Free Republic

Has anyone else recieved an RNC census form in the mail? I just returned mine. I politely answered all the questions, filled in the circles next to my views on each. When I got to the part where they asked for a contribution, I crossed it out and included a little love-note in response. It read: "Ill give you money when these things are accomplished: 1. Republicans GROW A SPINE and begin to act like the MAJORITY party and STOMP Democrats into the dirt every time they open their LYING, TRAITORUS MOUTHS! 2. When the border are secured, illegal aliens...

President Bush recently suggested that the military be given broader powers to deal with domestic crises like Hurricane Katrina or a potential bird flu epidemic, but emergency response and security groups in the U.S. say the military already has the power it needs to provide both relief and protection to citizens, and question whether the president's real motives aren't political. In mid-September, after Katrina and the subsequent civil disorder struck New Orleans, President Bush told the nation that the military should play a bigger role in such major domestic crises."It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires...

Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) has successfully tested a new design for a supersonic airliner. An 11m (36ft) scale model was launched by rocket from the test site at Woomera in the Australian desert. Officials at the aerospace agency said the test marked a major step forward in the development of supersonic flight technology. When the real jet has been created, it should be able to halve the journey time from Tokyo to New York. [end] The prototype airliner was launched at 0706 local time on Monday for a 15-minute flight. It separated from the rocket as planned at about...

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — The Mermentau police chief and an officer in his department are accused of stealing T-shirts, sunglasses and suede sports coats from New Orleans stores after they came to help police in the city, the state attorney general said Monday. Bond was set at $35,000 each for Police Chief Jeremy Joseph LeBlanc and Officer Hollins Burt Trahan, each of whom was booked in New Orleans with malfeasance and two counts each of looting and felony theft, Attorney General Charles C. Foti Jr. said in a news release. While in uniform, the two took suede and leather...

A Paleocon Plumps for Lynne Stewart Posted by Jacob Laksin @ Monday 10 October 2005, 1:02 pm The convergence of the radical left and the paleo right continues apace. The latest chapter in this unfolding saga is paleocon Paul Craig Robert’s whitewashed defense of radical attorney Lynne Stewart that appears, fittingly enough, in the radical journal Counterpunch.  Stewart, of course, infamously represented one of the architects of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, “Blind Sheikh," Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman.” Roberts, for his part, claims that “Stewart represented her client in ways disapproved by prosecutors.” Please. What Stewart actually did was...

Here's a poser for you: you're trying to knock together a TV ad highlighting the effects of war on children. What's the plan? Well, you could go down the traditional route of earnest voice-over accompanying footage of said kids miserably awaiting a better life or, on the other hand, you could arm up a squadron of attack aircraft and go and raze a Smurf village to the ground. Let's face it, it's a toughie. Not for Unicef Belgium though, which earlier this week reduced an enchanted Smurf hamlet to smouldering rubble - much to the horror of some TV viewers...

Raising Boys Without Men by Peggy Drexler, Ph.D. Benefit to society or slap in the face to fathers? If you're a single or lesbian mom who is raising a boy without his father and you want assurance that you can raise him to be a decent man, “Raising Boys Without Men” is the book for you. Peggy Drexler takes us on a feel-good journey through the lives of several boys being raised by single moms and lesbian couples. What she found was these boys were essentially the same as the boys being raised in heterosexual families. She states, “I came...

How does Louis Freeh's book change your opinion of Bill Clinton? How does his book change your opinion of Louis Freeh?

There have been many days where a freeper will eagerly log onto FreeRepublic, scan the news, then the chat, then the blogs, and then even the Smoky Back Room, only to find no subject that catches his interest. So in the interest of weeding out subject matter that is too boring to deal with, here at the Pissant Reasearch University for Newsworthy Endeavors (PRUNE) we've compiled the list of topics that are sure to induce sleep in even the most caffeinated insomniac! Top 7 Boring FR Topics 7. Howard Deans Speeches. Granted, during his brief moment in the sun when...

"With Bill Clinton," Mr. Freeh writes in a chapter called "Bill and Me," "the scandals and rumored scandals, the incubating ones and the dying ones, never ended. Whatever moral compass the president was consulting, it was leading him in the wrong direction, and he lacked the discipline to pull back once he found himself stepping into trouble. Worse, he had been behaving that way so long that the closets were full of skeletons just waiting to burst out."

The two major-party candidates for Virginia governor clashed on the death penalty and taxes during a televised debate Sunday night that included several rancorous exchanges. Republican Jerry Kilgore, the former state attorney general, insisted that Democratic Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine could not be trusted to enforce the death penalty and to not raise taxes. Kaine, who is Roman Catholic, said his religious objections to capital punishment would not affect his decisions on the issue. He did not promise not to raise taxes and suggested Kilgore's demand for a voter referendum on all tax increase proposals showed poor leadership. "You've got...

OCT. 10, 2005: WHAT THE INSIDERS ARE SAYING More talking over the weekend to more conservative lawyers in Washington. It is hard to convey how unanimously they not only reject, but disdain, the choice of Miers. One commented on this news story that Miers' favorite reading was John Grisham novels: "Look, it's inevitable these senators are going to ask you some obviously stupid questions. You just can't give them obviously stupid answers. How hard is it to say that you are reading Jean Smith's biography of Chief Justice John Marshall?" Another told me of a briefing session to prepare...

ALMOST FIVE months after Uzbekistan's president, Islam Karimov, ordered his security forces to massacre hundreds of mostly unarmed demonstrators in the city of Andijan, European governments are finally taking steps to punish his regime... After Sept. 11, 2001, the United States cultivated Mr. Karimov despite mounting evidence that he was one of Asia's most brutal rulers. The reason was simple: The Pentagon coveted the Karshi-Khanabad airbase, which Mr. Karimov provided as a staging point for U.S. air and rescue operations in Afghanistan. Under pressure from Congress, the State Department finally suspended several aid programs to Uzbekistan last year. But the...

Two years after relations between the US and France soured over the Iraq war, French-bashing in America appears alive and well in light of a recent ad campaign by a fast-food chain linking France and cowardice. The ad by the Subway chain touted a cordon bleu chicken sandwich with the words “France and chicken, somehow it just goes together”. A photo of a chicken dressed like Napoleon accompanied the advertisement. Subway ran the ads in about 10 US states for nearly a month and pulled them in September following an outcry by members of the French expatriate community and other...

According to AAA, distracted drivers account for between 4,000 and 8,000 traffic accidents daily in the United States. Distracted drivers also account for about half of the six million traffic accidents in the United States reported annually. One distraction facing drivers in this high tech age are cell phones. Obviously cell phones are not the only distraction facing drivers. Other distractions such as looking at objects on or near the road, looking at other people in other cars, loud music and distracting interaction with passengers are just as menacing to the safety of you and others on the road. Oh...

ISTANBUL, Oct 10 (Reuters) - A Turkish al Qaeda suspect held by U.S. forces in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison said in a statement read out in court on Monday he was saddened by a series of Istanbul suicide bombings that killed scores of people in 2003. The Istanbul court is hearing charges against 71 suspected Islamist militants in connection with the attacks which killed 61 people, including the bombers, and wounded hundreds more. Burhan Kus said he had travelled to Syria before the bombings on orders from Syrian suspected militant Luia Sakra, known as Abu Mohammed, and Habip Akdas, a...

Gwinnett police on Friday arrested a man they characterized as a would-be hijacker who tried to commandeer a tractor-trailer idling in traffic. Unfortunately for him, said officers, he chose a truck whose driver was armed. Police said Cesar Iban Santoyo Pantija, 23, jumped into the cab of a tractor-trailer traveling north on I-85. It was about 11:30 a.m., and traffic had come to a stop just south of Indian Trail Lilburn Road, police said. According to investigators' reports, Pantija told the driver, Christobal Colon of Auburn, "You have to take me out of here." Colon, 43, said no. Police said...

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan officials said on Sunday they would occupy more cattle land run by British meat producer Vestey as part of President Hugo Chavez's agrarian redistribution program for the poor. Authorities have stirred fears over property rights and investment by sending troops and state-backed co-operatives to occupy farmland as Chavez accelerates his self-described socialist revolution in Venezuela, a top oil producer. National Land Institute director Richard Vivas told the state news agency that officials will move against land at three Vestey ranches under a law allowing expropriation of idle farms and confiscation of those without proper documents....

In the aftermath of Katrina and the soaring gas prices, it would be nice to get some relief. Since LA is so impacted right now, I think that drilling in Alaska could offer some relief. Shouldn't we drill in the Arctic despite the hippies who say NO?

Durban - BLACK South Africans have begun a series of “symbolic” property invasions with the aim of pressing the government to speed the transfer of white-owned farms to them. Supporters of the South African Communist party yesterday took over unused municipal land outside Brits, a town in North West province. The Communists, who are in government with President Thabo Mbeki’s African National Congress, have called for similar demonstrations across the country to force the state to redistribute property to poor blacks. The government has accused white farmers of delaying land reform by demanding exorbitant prices for their property. But, worried...