Free Republic

RUSH: Well, look at this. From Fox News. “President Trump today –” ha-ha-ha. You’re gonna love this. You are going to love this. President Trump today appeared to deny military aircraft to House speaker Nancy Pelosi for an upcoming foreign trip. This in response to her call to the latest State of the Union address amid the government shutdown. “In a stinging and curt letter to Pelosi Trump said that her trip has been postponed. He wrote, ‘Due to the shutdown, I’m sorry to inform you your trip to Brussels, Egypt, and Afghanistan has been postponed. We will reschedule this...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed the identity of the Chattanooga gunman who killed four Marines today as Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez, 24. “The FBI’s Knoxville Field Office, along with the Chattanooga Police Department and other law enforcement partners, are working jointly to investigate today’s shootings at a military recruitment center and a reserve center in Chattanooga, Tennessee in which four individuals were killed and three injured,” the Bureau said in a statement. Abdulazeez, who first targeted a recruiting office in a strip mall, was also killed in a shootout with police outside of a Navy Reserve facility, where the four...

House Republicans have dug up emails from Lois Lerner in which the former IRS official refers to some in the Republican Party as “---holes” and "crazies" – an exchange they say shows her “animus” toward conservatives. The November 2012 emails were released Wednesday by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., as part of his renewed call for the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate. Lerner is the ex-IRS official who led the unit accused of targeting conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status for extra scrutiny. In the email exchange, Lerner appears to be chatting with...

I read the following from Little Green Footballs: "Apparently, South Korean student Seung Hui Cho signed his note, “Ismail Ax,” and also wrote those words on his arm. All other signs right now point to this being a deranged individual with a history of odd behavior (not a “sudden jihadi”), but this is very curious." Hotair.com suggests that he meant only to refer to a story by an author named Ishmael: You probably already know this, but in James Fennimore Cooper’s story “The Prairie,” the settler Ishmael Bush, who is attempting to escape from civilization, sets out across the prairie...

THAT'S AL, FOLKS Franken wants a paycheckIs Air America Radio going belly up? The troubled left-leaning network is dismissing yesterday's report by Think Progress that it plans to file for bankruptcy on Friday. But you know things must be bad when even your top star can't get paid. "I don't know if that's true or not," Al Franken told Radar late Wednesday, when asked about the bankruptcy report. "We do know that there have been cash-flow problems. I haven't been paid in a while. Like, there's no cash flowing to me." It's not the first time Franken has gone without...

Crawford- Anti-War Activist Cindy Sheehan is going to become a neighbor of President Bush, and local residents are not happy about the mess. On the Gold Star Families For Peace website, Sheehan explained how Central Texas had grown on her. She now wants a permanent place where she and fellow protestors can go to demonstrate against President Bush. Peace Supporter, Gerry Fonseca, says he purchased the 5-acre parcel, which cost more than $52,000. It was bought with the money frome her son, Casey's, life insurance policy. "I doubt they would have sold her the property if she tried to buy...

July 21, 2006 -- JERUSALEM - Israeli military commanders decided last night they must invade Lebanon to drive Hezbollah from Israel's border, officials revealed. Israel will send a large ground force across its northern border to carve out a Hezbollah-free zone at least 20 miles deep, they said. Officials concluded that an invasion is necessary because the blistering air bombardment of Hezbollah targets over the last nine days won't be enough to force the guerrillas far enough away from the border so that they can no longer terrorize Israelis with rockets. Senior Israeli military leaders met last night to determine...

Zarqawi 'survived initial strike' Pictures of Zarqawi's body were earlier put on display by the US Militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was still alive when Iraqi police got to the scene of the air strikes that targeted him, the US military says.But the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq died of his wounds shortly afterwards, Major General William Caldwell said. US planes dropped two 500lb (230kg) bombs on Zarqawi's safe house near the city of Baquba on Wednesday. Zarqawi had tried to move off the stretcher where he had been placed by Iraqi police, Maj Gen Caldwell said. "Everybody resecured...

Early critics seemed happy to try to break "The Da Vinci Code." Reaction ranged from halfhearted admiration to boredom to derision among journalists at the first press screening of the Ron Howard-Tom Hanks blockbuster in waiting, premiering Wednesday at the Cannes Film Festival and opening worldwide through Friday. "`Da Vinci' never rises to the level of a guilty pleasure. Too much guilt. Not enough pleasure," wrote critic Kirk Honeycutt in the trade paper The Hollywood Reporter.

KABUL, Afghanistan — An Afghan man who allegedly converted from Islam to Christianity is being prosecuted in a Kabul court and could be sentenced to death, a judge said Sunday. The defendant, Abdul Rahman, was arrested last month after his family went to the police and accused him of becoming a Christian, Judge Ansarullah Mawlavezada told the Associated Press in an interview. Such a conversion would violate the country's Islamic laws. Rahman, who is believed to be 41, was charged with rejecting Islam when his trial started last week, the judge said. During the hearing, the defendant allegedly confessed that...

U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy — who ripped Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito for ties to a group that discriminates against women — says he’s going to quit a club notorious for discriminating against women “as fast as I can.” Kennedy was outed by conservatives late last week as a current member of The Owl Club, a social club for Harvard alumni that bans women from membership. In an interview with WHDH Channel 7’s Andy Hiller that aired last night, Kennedy said, “I joined when I . . . 52 years ago, I was a member of the Owl Club,...

WASHINGTON Nov 22, 2005 — A top U.S. commander in Iraq said Tuesday he has "absolutely no reason" to believe the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, died in a weekend raid in Mosul. Lt. Gen. John Vines, chief of the Multi-National Corps Iraq, also confirmed that U.S. officials have the ability to determine if al-Zarqawi was there. "I am told that there is a DNA database of some of his relatives that is able to be compared against some of those who were killed there," Vines told reporters. "If he had been in one of those houses...

Senior U.S. intelligence officials call a letter from al Qaeda's No. 2 man to its leader in Iraq "chilling" because of how "calm, clear and well argued" it is in urging preparation for a U.S. departure from Iraq. According to a translation of the 6,300-word letter provided by the U.S. government, Ayman al-Zawahiri predicts "the Americans will exit soon" from Iraq and says "things may develop faster than we imagine." U.S. leaders have refused to set a timetable for troop withdrawals, saying such a move would embolden insurgents. Military leaders have suggested a reduction in 2006 is possible, depending on...

LONDON — Foreigners who preach hatred, sponsor violence or belong to extremist groups could be deported from Britain (search) under strict new measures that Prime Minister Tony Blair announced Friday, nearly a month after homicide bombers killed 52 people on London's transit system. Membership in extremist Islamic groups such as Hizb-ut-Tahrir (search) would become a crime under the new measures. "They come here and they play by our rules and our way of life," Blair said at his monthly news conference. "If they don't, they are going to have to go."

All four of the suspected would-be London suicide bombers have been rounded up by anti-terror police in London and Italy. The fourth man was arrested in Rome, an Italian Government minister confirmed. He was described as a Somali man called Osman Hussain who is a naturalised British citizen. Earlier, two other members of the July 21 gang were arrested in west London. One of them is believed to be Muktar Said-Ibrahim, 27, who allegedly tried to blow himself up on a number 26 bus in Hackney, east London. The other is believed to have been responsible for an attempted bombing...

The historical progress we have made in the two nations the Media so cavalierly refer to as “U.S. occupied” has vitalized the Cedar Movement in Lebanon to oust their Syrian overlords, reinvigorated and increased the democratic underground in Iran, and caused Libya’s Qaddaffi to roll over and beg for his stomach to be rubbed. All it took was the pictures and television shots of Iraqis emerging from voting booths with purple, ink-stained fingers, and those who seek self-determination in the Middle East knowing that it was America who paved the way for that simple, revolutionary act of freedom to occur....