Free Republic

The winter vomiting bug norovirus has struck 2.8million people, with health professionals braced for another rise as people return to schools and offices. The virus - which causes projectile vomiting, diarrhoea, mild fevers and headaches - is striking down more than 200,000 a week, according to official estimates. Three hospitals have been placed on red alert, while hundreds of wards up and down the country have been closed to new patients as the number of beds being taken up by bug victims reaches critical levels.

Sheikh Ahmed Abdul Ghafour al Samarrai. Click to view. Wednesday's closure of the headquarters of the Association of Muslim Scholars at the Umm al Quraa mosque marks a dramatic shift in the Sunni religious establishment. Prominent Sunni clerics, who once supported, justified, or remained silent about al Qaeda's terror tactics, have now turned on the leading Sunni religious establishment that supports al Qaeda in Iraq. On November 14, Iraqi soldiers surrounded the headquarters of the Association of Muslim Scholars after Sheikh Ahmed Abdul Ghafour al Samarrai, the leader of the Sunni Religious Endowments, or Waqf, ordered the mosque's closure....

With Rudy Giuliani crisscrossing the country in support of Republican candidates and raising money for his new political action committee, it is beginning to look inevitable that he will seek the presidency in 2008. Despite his lead in many early polls, skeptics still dismiss his chances of winning the Republican nomination given his personal background and liberal views on social issues. There is no doubt that these will be obstacles for Giuliani, but compared to the forces that will propel him into the White House, they are small potatoes. "History is in motion, and those moving with it are so...

The sun is rising over a house in the Berkeley Hills, and in its modest studio apartment, America's most compelling anti-war activist is making her bed, apologizing for the clutter and running late. Cindy Sheehan was up much of the previous night while emergency room doctors treated her daughter for a painful cyst, but sleeping in is out of the question. Soon a car will whisk her off to a Canadian TV interview, to be followed by a local TV interview, and finally, fixing spaghetti for her three adult children in Vacaville -- her home before the death of her...

NEW YORK -- On Katie Couric's busy schedule, the phone interview about her new children's book was set for 4:30 p.m., about 12 hours after she had left for work as co-host of NBC's Today. When she called at 5, she was apologetic and explained she had forgotten that one of her daughters had a volleyball game. So while rushing to the game on the Upper East Side, Couric called by cellphone. She laughed and said, ''I'm trying to multitask.'' The latest example of that is Couric's The Blue Ribbon Day (Doubleday, $15.95), on sale this week, a sequel to...

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times Senators Charles E. Schumer, left, and Lindsey Graham, discussing legislation outside the Senate chamber on Thursday. WASHINGTON — When Charles E. Schumer recommended using an extreme tactic — the filibuster — to block some Bush administration nominees for federal judgeships, he put himself in the cross hairs of the president's Republican and conservative allies. Over the last two years, Mr. Schumer has used almost every maneuver available to a Senate Judiciary Committee member to block the appointment of the more controversial judges nominated by the Bush administration, drawing fire from the political right for both...

"It's easy for people to say that if they shoot up on heroin the only people they're hurting are themselves. But that's not true. ... Drug abusers destroy their families ... If we legalize these vices, we erode the societal support for prohibitions against crimes such as murder. The erosion of the moral fabric of society is a gradual, insidious process." -- Rush Limbaugh, The Way Things Ought to Be, pp 53-54. As I sifted through hundreds of comments from Rush Limbaugh fans over the last week, some interesting trends emerged. About 50 percent just wanted to call me names....

MIDI - OH WHAT A BEAUTIFUL MORNINGIn our office the smell of fresh flowers...will be wonderful for many hours But in comes Bilewsky and we become ill...in his coffee we should slip a cyanide pill Oh what a beautiful morning...until he shows up at work Oh what a beautiful morning...that guy is one smelly jerk He's got bad breath, his armpits cause gagging...of his gas passing he has been bragging He'll belch like a fog horn and take off his shoes...if he got a brain tumor, we'd welcome the news Oh what a beautiful morning...until he shows up at...

Republicans And Christians Are Becoming Increasingly Irrelevant By Chuck Baldwin Food For Thought From The Chuck Wagon August 15, 2003 Can anyone remember when conservative Christian groups and conservative Republicans actually stood for something? Can you remember when millions of motivated conservative Christians stood as one for less government, tax reductions, and more freedom? Why, I can even remember when conservatives championed the elimination of at least five federal departments, scores of federal agencies, and massive cuts in federal spending. Well, those days are gone, my friends. Today's conservative Christians and Republicans do not remotely resemble the principled conservatives of...

February 27, 2003 -- IF at least 41 Senate Democrats succeed in blocking a vote on the confirmation of Miguel Estrada to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the Constitution effectively will be amended. If Senate rules, exploited by an anticonstitutional minority, are allowed to trump the Constitution's text and two centuries of practice, the Senate's power to consent to judicial nominations will have become a Senate right to require a 60-vote supermajority for confirmations. By thus nullifying the president's power to shape the judiciary, the Democratic Party will wield a presidential power without having won a...

Under the heavily ironic heading "Behind Every Choice is a Story," Planned Parenthood is advertising an artwork and poster contest "celebrating 30 years of choice." Serrin Foster, with Feminists for Life, is concerned about the images in the minds of women who have suffered through an abortion. "And I think what they're going to miss are the untold stories of women who've had abortions and all the millions of young men and young women who aren't with us this year," Foster said. "The thoughts that they're going to have on the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade imagining the children...