Free Republic

Of particular interest to L.A. taxpayers are these assurances from the school district: And this: The Los Angeles Times reports: As of midafternoon, more than 22,000 students had walked out of classes in "little bits here and there," according to Ellen Morgan, spokesperson for the Los Angeles Unified School District. A total of 60 schools were involved. Many students waved Mexican flags as they poured out of schools and onto city streets. "Everything has been calm and there have been no reports of injuries or incidents," said Morgan. The major walkouts were: Kennedy High School in the San Fernando Valley,...

There is a new Paganism taking root around the world and it manifests itself as environmentalism or more explicitly, Pantheism, a doctrine identifying the Deity with the universe and its phenomena, Fundamentalist Environmentalism, if you will. Pantheism is a metaphysical and religious position, it is the view that "God is everything and everything is God, the world is either identical with God or in some way a self-expression of his nature” Similarly, it is the view that everything that exists constitutes a "unity" and this all-inclusive unity is in some sense divine. Anthropologists have observed in cultures the world over...

The Open Borders Lobby’s pied pipers convince half-a-million illegal aliens and students to skip school and play in traffic. BIG CORPORATIONS AND THE FAR-LEFT HAVE ONE THING IN COMMON: both like to employ cheap illegal immigrants to do their heavy lifting. The leftist media have tried to portray this weekend’s massive protests against House measures to curtail illegal immigration as the uprising of “The Other America”: forgotten, humble, hidden Hispanic members of the working poor simply demanding their “rights.” As events spanned from California to Detroit, Phoenix to Washington, D.C., the media kept up its anti-enforcement drumbeat. Although some have...

Take a moment to relax and view these cool pictures. Turn up your volume for music.

It was a bizarre and emotional courtroom scene, but one occurring with disturbing frequency these days. A popular middle school teacher, 43-year-old Pamela Diehl-Moore, had tearfully pleaded guilty to having sex with a child – a 13-year-old male student who had just completed 7th grade – and now stood before a Hackensack, N.J., judge awaiting sentencing. And what would that sentence be? Considering all the intense media coverage of male sexual predators victimizing female children, one might expect a stiff prison term, accompanied by a withering rebuke. But when New Jersey Superior Court Judge Bruce A. Gaeta opened his...

For Anglicans, and members of mainline denominations, there used to be The Bible, that is the The King James Version, and nothing else, except the Coverdale translation of the Psalter inside The Book of Common Prayer (1662 & 1789 USA). Then from the late nineteenth century and before World War II there appeared a new translation, sponsored by the Church of England and the mainline denominations in the USA – specifically The Revised Version (1881-1895) and The American Standard Version (1901). All of these versions followed the original languages in terms of distinguishing between the second person singular (“thou” &...

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/01/20/60minutes/main1225184.shtml The Oil Sands Of Alberta (Page 1 of 3) Jan. 22, 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (CBS) (CBS) There’s an oil boom going on right now. Not in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or any of those places, but 600 miles north of Montana. In Alberta, Canada, in a town called Fort McMurray where, this time of year, the temperature sometimes zooms up to zero. The oilmen up there aren’t digging holes in the sand and hoping for a spout. They’re digging up dirt — dirt that is saturated with oil. They’re called oil sands, and if you’ve never heard of them then...

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing. Judging from the rather frantic behind-the-scenes efforts of Russia and China in Iran, they seem to appreciate that the Iranian leadership is in for a big and probably deadly surprise. The Bush administration has not only handled its Iran dossier much more skillfully than Iraq, but also managed to set up Iran for a war it can neither win nor fight to a draw. If the Iranian leaders think they can deter an attack because...

Close window Published online: 16 February 2006; | doi:10.1038/news060213-9 Why you should go with your gutStudy says unconscious consideration yields most satisfying decisions.Helen Pearson Which would you choose? Studies say you should list the pros and cons, then sleep on it.© Punchstock The best way to make a tough decision is to put your feet up and think about something else. So says an investigation of people shopping for cars, clothes and furniture. Many people assume that the best way to tackle a difficult choice is to list the pros and cons and ponder them deeply. Others believe we...

In January, LiftPort team members deployed a mile-long tether with the help of three large balloons in the Arizona desert (N Aung/LiftPort Group)Related Articles A slim cable for a space elevator has been built stretching a mile into the sky, enabling robots to scrabble some way up and down the line. LiftPort Group, a private US company on a quest to build a space elevator by April 2018, stretched the strong carbon ribbon 1 mile (1.6 km) into the sky from the Arizona desert outside Phoenix in January tests, it announced on Monday. The company's lofty objective will sound familiar...

Iran: Irreconcilable differences By Salena Zito TRIBUNE-REVIEW We are "real time" in a defining moment in our history: Iran is becoming the diplomatic equivalent of an ice cream headache with Iranian President Ahmadinejad holding the frozen confection to the roof of our mouths.

RadioShack to close up to 700 stores Fri Feb 17, 2006 1:16 PM ET By Nicole Maestri NEW YORK (Reuters) - RadioShack Corp. (RSH.N: Quote, Profile, Research), whose chief executive has admitted to lying on his resume, on Friday said quarterly profit fell 62 percent after a switch in wireless providers led to an inventory write-down, sending its shares to a nearly three-year low. The consumer electronics retailer, which said it was hiring legal counsel to investigate the admission by CEO David Edmondson, also announced a new turnaround plan that includes closing 400 to 700 company-operated stores and liquidating slow-moving...

Commercial satellite photos made public recently provide a new look at China's nuclear forces and bases images that include the first view of a secret underwater submarine tunnel. A Pentagon official said the photograph of the tunnel entrance reveals for the first time a key element of China's hidden military buildup. Similar but more detailed intelligence photos of the entrance are highly classified within the U.S. government, the official said. "The Chinese have a whole network of secret facilities that the U.S. government understands but cannot make public," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "This is...

A new site promises sophisticated home valuations and -- one day -- an end to 6% commissions. NEW YORK (MONEY) - Say "goodbye" to appraisers -- and possibly real estate agents. At least that's the promise of Zillow.com, launched Wednesday, which is headed by the founder of Internet travel company Expedia........... Plug in an address and you get a price. You can even pull back to a satellite photo of a particular street, complete with price estimates for every house on the block. Those price guesses, which the branding-savvy Zillow folks call a "Zestimate," take into account the size of...

At first glance, world-renowned Israeli virologist Dr. Madeleine Mumcuoglu does not seem like the sort of person you expect to come up with what could turn out to be a cure for one of humanity's biggest threats today - the avian flu. She seems comfortable and grandmotherly, not the type to be on the frontline of research into a potential pandemic. On the other hand, however, Mumcuoglu's treatment, Sambucol, which is already a clinically proven treatment for regular flu and in new in-vitro tests proved effective against avian flu, is based on elderberries, an old folk remedy for influenza passed...

Click the link to proceed.

Pukin Dog here, with my 2nd bad cold in the past 3 weeks. Just as I thought I was feeling better, I get slammed again. I've got the Dayquil/Ni-quil, I've got the Theraflu, The Vicks, the Halls, you name it. I've had so much hot tea, I could float away. The only thing that gives me the slightest relief has been a teaspoon of Cayenne pepper, but that was NOT pleasant. I got my electric blanket turned up to maximum, shades drawn, looking like death warmed over. Dont tell me about Chicken soup, its coming out my..never mind. Help!

Detroit WHEN TREASURY SECRETARY John Snow announced guidelines for a new tax cut for the rich here last week, liberals did not denounce him. That's because the proposed tax breaks were for gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles, the favorite ride of environmentalists this side of bicycles. But the dirty secret about hybrids is that, even as the government continues to fuel their growth with tax subsidies, they don't deliver the gas savings they promise.Most cars and trucks don't achieve the gas mileage they advertise, according to Consumer Reports. But hybrids do a far worse job than conventional vehicles in meeting their Environmental...

In 1980, a man from a small town called Limone Sul Garda in northern Italy went to a doctor for some problem, not heart related. Testing of his blood showed very high levels of triglycerides, and very low levels of HDL, the good form of cholesterol. By all rights, the man should have either been dead from, or in imminent danger of a heart attack. But his arteries were clear. Analysis of his blood showed he had a very special form of Lipoprotein, a type of HDL. And further work with this particular type of Lipoprotein revealed astounding results. In...

Storage expert warns of short life span for burned CDs And don't count on hard disk drives for long-term storage, either News Story by John Blau JANUARY 10, 2006 Although opinions vary on how to preserve data on digital storage media, such as optical CDs and DVDs, Kurt Gerecke, a physicist and storage expert at IBM Deutschland GmbH, takes this view: If you want to avoid having to burn new CDs every few years, use magnetic tapes to store all your pictures, videos and songs for a lifetime. "Unlike pressed original CDs, burned CDs have a relatively short life...

Ice ages come every 11,000 years. A mega ice age comes every 105,000 years. Both are due between now and 2012. The 11,000 year cycle happens because of increase and decrease of cyclical underwater volcanic eruption. The 105,000 mega ice age happens because of the changing shape of the orbit of the earth around the sun – circular to elliptical and then back to circular every 105,000 years. Both the cycles are overdue. They have actually started. Europe right now is in deep freeze. Japan and South Korea are experiencing the worst snowfall ever. Even New Delhi is experiencing the...

FORT SUMNER, New Mexico - A mouse got its revenge against a homeowner who tried to dispose of it in a pile of burning leaves. The blazing creature ran back into the man's house, catching it on fire. Luciano Mares, 81, of Fort Sumner said he caught the mouse inside his house and wanted to get rid of it. "I had some leaves burning outside, so I threw it in the fire, and the mouse was on fire and ran back at the house," Mares said from a motel room Saturday. Village Fire Chief Juan Chavez said the burning mouse...

<p>THE secret to longevity lies in the supermarket. According to "SuperFoods Rx: Fourteen Foods That Will Change Your Life" (William Morrow, $24.95), some foods will not only improve your life - but may well extend it.</p> <p>Beans, blueberries, broccoli, oats, oranges, pumpkin, salmon, soy, spinach, tea, tomatoes, turkey, walnuts and yogurt - all rich in nutrients and relatively low in calories - are all credited with preventing, and in some cases even reversing, heart disease, diabetes, certain cancers and dementia.</p>

Vitamin D 'key for healthy lungs' Vitamin D is essential for the processing of calcium Vitamin D could play a role in keeping the lungs healthy, research suggests. Patients with higher vitamin D levels in their blood had significantly better lung function, a University of Auckland team found in a study of 14,091 people. The difference between the two was more marked than that between smokers and those who had quit, the study published in the journal Chest said. Dietary supplements could boost lung function, the team suggested, but they added that more research was needed. "Low levels of vitamin...

According to National Planning Scenarios complied by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, an improvised nuclear bomb going off in an American city is not a farfetched idea. In fact, it's the number one risk to the nation. Nuclear physicists using a Defense Department computer program to calculate the consequences of a nuclear attack on downtown Portland found that casualties would be surprisingly high. While few people think Portland could be a terrorist target, experts say think again, including the head of Oregon Emergency Management. Director Ken Murphy says, "We don't ever want to think we're not a target because...

One unforeseen blessing of the collapse of the Soviet Union has been the easing of security restrictions in former Iron Curtain nations. Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Western journalists have been able to access to classified documents that would have gotten them shot a few years before. That's a scary thought - but not nearly as chilling as some of the secrets they've uncovered. In "Red Star Rogue," author Kenneth Sewell takes us inside the once top-secret Soviet nuclear navy to reveal the explosive facts about one of best-kept secrets of the Cold War, the sinking of Soviet...

The United Nations held a "Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People" last week. A large map of “Palestine,” with Israel literally wiped off the map, featured prominently in the festivities.The ceremony was held at the UN headquarters in New York and was attended by Secretary General Kofi Annan and the Presidents of the UN Security Council and the General Assembly. During the festivities, a map labeled a "map of Palestine” was displayed prominently between UN and PLO flags. The map, with “Palestine” written in Arabic atop it, does not include Israel, a member of the UN for 56 years....

Continue The Story: It Was a Dark and Stormy night. Attention Writers, Wouldabee’s, Wannabee’s, Amateurs, Hacks, etc. etc. Now is your chance to perceive, pen and publish your punishing purple prose planetwide. Just take the last line from this, or any post/comment and add your prose. No need for this turkey to come out linearly. Any genre, any style. And without concern if it’s bad, it’s SUPPOSE to be. Comments and Groans are welcome. It was a dark and stormy night. The wind howled out of the north like a bereaved banshee, roaring over the moor, funnelling its fuming ferocity...

ST. PETERSBURG - Ralph Parker had shown signs of dementia before, but his condition worsened dramatically over the past week. Argumentative one minute, calm the next. Alarmed, Parker's son left Idaho on Wednesday to get his 93-year-old father in a safe place, police said. Before he could get here, his dad backed his gold Chevrolet Malibu out of the driveway and went for a drive. It ended horribly. Parker hit a man crossing 34th Street S, severing the man's right leg, then drove 3 miles with the body stuck in the windshield. When police asked Parker what happened, he said...

New South Park episode tonight! "Two Days before the Day After Tomorrow"Wednesday, October 19, 10:00pm ET/PT, Comedy Central Global Warming is determined to be the cause of the massive flood that destroys a neighboring town. It’s a brand new episode of “South Park” entitled “Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow,” premiering Wednesday, October 19 at 10:00 p.m. on Comedy Central. The world’s largest beaver dam breaks and the waters overtake the adjacent town of Beaverton.. As the victims wait for help to arrive, everyone in South Park tackles priority number one: who is to blame? The President, the mayor,...

Mormons want you to believe that they are "Christians" and that their church, "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints," is just another Christian denomination. Mormons themselves believe that they are Christians and that their church is the only true church. There is even a move among Mormons to shorten the name of their church to simply "The Church of Jesus Christ." In This Article... America's Lost TribeJesus: Brother of Lucifer?When Talking to a Mormon America's Lost Tribe Their founder, Joseph Smith, claimed to have been told in a vision regarding the Christian churches that God "forbade me...

The pilot of the stolen corporate jet that landed at Gwinnett's Briscoe Field last weekend pulled off the aviation equivalent of driving the wrong way on a busy highway at night with the lights out, aviation experts said. "I don't think the five passengers on that plane had any idea how much danger they were in," said Steve Haslup, a flight instructor who teaches at Briscoe Field where the Cessna Citation VII landed late Saturday night or early Sunday morning. "It's remarkable that no one was hurt." FAA officials said the plane's transponder was turned off or disabled so that...

Is it simple selling or selling out? We report on a band at odds over ad revenue THE drummer of the Doors has infuriated his former bandmates by turning down nearly $20 million to use their music to sell computers and cars. John Densmore has a legal right to veto the use of the band’s music for advertising. And that is exactly what he is doing. He says that he is holding out to honour the memory of the band’s lead singer, Jim Morrison, who died in Paris from a suspected heroin overdose in 1971, aged 27. “People lost their...

TORONTO (CP) - North American sales of the drug oseltamivir have more than tripled in recent months, a trend public health experts see as evidence individuals are stockpiling the once little-used antiviral as a hedge against a possible flu pandemic.

Before hurricane Katrina made landfall, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana appears to have been more focused on securing federal funds for post-hurricane relief than ensuring that necessary troops were deployed to carry search and rescue missions, deliver food and water, and protect the citizens of Louisiana against marauding street thugs. President Bush had offered the governor federal aid, including additional troops. He declared Louisiana a disaster area before Katrina arrived. To the dismay of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, the governor told the president she wanted 24 hours to decide whether to accept the offer because Mr. Bush, as...

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco's abrupt decision Wednesday night to take responsibility for her state's inadequate response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster followed an inadvertent confession that was caught on camera where Blanco admitted she blew it. "I really should have called for the military," Blanco said, while chatting with her press secretary in between TV interviews. "I really should have started that in the first call." Unbeknownst to Blanco, her bombshell acknowledgment was recorded on a network satellite feed, and by Tuesday the clip was getting wide exposure in Louisiana news broadcasts. In the early days of the Katrina crisis,...

Breaking News from NewsMax.com Kathleen Blanco: I Should Have Called the Military Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco's abrupt decision Wednesday night to take responsibility for her state's inadequate response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster followed an inadvertent confession that was caught on camera where Blanco admitted she blew it. "I really should have called for the military," Blanco said, while chatting with her press secretary in between TV interviews. "I really should have started that in the first call." Unbeknownst to Blanco, her bombshell acknowledgment was recorded on a network satellite feed, and by Tuesday the clip was getting wide exposure...

If you suffered from piles, would you want your friends asking about your condition in public? Most people wouldn't, yet new research suggests that the older you become the more likely you are to make someone blush with embarrassment in that way. But old people may not intend to be rude: in fact, age-related changes in brain function may explain their lack of tact, according to a new Australian study just published in the journal Psychology and Aging. Tests carried out by researchers at the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, found that people aged 65 to 93 years...

The Superdome just turned 30 years old. It may not see 31. Over the next few months, Gov. Kathleen Blanco will have to decide whether to invest at least $100 million for repairs or just bulldoze it. Long a New Orleans landmark, the Louisiana Superdome during the days that followed Hurricane Katrina became the symbol of government's failure to provide adequate relief to storm victims. After stories of extreme deprivation, tens of thousands of storm victims were evacuated from the Superdome, the last climbing aboard buses Saturday. The damage left by the storm and the evacuees is extensive but will...

The nation's energy industry is struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina. Gas prices are soaring as a result of the catastrophic storm. America's reliance on overseas oil increases every year. And from his office in the North Bay city of Sebastopol, Mark Goldes envisions a day -- perhaps not so far off -- when none of this will be a problem. Goldes, 73, is chief executive of a small company called Magnetic Power Inc., which has spent years researching ways to, yes, generate power using magnets. Within a few months, he says, he might just have a breakthrough to report...

In case you aren't familiar with how our government is SUPPOSED to work: The chain of responsibility for the protection of the citizens in New Orleans is: 1. The Mayor 2. The New Orleans director of Homeland Security (a political appointee of the Governor who reports to the Governor) 3. The Governor 4. The Head of Homeland Security 5. The President What did each do? 1. The mayor, with 5 days advance, waited until 2 days before he announced a mandatory evacuation (at the behest of the President). The he failed to provide transportation for those without transport even though...

To medieval observers, they were mysterious harbingers of doom, but thanks to an unprecedented act of celestial vandalism, scientists have unveiled some of the innermost secrets of comets. Out is the long-held view of hardened, dirty snowballs hurtling through space. In is the comet as a fluffy ball of powder, blowing puffs of dust whenever sunlight falls on it. The insight came yesterday when researchers announced the first detailed results of Deep Impact, an elaborate experiment played out in space on July 4. Under the gaze of cameras on nearby spacecraft and more than 70 ground-based telescopes, the Deep Impact...

The near total evacuation of the major American port city of New Orleans, Louisiana was accomplished between Tuesday afternoon, August 30 and Friday afternoon, September 2, 2005. This evacuation occurred while other search, rescue, relief and evacuation operations were simultaneously being conducted throughout the Gulf Coast between approximately Lafayette, Louisiana, on the west and the Florida panhandle on the east -– an area of about 90,000 sq. miles, or the size of the entire nation of Great Britain. I'd say this amazing achievement is the opposite of slow. I'd say that it's a stunning accomplishment and one that demonstrates superb...

Where to even begin in being one more idiot talking about Hurricane Katrina? I hate the subject. It should be a news item and a humanitarian cause --a huge recovery and reconstruction effort joined in by all. It should not a political issue fit for “commentary.” But the Hurricane tore at more than just the weaknesses in New Orleans’ inadequate levees. The shortcomings of the levee system were known to all who ever lived on the Gulf Coast, and in the end, all the levees really did was encourage expanded development in a huge geologic bowl sitting between a large...

September 06, 2005 RALEIGH — There is a fetid stink in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and it’s not coming just from the fouled waters flooding New Orleans. It also wafts from the putrid reporting of the disaster by the mainstream media. From the moment Katrina made landfall the media focused on anything that could redound to the detriment of President Bush or inflame race and class tensions. Reporters and commentators ignored the dismal performance of New Orleans’ Democratic mayor and Louisiana’s Democratic governor, blaming every problem that arose on the Bush administration. Racial demagogues accused Bush and his administration...

I was in downtown New Orleans shooting Hurricane Katrina video and documented the last few days of the City before it died. http://www.stormchaserdiary.com/Hurricane_Katrina/index.htm While other hurricane chasers were going for the worst winds and everyone was avoiding New Orleans because of the flooding, I stayed for Hurricane Katrina and the flooding and the story that it was going to make. After Hurricane Ivan, I did not want to cross any large bridges could be washed out and end up cutting me off from going home alive. It was a long shot to stay in New Orleans because the storm could...

Note: Links show how the facts of the case this article describes correspond to patterns uncovered in San Francisco's stadium election investigation. Earlier this year in an office building in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, witnesses were still talking about the 1996 election for the U.S. Senate in which Democrat Mary Landrieu defeated Republican Louis "Woody" Jenkins. "This nice person drove up and asked whether I was registered," one woman said to the lawyers and investigators for Jenkins. "I told him I was but I didn't feel like going. He said, 'If I paid you, would you go?' I...

By Audrey Hudson THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published September 5, 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- State and local officials did not inform top federal officials early on of the deaths and lack of food among hurricane victims in the Superdome or convention center, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said yesterday. Mr. Chertoff said neither he nor Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown was told of the deteriorating situation in New Orleans until Thursday night. "This is clearly something that was disturbing. It was disturbing to me when I learned about it, which came as a surprise. You know, the very day that this...

From combined dispatches In the past week, Joseph Brant lost his apartment, walked by scores of bodies on the streets, traversed pools of toxic water and endured an arduous journey to escape the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in his hometown of New Orleans. Yesterday, he was praising the Lord, saying the ordeal was a test that ended up dispelling his lifelong distrust of white people and setting his life on a new course. Mr. Brant, who is black, said he hitched a ride Friday in a van driven by a group of white people. "Before this whole thing, I had...

NEW ORLEANS - On the seventh day, the mayor of New Orleans said he would surrender control of his shattered, nearly abandoned city to federal and state officials, and authorities issued dire predictions of the human cost of Hurricane Katrina."We need to prepare the country for what's coming," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Sunday. "We are going to uncover people who died hiding in the houses, maybe got caught in floods. It is going to be as ugly a scene as you can imagine."Late Sunday, Mayor Ray Nagin told Knight Ridder that his entire police force would be pulled...