Free Republic

Midterm elections are over a year away and while there is some talk about one party gaining or losing seats in the House or Senate, the serious speculators are gearing up for the presidential duel in 2008. The next presidential election will be different from those in recent memory because there will be no incumbent and there is no heir apparent in the form of a vice-president. This race will be a clean slate for both major parties and even this far out you can feel the excitement. There was much speculation leading up to the 2004 election that Dick...

Fire by Fire by Laurentiu Ciocazanu Sunday, 09 Octomber 2005 What should we do with the thief shot dead in Primaverii neighborhood? The thief shot dead inside the home of fashion designer Romanita Iovan should be granted a post mortem medal for having contributed to the promotion of the new Penal Code. Bogdan Iancu, a recidivist, has ended his mission on Earth after having stolen a handful of jewels from the home of Iovan family. He was just getting ready to return to Ferentari base. The operation was a half success as the owner of the villa in Primaverii St....

Speaking on Staten Island, Sen. John McCain said yesterday Mayor Michael Bloomberg was right to alert the public to the terrorist threat against the city subway system. "I believe the mayor was right in saying that it's far better to overreact than underreact," McCain (R-Ariz.) told more than 600 people at a re-election fund-raiser for Borough President James Molinaro in the Excelsior Grand, New Dorp. Officials here and in Washington continue to debate the legitimacy of the threat. "What if there had actually been a real threat and they hadn't reacted? You're abrogating your responsibilities," McCain told the Advance earlier....

As we've noted in this space before, the government's own Energy Information Administration has predicted that energy costs will continue to soar in the months ahead. The cost for people to stay warm this winter in the Northeast and the Midwest are expected to be nothing short of astronomical, a burden that falls disproportionately on the poor and middle class. Because we can see this storm cloud coming (in fact, it's already here), we just wanted to remind everyone that this country's energy policy has been held hostage for years by a small band of extreme environmentalists: -- They have...

THREE SEPARATE FORCES are attacking Congressman Tom DeLay. Outwardly, these forces seem independent. On closer inspection, however, we find that all three have something in common. All have significant links to leftwing billionaire, Democrat kingmaker and convicted insider trader George Soros. (1) The first of these attackers is Texas prosecutor Ronald Earle, who has indicted DeLay for alleged violations of state campaign finance laws. The second attacker is Republican Senator John McCain, whose Senate Committee on Indian Affairs is probing certain of DeLay's associates for their dealings with Indian casino interests. (2) The third attacker is a network of bogus...

AS WE AWAIT President Bush's nominee to replace Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, all the talk is about precedent. Roe vs. Wade. What does a judge do when a precedent is based on shaky legal ground? The Ginsburg Precedent: How much does a nominee have to answer, and how do you draw the line? Yet the most important precedent hasn't been mentioned: the Clinton Precedent. To refresh our memories, President Clinton had a chance to make two appointments to the Supreme Court. The first came with the retirement of Justice Byron White, a conservative who cast one of the...

A LIFETIME of hard work should bring economic security -- income sufficient to raise a family, and resources to enjoy a retirement earned over many working years. It is troubling that as far off as this goal seems to millions of American men, it is even further off for America's working women, especially in the area of retirement security. Even as families become more dependent than ever on second incomes, and the number of women as sole providers grows, women still earn less money than men; women are less likely to have a pension than men; and women are less...

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil, Oct 6 (Reuters) - A Brazilian court will consider a psychic's claim that the U.S. government owes him a $25 million reward for information he says he provided on the hiding place of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Brazil's second-highest court, the Superior Court of Justice, decided on Thursday the Brazilian justice system could rule on the matter and told a court in the psychic's home state of Minas Gerais to judge the case. The lower court had earlier told Jucelino Nobrega da Luz it could not take up his claim and it would have to...

Master Sgt. Evander E. Andrews Died: Oct. 10, 2001 Air Force Master Sgt. Evander E. Andrews, 36, entered the Air Force right out of high school in his tiny central Maine hometown of Solon, and was assigned to the 366th Civil Engineer Squadron from Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho. The 18-year veteran was killed in a forklift accident while helping in the construction of an airstrip in the Persian Gulf emirate Qatar. His former squadron commander, Col. Ken Shelton, said at his funeral that Andrews was a man with a “behind-the-scenes style that was both sincere and heartfelt.” Andrews...

French anti-fur activists said they struck Anna Wintour, editor of the U.S. edition of Vogue, in the face with a cream pie on Saturday to protest against her support for the use of animal fur by the fashion industry. Wintour, dressed in a fur-trimmed black jacket, was hit in the face with a tofu cream pie as she left the Chloe fashion ready-to-wear show at the Tuileries Gardens in central Paris, members of the group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said. It was the second such attack this year on Wintour, an unapologetic fur supporter decried by...

Weighing the Columbus cargo By Edward Hudgins ehudgins@objectivistcenter.org Published October 10, 2005 -------------------------------------------------------- Many critics argue Christopher Columbus gave us a devil's bargain. In October 1492 that Italian explorer, working for Spain, opened America to his fellow Europeans. The result: We got a prosperous New World by impoverishing, enslaving and murdering the natives who were already here. But this fails to distinguish between two types of exploitation, one over other humans and the other over nature. The former should be expunged from our moral codes and civilized society, the latter is the essence of morality and civilization. Human exploitation was...

Replacement theology has become dispensationalism's latest prophetic boogeyman. If you want to end a debate over eschatology, just charge your opponent with holding to replacement theology. What is “replacement theology,” sometimes called “supersessionism,” and why do dispensationalists accuse non-dispensationalists of holding it? Here’s a typical dispensational definition: Replacement Theology: a theological perspective that teaches that the Jews have been rejected by God and are no longer God’s Chosen People. Those who hold to this view disavow any ethnic future for the Jewish people in connection with the biblical covenants, believing that their spiritual destiny is either to perish or become...

Spokane Mayor Jim West's city-owned computer contains 1,800 files, at least half of them photos, that he doesn't want the public to see, according to new court filings. "From what I've been told by a city attorney, the mayor's computer contains pornographic pictures and probably very sexually descriptive correspondence with people he met on chat lines with his City Hall computer," City Councilwoman Cherie Rodgers told The Spokesman-Review for a Saturday report. West declined to comment Friday on his decision to challenge release of the files. The files apparently include photos of young men the mayor met on gay Web...

“A Distant Thunder” A Jonathan Flora Film Jonathan Flora Interview By Michael Westfall The American Worker November 1, 2005 A Distant Thunder is a soon to be released controversial 35-minute featurette. It is an independent film that was written and directed by respected Hollywood Filmmaker, Jonathan Flora and produced by the talented Kip Perry. Flora,wanted to use his expertise to create this film for a higher purpose. He succeeded. The story evolves around a supernatural setting. It uses a courtroom as the arena in which to focus on the many terrible human costs related to the partial birth abortion procedure....

MONTREAL -- Frustrated by her meagre teacher's salary, a Montreal math teacher says she took advantage of school holidays to work as an escort. Using the pseudonym Dawn, the 29-year-old, who recently retired from teaching, sold her sexual services by night and taught high school math by day. For four years, Dawn divided her time between the classroom and hotel rooms, without her colleagues' knowledge. The woman told Sun Media that the $400 a week she cleared on her teacher's salary wasn't enough. Dawn, who agreed to share her story provided her identity not be revealed, said she stumbled onto...

I have to admit to being a Geena Davis fan. From "Earth Girls are Easy", to "Tootsie" and now "Commander in Chief." I am one of the folks pushing the ratings of this show to winning it's time slot.But it isn't her acting that is winning me over. It is Donald Sutherland's. His portrayal of a rabid conservative hack is more over the top than Michael Keaton in "Beetlejuice." His manipulations, chicanery and quest for power look like more fun than a human being should be allowed to have! He is the liberals view of what a conservative is, and...

The Department of Correction has found a new way to entertain the most dangerous cons in the state: They have sent in the circus. Last week, murderers, rapists and other violent prisoners at MCI-Walpole, Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center and Boston Pre-release Center were being treated to entertainment in the form of strongmen, singers and comedians who are part of a touring evangelistic Christian outreach group that uses laughs to urge cons into Bible study. Correction officers say clowns even joined the act. And the show will go on. The Christian group is called Operation Starting Line, a program aimed at helping...

Hearst: U.S. needs defense against panic attacks, too Patty Hearst has a message for folks who are worried about terrorist attacks: Stop wringing your hands, people! "I was kidnapped by terrorists. It's not like I'm numb to this and think it can't happen. But get real!" Hearst admonished. "There's so much weeping and wailing and memorializing, my feeling is it'd be a lot healthier if people didn't externalize so much and kind of bucked up a little bit." The 51-year-old media heiress was famously abducted by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974, then served 21 months in prison for bank...

The FBI, famous for its straight-laced crime-fighting image, is considering whether to relax its hiring rules on how often applicants could have used marijuana or other illegal drugs earlier in life. Some senior FBI managers have been deeply frustrated they couldn't hire applicants who acknowledged occasional marijuana use in college, but in some cases perform top-secret work at other government agencies, such as the CIA or State Department. FBI Director Robert Mueller will make the final decision. "We can't say when or if this is going to happen, but we are exploring the possibility," spokesman Stephen Kodak said The change...

NEW DELHI, Oct 10 (Reuters) - Pakistan is unlikely to take up India on its offer to help tens of thousands of people hit by the massive weekend earthquake despite a new warmth in ties, officials and analysts say. The hitch is Kashmir, the divided Himalayan territory claimed in full by the neighbours and now the scene of devastation after an earthquake of 7.6 magnitude. Accepting Indian help would mean giving Indian troops -- experts in disaster relief -- access to Pakistani Kashmir, the area worst affected by Saturday's earthquake. That would be a public relations disaster for Islamabad as...