Free Republic

'Bizarre' new mammal discovered By Rebecca Morelle Science reporter, BBC News The curious-looking creature was caught on camera A new species of mammal has been discovered in the mountains of Tanzania, scientists report. The bizarre-looking creature, dubbed Rhynochocyon udzungwensis, is a type of giant elephant shrew, or sengi. The cat-sized animal, which is reported in the Journal of Zoology, looks like a cross between a miniature antelope and a small anteater. It has a grey face, a long, flexible snout, a bulky, amber body, a jet-black rump and it stands on spindly legs. "This is one of the most exciting...

Sometimes it’s the little things that suggest a campaign has, at least for now, weathered the Obama storm and is moving smoothly into the summer. Hillary Clinton’s Tuesday morning press conference, announcing her endorsement by Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, had a multitude of those little omens. 1. Few if any defections of consequence. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and opportunism hath no representative like a New Jersey politician. (Think of former Sen. Bob Torricelli, creator of the Torricelli rule that limited the use of CIA sources with checkered human-rights records, ripping into the Central Intelligence...

NEW YORK (May 4) -- One-third of Americans say they have a negative view of Katie Couric , her personal popularity lagging behind rivals Charles Gibson and Brian Williams just as her evening news program trails in the ratings. The Gallup Poll survey released Thursday found that 51 percent of Americans said they had a positive view of Couric, who jumped from NBC's "Today" show to CBS last fall. The poll found Gibson and Williams essentially running neck-and-neck in terms of popularity. ABC's Gibson was viewed positively by 62 percent of TV viewers and NBC's Williams by 59 percent, but...

Nancy Pelosi stands to make life much tougher for President Bush if the Nov. 7 elections net her a powerful job that puts her just two steps behind him. The 66-year-old California liberal stands to become the first woman to lead the House of Representatives if she and fellow Democrats win control of the chamber from Bush's Republicans. She vows to ensure Congress acts as an equal to the most powerful man in the world. Often ignored or even mocked by Bush during his six years as president, Pelosi, now the House Democratic minority leader, told Reuters in an interview:...

I called Tim Russert to ask if Dick Cheney had washed his hands after their interview on Sunday. "No-o-o," he replied, sounding confused. Any sort of scrubbing, I wondered? Antiseptic wipe, Purell, quick shower on the way out? No, Tim assured me, the vice president did not stop at the basement shower at NBC, or even drop by the men's room you pass on the right as you head out to the parking lot. According to The New York Times' health section on Tuesday, Lady Macbeth and Pontius Pilate were not alone in wanting that "damned spot" out. "People who...

THE world mourns. The world-famous wildlife warrior Steve Irwin has died a hero, doing the thing he loved, filming a sequence for a new TV series. Irwin was the real Crocodile Dundee, a great Australian, an ambassador for wildlife, a global phenomenon, a superhuman generator of merchandise, books, interactive video games and action figures. The only creatures he could not dominate were parrots. A parrot once did its best to rip his nose off his face. Parrots are a lot smarter than crocodiles. What seems to have happened on Batt Reef is that Irwin and a cameraman went off in...

Fellow Americans, there comes a time every mans life when we must give up ourselves before we are worthy to recieve. There comes a time in this war on terror when in order to protect liberty, we have to give it up in the mean time for safty. That's right folks. Today, Americans have forsaken the creator for the creation and have decided that they would value our "civil liberties" than protecting western civilization and rich white people from the tender mercies of radical Islamic terrorists. Selfish liberals insist and whine that Bush has no right to spy on Americans...

There's no helping you. This site is now just a diversion -- like a train wreck. This site is inherently for and about raving egomaniacs, and Jim's site policies -- which amount to excluding reality and actual dialogue in favor of political/militaristic pornography -- is conducive to cognitive dissonance, which at the times your worldview is threatened leads you into psychotic breaks (on the political cognitive plane, that is, and just maybe in other realms too). Not to mention that your baseline politics is based in mythology about American demographics, science, economics, ethics etc. You spoonfeed each other in the...

After reading all of the crap that people have been saying regarding Adult Private Social Clubs, I felt that I had to post an article and give my opinion. I am sick and tired of all the religous groups that are saying that there are drugs, prostitution, minors, non-consenting people, and just immoral people at these clubs! First of all, who do these people think they are to decide what is morally right or wrong for me? I believe that I have a good set of morals. I am a law abiding, tax paying citizen, I work full time and...

To the Editor: "Last week I substituted at a local elementary school in Lebanon County. The lesson plan required me to read the 1882 poem “The Night Before Christmas” by Clement Clarke Moore to two classes of students. While I can appreciate the poem for its literary value, the subject matter is offensive to me, and the reading of this poem to the children imposed values upon me which are against my deeply held religious beliefs. I could not in good conscience present the notion of Santa Claus as a truth to the children, and stated so. No public school...

Get a load of *this*! Maureen Shroud, is going to be on Larrty King this weekend, and her topic du jour, is: 'Why women make better leades than men." *This* oughta be good for a few chuckles at the warped old frustrated 'harpy in training'. :oD

AUGUST 15--The next well-wisher approaching Cindy Sheehan at her tent encampment outside President George W. Bush's Texas vacation home may actually be a process server. That's because the California woman's husband--in a curious bit of timing--filed for divorce Friday afternoon (below you'll find a copy of Patrick Sheehan's complaint, lodged August 12 in Solano County District Court).

If I hear "Frosty the Snowman" one more time, I'll rip his frozen face off. It's a scientific fact, or should be, that Christmas music can turn you into a fruitcake. It either sends you into a Pavlovian shopping trance, buying stupid things like the Robosapien, or, if you hear repeated Clockwork-Orange choruses of "Ring, Christmas Bells" drilling into your brain with that slasher-movie staccato, makes you feel as possessed with Christmas spirit as Norman Bates. I've never said this out loud before, but I can't stand Christmas. Everyone in my family loves it except me, and they can't fathom...

Her appointment at the Civil Right's Commision expires next month There's something about Mary ...

America's morning TV sweetheart, Katie Couric, wasted no time on Wednesday trying to turn the beheading of Americans in Iraq into political ammunition - asking the brother of executed hostage Jack Hensley if he still supported the war.

"I can't imagine I would be attacked for telling the truth." That statement came from former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill during an interview with CBS-TV'S "60 Minutes." He has learned differently since then. O'Neill caused a big stir with his remarkably candid new book, "The Price of Loyalty," about his Cabinet tenure as President Bush's man at the Treasury Department. In the book written by journalist Ron Suskind, O'Neill charges that Bush had planned to depose Saddam Hussein from the start of his administration in 2001 -- not, as the White House would have us believe, as the result of...

WASHINGTON - Three years ago, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton opened her Senate campaign with promises to help lift the flagging upstate New York economy into the 1990s boom enjoyed by the rest of the country. But today, two years after she entered the Senate, upstate is in an even deeper slump. The only difference now is that the rest of New York and the nation have joined upstate in a recession. At the same time, Clinton has emerged as the Democratic Party's most ferocious critic of President Bush. She received a party leadership post and is mentioned constantly -...

Wednesday April 30, 2003; 5:14 p.m. EDT Conservatives React to Hillary Shriekfest The mainstream press is pretending not to notice Hillary Clinton's shrieking tirade against President Bush in Connecticut Monday night, where she bellowed that she was "sick and tired" of Bush supporters questioning the patriotism of Democrats who criticized the commander-in-chief while troops were in harms way. But conservative commentators had a field day with the former first lady's rhetorical meltdown, with most suggesting that it revealed "the real Hillary." Talk radio host Michael Reagan posited that for those who know Hillary best, her Monday night tantrum was nothing...

NewsMax.com Tuesday, April 29, 2003 8:46 a.m. EDT Hillary: 'I am Sick and Tired' of Patriotic Critics New York Sen. Hillary Clinton opened up both barrels on supporters of President Bush Monday night, saying she's "sick and tired" of the way the patriotism of Bush's critics has been questioned. "I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration somehow you're not patriotic," a shrill-sounding Clinton shouted during her address to Connecticut's Jefferson Jackson Bailey dinner. "We should stand up and say we are Americans and we have a right to...

Barbra Streisand wasn't the only one caught citing phony William Shakespeare passages to make a point about the immorality of President Bush's saber-rattling over Iraq. Internet pioneer Matt Drudge nailed Streisand for reciting made-up Shakespeare lines before thousands at a National Democratic Gala in Hollywood Sunday. "To make her case not to go to war against Iraq, Streisand quoted extensively from William Shakespeare – but the quotes were from a William Shakespeare hoax that has been circulating on the Internet," Drudge reported. But check out the latest cartoon from three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Paul Conrad at MSNBC. There you...