Free Republic

Commentary - I continue to be astonished by the strength of the Toll party movement. Over a year ago, we were privately admonished by local leaders in San Antonio for publishing the work of Terri Hall and the San Antonio Toll Party. We felt they had something to say. The Toll Party “Tipping Point” occurred when State Representative Carter Casteel was defeated at the hands of anti-toll candidate Nathan Macias. That is when everything changed. Think about that: An established state representative is taken out by anti-toll activists who knocked on thousands of doors spreading their message. The Trans Texas...

After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon. To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration. (snip) Interviews with scores of...

1967 TYRONE GARNER 2006 Defendant in landmark sodomy ruling was not motivated by politics The key civil liberties victory for gays was 'fight against all odds' Tyrone Garner, whose arrest in violation of Texas sodomy laws led to a challenge before the Supreme Court and an eventual victory that struck down such statutes across the country, died after a lengthy illness, friends said Wednesday. He was 39. Garner, who died Monday of meningitis in a Houston-area hospital, was openly gay but not politically active when he chose to fight his arrest in court, said his lawyer, Mitchell Katine. "He was...

TMZ has learned that Mel Gibson went on a rampage when he was arrested Friday on suspicion of drunk driving, hurling religious epithets. TMZ has also learned that the Los Angeles County Sheriff's department had the initial report doctored to keep the real story under wraps. TMZ has four pages of the original report prepared by the arresting officer in the case, L.A. County Sheriff's Deputy James Mee. According to the report, Gibson became agitated after he was stopped on Pacific Coast Highway and told he was to be detained for drunk driving Friday morning in Malibu. The actor began...

LAHORE: The vast Amazon rainforest is on the verge of being turned into desert, with catastrophic consequences for the world’s climate, alarming research suggests. And the process, which would be irreversible, could begin as early as next year. Geoffrey Lean and Fred Pearce, writing for The Independent on Sunday, quote studies conducted by the blue-chip Woods Hole Research Centre in Amazonia as concluding that the forest cannot withstand more than two consecutive years of drought without breaking down. “Scientists say that this would spread drought into the northern hemisphere, including Britain, and could massively accelerate global warming with incalculable consequences,...

Advocates who say black Americans should be compensated for slavery and its Jim Crow aftermath are quietly chalking up victories and gaining momentum. Fueled by the work of scholars and lawyers, their campaign has morphed in recent years from a fringe-group rallying cry into sophisticated, mainstream movement. Most recently, a pair of churches apologized for their part in the slave trade, and one is studying ways to repay black church members. The overall issue is hardly settled, even among black Americans: Some say that focusing on slavery shouldn't be a top priority or that it doesn't make sense to compensate...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Appearing before a religious conference earlier this week, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-New York) told the audience that as a child attending Sunday school she would baby-sit the children of migrant workers so that their older siblings could join their parents at work. "I was fortunate that at an early age, through my church, I was given the opportunity to expand my horizons," Clinton told the 600 adults and teenagers attending the Sojourners "Covenant for a New America" conference. Politically, the story served two purposes for the New York Democrat. It allowed her to promote a developing...

The June 27, 2006 Associated Press (AP) article titled “Scientists OK Gore’s Movie for Accuracy” by Seth Borenstein raises some serious questions about AP’s bias and methodology. AP chose to ignore the scores of scientists who have harshly criticized the science presented in former Vice President Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth.” In the interest of full disclosure, the AP should release the names of the “more than 100 top climate researchers” they attempted to contact to review “An Inconvenient Truth.” AP should also name all 19 scientists who gave Gore “five stars for accuracy.” AP claims 19 scientists viewed...

WASHINGTON - The nation's top climate scientists are giving "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore's documentary on global warming, five stars for accuracy. The former vice president's movie — replete with the prospect of a flooded New York City, an inundated Florida, more and nastier hurricanes, worsening droughts, retreating glaciers and disappearing ice sheets — mostly got the science right, said all 19 climate scientists who had seen the movie or read the book and answered questions from The Associated Press. The AP contacted more than 100 top climate researchers by e-mail and phone for their opinion. Among those contacted were...

Jimmy Carter: Recovering Racist, Still a Bigot By Julia Gorin Jimmy Carter has been called everything from a humanitarian, to a crack pot, to the ultimate pacifist. But a look into his past reveals a shoe that fits better than all of these. It's a story told to me by an acquaintance from Watertown, NY, a place situated way upstate, well north of Syracuse. The acquaintance had heard it from two barflies who were there the night in 1975 that Jimmy Carter passed through town in his first New York appearance during the "250-day 1975 portion of the presidential campaign,"...

"Politics Wasn't First on List of NY Sen. Clinton's Career Picks" PURCHASE, N.Y. (AP) _ She's a former first lady, a United States Senator, and a potential 2008 presidential candidate. But to hear Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton tell it, all of that pales in comparison to her real childhood dreams. "I wanted desperately to be an Olympic athlete,"....

LONDON -- Westminster Abbey has implicitly criticized churches that opened their doors to the filming of "The Da Vinci Code" last year by denouncing the thriller as "nonsense" that should be exposed by Christians. The abbey barred the filmmakers from its premises in June, saying that the best-selling Dan Brown novel on which the film was based was "theologically unsound." But Lincoln and Winchester cathedrals cooperated with the Hollywood adaptation, as did Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland. The film -- starring Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou and Sir Ian McKellen -- is expected to be one of the blockbusters of the year...

Opinion Journal story embargoed til 12:00m.

I found this not so cut up video of the poor old woman disarmed and evicted by force from her home on Sept. 7th, 2005, by the California Highway Patrol. “There’s a mandatory evacuation” (words from the CAHP on the video). Obviously, they used force to enforce it, and not just in this instance. http://www.ktvu.com/news/4936363/detail.html Now let’s move forward by one day. (Sept. 8th, 2005, ABC World News, Reporter Bob Woodruff). “Police and National Guard find themselves in a very difficult position tonight to try to carry out an order to force people from the city without actually using force....

If you owe Child Support and other charges under child support title YOU are NOW on the FBI/Homeland Security Terrorist Watch List.... "...The Terrorist screening center is an FBI operation which maintains a constantly updated watch list of people suspected of being terrorists, or terrorist associates...."

Supreme Court rules cities may seize homes HOPE YEN Associated Press WASHINGTON - A divided Supreme Court ruled that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses against their will for private development in a decision anxiously awaited in communities where economic growth conflicts with individual property rights. Thursday's 5-4 ruling represented a defeat for some Connecticut residents whose homes are slated for destruction to make room for an office complex. They argued that cities have no right to take their land except for projects with a clear public use, such as roads or schools, or to revitalize blighted areas....

Thousands of girls and boys were raped and tortured, and many were murdered, in Canada's aboriginal boarding schools, most of which shut down in the 1970's. The unchecked criminal violence suffered by these girls and boys has become a major cause of rampant child prostitution and other serious social ills among several generations of Canada's First Nations (Native/indigenous) peoples. This violence is called genocide.

LONDON, England -- Workers distracted by phone calls, e-mails and text messages suffer a greater loss of IQ than a person smoking marijuana, a British study shows. The constant interruptions reduce productivity and leave people feeling tired and lethargic, according to a survey carried out by TNS Research and commissioned by Hewlett Packard. The survey of 1,100 Britons showed: Almost two out three people check their electronic messages out of office hours and when on holiday Half of all workers respond to an e-mail within 60 minutes of receiving one One in five will break off from a business or...

The one thing that international bankers don't want to hear is that the second Great Depression may be round the corner. But last week, a group of ultra-conservative Swiss financiers asked a retired English petroleum geologist living in Ireland to tell them about the beginning of the end of the oil age. They called Colin Campbell, who helped to found the London-based Oil Depletion Analysis Centre because he is an industry man through and through, has no financial agenda and has spent most of a lifetime on the front line of oil exploration on three continents. He was chief geologist...

US tells India, drop dead March 28, 2005 A friend, usually upbeat about India-US relations, sent me an angry mail over the weekend after President George Bush called up Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the evening of March 25 to inform him that the US had decided to supply F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in an interview to The Washington Post, "dismissed concerns" about the fallout of the American decision. The mail reads: "lovely easter gift to india from the us. moral: proliferate nukes, threaten us interests everywhere, be terror hub, and get rewarded...