Free Republic

AN Indonesian villager had to be rushed to hospital after a horse bit off one of his testicles during a freak attack.

I have spent my entire 35 year professional life developing and implementing energy policies vital to our state. So it pains me to now see California taking an unfortunate misstep: embracing participation in the Western Climate Initiative. WCI, developed by seven U.S. states (California is joined by Oregon, Washington, Utah, Montana, New Mexico and Arizona) and several Canadian provinces along the western rim of North America, proposes to combat global warming – independently from their national governments. Herein lays the first reason I oppose the WCI: with the likelihood of federal pre-emption with President Obama and the 111th Congress set...

A California appellate court ruling last week supports a lawsuit challenging a state law that grants illegal immigrants heavily subsidized tuition at California public universities and colleges. The court found that the 2001 law conflicts with federal law. As I read the ruling, I asked the question the judges cannot answer - as it is a policy issue best left to elected lawmakers: Why would a state subsidize the college tuition of students who cannot work legally in the United States when they graduate? Does California not have enough educated, angry people? Or does the state have so few angry,...

Like nine other states, California allows students who attend high school in the state for three years and graduate to pay in-state tuition at public universities. Yet a group of out-of-state parents doesn't like the law. The gripe? AB 540 allows kids whose parents entered the state illegally to pay in-state tuition. So they filed a lawsuit in Yolo Superior Court. Lawmakers passed AB 540 because they want kids who were brought to California through no decision of their own and who have little or no connection with their parents' country to be educated, productive members of society. The Superior...

It turns out that the ideal vice presidential candidate for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is the same person as the ideal vice presidential candidate for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), the presumptive Democratic nominee, according to a sophisticated online survey by Affinnova Inc. For both candidates, the best running mate is Colin Powell, a former U.S. Army general and former secretary of state under President George H.W. Bush, according to the survey, which was powered by an Affinnova algorithm it calls "evolutionary optimization."

Tomorrow, after returning from the velvet opulence of the luxury yacht that was their floating refuge for eight days, Charles and Camilla will be back home and enjoying the spacious comforts of Highgrove, where he can disappear thankfully into his garden and she can be alone . . . at last. Oh dear. No one told the Duchess of Cornwall just how suffocating life at sea in a relatively confined space with the Prince of Wales was going to be. She returns from their Caribbean tour a wiser, but somewhat disillusioned, woman. It certainly wasn't the smiling and curious West...

Freddy has taken over our Free Republic! What a nightmare ...

Which spectre haunts financial advisers the most? Terrorism? Global unrest? Not even close. According to a survey of over 200 financial advisers taken in December, their biggest worry is that Hillary Clinton will win the presidential election in November: Nothing worries financial advisers more than the prospect of a Democrat's being elected president in November, according to a quarterly poll by Brinker Capital Inc. The fourth-quarter edition of the Brinker Barometer, which polled 236 advisers in December, found that 22% indicated that a "Democrat in the White House" worried them more than all other economic or geopolitical concerns. Rounding out...

SACRAMENTO -- California schools could face painful mid-year spending cuts of a $1 billion or more as a weakening economy lowers tax revenue forecasts, reducing the Proposition 98 school-funding guarantee. Non-partisan Legislative Analyst Liz Hill said last month that school funding in the current year was about $400 million above the Proposition 98 guarantee. She suggested that lawmakers look at cutting the "over-appropriation" as one way to begin closing a huge budget shortfall now reportedly estimated by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to be about $14 billion over the next 18 months. Hill's estimate was made when the shortfall was believed to...

Barack Obama may have The Bomb. And it’s not aboard the Enola Gay. It’s now aboard the Obama Express campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Suddenly Hillary’s not looking invincible. The secret weapon is, of course, Oprah, the nationally adored talk-show host. She attracted a crowd estimated at almost 30,000 Sunday in Columbia, S.C., after campaigning with him Saturday in Iowa. “There are those who say it’s not his time, that he should wait his turn,” she told the crowd in Columbia. “Think about where you’d be in your life if you’d waited when people told you to.” She added,...

There are many reasons a conservative should not vote for Rudy in the Republican primary but I want to emphasize one reason that has not been stated enough on most of the websites I frequent. He will depress the conservative vote, which will impact most other Republicans running for office. That means any close race that a Republican might have won because of the conservative vote, will go down to defeat because enough conservatives stayed home and did not vote. It is a fact that many voters will not come out to the polls if they feel that there is...

IT WAS always a long shot for supporters of an immigration measure known as the Dream Act to round up the 60 votes needed to advance the bill in the Senate. But it didn't help matters yesterday when the Bush administration, having supported a comprehensive immigration reform bill containing essentially the same provision, came out against the bill on the morning of the vote. This helped quash the hopes of tens of thousands of promising young people who find themselves, through no fault of their own, in this country illegally. The failure of the Dream Act -- it got just...

<p>Wednesday Cloture Vote Set For DREAM Act Amnesty Bill (October 23) Last night, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) filed to invoke cloture on S. 2205, Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin’s (D-Ill.) new stand-alone DREAM Act amnesty bill. The cloture vote, for which 60 YES votes are necessary to prevent a filibuster on the measure, is set for Wednesday, October 24. Reid is attempting to bring this nightmarish amnesty bill to the floor under Senate Rule XIV without it ever having been debated in committee... Click here for more background on the DREAM Act.</p>

Presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., laughs as she talks to the media after meeting with Missouri clergy Oct 5, 2007 in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Fact: 54% of voters in the 2004 election were women and that’s good news for Hillary Clinton (D-NY). According to various news reports, Clinton employs six full-time staffers specifically for women’s outreach -- more than any other candidate -- to reel in the female vote. For now, Clinton leads Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) in the Democratic race by a 42-23% (according to the latest RCP poll) margin and will likely take the nomination for 2008. She knows how critical that female vote is, which is why she participated in a Women in Public Policy (WIPP) event yesterday. Clinton used the...

Tell your senator: Vote NO on Senate Amendment 2237Exactly one week ago, I warned about the return of the DREAM Act, which would confer special tuition benefits on illegal alien students despite federal prohibitions on such special treatment. It was September 11 and no one was paying attention, I guess. Well, now bipartisan open-borders lawmakers in Congress are poised to slip the DREAM Act (Senate Amendment 2237 text here) in during consideration of the Department of Defense authorization bill (H.R. 1585) this week. Numbers USA has the lowdown. The sponsor is Dick Durbin. Open-borders Orrin Hatch has sponsored previous DREAM...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency following the collapse of one of the San Francisco Bay area's most traveled sections of freeway, as workers began clearing debris from a fiery accident that destroyed an important commuter link.A freeway interchange that funnels traffic off the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge collapsed onto another highway ramp in Oakland, Calif., Sunday, April 29, 2007, after a gasoline tanker truck overturned and caught fire.

Does anyone else out in FR have terrorism "dreams" I started having them like 2 nights after Sept 11 2001 and they never went away. Sometimes they are soo eeerie. I had a big increase in the frequency of the dreams right before the attacks in London. I will tell you this. I have been sleeping a lot less and a lot less comfortably since the Democrats took over.

[url=http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnw/20061114/pl_usnw/dnc_statement_on_giuliani_s_potential_presidential_bid331_xml]Rudy Giuliani[/url] draws large poll numbers across the country and across the board. Although their combined RINO quotient is high and could spawn a third-party revolt if they got nominated, John McCain and Giuliani would be a dream team. That is, if one of these two egomaniacs could be persuaded to take the VP slot on the 2008 Republican ticket! Despite his frankly left-wing takes on many social issues, I like his support of school vouchers as this product of parochial schools does the right thing to enable kids to escape dead-end public education, over-funded and under-delivering because of huge...

SNIPOscar-winning doc filmmaker Barbara Kopple ("Harlan County USA," "American Dream") teamed up with collaborator Cecilia Peck to co-direct a behind the scenes look at the best-selling female group of all time, "The Dixie Chicks." The film, "Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing" was initially envisioned as a much more modest project, according to the band's Natalie Maines who spoke at a press conference this week at the Toronto International Film Festival. "We originally thought of having a filmmaker [to capture footage] for ourselves or as a supplement to some concert DVD release," said Maines. But Maines' now famous off-handed comment...

The mother of a Marine corporal charged with the murder of an Iraqi along with seven other servicemen says Navy prosecutors are trying to frame the "Pendleton 8" – denying them access to evidence, attempting to coerce confessions and treating them more harshly than terrorist prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Leanne Magincalda, mother of Cpl. Marshall Magincalda, blamed leaks by Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., for creating a climate of witch-hunt hysteria surrounding the case, leading to isolation and harassment of the incarcerated soldiers. She told WND the parents of the eight have seen most of the evidence against their sons, and...

The charismatic war hero who is not afraid to criticise Bush could be just the man for the Republicans NED LAMONT, the winner of the Democratic primary for the Senate in Connecticut, is a lucky man. He has both old and new money; his great-grandfather was a partner in J. P. Morgan’s bank when it was still the most powerful private bank in the world. He has made fortunes in asset management and communications. In his filing, he states modestly that his net worth is between $50 million (£28 million) and $300 million. He was able to outspend Joseph Lieberman,...

David Horowitz and Richard Poe expose the unwritten partnership between Soros and Hillary. The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party by David Horowitz & Richard Poe Nelson Current (August 2006) Hdbk., 304 pgs To condemn as false the entirety of the Left’s attacks on their opponents, the past, our culture, and capitalism is to somewhat overstate the case as, amid the sweltering cauldron of fabrication which so often is their argumentation, a few gray areas exist wherein the rhetoric is more true than false. Perhaps the best example of one...

WASHINGTON -- Democrats are poised to fan out across the country today to tout their ``Six for '06" agenda -- a series of easily digestible policy proposals that party leaders hope will help them shed their reputation for diluting their positions with maddening complexity and nuance. Taking inspiration from the Republicans' 1994 ``Contract With America," Democrats have reduced their policy proposals to a series of short, pithy promises that challengers can offer as the party's vision in an election they want to be determined by national trend lines and issues. ``People want to know what we stand for, but they...

August 2, 2006 Democrats Dream, Everyone Else Pays By Carol Turoff The Democrats "American Dream Initiative" is based on the old carrot-and-stick trick. Dangle other people's money in an attempt to purchase votes and win back Congress. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) has come up with a sure-fire idea to reclaim the White House in 2008. Buy it! "Americans are earning less while the costs of a middle-class life have soared," Clinton shouted into the microphone at a meeting of the Democratic Leadership Council, as she introduced the group's "American Dream Initiative." The centerpiece of the proposal includes a $500 "Baby...

Republicans in Congress are playing a cynical game of politics with the lives of millions of hard-working Americans by attaching a long overdue raise in the minimum wage to fiscally irresponsible tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. President Bush doesn't support an increase in the minimum wage either, and his recent comments on the prosperity of our economy reveal how deeply out of touch his administration is with the lives of working Americans. While the president and the Republican leadership in Congress are promoting more and more tax giveaways for a small number of wealthy Americans that will only increase...

THE CENTER-left Democratic Leadership Council has figured out rightly that the American middle class feels it is too low on the Bush totem pole, so the DLC has devised an American Dream Initiative that promises to relieve the middle class in ways that would never occur to the Bushies -- while helping to elect more Democrats. On the politics, the American Dream Initiative is brilliant. The Bushies clearly don't understand how it looks to the heartland when the administration tries to get rid of half of the IRS auditors who investigate inheritance tax returns. Bush's signing of the bankruptcy bill...

WASHINGTON - Democrats plan to press for a minimum wage increase and "tough, smart" national security in their final push to wrest power from the Republicans in the November elections. House and Senate Democrats will hold a joint meeting on Thursday to discuss events planned for the 100 days leading up to midterm congressional elections and lay out their party agenda, called "A New Direction for America." It's a compilation of positions the party has staked out over the past few months on income, national security, energy, education, health care and retirement accounts. "We're going across the country to make...

DENVER – Moderate Democrats trying to get back into a debate now dominated by liberals offered yesterday what they hope is a centrist path back to the White House, showcasing potential presidential candidates and unveiling a Hillary Clinton-produced “American Dream Initiative” designed to appeal to the middle class. Hillary Clinton The occasion was the annual meeting of the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist group that propelled Bill Clinton to the presidency and has been long favored by the party's officeholders from states that lean Republican. The backdrop for the summer session was the growing pressure from the left to make...

Centrist Democrats, led by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, yesterday unveiled a policy manifesto to win back Congress and the White House and distance the party from its clamorous left wing. Highlights included proposals to make college tuition and home buying more accessible, expand the availability of health care, and provide greater retirement security, all leavened with a smidgen of Bush-bashing. The war in Iraq, the fulcrum for angry splits between liberals and centrists in several races nationwide, was scarcely mentioned. Proposals included directing more federal money to states to lower the costs of college, expanding the home-mortgage...

Testing lines for 2008, Democrats with presidential ambitions accused President Bush and the Republicans of making a mess of the economy and Iraq while arguing that Democrats offer the best hope for a rising middle class that's preferred the GOP. "They're not taking care of America. They're bankrupting our country and failing to address the problems," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said Monday, citing skyrocketing gas, college and health care costs. Speaking to the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist think tank, she and three other yet-declared presidential candidates argued that Republicans have ignored the very people who make up much...

DENVER - Moderate Democrats think they have the key to winning back power in Washington and across the country - a package of economic proposals aimed at giving every American a shot at reaching the middle class. "We thought it was important and necessary to rekindle the American dream," said Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa, a potential 2008 presidential candidate and the chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist think tank. [snip] The centrist organization, best known for helping Bill Clinton secure the White House in 1992, was to unveil Monday its "American Dream Initiative," which lays out policies...

DENVER (Reuters) - New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a possible White House contender in 2008, said on Monday the Bush administration had hurt working Americans and Democrats must offer new ideas to strengthen the middle class. "Americans are earning less while the costs of a middle-class life have soared," Clinton told the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, a group that aided her husband Bill Clinton's rise to the presidency in 1992 but has clashed in recent years with the party's more liberal wing. "A lot of Americans can't work any harder, borrow any more or save any less," she said...

Hillary Rodham Clinton is not at her best when she is being compared to her husband. So you have to wonder why she invites it. Monday found her in Denver at the annual meeting of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, unveiling what the DLC calls "The American Dream Initiative." It is a project that she has led for a year, and that could help form an agenda for her own bid for the White House — if, that is, she decides to run. [snip] They are variations on many of the programs that were hallmarks of Bill Clinton's presidency. But...

When Officer Manuel Gonzalez was stabbed to death Jan. 10, 2005, the inmate suspected in the killing was out of his cell – in violation of standing orders at the prison. Gonzalez, a veteran officer at the California Institution for Men in Chino, also wasn’t wearing his protective "stab-resistant" vest. That’s because it, and hundreds more like it, were in storage and had never been distributed. The killing came a year and a half after prison laundry employee Karen Gossom claims she was sexually assaulted by her supervisor while at work. An Internal Affairs investigation sustained the allegations, and Gossom...

Nightmare on Downing Street By George Jones (Filed: 06/05/2006) Tony Blair carried out his biggest and most brutal Cabinet reshuffle yesterday as he attempted to shore up his position after one of the worst ever local election performances in Labour's history. He signalled his determination to remain in Downing Street by promoting trusted and loyal ministers, sacking Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, and demoting six ministers, including Jack Straw and the disgraced John Prescott. It was a defiant rebuff for supporters of Gordon Brown who stepped up their demands for Mr Blair to quit after Labour was relegated to third...

Nightmare on High St By Edmund Conway, Economics Editor (Filed: 17/02/2006) High street stores have suffered their worst start to the year since records were first kept in 1945. Figures issued by the Government yesterday showed that retail sales crumbled last month - the latest evidence that many families have been crippled by record debt. Kingfisher: Down nine per cent in the final quarter of 2005 Experts said that the collapse in retail spending could cause a serious slowdown in the overall economy this year, potentially causing further bankruptcies and a rise in unemployment. Figures from the Office for National...

Darwin's nightmare: Toxic toad evolves to secure supremacy Wednesday February 15, 07:13 PM PARIS (AFP) - He's fat, ugly and poisonous -- and he's mutating. He's the cane toad (Bufo marinus), a species which was introduced into the Australian state of Queensland 70 years ago to tackle insect pests in canefields and has since become an ecological catastrophe. Weighing in at to up two kilos (4.4 pounds), the unwanted anuran has extended its range to more than a million square kilometers (386,000 square miles) in tropical and sub-tropical Australia, crushing native species in its relentless A team of University of...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist told Republican Party activists on Friday night that U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito was the "worst nightmare of liberal Democrats." Frist, a Tennessee Republican, made the remark to fellow Republicans during a private tour he gave them of the Senate chamber when the Senate was not in session. Frist was not available for comment following his remarks. Asked about the senator's remark, Frist spokesman Bob Stevenson said that Alito "is a thoughtful mainstream conservative jurist who is well respected by his peers, by Democrats and Republicans alike." Stevenson added, "There are...

British scientists are seeking permission to create hybrid embryos in the lab by fusing human cells with rabbit eggs. If granted consent, the team will use the embryos to produce stem cells that carry genetic defects, in the hope that studying them will help understand the complex mechanisms behind incurable human diseases. The proposal drew strong criticism from opponents to embryo research who yesterday challenged the ethics of the research and branded the work repugnant. Plans for the experiments have been put forward by Professor Chris Shaw, a neurologist and expert in motor neurone disease at King's College London, and...

CARACOLLO, Bolivia - As a little boy in Bolivia's bleak highlands, Evo Morales used to run behind buses to pick up the orange skins and banana peels passengers threw out the windows. Sometimes, he says, it was all he had to eat. Now, holding the lead ahead of Sunday's presidential election, he's threatening to be "a nightmare for the government of the United States." ADVERTISEMENT It's not hard to see why. The 46-year-old candidate is a staunch leftist who counts Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez among his close friends. Moreover, he's a coca farmer, promising to reverse the...

Original Writer: Harry Nilsson Publisher: EMI Blackwood Music Recorded: June, 1971 Producer: Richard Perry Tune of "The COCONUT Song" *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Dhimmies bought a president, they bought her for a dime The sister got an army, and she's puttin' them in line. She put their nuts in in a steel box, and lock'um all up She put their nuts in in a steel box, and locke'um all up She put da nuts in in a steel box, Called the UN doctor, woke him up, and said, "Hey Kofi, ain't there nothin' I can take, I say, Kofi, to make the army...

LOS ANGELES -- Michael Jackson is nearing a settlement in a legal dispute with his ex-wife over visitation rights for their two children, the singer's attorney said Tuesday. Deborah Rowe Jackson was married to the singer for three years starting in 1996 and is the mother of 8-year-old Prince Michael and 7-year-old Paris. She voluntarily gave up her parental rights in 2001, but a judge voided the order at her request in 2004 after her attorneys argued that proper court procedures weren't followed, according to court records. Her attorneys said at the time she wanted a change in status because...

Three Strikes yer Out: Time For Republicans to Step up to the Plate. by N. BeaujonApril 30, 2005 George Bush, former part owner of the Texas Rangers should understand this baseball analogy: It’s the 8th inning in the second game of the World Series and you’re down 12 runs. You were last years World Series champions, so how did you go from hero to goat? Likely, by resting on your laurels and taking your fan base for granted. Republicans had better not count on the successes of last season to think they’re going to win in 2006 or 2008. In...

ROCHESTER, Minn. - The decision to literally turn the lights out on Rochester public high school baseball this spring was not a school district issue nor a city of Rochester issue. It was complying with federal law, specifically Title IX. That, Rochester school officials say, was the reason all home baseball games for Century, John Marshall and Mayo must be played under natural light exclusively for the first time in years. A couple of weeks ago Mayo players were the first to experience the baseball blackout when their game was suspended because of darkness. Despite the Mayo Field lights being...

In the entire universe that has been studied, there is only one galaxy, with one solar system, with one planet that we know of, that supports life. On this planet there are four oceans and seven large bodies of land. We call the land continents. Two of these continents are the Americas. There is North America and South America. Every person who lives on these two continents, are Americans. People who live on other continents are known as Europeans, Africans, Asians, Australians and I suppose Antarticans. There are numerous nations in the Americas. Only one of them has a Bill...

Leftist “militants” ushered in the new year in Colombia in true form: Members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) murdered 17 peasants, including 6 women and 4 children, who were gathered to celebrate New Year’s Eve. When I say “true form,” I mean FARC was practicing the art that the extreme left has mastered, perhaps invented: terrorism. On this New Year’s Eve, the FARC was proving it believes the “end justifies the means,” as it is the grotesque, disfigured child of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and, yes, even Hitler -- remember, he was a National Socialist (Nazi). FARC is...

Confessions of a Liberal Democrat Betsy Gibson October 15, 1998 Partisanship is blinding us to the deeper truths we need to understand about Bill Clinton, ourselves and our country. I know about partisanship. I’m a liberal Democrat from a family so committed to those ideas that in 1968 my single-parent mother quit her job to volunteer for Senator Eugene McCarthy. During that long, hot summer in Chicago our already cramped apartment housed other volunteers who come to the convention to fight the good fight for the soul of the Democratic party. Our enemy was Hubert Humphrey and the establishment wing...

With sincere apologies to Clement Clark More ‘Twas the night before Christmas, in 2004, Not a Liberal was stirring, not even Al Gore; Their prospects were dismal, they pined in despair, And hoped that St. Hilary soon would appear. The Democrats waited, subdued by the meds, While visions of pork barrels danced in their heads. With election-year worries and woes off my chest, I’d just settled down for a long four-year rest. When out on the Beltway, arose such a clatter, I headed for Fox News to check out the chatter; I reached for my clicker with partisan glee, But...