Free Republic

For Immediate Release November 4, 2009 Health Care Reform Bills will Hurt Oklahoma’s Seniors and Families by U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. Over the past few months I've visited with thousands of Oklahomans who are concerned about how the health care reform bills moving through Congress will affect their lives and their families' lives. Politicians in Washington have talked a good game about pursuing common reform goals, such as reducing costs and improving access and quality. Unfortunately, the plan backed by congressional leaders not only falls far short of the goals of reform, but will place new burdens on families,...

DESTIN — News that a federal agency had slammed the door on this year’s amberjack season without notice didn’t sit well Tuesday with charter fishermen. They believe Big Brother is out to take their livelihood from them. “They’re killing us,” said boat captain Thomas Swanson. “They’re flat killing us.” Read the press release from the NOAA Fisheries Service » A morning announcement that no greater amberjack could be caught after midnight Friday swept across the docks at Destin Harbor. It didn’t take long for an angry group of fishermen to gather to vent. It also didn’t take long for the...

Marine free after conviction tossed out Rape charge led to decade in prison By Rick Rogers (Contact) Union-Tribune Staff Writer 2:00 a.m. March 14, 2009 Brian Foster After spending a decade behind bars, a former Camp Pendleton Marine is now a free man because a military appeals court ruled that “a muddled, hearsay-based case” caused his spousal-rape conviction. But anyone who thinks Brian Foster is bitter would be wrong. As Foster left the prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., on Feb. 20, he picked up his sergeant stripes and spoke candidly with his superiors. “I told (them) I was happy to...

MGM and the Farrelly brothers are closing in on their cast for "The Three Stooges." Studio has set Sean Penn to play Larry, and negotiations are underway with Jim Carrey to play Curly, with the actor already making plans to gain 40 pounds to approximate the physical dimensions of Jerome "Curly" Howard. The studio is zeroing in on Benicio Del Toro to play Moe. The film is not a biopic, but rather a comedy built around the antics of the three characters that Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Howard played in the Columbia Pictures shorts. The quest by the Peter...

WASHINGTON – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid predicted Friday that Congress will finish its work on a massive, $790 billion economic stimulus plan, possibly by day's end, giving President Barack Obama a big victory. Speaking as debate resumed on Capitol Hill, the Nevada Democrat said the Senate would likely vote on the package of spending and tax cuts later in the day and that the finished product could be sent to Obama's desk soon thereafter. "We expect to be in a position to vote on adoption of the conference report," Reid said at the start of the Senate day. Obama,...

ARKANSAS School shooter guilty of theft A man who as a teenager fired on his middle-school classmates has been sentenced to an extra six years in prison for using a stolen debit card, this time to pay for a $7.99 Burger King breakfast. Mitchell Johnson, 24, pleaded guilty and was sentenced for theft and financial identity fraud. It was his third sentencing since he was released from prison three years ago for his role in the school shooting. Johnson was 13 when he and an 11-year-old schoolmate killed four students and a teacher at Jonesboro Westside Middle School in March...

EL PASO, Texas — Two former Border Patrol agents convicted of shooting a drug smuggler and trying to cover it up have been denied a request for a new hearing. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans denied the request by Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean on Wednesday. The same court upheld the men's convictions in July. No reason was given for the Wednesday's denial. Ramos and Compean are each serving sentences of more than 10 years for shooting Osvaldo Aldrete Davila in the buttocks while he was fleeing from an abandoned marijuana load in 2005....

On Wednesday, June 18, a district court in the German state of Hesse sentenced Jurgen and Rosemary Dudek each to three months in prison simply because they homeschool their seven children. HSLDA condemns this court ruling in the strongest possible terms. Good parents who love and care for their children should never be sentenced to prison for doing what is best for their children. Germany is a Western nation and should know better. HSLDA will be helping the Dudeks with their appeals, but German courts have so far consistently ruled against homeschoolers. More information will be forthcoming as this story...

TYLER — A 17-year-old who phoned his rival high school on a school bus and threatened to open fire on students has been sentenced to eight years in state prison. An attorney for Terrance Taylor said Saturday he was surprised by the sentence and had recommended probation for his client, who was a junior at John Tyler High School in Tyler. Taylor pleaded guilty Thursday to making a terroristic threat. Don Davidson, the student's attorney, said state District Judge Jack Skeen Jr. used the phrase "the times we live in" in handing down the sentence.

(Private in jail for "Assault" while SFC shooter skates free) A court-martial panel on Friday found a Hawaii-based soldier not guilty in the killing of an unarmed Iraqi during a raid on a suspected insurgent hideout last year. Sgt. 1st Class Trey Corrales' friends and family erupted in cheers when the head of the military panel, or jury, read the verdict. The jury of nine soldiers acquitted Corrales of all three charges, including premeditated murder, after more than seven hours of deliberation.

In anticipation of today's cloture vote, DREAM Act supporters have been telling people that the measure would give amnesty to only 60,000 illegal aliens a year; ...But even their own think tank disagrees — the Migration Policy Institute has estimated that 360,000 illegals would get amnesty right away, with another 715,000 benefiting in the future, for a total of over 1 million amnestied. Using a different data source, we looked at the same question and estimated that the total number of potential beneficiaries of the amnesty is 2.1 million. What's more, there are another 1.4 million parents and young siblings...

WASHINGTON - To put it bluntly, Texas wants President Bush to get out of the way of the state's plan to execute a Mexican for the brutal killing of two teenage girls. Bush, who presided over 152 executions as governor of Texas, wants to halt the execution of Jose Ernesto Medellin in what has become a confusing test of presidential power that the Supreme Court, which hears the case this week, ultimately will sort out. The president wants to enforce a decision by the International Court of Justice that found the convictions of Medellin and 50 other Mexican-born prisoners violated...

...Democrats invited camera crews to film the arrival of a dozen cots outside the Senate chamber...for the all-night Iraq debate. With rather less fanfare, the cots, unused, were removed early yesterday morning. "They've been taking some of them out," a Capitol Police officer said at 2 a.m. "It was just a photo op." So was the debate. The Democrats had the cameras film the delivery of pizza to the cloakroom. They offered barbecue to Republicans. They gave GOP senators care packages of Colgate toothpaste, a CVS toothbrush and Speed Stick deodorant, all wrapped in a yellow ribbon with a note...

Mary Winkler guilty of voluntary manslaughter in the March 2006 killing of her minister husband, Matthew. Judge gives her only 60 days in mental hospital............................

The Plame Scandal: The topic of amnesty has been very much front-and-center in public debate. Well, let us go on the record: We support amnesty 100%. For ex-White House aide Scooter Libby, that is. Scooter Libby will face justice of sorts today, as a judge prepares to sentence him for the trumped-up crimes on which he was convicted three months ago. We hope Judge Reggie B. Walton will remain oblivious to the howls for blood from the left-wing media and Democrat politicians and do what's right: Let Libby go, no prison time. Further, we call on President Bush to pardon...

We've got some real challenges facing us. FR was established to fight against government corruption, overstepping, and abuse and to fight for a return to the limited constitutional government as envisioned and set forth by our founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and other founding documents. One of the biggest cases of government corruption, overstepping and abuse that I know of is its disgraceful headlong slide into a socialist hell. Our founders never intended for abortion to be the law of the land. And they never intended the Supreme Court to be a legislative body. They...

Cross Posted: THE MINORITY REPORTI lack the inside baseball connections to know who Mel Sembler is, but I’m convinced the man is a great American. He has taken the personal initiative to rise up against the malignant injustice of our nation’s latest judicial witch-hunt. In the letter below, he requests our help. “As Scooter’s lawyer, Ted Wells, said today, we are all disappointed in the verdict. His attorneys will seek a new trial and if that’s denied, they will appeal. The defense team fervently believes in Scooter’s innocence and intends to continue fighting to establish Scooter’s innocence. Speaking for the...

In this week's episode of Rome (a superb HBO series which increasingly reminds me of the Nation's Capital), Servilia, whose son was killed in a power grab, knelt before the door of manipulative Attia, mother of Octavian and lover of Marc Anthony, the two men responsible, calling out in a haunting cry, "Attia of the Julii, I call for justice." She did so because the unavailing legal system was broken, and curses (which were taken seriously in those days) were the one remaining way most people had to redress grave wrongs. I call for justice for Scooter Libby because he...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been found guilty on four of five counts in his perjury and obstruction of justice trial. Libby, 56, faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison and a fine of $1 million. Libby was convicted of: obstruction of justice when he intentionally deceived a grand jury investigating the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame; making a false statement by intentionally lying to FBI agents about a conversation with NBC newsman Tim Russert; perjury when he lied in court about his conversation with Russert; a second count of...

I'll let the reader decide where to place this article from Newsweek. Here's the headline graphic with the caption: "'Her heart responded': Clinton bows her head during the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington last week" Your thoughts?

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A Tennessee woman who is seeking a divorce from her husband because of his alleged "ties to terrorism" and had traveled out of state to consult with her general counsel lawyer has returned home – under a judge's order to do that or lose that home until the divorce case is concluded. Rosine Ghawji returned yesterday to her Memphis home under the order from Judge Donna M. Fields in the divorce case in which Mrs. Ghawji has alleged her husband is a self-proclaimed radical Islamist and "has threatened to kill her and her two boys if they did not abide...

Fincher Guilty In Machine Gun Case Friday, January 12, 2007 3:37 PM CST It took a jury just under five hours to find Hollis Wayne Fincher guilty of owning illegal machine guns and a sawed-off shotgun. Closing arguments in federal court in Fayetteville wrapped at mid-morning and the case went to the federal jury about 10:30 a.m. The jury returned its verdict about 3:20 p.m.

Terror On Trial: The world is rightly outraged by an Indonesian court's exoneration of Abu Bakar Bashir, who was implicated in the Bali terror attacks. But the biggest victim of this travesty will likely be Indonesia itself. Bashir is a militant Islamofascist cleric who gave Java-based terrorists his blessing to detonate the huge bombs that killed 202 people on Bali in 2002. He also is a master manipulator of Indonesia's court system. Despite his role in the attacks, he got his already pathetic 2 1/2-year prison sentence overturned. In a further travesty, the malevolently grinning cleric now demands compensation from...

A private laboratory hired by the prosecution in the Duke lacrosse case failed to report that it found DNA from multiple males in the accuser's body and underwear, according to a defense motion filed today. The lab, DNA Security of Burlington, found that the DNA did not match the three defendants, their lacrosse teammates or anyone else who submitted their DNA to police, including the accuser's boyfriend. The new evidence emerged in thousands of documents handed over to the defense in October.

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Commercial activities of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation are protected from lawsuits under tribal sovereign immunity, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday. The ruling reverses a court of appeals decision in a racial discrimination lawsuit filed by a non-Indian against two corporations of the Eastern Washington tribe and a supervisor. The opinion, written by Justice Richard B. Sanders, found that state laws echo federal laws granting the Colvilles' tribal corporations sovereign immunity unless there is an express waiver by the tribe or immunity is abrogated by Congress. Tribal sovereign immunity protects tribes from suits...

Hialeah, FL - Dec 03, 2006 An autopsy report released last week obtained by Operation Rescue now indicates that a baby that was reportedly born alive then intentionally killed at a Hialeah abortion mill in July was indeed born alive. However, it is unclear how this determination will affect any criminal prosecutions. The Hialeah Police are asking for murder charges to be filed against those responsible for the baby’s death.On July 20, an 18-year old woman reported to the A Gyn Diagnostics abortion mill to complete an abortion in her 22nd week of pregnancy. The doctor was not on hand...

At about 5 a.m., loud banging on a front door quieted a chorus of crickets on a pine-ringed road in this Atlanta suburb. "Police! Policia! Open the door!" shouted the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. The raid, part of a new push to round up immigrants who have been ordered deported for criminal convictions or visa violations, was targeting a man from El Salvador who had repeatedly been busted on drunk driving charges. They came away instead with two brothers from Mexico, one of whom has the same name as the fugitive, who said they came illegally and will likely...

When Border Patrol Agent Ignacio Ramos pulled the trigger last February, all he knew was that his partner was lying on the ground behind him – bloodied from a struggle with a fleeing suspect – shots had been fired and now, it appeared, the drug smuggler he was pursuing had turned toward him with what looked to be a gun in his hand. In the split-second he had to respond, Ramos determined the course of his and his partner's lives – federal prison for the next 20 years for assault with serious bodily injury, assault with a deadly weapon, discharging...

HOUSTON -- Jurors reached a verdict in Andrea Yates' murder retrial Wednesday morning. The jury's decision will be announced at about 11:25 a.m. KPRC and Click2Houston will air the verdict live. After deliberating nearly 11 hours, jurors returned for a third day Wednesday to determine if she was legally insane when she drowned her five children in the bathtub. Before court ended Tuesday, the jury of six men and six women asked to review the state's definition of insanity: that someone, because of a severe mental illness, does not know a crime he is committing is wrong. State District Judge...

Washington DC - With the 10th anniversary of the crash of TWA Flight 800 approaching, the National Transportation Safety Board today released a fact sheet that reviews lessons learned from the accident investigation and the progress toward ensuring that similar tragedies do not happen in the future. The Board's review found that significant safety improvements have been implemented over the past ten years, but that more needs to be done to avoid another accident like TWA 800. TWA 800, a Boeing 747, crashed on July 17, 1996, minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport on a flight to...

A state appeals court has ruled that a Birmingham abortion clinic can be sued over an unsuccessful abortion that a woman blames for damaging her child's health. The Alabama Court of Civil Appeals reversed a lower court ruling that had blocked a lawsuit filed by a woman on behalf of herself and her child. In a decision released May 26, the appeals court said the woman, identified only by her initials L.K.D.H., can sue Planned Parenthood of Alabama on behalf of her child.

Some time ago a trusted leader in my parish decided to divorce his wife. There was no adultery (at least not on her part), no abandonment, no abuse. He told me he just wasn’t “happy“; that he hadn’t been “happy” for some time. He told me straight up: “the Spirit is leading me out of his marriage.” God, after all, wanted him to be happy. I spent several months trying to dissuade him. He is staunchly orthodox doctrinally speaking and remained rock solid after GC2003. During those days I remember having conversations with him about the nature of ECUSA’s error;...

A grand jury indicted a third member of Duke University's lacrosse team Monday on charges tied to a woman's allegations she was raped and beaten at a team party. David Evans, a senior and team captain from Bethesda, Md., was indicted on charges of first-degree forcible rape, sexual offense and kidnapping. He joins two other players, both sophomores, indicted last month on the same charges. No Semen on Swabs, No Blood on Plastic Nail ABC News' Law & Justice Unit was given exclusive details about the latest DNA report in the Duke lacrosse rape investigation and was shown and reviewed...

Tom DeLay's good pal Jack Abramoff is crooning to investigators. His former aide, Michael Scanlon, has pleaded guilty to corruption charges and is singing harmony with the Justice Department. Ditto DeLay's former chief of staff, Tony Rudy. And a third aide, Emily Miller, is now doing an aria on the crimes of Scanlon, her ex-fiance. Scanlon had bought Miller a $4.7 million beach mansion as a wedding present, then jilted her for a 24-year-old waitress. Bad move. There's now more singing from DeLay's former associates than in the tavern scene from "Carmen." And so the former House majority leader could...

A year after Los Angeles seized three acres from a private company to construct a public building, a city councilman wants to sell the land to another private firm for a commercial development. Both companies are furniture manufacturers. But executives with the company that would buy the land have political connections and have made $17,600 in campaign contributions to key city leaders. Critics of the proposal say it's wrong for the city to use its power of eminent domain to take property from one business for a public purpose and then sell it to another business. "It strikes me as...

<p>A tower of voices heroically marks the entry to and exit from the memorial site at Route 30. Tall enough to be seen from the highway, set on a planted mound within rings of White Pine trees, the tower houses forty white wind chimes. The sounds of chimes in the wind are a living memory of the forty persons who are honored; many of whose last contact was through their voices.</p>

NOVEMBER 22--In a sweetheart plea deal, a former Florida middle school teacher who had sex with a 14-year-old male student escaped a jail term today. Debra Lafave, 24, pleaded guilty to two counts of lewd and lascivious behavior and was sentenced to three years of community control, or house arrest, and ordered to register as a sex offender. Lafave's plea came on the eve of trial and was approved by the teen victim and his family (in a court affidavit filed today, the boy's mother wrote that a trial would "negatively affect my son's emotional and psychological well-being"). Lafave, who...

<p>Pleasee sign this petition opposing the "Crescent of Embrace" design being developed for the Flight 93 memorial. Despite vague comments by the designer and the Park Service, the design is going forward as yet unchanged.</p> <p>We must, as US citizens oppose this travesty and make our voices heard. If enough of us do so, we will be successful as we were in opposing the Flag Raising Monument in January of 2002 that had been planned for the WTC Flag Raising.</p>

If you reside in Detroit, as I do, your radio and TV broadcast airwaves are dominated by live coverage of Rosa Parks' funeral. All other programming is pre-empted -- so we can be lectured by racists and race merchants. Right now, I'm listening to Louis X a/k/a Louis Farrakhan. Why is this racist loon a prominent speaker at this woman's funeral? If he had it his way, Catholics and other Christians, Jews, Whites, Asians, Gays, Arabs, and anyone not Black Muslim would not be riding in the back of the bus: they'd be dead. Is Rosa Parks' funeral the place...

BOB PERKINS IS TOM DELAY'S "JUDGE" IN HIS "BOOKING" HEARING--BOB PERKINS COULD ALLOW TOM DELAY TO NOT BE "BOOKED" WITH A MUG SHOT. WHAT ARE THE CHANCES OF THAT HAPPENING, NOW THAT WE SEE BOB PERKINS' POLITICAL CONTRIBUTIONS ACCORDING TO OPENSECRETS.ORG? 6 records found in 0.7656 seconds.  Search Criteria:Donor name: PerkinsDonor State: TXZip: 78704Cycle(s) selected: 2004, 2002Start another search Sort by NameSort by DateSort by Amount Total for this search: $1,775 Contributor Occupation Date Amount Recipient PERKINS, BOBAUSTIN,TX 78704 STATE OF TEXAS/JUDGE 7/29/2004 $475 Kerry, John PERKINS, BOBAUSTIN,TX 78704 STATE OF TEXAS/JUDGE 10/14/2004 $200 DNC Services Corp PERKINS, BOBAUSTIN,TX 78704 STATE OF TX/JUDGE...

Rocket fired into Netzarim and gunfire at Kfar Dorom. Israel is retreating under fire, as expected. Profuse praise by Condaleeza Rice, who has not succeeded in the request to disarm a single terrorist in the Palestinian areas. Rice demands Israel also pull out of most if not all of the West Bank and allow free transit (of terrorists and weapons) between Gaza and the West Bank. And the Gaza seaport will also make a nice base for incoming weapons.

The name Neshoba County, Mississippi, became synonymous with publicly sanctioned murder when a sheriff's deputy conspired with the Klan to kill three young civil rights workers during the summer of 1964. The slaughter of James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner became known not just for its brutality but also for the conspiracies of silence and inaction that developed inside Mississippi itself and protected the murderers by pushing the case out of public view. This week's conviction of Edgar Ray Killen, an 80-year-old former Klansman, brings the case to a conclusion of sorts and affords some solace to the...

Double Murder Conviction for Man Who Helped Girlfriend Miscarry Tuesday, June 07, 2005 LUFKIN, Texas — A 19-year-old accused of causing his teenage girlfriend to miscarry two fetuses by stepping on her stomach was convicted Monday of two counts of murder. Gerardo Flores (search) received an automatic life sentence because prosecutors did not seek the death penalty, which was available under the state's 2003 fetus protection law (search). Erica Basoria, 17, acknowledged asking Flores to help end her pregnancy; she could not be prosecuted because of her legal right to abortion. The defense contended that Basoria punched herself while Flores...

Seventeen states have no laws requiring parental notification before a minor daughter aborts. I live in one of them, Illinois. Here is one example how unobstructed minor "choice" translates. The incident occurred less than a week ago. Jack* arrived home the morning of March 17 after working the midnight shift in time to see his two stepchildren off to school. His wife, Shane*, had already left for her job as a school bus driver. But 14-year-old Nicole* was nowhere to be found. Jack was promptly worried. Nicole had recently told her family she was pregnant by 16-year-old boyfriend Mark*, and...

Maybe I haven't visited enough presidential libraries. And, yes, I do know they all inevitably have something worshipful about them; it's in their nature. But I can't recall anything - anything! - so blatantly partisan, so full of just plain bullfeathers, so completely . . . Orwellian in its approach to the truth as one display at the newly opened Clinton Library here in Little Rock. You really need to see it to disbelieve it. [snip]But as every apparatchik knows, the real trick to disguising propaganda as history isn't what's said but what isn't. Some terms are clearly verboten in...

IT WAS ten days ago that rumours began circulating in Baghdad that Margaret Hassan had been murdered, but it was not until last Thursday that a video of her murder was given to the Arab satellite station al-Jazeera. The station decided not to broadcast the film. Instead it contacted British diplomats who sent a specialist team to the network’s headquarters in Qatar. At first the experts could not be sure it was Mrs Hassan who could be seen blindfolded and kneeling on the floor before being shot with a pistol at point blank range. One official who has seen the...

Michael Schiavo won his fight to have his wife killed by dehydration. Now he won't even allow her parents to sit by her side. by Wesley J. Smith 04/30/2004 9:00:00 AM Increase Font Size Printer-Friendly Email a Friend Respond to this article WHAT LITTLE Terri Schiavo has left in this life, is being cruelly stripped away. Not only has a judge ordered her to die slowly by dehydration via having her tube-supplied food and water removed, but now, her (estranged) husband and legal guardian Michael Schiavo has completely isolated her from her family. Ever since mysterious "puncture wounds" were supposedly...

Pete Rose and Major League Baseball have reached an agreement that would allow him to return to baseball in 2004, and includes no admission of wrongdoing by Rose, Baseball Prospectus has learned. According to several sources, Rose signed the agreement after a series of pre-season meetings between Rose, Hall of Fame member Mike Schmidt, and at different times, high-level representatives of Major League Baseball, including Bob DuPuy, Major League Baseball's Chief Operating Officer, and Allan H. "Bud" Selig, Commissioner of Major League Baseball. The agreement includes removal of Rose from baseball's permanently ineligible list. This would allow Rose to appear...

The family of a woman who was raped and killed by an unsupervised and violent sex offender settled a wrongful-death suit for $3.1 million yesterday. The state agreed to pay $2.6 million and King County $500,000 to the family of Deborah Funk, a 40-year-old mother of three who was raped and slain in her Federal Way home April 14, 2000. Roy Elexis Webbe, 34, a paranoid schizophrenic, was convicted of her murder in January this year and sentenced to life in prison after numerous court hearings that focused on his competency to stand trial. One jury deadlocked on the...