Free Republic

TIJUANA — Following several high-profile busts, the Mexican Army is stepping up its battle against organized crime in this region. The city's director of Public Safety, Julián Leyzaola, announced this week that the Army would begin joint operations with local police in the most violent neighborhoods. That's a change, given that the military has largely steered clear of working directly local police. On Wednesday, Mexican soldiers rescued eight people who had been kidnapped and were being held at a ranch east of the city after a shootout that claimed the life of one of the suspected kidnappers. Last month, the...

A German woman from Minnesota has become a U.S. citizen so she can deploy to Iraq this week. Heike Lewandowski became an American at a ceremony Saturday at the Mall of America. She'll be serving for a year with the 34th Infantry's Red Bull Division. The 37-year-old lives in Long Prairie. She met her Minnesota native husband, Jeff, when he was stationed in Germany with the military. She moved to the U.S. in 1998 and has served in the National Guard for eight years.

Power duet-Why Barack Obama will join Bruce Springsteen to stop Ticketmaster & Live Nation's merger February 6 Turns out Hell hath no fury like a crossed Boss, especially if you mess around with his fans.

Marks from teachers, test scores vary widely: In many cases, ‘A’ student can get ‘F’ on state’s exam Some metro Atlanta high schools routinely award stellar grades to students who can’t pass standardized tests in the subject, leaving them potentially unprepared for college, a state study has found. The results could mean teachers are either handing out good marks too easily or not teaching the state curriculum well, experts say. The study released last week found the End of Course Tests were generally much harder for high school students than classroom work. The gap was most startling for the economics...

February 6, 5:29 PM by John Guerrerio, Energy Examiner « Previous Lambs with guns; a dangerous combination.The way we generate energy and conduct business in general has come under question over the course of the past decade and up for serious debate in the last month in Congress.  America and the world have relied on fossil fuels for more than a century now, and conducting business in our world is requiring more and more energy each year in order to keep our growth curves positive.  Changing entrenched systems of doing things is hard.  People don’t like to change, especially...

Nancy Pelosi told her leadership team that she had told the president, “I don’t mind you driving the bus over me, but I don’t appreciate your backing it up and running over me again and again.”

Until Friday, President Obama's plea for bipartisanship support of his costly plan for stimulating the economy mostly had fallen on deaf GOP ears, but that changed when three Republican moderates pledged their support. In doing so, Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, and Pennsylvania's Sen. Arlen Specter risked drawing the wrath of their fellow Republicans and of some constituents The trio's support is expected to give Democrats the 60 votes needed in the Senate to advance to a final vote on the $827 billion stimulus bill next week -- and ultimately push the controversial mix of massive spending...

... Doesn't it seem like we are living through sort of nightmare and no matter how hard we pinch ourselves, we just can't seem to wake up? When Barack Obama won the presidential election just a few short months ago, many of us asked: How bad could it be? Well, putting it mildly, it couldn't be any worse. Obama really meant it when he promised "change" for America. Right before our eyes, he is changing the U.S. into a socialist nation, along the lines of Euro-socialism and it's apparent there's nothing any of us can do about it. But let's...

A convicted drug dealer was busted early Saturday in the brutal rape of a laundermat worker, police said. Samuel Rivera, 29, who lives a few blocks from the laundermat where the 38-year-old woman was attacked, was waiting to be arraigned late Saturday on rape and robbery charges. Police said the suspect, posing as a customer, arrived about 7:15 a.m. Tuesday. He grabbed a wad of cash from the register, forced the worker into a back room, then raped her. A subsequent customer scared Rivera off, police said. A security camera captured the vicious attack. While police say Rivera is a...

Foster parent who has looked after 80 children struck off...because a Muslim girl in her care became a Christian By JONATHAN PETRE 07th February 2009 A foster mother has been struck off by a council after a teenage Muslim girl in her care became a Christian. The carer, who has ten years’ experience and has looked after more than 80 children, said she was ‘devastated’ by the decision. ‘This is my life,’ she revealed. ‘It is not just a job for me. It is a vocation. I love what I do. It is also my entire income. I am a...

Put 257 eighth-graders in a room with a congressman, tell them to ask questions, and you’ll soon find out what’s on their mind. So it was on Friday, as freshman Republican Tom McClintock – on break from Washington and in the midst of a district-wide meet-and-greet – paid a visit to the students of Olympus Jr. High in Roseville. The conservative legislator held forth on the importance of political involvement and American values – with a heavy dose of Lincoln and de Tocqueville thrown in for good measure. “It’s fun talking to eigth-graders, because they’re studying the American constitution and...

Russia may face a grim economic downturn but one would scarcely think so to judge by the sound of sabre-rattling emerging from the Kremlin. Unless, of course, it is intended as a domestic distraction from the gathering gloom. The double-act of Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin has come up with a series of security initiatives that seem designed to provoke, or at least irritate, the new administration in Washington. Without even waiting to hear how President Barack Obama intends to conduct his relations with Moscow – something that Joe Biden, his vice-president, may well address on Saturday at the annual...

Facebook has issued a statement in response to allegations that one of its members used the site to get nude photos of teens and blackmail them into performing sex acts. Police have charged Wisconsin 18-year-old Anthony Stancl with sexual assault and accused him of copying female Facebook members' photos, pretending to be a girl, and persuading male schoolmates to send nude photos. Police claim he then threatened to distribute the photos to the whole school unless the boys had sex with him.

While reading the food section of the afternoon edition of the newspaper, I came across a comment about "heirloom" seeds--not their qualities or anything, but just a suggestion that one hoard a few in a general pantry. Now, I was born and raised alongside the Platte River of Nebraska, farming country (and then as a teenager, the Sandhills of Nebraska, ranching country), and so matters agricultural and horticultural are not exactly alien things to me. But on the Head of St. John the Baptist, I must say the first time I ever saw the term "heirloom seeds" was when I...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) - Bank of America Corp. (BAC) (BAC) Chief Executive Ken Lewis capped off a week of defending his bank and his role in it on Friday by firing back against rumors that his company could be in danger of nationalization. "It's absurd," Lewis said in an interview on CNBC, adding that he knows of no government officials who have talked about nationalizing the bank. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and other top officials are close to finishing a plan to overhaul the government's $700 billion financial rescue fund. Some investors in recent days have been worried that the...

NEW YORK – The federal government will have to issue record levels of debt in the next two years – up to $2.5 trillion in 2009 and as much as $4 trillion in 2010. The record federal debt financing is required to fund the social welfare programs called for in the Obama administration's nearly $1 trillion deficit-spending economic stimulus plan and to overcome a likely shortfall due to falling tax revenues, according to BustedBudget.com, a website dedicated to "tracking the government's shameful overspending one painful day at a time." BustedBudget.com noted that factors leading to the increased federal government borrowing...

Ok, many of us conservatives / libertarian types have concluded Obama hates the U.S., is associated with Alinsky, and has only acted to do things that lower America's status in the world, and reward his like buddies and groups who helped elect him. Here's the challenge on this thread: for you liberals/progressives, make a reasoned, sane, non-flip argument that Obama is making the U.S. better by what he's doing...tell us how the "stimulus" will improve things. Name items in the stimulus that specifically are bettering America. Do you know Acorn is rewarded in this bill? Come on, answer the challenge....

A bill to remove South Dakota’s restrictions against embryonic stem cell research was introduced yesterday in the state senate. SB 195 would strike from SDCL 34-14 the language prohibiting human embryos from being used for research.  The bill was sponsored by Senators Nesselhuf, Adelstein, Nelson, and Turbak Berry and Representatives Engels, Blake, Cutler, Dreyer, Hoffman, Hunhoff (Bernie), McLaughlin, and Street. We knew this was coming for some time now. Last summer the Argus Leader ran an article about Sanford Health in Sioux Falls under the heading “Sanford eyes stem cell study.”In that article we read A new donation from philanthropist T. Denny...

President Obama on Friday quietly signed an executive order pushing federal construction projects to favor union workers, undoing yet another Bush administration labor rule and generating criticism of political "payback." The order - a substantial boost to unions - says government contractors should favorably consider "project labor agreements," which carve out jobs for union workers. It overturns President Bush's 2001 order banning PLAs, which had overturned a Clinton order, which had overturned an order from President George H.W. Bush. Unions said the agreements ensure certainty in both costs and timelines, making them worthwhile for government spending. "PLAs help build America...

A new study has cast doubt on whether research using animal-human embryos will ever lead to medical treatments. A team of scientists in Massachusetts tried to produce stem cells from embryos created from animal and human material. But when they put the nuclei of human cells into animal eggs they found that the mechanism needed to generate the stem cells didn’t work. “Instead of turning on the right genes, it turns out the animal eggs actually turn them off,” said senior researcher Dr Robert Lanza. The team said their results “call into question” the ability of animal-human embryos to generate...