Free Republic

Neurosurgeon Ben Carson should withdraw from the presidential race for his comments that a Muslim shouldn't be president a prominent Muslim-American group said Sunday. "I think his remarks should be repudiated by everyone on the political spectrum and that he should withdraw," Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation's largest Islamic advocacy group, told the Washington Examiner on Sunday. Carson, who is third in the Washington Examiner's presidential power rankings, spoke on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday and said that he wouldn't "advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation."

BALTIMORE (AP) — A 31-year-old woman and a young boy were shot in the head Thursday, becoming Baltimore’s 37th and 38th homicide victims so far this month, the city’s deadliest in 15 years. Meanwhile, arrests have plunged: Police are booking fewer than half the number of people they pulled off the streets last year. Arrests were already declining before Freddie Gray died on April 19 of injuries he suffered in police custody, but they dropped sharply thereafter, as his death unleashed protests, riots, the criminal indictment of six officers and a full-on civil rights investigation by the U.S. Justice Department...

The Chicago studios of talk-show superstar Oprah Winfrey and the iconic “Sears Tower” (renamed Willis Tower) were the targets of a terrorist truck-bomb plot in 2009. But initially unbeknownst to federal authorities, two of the conspirators recently were arrested for unrelated state crimes in different parts of the country. The alleged bombers targeted Ms. Winfrey’s Harpo Studios because they resented her popularity and power, while the tower was selected because of its obvious landmark status. The bomb plot itself, planned in 2009, was inspired by militant Islamist hatred of American military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to law...

He can't be serious! Did any of you see him try to defend the rats again on FOX? The others hosts there looked at him as if he had to be joking. GOP picks up at least 10 House Seats, and cleaning house all over the map. And a little while ago Juan denies it's a Republican wave. He should be fired for acting like Debbie Wasserman and Joe Biden!

Harper Lee, the author of To Kill A Mockingbird, has sued her literary agent for allegedly duping her into assigning him the copyright on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. In the lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan, Lee says Samuel Pinkus, the son-in-law of Lee's long-time agent, Eugene Winick, took advantage of her failing hearing and eyesight to transfer the rights on the book, which has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and became an Oscar-winning film. The 87-year-old says she has no memory of agreeing to relinquish her rights or signing the agreement that cements the purported transfer.

Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona signed the nation’s toughest bill on illegal immigration into law on Friday. Its aim is to identify, prosecute and deport illegal immigrants. The move unleashed immediate protests and reignited the divisive battle over immigration reform nationally. Even before she signed the bill at an afternoon news conference here, President Obama strongly criticized it. Speaking at a naturalization ceremony for 24 active-duty service members in the Rose Garden, he called for a federal overhaul of immigration laws, which Congressional leaders signaled they were preparing to take up soon, to avoid “irresponsibility by others.” The Arizona law,...

World leaders arriving in Washington for President Obama's Nuclear Security Summit must have felt for a moment that they had instead been transported to Soviet-era Moscow. They entered a capital that had become a military encampment, with camo-wearing military police in Humvees and enough Army vehicles to make it look like a May Day parade on New York Avenue, where a bicyclist was killed Monday by a National Guard truck. In the middle of it all was Obama -- occupant of an office once informally known as "leader of the free world" -- putting on a clinic for some of...

DETROIT (CNNMoney.com) -- On a side street in an old industrial neighborhood, a delivery man stacks a dolly of goods outside a store. Ten feet away stands another man clad in military fatigues, combat boots and what appears to be a flak jacket. He looks straight out of Baghdad. But this isn't Iraq. It's southeast Detroit, and he's there to guard the groceries. In this recession-racked town, the lack of food is a serious problem. It's a theme that comes up again and again in conversations in Detroit. There isn't a single major chain supermarket in the city, forcing residents...

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), the 2008 vice presidential nominee, will join a new Republican policy group aimed at reshaping and promoting the party brand. House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.)announced Palin’s decision to join the National Council for a New America on Monday night. The group launched late last week and held its first town hall-style forum on Saturday in Virginia. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the 2008 presidential nominee, indicated during a conference call last week that his former running mate had been invited to join the policy panel. The group, which is made up of prominent Republican leaders,...

The science blog Cosmic Variance has a great rundown of what the LHC could find. At the top of this list is the Higgs boson, which is the only particle in the Standard Model (the theory that describes the fundamental interactions between the particles that make up all matter), that hasn't yet been detected. The site thinks there is a 95 percent chance the LHC finds this particle, and that could lead to a much better understanding of how our universe works. Other notable possibilities on Cosmic Variance's list include finding extra dimensions (these could be so-called "warped" hidden dimensions...

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A Dutch police station trying to help Muslim detainees face Mecca for their prayers painted arrows in cells pointing in the wrong direction...

Wal-Mart will face a lawsuit claiming pay discrimination against more than a million female US employees after a court approved the action. A federal appeals court upheld a 2004 ruling granting the lawsuit class action status, sanctioning claims from 1.5 million current and former staff. Should it lose the case, the world's largest retailer could have to pay damages worth billions of dollars. Wal-Mart has said it did not have a policy discriminating against women. In a two to one verdict, the San Francisco court ruled that the country's largest class action lawsuit against a private employer could proceed. Judge...

Attorneys for Fulton County are scrambling to keep a convicted child molester's hands off more than $2 million in county money. That's because an oversight, a piece of paper misplaced by county officials, left Calvin T. McGee II, 44, behind bars for nearly two years too long. It's far from Fulton County's finest moment, but it's about to play out in a very public forum. McGee, who molested two young girls, is suing Superior Court Clerk Juanita Hicks and one of her deputy clerks for $2.5 million, claiming he languished in prison for 22 months because the clerk's office didn't...

...Slowing the spread of one of the nation's most prevalent STDs among college students — the human papilloma virus, or HPV — requires knowing how the virus is prevented. That has been somewhat of a mystery — until now. A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine reveals that consistent condom use can prevent the spread of HPV in up to 70 percent of cases, giving Innis and other health educators better proof that condoms can prevent HPV, helping to dispel any myths that they are not effective....

<p>Convicted Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui says he lied on the witness stand about being involved in the plot and wants to withdraw his guilty plea because he now believes he can get a fair trial.</p> <p>In a motion filed Friday but released today, Moussaoui said he testified March 27 he was supposed to hijack a fifth plane on Sept. 11, 2001, and fly it into the White House "even though I knew that was a complete fabrication."</p>

I offer up my feeble rant here, quite possibly my FR swansong. I've had it w/ W. This supreme court selection is the last straw. He's got no balls. None of our Republican so called "leaders" has any. I'm also tired of seeing that fake little smile of Tom Delay on TV. Neither of these guys have any idea what a working class conservative guy goes through out here in the trenches. W's supreme court pick may be the next thing since sliced bread, but she's 60 years old! UNINSPIRING to the MAX. A Squandered opportunity. Cronyism at its best....

Mexico has reacted furiously to a bill signed into law by the US this week that would fund a border wall and prevent illegal Mexican migrants from obtaining US driving licences. President Vicente Fox said he would lodge a diplomatic complaint, and was considering complaints to multilateral bodies if Mexico could not unable to resolve the problem bilaterally. In the US, leaders of the Mexican community threatened to strike to send a message to US employers that they could not survive without cheap Mexican labour. Santiago Creel, Mexico's interior secretary, said the “Real ID” law was “negative, inconvenient, and obstructionist”....

Just a heads up, Pelosi and Reid are on C-SPAN complaining that "the Republicans want to change the rules in the middle of the game; 8 balls to get to first base, 6 strikes and you're out."

SADDAM Hussein watched the election of Iraq's new president on video today and was shaken by what he saw, the country's human rights minister said. "He was clearly upset. He realised that it was over, that a democratic process had taken place and that there was a new, elected president," Bakhtiar Amin said. "It was not just the fact that there was a new president, but that the president was a Kurd. And the previous interim president became a vice-president. What's more, it all happened without bloodshed," he said. Iraq's parliament earlier elected Jalal Talabani, a veteran Kurdish leader, as...

Susan Sontag, the author, activist and self-defined "zealot of seriousness" whose voracious mind and provocative prose made her a leading intellectual of the past half century, died Tuesday. She was 71.