Free Republic

Ambrose Bierce in The Devil's Dictionary satirically defined electricity as the power that causes all natural phenomena not known to be caused by something else. This definition seems apt for California Assembly Bill 32 (AB 32), also known as the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. AB 32, which mandates shifting to much costlier forms of green energy, is not about Global Warming or Green Power at all. It would not have a chance of success in greenie California without its environmental mythology. What AB 32 is all about is passing along the costs of cleaning the air in California...

In President Obama's first 11 days on the job, he wore only red and blue ties, observed Daily News reporter Joe Dziemianowicz. "Obama represents something different in politics, but he dresses the same as everyone else," said Esquire senior fashion editor Wendell Brown. "Washington, D.C., is a strange place when it comes to style. All the emphasis is on fitting in..." The ties to red and blue go way back. Neckties are said to be descended from the cravat and used throughout most of history, at least the portion during which humans have been fully clothed. Blue was once associated...

Barack Hussein Obama will propose a massive business tax on greenhouse gases in his FY 2010 federal budget to be presented this week.The massive tax increase and power grab was buried at the end on article on Obama's forthcoming budget proposal in The New York Times:On energy policy, Mr. Obama’s budget will show new revenues by 2012 from his proposal to require companies to buy permits from the government for greenhouse gas emissions above a certain cap. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the permits would raise up to $300 billion a year by 2020. Since companies would pass their...

THIS MAN IS A U.S. SENATOR... In fact he is the Majority Leader THIS HAS GOT TO SEEN AND HEARD TO BE BELIEVED! This interview with Senator Harry Reid on the subject of taxes is incredible...and worth watching for the 4 minutes it takes... How do we elect people this stupid? Because we the people are more stupid and uneducated than people like Reid.

In a campaign where nothing has been left to chance, we have America's new First Family, the Obamas, all decked out in red and black! [...] When I looked at this picture this morning, I thought the choice of clothing colors was a bit odd. Really, who puts black on a little girl and why red & black on the all four of the Obamas? [...] Think about it. Don’t we always see politicians in shades or combinations of red, blue, navy, etc. Examples that quickly come to mind include Nancy Reagan’s red dresses, Hillary’s many shades of blues dresses...

Anybody have any sort of a red/blue map breakdown by counties from last night?

Red may be the color of love for a reason: It makes men feel more amorous towards women, a new study reports. From ancient rituals to those red paper lace hearts on Valentines, red has been tied to carnal passions and romance in many cultures over the course of history. In five psychological experiments, University of Rochester psychologists tested how different colors affected men's attitudes towards women.

Right now, in the press, "rage" is all the rage. At the New York Times, Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich - who may be the same person since they both wear dresses - have columns on the rising tide of anger in McCain's campaign. Dowd is calling the whole thing "seamy," and whenever someone brings up Bill Ayers, Rich sees a "violent escalation" in rhetoric. He links addressing real issues to an increased risk of Obama's assassination – meaning if you think voter fraud is important, you probably also want to kill black people. True, a few nutbags in the...

HONOLULU (AP) _ At key moments in his adolescence, Barack Obama could not turn to a father he hardly knew. Instead, he looked to a left-leaning black journalist and poet for advice on living in a world of black and white. Frank Marshall Davis had his opinions. He once argued that the public schools of his youth prepared neither blacks nor whites for "life in a multiracial, democratic nation." He called hypocrisy "a national trait of American whites." Advocating civil rights amid segregation, Davis wrote in 1949: "I refuse to settle for anything less than all the rights which are...

It is a sport folks.As seen on ESPN the World Hot Dog eating Champ Joey from San Jose California kept this years title in the USA. Well today he at over 8 pounds of rib meat. King Vanity had a blast watching the panal of grown men compete for this years Smoking At the Ocean rib eating Championship Belt. He visited with all the contestants post contest and enjoyed their grunting in abdominal pain. Other contestants were World Champs in eating Jalepenos, Captain Crunch, fried Asparugus and much more. Can you imagine downing jars of Mayonnaise? It is true.

Third red spot erupts on Jupiter 18:03 22 May 2008 NewScientist.com news service David Shiga Three red spots now adorn Jupiter – the Great Red Spot at right, Red Spot Junior at lower left and the third red spot just above it, as revealed by the Hubble Space Telescope (Image: NASA/ESA/M Wong/I de Pater/University of California, Berkeley) A third giant red storm has flared up on Jupiter, joining the Great Red Spot and the recently developed Red Spot Junior. The spot, along with new measurements of record-high wind speeds on Red Spot Junior, suggest the solar system's largest planet is...

DNA reveals Neanderthal redheadsNeanderthals’ pigmentation possibly as varied as humans’, scientists say By Steve BradtWith Neanderthals’ surviving bones providing few clues, scientists have long sought to flesh out the appearance of this hominid species. Illustration created by Knut Finstermeier, Neanderthal reconstruction by the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museum Mannheim Ancient DNA retrieved from the bones of two Neanderthals suggests that at least some of them had red hair and pale skin, scientists report this week in the journal Science. The international team says that Neanderthals’ pigmentation may even have been as varied as that of modern humans, and that at least 1 percent of...

TO HIGHLIGHT China's repressive policies, protesters are attacking the Olympic torch as it wends its way to Beijing and the summer games. It's embarrassing for the moment, but China knows the real score. In the long run, the drive for human profit always beats the drive for human rights. Massachusetts offers a tiny but telling glimpse into that broad economic reality. On April 1, University of Massachusetts president Jack M. Wilson announced an agreement with Chinese officials to offer government-sanctioned online classes in the communist nation of 1.3 billion. The deal, UMass officials said, could generate up to $5 million...

Mounting Evidence Shows Red Wine Antioxidant Kills CancerA natural antioxidant found in grape skins and red wine can help destroy pancreatic cancer cells. (Credit: iStockphoto) ScienceDaily (Mar. 27, 2008) — Rochester researchers showed for the first time that a natural antioxidant found in grape skins and red wine can help destroy pancreatic cancer cells by reaching to the cell's core energy source, or mitochondria, and crippling its function. The new study also showed that when the pancreatic cancer cells were doubly assaulted -- pre-treated with the antioxidant, resveratrol, and irradiated -- the combination induced a type of cell death called...

An image of an eight-year-old Knowles appears in the ad, shown sleeping soundly in bed. The Clinton campaign legally purchased the file footage of Knowles from Getty Images. Clinton's ad aimed to emphasize her experience and say she'd be a strong national security candidate. The ad was a play on a 1980s-era advertisement with a similar theme: if there was a middle-of-the-night national security emergency, who would you want to have answer the phone and deal with it? Ironically, though, the now-17-year-old Knowles would want Clinton rival Barack Obama to answer any important 3 a.m. calls coming into the White...

I do like the new interface to FR. But I have to ask, why is the keyword 'Obama' red and all the rest are grey or grey bold. I'm sure this is just a coincidence.

"It is not yet true, as it has long been of the United States, that if China were to sneeze, the world would catch pneumonia," comments Times Literary Supplement reviewer Rosemary Righter. But "China's potential capacity to upset the international applecart already exercises financial analysts and other crystal-ball gazers." It is certainly instructive to see how "the next superpower" responds to the dangers of inflation. While Ben Bernanke continues to cut interest rates to spur easy credit and artificial economic growth – and to make his political masters look good – China raised interest rates six times last year. The...

RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's religious police have banned red roses ahead of Valentine's Day, forcing couples in the conservative Muslim nation to think of new ways to show their love. The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has ordered florists and gift shop owners in the capital Riyadh to remove any items coloured scarlet, which is widely seen as symbolising love, newspapers said. "They visited us last night," the Saudi Gazette quoted an unidentified florist as saying. It is not unusual for the Saudi vice squad to clamp down ahead of Valentine's Day, which it...

Living On 'The Red Edge': Rare Form Of Chlorophyll Discovered In Newly Sequenced BacteriumSea Squirts and sea stars. The Acaryochloris marina lives beneath the sea squirt, which is a marine animal that lives attached to rocks just below the surface of the water. The cyanobacterium absorbs "red edge" light through the tissues of its pal the sea squirt. (Credit: iStockphoto) ScienceDaily (Feb. 11, 2008) — Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and Arizona State University have sequenced the genome of a rare bacterium that harvests light energy by making an even rarer form of chlorophyll, chlorophyll d. Chlorophyll d...