Free Republic

KGO night-time talk show host Bernie Ward was indicted in Federal Court today on two counts of child pornography using the Internet. Ward’s attorney says the incidents are from more than four years ago and were a part of research for a book. KGO’s Operations Director Jack Swanson says, “Bernie Ward has been a valued, long-time employee of KGO Radio. We were just recently made aware of these serious charges and are surprised and concerned by their nature. As the matter is currently pending in federal court, we will have no additional comment at this time. A substitute host will...

I have no idea who I will be voting for yet, as the presidential candidates make their way through the early primary states. But I do know who I will not be voting for: Fred Thompson. From CNN: Fred Thompson wants the government to keep its hands off your dinner plate. That's what he told a questioner Tuesday in South Carolina, anyway. Standing about 15 feet away from a mouth-watering steam tray buffet loaded with fried chicken, creamed corn and macaroni and cheese at Wade's Southern Cooking in Spartanburg, Thompson dismissed the idea that preventative care and wellness education should...

Giving birth is a burden on the world. This is according to British born, Toni Vernelli, 35, who had an abortion 10 years ago to ensure her carbon footprint would be kept to a minimum, the U.K.'s Daily Mail reported Sunday. Vernelli -- who works for an environmental charity -- was later sterilized to help "protect the planet", the Mail reported. "Having children is selfish. It's all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet," Vernelli told the Daily Mail, adding she believes bringing new life into the world only adds to the problem. The Mail also...

I’ve said it all along: The Democrats’ massive S-CHIP expansion is a Trojan Horse for Hillarycare. Now, we get it straight from the horse’s mouth. A Hill source sends an audio clip of former Iowa Dem. Governor Tom Vilsack at Drake University on Nov. 16 describing how S-CHIP will help achieve those universal entitlement ends: Click here for audio. Transcript: “I think there is going to be a commitment to universal coverage. I don’t think it’s necessarily going to be a sector by sector process. I think you either need to go in whole hog or not. We tried to...

New Zealand Denies Immigration to U.K. Wife Because She's Too Fat Saturday, November 17, 2007 NEW YORK — New Zealand immigration officials are keeping a U.K. wife from joining her husband "down under" because they say she is too fat, the Daily Mail reports. Click here to read the full report in the Daily Mail. British citizens Rowan Trezise, 33, and Richie Trezise, 35, are living apart as she tries desperately to shed the pounds needed to comply with New Zealand guidelines that immigrants maintain a healthy BMI, or body mass index. BMI is a weight-height ratio that estimates percentage...

'Cockroaches on operating tables during surgery' at RNS A parliamentary inquiry into Sydney's Royal North Shore (RNS) hospital has heard a claim of live cockroaches being killed on operating theatre tables during surgeries. A submission from retired RNS doctor Henry Sleye Hughes also claims some of the hospital's operating tables are so old, one broke in two while a patient was anaesthetised. New South Wales Health Minister Reba Meagher was the first witness to front the inquiry, set up after 32-year-old Jana Horska miscarried in the hospital's emergency room toilets after waiting two hours for treatment. Ms Meagher has told...

Quack Michael Moore has mad view of the NHS   Minette Marrin   The fourth estate has always had a bad name, but it seems to be getting worse. Journalism should be an honest and useful trade, and often still is. But now that journalism has more power than ever before, it seems to have become ever more disreputable. In recent years it has been brought lower and lower by kiss-and-tell betrayals, by “reality” TV, by shockumentaries and by liars, fantasists, hucksters and geeks of every kind, crowing and denouncing and emoting in a hideous new version of Bunyan’s...

I won't let Daddy die: Girl of six raises £4,000 for life-saving drugs the NHS won't provide - By LUCY LAING - 01:08am on 27th October 2007 ) Faced with the prospect of losing her father to cancer, Chantelle Hill reacted a little differently to the average six-year-old. Instead of letting the grown-ups deal with it, she decided to save him herself. Now, she has raised more than £4,000 to buy the life-saving drugs David Hill needs after he was told they were not available to him on the Health Service.The little girl made posters bearing the words, "Please help...

Faced with the prospect of losing her father to cancer, Chantelle Hill reacted a little differently to the average six-year-old. Instead of letting the grown-ups deal with it, she decided to save him herself. Now, she has raised more than £4,000 to buy the life-saving drugs David Hill needs after he was told they were not available to him on the Health Service.

Cabbie pulls teeth out Oct 20 09:08 AM US/Eastern A man described how he pulled out seven of his own teeth because he was told to wait for an appointment to see an NHS dentist. Taxi driver Arthur Haupt used pliers and a technique he had learned in the army to carry out the DIY dentistry. He said he was forced in agony into taking the drastic action because he was given a three-week wait by staff at his local NHS dental surgery.

Nurses who didn't wash their hands and left patients lying in soiled beds were cited in an official report blaming mismanagement for the deaths of 90 people who contracted a bacterial infection in hospitals in southern England. "Significant failings" at all levels contributed to infections of more than 1,000 patients at three hospitals, the Healthcare Commission said Thursday. The patients were infected with Clostridium difficile, or C. diff, which can cause diarrhea, colitis and other intestinal problems, officials said. "The Healthcare Commission has passed the copy of the report to us and that is being reviewed," said a spokesman for...

Unclean and uncaring nurses in the U.K. are blamed may have spread superbugs that led the deaths of the patients they were charged with caring for. The nurses are accused of not washing their hands and of leaving patients lying in soiled beds. They were cited in an official report blaming mismanagement for the deaths of 90 people who contracted a bacterial infection in hospitals in southern England. The report into the spread of the highly contagious bacterium said nurses at three hospitals run by the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS trust were often too busy to wash their hands...

Whatever you made of the Chancellor’s various sleights of hand on Tuesday, lurking beneath his Budget plans was one inescapable fact. The hungry maw of the NHS is swallowing more and more resources, at the expense of virtually everything else. The defence budget is at its lowest since 1930, despite our dwindling troops being dotted across three continents. Prison overcrowding is at such record levels that Jack Straw will have to release even more inmates early in a few weeks’ time. But the health service marches relentlessly on, having hoovered up two thirds of the increase in public spending in...

On June 19, 1987, Ben & Jerry’s introduced Cherry Garcia, in honor of the man who played lead guitar for the Grateful Dead. The Food and Drug Administration struck back three months later, when it approved the first of a new family of statin drugs that curb cholesterol production in the human liver. A synthetic statin licensed a decade later would become the most lucrative drug in history. At its peak, Lipitor was streaming $14 billion a year into Pfizer’s coffers. Let’s not blame the victim: we don’t choose Cherry Garcia; it chooses us. Lipitor is a lifesaver for 600,000...

LEFTIST leaders and sympathisers marked the 40th anniversary of the death of revolutionary icon Ernesto Che Guevara today in Cuba, where he is buried, and Bolivia, where he was killed in 1967. Cuba's Acting President, Raul Castro, led the main event under a giant bronze statue of the guerrilla fighter in the town of Santa Clara, some 300 kilometres (186 miles) east of Havana. Convalescing Cuban leader Fidel Castro, 81, was absent, but a homage he penned was read in public. The Argentine-born doctor-turned-guerrilla was "a flower torn up prematurely by the stem. I bow my head to pay tribute...

Sicko Studies by: Malcolm A. Kline, September 21, 2007 Look for the latest documentary from self-described gadfly Michael Moore to make the rounds of American college campuses in the not-so-distant future. From Roger & Me to Fahrenheit 9-11, college administrators and professors have routinely made Moore’s cinematic output available to students, either for their extracurricular edification or, not infrequently, as required viewing. Over that same time period, a cottage industry has emerged with web sites exclusively devoted to fact-checking the rotund one. Moore’s latest film promises plenty of grist for both the academic and the blogging mill. His video muckraking...

Logan Darrow Clements producer of SickAndSickerMovie.com will be debating the merits of the movie Sicko and socialized medicine this Thursday 9/27 at 6:30pm in Los Angeles. He is standing in for Stuart Browning who is...sick. Please show up. Show the left-wingers in the audience that you will not allow the government to force you into socialized medicine. Details at http://liberty.pacificresearch.org/events/ID.37/detail.asp

On Friday’s "Good Morning America," token conservative reporter John Stossel told portly filmmaker Michael Moore, "Forgive me. More of us look like you" and that obesity explains why Canadians live longer than Americans, not universal health care. Stossel appeared on the morning show to promote his program debunking the myth of "free," government-run health care. His "20/20" special, which will air September 14 on ABC, includes a quarrel with the left-wing director.

Liberal MP Belinda Stronach, who is battling breast cancer, travelled to California last June for an operation that was recommended as part of her treatment, says a report. Stronach's spokesman, Greg MacEachern, told the Toronto Star that the MP for Newmarket-Aurora had a "later-stage" operation in the U.S. after a Toronto doctor referred her. "Belinda had one of her later-stage operations in California, after referral from her personal physicians in Toronto. Prior to this, Belinda had surgery and treatment in Toronto, and continues to receive follow-up treatment there," said MacEachern. He said speed was not the reason why she went...

It wasn’t long ago that most conspiracy theories came from conservatives. The right, after all gave our country the John Birch Society. But these days, liberals have a virtual monopoly on loony ideas -- and they seem to be getting crazier all the time. For example, in case you haven’t noticed, the United States is sliding into fascism. Well, not sliding, actually. We’re being driven into fascism. By you-know-who. “Beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society,” Naomi Wolf wrote this year in Britain’s Guardian newspaper. “There is essentially...