiting for us to...

President Obama's rally at the University of Maryland on Thursday was a highly choreographed campaign event that drew in college students and union members by the thousands. Instead of campaigning for an election, the President was campaigning for health care reform. Obama didn't quite fill the 18,000 seats in UMD's Comcast Center and appeared three hours later than the scheduled 9am start time. It didn't seem to bother the crowd, which performed "waves" around the stadium with their hands to the music of UMD's school band, which played hits like "Sweet Caroline," "Thriller," and "Let's Get Ready To Rumble." It...

"This is certainly nothing to celebrate. The glorification of the incident online and around town belies the horror of the killing and its aftermath. Even if it ultimately is judged to have been legally justified, the question of whether the situation couldn't have been handled differently will remain."

Execution Date Set for John Allen Mohammed Ties to al-Qada and Jamaat ul-Fuqra Established byPaul L. Williams, Ph.D.thelastcrusade.org A Virginia judge has set November 10 as the execution date for John Allen Mohammed, the Beltway sniper who masterminded terror attacks in the Washington, D.C. area that left 10 dead in the fall of October 2002. The time-table of the Beltway killings indicates Muhammad’s ties to ul-Fuqra and other Islamic terrorist groups. He acquired the 1990 Chevy Caprice that he would modify into his killing platform on the first anniversary of 9/11, and killed his first victim - - James...

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has planned a flurry of appearances in the Washington area this weekend, an indicator of the kind of hectic schedule he's been keeping as he looks ahead to a possible presidential bid in 2012. His D.C. itinerary will be dominated by fundraisers, but Romney has planned a pair of high-profile speeches to conservative groups that are sure to draw attention: On Saturday he is slated to address the Values Voters Summit, and on Monday he'll deliver remarks to a luncheon at the Foreign Policy Initiative, a neoconservative think tank founded by William...

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - A Virginia circuit court judge has set a Nov. 10 execution date for John Allen Muhammad, mastermind of the 2002 sniper attacks in the Washington, D.C., area.

Last night while listening to Glenn Beck, he challenged his viewers with a call to action. He ordered us to get off our collective arses and call the media demanding to know if they will cover the ACORN story. This morning, I called the National News desk of the ComPost - I live in Maryland and work in DC. After numerous rings, I finally got voicemail stating to leave a message and number. My message was if the ComPost - I did not call them that on the voicemail - was going to investigate ACORN. I next called the Washington...