Free Republic

Open Challenge to the "Conservative" Punditry. Stand and Deliver time boys and girls. OK. Let's forget about your inexcusable conduct towards Miers and deal. The LIBERALS are LAUGHING at you. They cannot believe you are all THIS stupid. They are watching, in stunned disbelief, as YOU do THEIR job in destroying the 1st Republican Majority in 50 years. All you "Conservatives" are all telling us "You can't trust Bush" and "We can win this fight". Well guess what. We have NO proof we can trust you. WHERE is YOUR paper trail? NONE of you were able to convince the Senate...

Cheri Pierson Yecke began her job as one of the most powerful educators in the state last week with little fanfare, receiving her office keys and e-mail address and meeting in a two-day retreat with Department of Education staff. But the reputation of Florida's new chancellor for kindergarten through 12th grade, second only to Education Commissioner John Winn, preceded her with more flourish — and fear from some. Yecke, 50, who served most recently as Minnesota's top educator, is a conservative, a believer in creationism, a critic of teachers unions and a strong proponent of President Bush's education reform programs,...

An explosive device was detonated by the Los Angeles Police Department bomb squad outside of 527 Midvale Ave. on Friday afternoon. A calm and quiet Westwood was briefly disrupted Friday afternoon when the Los Angeles Police Department bomb squad inspected and detonated an explosive device found within the Midvale Plaza apartment complex on the 500 block of Midvale Avenue. After responding to a call made at 11:13 a.m., the bomb squad arrived at 527 Midvale Ave. to find "an improvised explosive device" in the building's open-air courtyard, said Grace Brady, a spokeswoman for the LAPD. No injuries were reported, but...

INDIANAPOLIS Bloggers would "probably not" be considered journalists under the proposed federal shield law, the bill's co-sponsor, U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar (R.-Ind.), told the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) Monday afternoon. Lugar emphasized, however, that debate is not yet closed on how to define a journalists under the proposed law. "As to who is a reporter, this will be a subject of debate as this bill goes farther along," he said in response to a question from Washington Post Deputy Managing Editor Milton Coleman. "Are bloggers journalists or some of the commercial businesses that you here would probably not consider...

Following are excerpts from an interview with Ahmad Rami, head of Radio Islam in Sweden. The interview was aired on Al-Manar TV on September 30, 2005: Ahmad Rami: Today, the Westerners harbor great respect for Hizbullah in their souls. Host: In public opinion? Ahmad Rami: Yes, in public opinion. They respect Hizbullah because it fights the Jihad. Host: Do you mean in Sweden or Europe in general? Ahmad Rami: Europe in general. The greatest author of Sweden, Jan Myrdal, said to me: "You Muslims may need our support, but we need your Jihad. Otherwise, whom will we support?" If there...

Uganda's former President, Milton Obote, has died at the age of 81 in hospital in South Africa. Mr Obote led Uganda to independence as prime minister in 1962, going on to serve two terms as president - both of which ended in military coups. Overthrown by Idi Amin in 1971, he returned to office in 1980, only to be ousted in 1985 by forces led by Yoweri Museveni, Uganda's current president. Mr Obote had spent most of the last 20 years in exile in Zambia.

Soldier praises support I am a soldier and it is my turn to say thank-you. Since the war against terror began in 2001, I have been thanked for serving our nation by strangers when I attended weddings and funerals. I have been thanked on the street, in restaurants and at the airport. I have received e-mails from family, friends and friends of friends, and even their friends. I was even thanked by a half-frozen Salvation Army volunteer outside a Michigan Wal-Mart in December. In some cases, I have been in uniform. Other times, it is simply the short haircut that...

One positive byproduct of the conservative crackup over President Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers should be the retirement of what was always a silly argument -- that asking Supreme Court nominees about whether their religious beliefs might affect their rulings amounts to an unconstitutional "religious test for office." As more than one conservative has ruefully admitted, supporters of the Miers nomination in focusing on Ms. Miers' membership in a pro-life evangelical church are doing exactly what conservatives accused liberal Democrats of doing when questioning past Bush nominees -- making an issue of a nominee's faith. SNIP Pro-Miers Republicans who had...

The other "trial of the century" and international justice Slated to start October 19, the "trial of the century"—a title previously bestowed on the trials of Alger Hiss, Adolf Eichmann, and Michael Jackson—is set to beam from the Middle East into American living rooms. But before we get sucked into the spectacle of Saddam, seven henchmen, and five judges, it's worth checking in with another has-been despot. Hussein is not the first dictator to be removed from his country at the behest of the U.S. government, accused of war crimes, and held up for judgment; he's the second in five...

Every night for the past week, Dave Summers has set up a lawn chair in the South Texas bush and sat for hours on end, listening. Summers is from Mesquite, but he's been in and around Falfurrias since July, setting satellite coordinates and tracking signs of movement - in particular, human movement - in preparation for this month's kickoff of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps' Texas vigil, which began Oct. 1. Now, he's using that information to determine where he's most likely to cross the path of illegal immigrants. That's where he and his fellow minutemen spend their nights waiting...

SAN FRANCISCO - A nine-year-old boy has just finished a pretty tough morning swim — from Alcatraz to San Francisco. Johnny Wilson, from Hillsborough, made the 1.4-mile swim in under two hours, braving choppy morning waters and rough winds in a portion of the San Francisco bay known to have sharks as well. Wilson's classmates were waiting for him on shore, cheering as he made it all the way to Aquatic Park. His effort raised about $30,000 for the Red Cross Katrina Hurricane Victims Fund. Wilson said the toughest part of the swim was the beginning, because it was cold...

PARIS (AP) - A French terror cell suspected of plotting attacks on the subway and other targets in Paris had contacts with Iraq's al-Qaida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a leading French counterterrorism official said Monday. Christophe Chaboud, head of the counterterrorism unit of the national police, also told The Associated Press that a member of the cell had returned to France with a potential bomb-making substance from Lebanon. "There were in effect contacts between the (French) group and al-Zarqawi," Chaboud said in an interview. Chaboud said one of the members of the alleged cell built around Safe Bourada - a...

Top News Story Now we know the truth about Iran, we must actBy Con Coughlin(Filed: 09/10/2005)It was not the outcome the Foreign Office had been planning. When it was announced early last week that a senior British diplomat in Baghdad was flying back to London to give a briefing on Iraq's constitutional referendum, the general expectation in Whitehall was that the following day's headlines would focus exclusively on whether sufficient numbers of Iraqis would turn out to validate the exercise.Imagine the surprise, then, of Jack Straw and his officials the following morning when they opened their newspapers to discover...

<p>PARIS — If the French marauders known as The Deflated waged their brand of urban subversion in Southern California, the mecca of the sport utility vehicle, by now they would probably have been jailed, beaten, shot or at least sued.</p>

October 8 was the 38th anniversary of the day the quaking "guerrilla hero" was prompted to say: "Don't Shoot! I'm Che! I'm worth more to you alive than dead!" According to many eyewitness accounts, Che's own victims conducted themselves much differently on their last day alive. "Viva Cuba Libre! Viva Cristo Rey! Abajo Comunismo!" "The defiant yells would make the walls of La Cabana tremble," wrote eyewitness Armando Valladares. Outside Havana and in the countryside, Che's murder victims often faced the firing squads untrussed, shoved in front of a recently dug pit with their hands free. "Aim right HERE!" was...

How are you doing?I am Mr.Chun Qiu, a chinese businessman involved in the production and exportation of semi finish steel products to europe,canada and america. I really need representatives in these regions/provinces for my business to suceed as it is now and that is the reason why i am contacting you now.I am looking for a man/woman who is trustworthy to be in charge of receiving cash on my company's behalf in his/her country.if you know you are not trustwothy please do not bother to reply at all because a lot of money is involved here....

MONTREAL -- Luc Boivin's lost cheddar is passing into local legend as the Titanic of the cheese world. The Quebec cheese maker dropped a 2,000-pound cargo of cheese to the bottom of the Saguenay fjord last year in a ripening experiment. Then he spent this summer searching for it. And now, after deploying a team of divers and an arsenal of high-tech tracking equipment, Mr. Boivin has given up the quest. The sunken treasure of cheddar is nowhere to be found. "It got too expensive to continue. At some point, you can't be crazy," he said recently from his factory...

One week and two days after the FBI began investigating the Joel Hinrichs case, the feds seemingly have stopped releasing information about what they have learned. It’s time the FBI opened its files and provided The Daily, other media and the greater public with some of the answers it undoubtedly has, for more than one reason. First, the public wants to know. Second, and almost more importantly, the longer this silence continues, the more students, faculty and the nation become “certain” in their “knowledge” of what has happened. But that “knowledge” is based mostly on conjecture and hearsay, and while...

ASSOCIATED PRESS 1:07 p.m. PT CORONADO, Calif. -- The Navy SEALs prefer to operate in the shadows, but the Pentagon's need to increase the ranks of the elite terrorist-hunting commando force is prompting an unusually splashy recruiting effort. Navy SEAL Mitchell Hall, who won a Bronze Star in 2001 in Afghanistan, hopes to use the upcoming Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii to spread the word about the need for more recruits. The competition will make the 31-year-old chief petty officer a spokesman for the community of self-described quiet professionals and put him in front of the cameras he spent years avoiding....

American Founder John Dickinson, writing in his "Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer," noted that "a firm, modest exertion of a free spirit should never be wanting on public occasions." In my opinion, the "no litmus test" approach to the defense of life doesn't make the cut as "a firm, modest exertion of a free spirit." Either life matters, or it doesn't. Either life is a right, or it isn't. If the president and his party are pro-life, they ought to reach down deep inside and find reasons to take a bold, consistent and intelligent stand for life. There are, after...