Free Republic

Sometimes, like a Cinderella team marching through March, Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign seems nothing short of charmed. It helps that while Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has 10 weeks to make Obama totally and entirely unelectable, Obama just has to wait out the clock. But the outside help Obama is getting (some that he asked for, some that he didn't) is the X-factor -- and it means that, even as Obama grapples with perhaps the biggest challenge to his candidacy, he will be the nominee short of something else dramatic happening in the race that's already seen everything. To survey...

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. health officials have identified a contaminant in batches of the blood thinner heparin associated with 19 deaths and are trying to determine how the chemical got into the drug. The lots of heparin, whose key ingredient was imported from China, were recalled Feb. 28, and Food and Drug Administration officials said Wednesday that no new deaths have been reported since that time. Dr. Janet Woodcock, head of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said the contaminant is oversulfated chondroitin sulfate, a chemical that does not occur naturally. Chondroitin sulfate is a natural compound that...

There are very few Christian relics as important and as controversial as the Shroud of Turin. This linen cloth, measuring about 4.4m by 1.1m (14.4x3.6 feet) holds the concealed image of a man bearing all the signs of crucifixion. Scientific tests have proved that there are blood stains around the marks consistent with a crown of thorns and a puncture from a lance to the side. In a new documentary, we have been given intimate access that no other broadcaster has had before. Until the 1980s, millions of Christians around the world believed the Shroud to be the burial cloth...

'You kids!" my mother ritually despaired in my childhood. "You're so - negative!" That line has been a standing joke between my brothers and me for decades, ruefully repeated at my mother's expense. But she had a point. We were a critical bunch. On into my middle age, much of my non-fiction commentary has continued to deplore this, to ridicule that. I am still "negative". Yet, like many of my American compatriots this week, I have been enjoying the unnerving experience of being for something. Of being encouraged. Of daring to believe that something in my country has improved. Of...

Thank You, Chris Wallace By Sam Graham-Felsen - Mar 21st, 2008 at 12:59 pm EDT On Fox and Friends this morning, hosts Steve Doocy, Brian Kilmeade, and Gretchen Carlson spent multiple segments sensationalizing a comment Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) made yesterday... When the trio welcomed Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace onto the show, instead of previewing his show this weekend, Wallace announced that he was going to take his fellow Fox hosts “to task” for their “excessive” and “somewhat distorting” coverage of what Obama said... We appreciate Chris Wallace for doing his job as a tough but fair journalist...

remove militant sympathies in Osama bin Laden's homeland. Officials in the kingdom have sought to manage hardline beliefs within the state-sponsored Wahhabist tradition in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks on America. For years senior ministers alternated between outright denial of endemic militancy and the adoption of reforms demanded by the West. Al-Sharq al-Awsat, a newspaper close to the reformist wing of the royal family, yesterday reported that Saleh al-Sheikh, the minister of Islamic affairs, planned to run seminars for every prayer leader. Clerics will be required to attend lectures at the Centre for National Dialogue, which also operates a...

CARACAS, Venezuela — For the better part of a decade, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has spent billions of dollars of his country's oil revenue to challenge U.S. interests, build influence around the world and fund a self-styled socialist revolution at home. Yet as Chavez moves from one international crisis to another— most recently a near military confrontation with neighboring Colombia , an important U.S. ally— many wonder how long his oil-funded wild ride will last. Not long, analysts in Venezuela and abroad said, if production continues to decline at the country's state-run energy company, Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. , known...

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- The subprime mortgage crisis has yielded at least one benefit for states: Mortgage-related investments have become so cheap that they are luring some pension funds to buy. Retirement systems in South Carolina and Pennsylvania are nibbling at the securities, betting that they have been beaten down so much that the ones with good credit ratings could yield strong returns later. South Carolina is looking to buy $100 million of mortgage-related investments for its $30 billion state pension fund. Pennsylvania, which made money off those securities' troubles in its hedge funds last year, is also betting that...

Listen for a few minutes to Joey Vento, owner of a south Philadelphia institution that serves gut-busting sandwiches through a takeaway hatch, and the scale of Barack Obama's problems become apparent. Obama is having the worst week of his campaign. It is, some believe, a week that threatens his chances of becoming president. "That minister, that was terrible, all his sayings. He's preaching hatred," Vento said. "The thing I didn't like about Obama; you're telling me for 20 years you been going to that church and you never heard that?" Vento, 68, was speaking about Obama's former pastor and spiritual...

March 21 (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden urged Palestinians to use "iron and fire" to end an Israeli blockade of Gaza, in a recording broadcast by the Al Jazeera channel on Thursday. Following is a chronology of major statements attributed to bin Laden. Sept. 24, 2001 - Al Jazeera television quotes bin Laden statement urging Pakistanis to fight any assault on Afghanistan by "crusader Americans". Oct. 7 - Bin Laden taunts "infidel" U.S. President George W. Bush over Sept. 11 attacks; says in a videotape shown by Al Jazeera that United States will not live in peace until Palestinians can...

ROCKFORD, Ill. — The heart transplant that saved Brian Troy was made possible by a fellow Marine. Troy, 43, of Rockford, served as a Marine in the 1980s. He was dying of an inherited heart condition in 2006 when he received a new heart in a transplant. The donor was 23. Troy didn't know much more than that. Then Troy saw headlines about the murder of a 23-year-old Marine. He read about how Ricky Martinez survived two tours in Iraq, but he was shot to death in Chicago in a case of mistaken identity. The gunman thought a passenger in...

Brothers and sisters in Christ: On the surface Good Friday is a tragedy. With the exception of one word, there is no resolution of grief, it ends in the despair of hopelessness. It was tragic for Jesus. He had given his life to love those who had turned away from the Father. Humanity in turn without cause tore his life apart on the cross. It was tragic for the disciples. They had expected a Messiah King who would usher in his royal kingdom and destroy the Romans. Instead Roman soldiers took their Messiah to a cross, and hung him with...

WASHINGTON - Older White House computer hard drives have been destroyed, the White House disclosed to a federal court Friday in a controversy over millions of possibly missing e-mails from 2003 to 2005. The White House revealed new information about how it handles its computers in an effort to persuade a federal magistrate it would be fruitless to undertake an e-mail recovery plan that the court proposed. "When workstations are at the end of their lifecycle and retired ... the hard drives are generally sent offsite to another government entity for physical destruction," the White House said in a sworn...

Ever since Barack Obama delivered his much praised but inadequate race speech on Tuesday, the editorialists have been telling us how much we need a national dialogue on the subject. Right. It's high time. So here's my contribution: Rev. Jeremiah Wright's remarks about America were the worst things said about my adopted country since I came here from England in 1962. Louis Farrakhan and Malcolm X are not in the same league as this champion of race hatred from Chicago. Imagine if Senator John McCain had for years been a member of a church where a white pastor said that...

Americans traveling to China for the Olympic Games in August can expect their hotel rooms there to be monitored, the State Department warned on its website. "All visitors should be aware that they have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public or private locations," according to the State Department site. "All hotel rooms and offices are considered to be subject to on-site or remote technical monitoring at all times. Hotel rooms, residences and offices may be accessed at any time without the occupant's consent or knowledge," it said. It added that many hotels and apartment buildings may be poorly built,...

Robert Mugabe turns the screw on Zimbabwe's dwindling white farmers By Peta Thornycroft in Chinhoyi Last Updated: 1:56am GMT 22/03/2008 President Robert Mugabe's regime is stepping up its intimidation of Zimbabwe's white farmers as he seeks a sixth term in office. A few hundred landowners managed to stay put on small portions of their original properties despite Mr Mugabe's land seizures, which began in 2000 and destroyed commercial agriculture, the backbone of the economy. But the president's re-election campaign ahead of next weekend's election is driven by the notion that the country's independence is under threat. He has long presented...

A recent study conducted by the University of New Hampshire confirms what curmudgeons in these parts have been complaining about for a long time: The Granite State may be turning into a suburb of Boston. more stories like thisThe report, "The Changing Faces of New Hampshire: Recent Demographic Trends in the Granite State," released last month by the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, indicates that nearly 25 percent of New Hampshire residents were born in Massachusetts, and Internal Revenue Service data indicate that the largest source of new migrants to New Hampshire is Greater Boston. According to...

Top psychiatrist concludes liberals clinically nuts Eminent psychiatrist makes case ideology is mental disorder February 15, 2008 WASHINGTON – Just when liberals thought it was safe to start identifying themselves as such, an acclaimed, veteran psychiatrist is making the case that the ideology motivating them is actually a mental disorder. "Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded," says Dr. Lyle Rossiter, author of the new book, "The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness." "Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of...

"Easter, Passover and the KJV"By Fred Butler There exist in American Christianity a rather vocal group of advocates who defend the King James Version as being the only true, infallible English translation.  Their contention is that it contains absolutely no transcribal or translational errors and can rightly be called the pure, inerrant Word of God.  Donald A. Waite, the director of Bible For Today ministries sums up the KJV only position when he writes:“If we really want to know what the Hebrew in the Old Testament says and what the Greek in the New Testament says in the English language...

Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), encumbered by a scandal since last summer, did not file for reelection by his state’s deadline Friday, keeping a promise he made and officially marking the end of his congressional career. Craig’s political future has been in doubt since his arrest and guilty plea on disorderly conduct charges filed after an incident in a men’s restroom at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport last June. The three-term senator, who previously served five terms in the House, denied the charges that he solicited sex from an undercover police officer conducting a sting operation to crack down on alleged gay...