Free Republic

BEIJING (AP) - Hungry visitors to next summer's Beijing Olympics won't have to choose between "steamed crap" and "virgin chicken" if Chinese authorities succeed in ridding restaurant menus of mangled English translations. The Beijing Tourism Bureau has released a list with 2,753 proposed names for dishes and drinks, designed to replace bizarre and sometimes ridiculous translations on menus, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Friday. Foreigners are often stumped by dish names such as "virgin chicken" (a young chicken dish) or "burnt lion's head" (Chinese-style pork meatballs). Other garbled names include "The temple explodes the chicken cube" (kung pao chicken)...

In the wake of the Larry Craig “Bathroomgate” story, some intrepid free-market-oriented bloggers came up with a novel solution to the problem of closeted gay conservatives indulging their carnal desires on the side. Gay-sex offsets. The same market-based approach is used by environmentally crapulent liberal celebrities all the time. They use private jets, drive around with big entourages and own numerous energy-sucking homes. To make amends, they purchase an indulgence in the form of “carbon offsets” — a contract whereby the equivalent amount of greenhouse gases are soaked up by newly planted trees and the like. So why not do...

Natalia Vodianova: the Cinderella of the Volga 16:30 | 08/ 03/ 2007 MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti commentator Anatoly Korolev) – Natalia Vodianova, one of the world’s top ten models, currently lives in New York City. She is married to Justin Trevor Berkeley Portman, half-brother of the 10th Viscount Portman, a lord born and bred, and a millionaire to boot. Therefore, her children—her son Lucas and baby daughter Neva—indisputably belong to the British aristocracy. Unbelievably, this glamorous Russian lady was a provincial vegetable vendor a mere seven years ago. Her unmarried mother had a hard time raising three daughters, one of whom...

Wary customers at North Valley grocery stores keep a watchful eye after several shoppers were recently threatened by three brazen coyotes. The animals were killed after they were trying to snatch white grocery bags from customers at a Fry's supermarket at Tatum Road and Cave Creek Road. "Coyotes are very smart animals," said Kriselle Colvin with Arizona Game & Fish. "Once they know where food source is, they know white bags have food in them, so they'll go up and grab them," Colvin said. One of the biggest reasons for the problem is well-meaning people feeding them, Colvin said. In...

ABC News' Ronna Waldman reports: Despite reports today quoting anonymous 'GOP sources" that embattled Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho., will resign Friday, his aide says the Senator will return to Washington, D.C. next week to continue his work as best he can, Craig's Idaho press secretary tells ABC News. If that plan changes, the media will be notified, the aide said. Pressure is mounting on Craig to resign after news broke of his arrest in an undercover sting operation in an airport men's room. Craig pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct on Aug. 1 but has maintained that he did nothing wrong....

Will not run agaiin

Stennis Returns Home From Deployment Story Number: NNS070831-13 Release Date: 8/31/2007 1:28:00 PM By Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class (SW/AW) Joseph R. Vincent, USS John C. Stennis Public Affairs BREMERTON, Wash. (NNS) -- USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) returned to its homeport of Bremerton, Aug. 31, after a successful seven and a half month deployment. While deployed, Stennis supported Operations Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Iraqi Freedom (OIF), maritime operations, coalition operations in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations (AOO), Expeditionary Strike Force (ESF) training and recently, Exercise Valiant Shield 2007. “The very presence of a nuclear aircraft carrier...

This is the first gathering of the community surrounding the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) project. The agenda is impressive with speakers from the development team, Intel, IBM, AMD, and others. The event is presented by Qumranet, the company supporting the KVM open source project.  As you may remember, I mentioned KVM in this article. Although Rails Machine’s virtualization infrastructure is based on Xen and CentOS, my local development environment is powered by Ubuntu and KVM (on a Thinkpad X60s and a home built Core 2 Quad). So, why is KVM different? It leverages the hardware virtualization support in recent processors and...

Is a salmon born in a hatchery a different species from the same salmon born in the wild? It is hard to believe, but recent Federal court rulings are claiming that otherwise genetically identical fish are separate species, forcing an appeal being announced recently to the 9th Circuit Court. ...These decisions will dramatically affect a lot of people living in the Pacific Northwest. Protecting the salmon will make water much more difficult to obtain, and, without irrigation permits, many farmers and ranchers will have to stop watering their crops and livestock. Large areas of private property will have to be...

Urges Bush Administration to Support Freedom and Democracy Instead of Acting as China’s “Bag Man” (WASHINGTON, DC) – U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo released the following letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, criticizing the administration for pandering to China and failing to manage U.S.-Taiwan relations in an evenhanded or effective way: Dear Secretary Rice, I was disappointed to read Deputy Secretary of State Negroponte’s comments earlier this week criticizing a proposed referendum that will be held in Taiwan next year. Unfortunately, I believe that his statements were just the latest example of this administrations total mishandling of our bilateral relationship...

A bull escaped from its handlers at the Minnesota State Fair today, running loose for about a block before it rammed a fire hydrant and died, witnesses said. No people were injured in the incident. The bull, owned by Morris-based Wulf Limousin Farms, was being unloaded from a trailer around 9:15 a.m. when it got spooked and broke free. Witnesses said they were shocked to see the bull running down the street on the south side of the fairgrounds, where most of the animal exhibits are. "All we heard was screaming, and then we saw the bull starting to run...

I’ve been searching Google and Yahoo news daily for new information on the 2 Middle Eastern Students that were arrested in Goose Creek, South Carolina with explosives. I just got home from Detroit shopping for the Yuntif (Holiday) with my lovely wife and low and behold……. They’re seems to be some news about our misunderstood Middle Eastern School Boys who were busted in Florida with IED’s (Improvised Explosive Devices) in their car. From The Tampa Bay Tribune: TAMPA - A federal grand jury in Tampa is asking for DNA and hair samples from a University of South Florida student jailed...

Brian Baird’s statements that the surge is actually working has drawn the wrath of the Netroots. What’s striking is that it doesn’t say that Baird lied about the improving conditions on the ground. Please call Rep. Baird and thank him for his integrity and help prevent him from caving into the moonbats.

The Larry Craig kerfuffle has led to some interesting reversals. Many have argued that Craig was hypocritical for being gay (though he denies it) and voting for the Defense of Marriage Act which made it so that gay marriage in one state would not have to mean gay marriage in another. I don't think that's a persuasive argument since there are plenty of openly gay people who do not support gay marriage. Unquestionably one group of people has been hypocritical here. Not the Republicans or the Democrats. The most hypocritical group in all this has been the self-described mainstream (actually...

Howie Carr show live thread.

From $62,000 for Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York, to $10,000 for the Tennessee Democratic Party, the full extent of fund-raising by Norman Hsu came into focus yesterday, as campaigns across the country began returning his money in light of revelations that he is a fugitive in a fraud case. Beyond the hundreds of thousands of dollars he raised from others for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Mr. Hsu personally contributed more than $600,000 to federal, state and municipal candidates in the last three years, a review of campaign finance records shows. It was a startling amount of...

Harry Reid All About Compromise LAS VEGAS - Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said he is now willing to compromise on his demand U.S. military forces withdraw from Iraq this spring. Reid acknowledged that his previous firm demand for a spring withdrawal deadline had become an obstacle for the few Republicans who had also embraced defeat. "I don't think we have to think that our way is the only way," Reid said of specific dates during an interview in his office here. "I'm now proposing we surrender but leave the troops over there for awhile. It's a win-win...

Shock figures show 11 to 13-year-olds drinking twice as much alcohol as they did five years agoLast updated at 15:02pm on 31st August 2007  Tens of thousands of 11-year-olds are getting drunk at least once a month   A "hard core" of young teenagers is drinking to increasingly dangerous levels every week, it has emerged.   Tens of thousands of 11-year-olds are also getting drunk at least once a month, despite a drive to cut soaring numbers of young drinkers. Four out of 10 pupils aged 11-15 have tried smoking at least once, and a majority of young smokers are...

For the United States, the primary issue in the Middle East has been and remains effective control of its unparalleled energy resources. Access is a secondary matter. Once the oil is on the seas it goes anywhere. Control is understood to be an instrument of global dominance. Iranian influence in the "crescent" challenges U.S. control. By an accident of geography, the world's major oil resources are in largely Shiite areas of the Middle East: southern Iraq, adjacent regions of Saudi Arabia and Iran, with some of the major reserves of natural gas as well. Washington's worst nightmare would be a...

Immigration Could Add 100M to U.S. by 2060 Written by Randy Hall, CNSNews.com Staff Writer/Editor If both legal and illegal immigration continues at its current pace, the U.S. population will grow by 1.25 million per year and reach a net total of 468 million by 2060, according to a report issued Thursday by a Washington think tank. That increase of 167 million people over the next 53 years "is equal to the combined populations of Great Britain, France and Spain," said Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), during a news conference at the National...