Free Republic

BLAST FROM THE PAST Reverse Discrimination Case in One-Paragraph Opinion ---snip--- Judge Cabranes also said that Sotomayor’s opinion failed to address the constitutional issues of the case, saying the majority had ignored the facts of the case as well. “It did so, moreover, in an opinion that lacks a clear statement of either the claims raised by the plaintiffs or the issues on appeal. Indeed, the opinion contains no reference whatsoever to the constitutional claims at the core of this case,” the judge criticized. “This Court has failed to grapple with the questions of exceptional importance raised in this appeal,”...

Housing has led us out of every economic slump for the past 50 years, which is why this recession could go on for a long time...

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - More than 20,000 Pennsylvanians are expected to exhaust their jobless benefits in mid-July. The state Department of Labor and Industry expects them to be the first large wave of people who have gone through as many as 72 weeks of unemployment benefits. Labor and Industry Department Deputy Secretary Patrick Beaty says the agency sent letters to 21,000 people last week notifying them. He says there is still no letup in applications for benefits, and the agency does not expect the rising unemployment rate to ease in the coming months.

For much of the Bush administration, the media splashed stories of neoconservative conspiracies and cabals. Exposés about mostly Jewish liberals-turned-conservatives charged that they were adherents of the philosopher Leo Strauss and embraced the Platonic notion of the “noble lie.” In his Republic, Plato outlined an elaborate, ranked utopia, a good city (“Kallipolis”) run by a sort of benign natural selection. The philosopher-kings sat atop hierarchies in which occupations were assigned for the citizenry. To justify arbitrary selections, the rulers would make up “noble lies” about divine edicts, making clear that the occupations chosen for lesser folk were god-given. Once the...

Rarely in history has a President of the United States acted so quickly, so poorly, and so ineffectively. Not even the infamous Jimmy Carter can hold a candle to how President Obama has handled situations on the ground in Iraq, the Military Base in Guantanamo, or relations aboard the Apology Express in Europe. But no, though the "Commander in Chief" stumbled and fell throughout those mentioned, they are not the worst things he has done. No, our Chosen One has done much more egregious things that will almost definitely cripple the lives of all involved. In his very young Presidency,...

The remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) was quite a disappointment to sci-fi fans. Viewers gave it just over 2 stars at Amazon.com. That’s slightly worse than Assignment: Outer Space (1960) and more than a point and a half behind Kronos (1950). If you haven’t heard of either, don’t worry about it. The point is that there are probably better movies at the outdoor even if you’re not planning to watch the movie.

For the past five months, White House aides and friends of the Obamas have been quietly visiting local churches and vetting the sermons of prospective first ministers in a search for a new - and uncontroversial - church home. Obama has even sampled a few himself, attending services at 19th Street Baptist on the weekend before his inauguration and celebrating Easter at St. John's Episcopal Church.

An ambitious director might look at Mitch Halligan's property and see an instant B-movie classic: "Invasion of the Grasshoppers." The place is overrun with the greasy little bugs. With each step you take on his property, the squirmy inch-long grasshoppers jump for cover in every direction. Those that don't crunch under foot perch themselves atop tall grass stalks, crawl up pant legs or munch through gardens.

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court has reversed Judge Sotomayor in the Ricci decision, the white firefighters race case.

Breaking ...BWAHAHAHA!

Ricci prevails!

Joint Honduras-United States Communique May 21, 1985 The Presidents of the United States of America and the Republic of Honduras, meeting in Washington, D.C., on May 21, 1985, with full commitment of their Governments to the ideals of justice, liberty and democracy that the people of the Western Hemisphere seek, and recognizing the critical situation in which these values are being tested in Central America today as well as the urgent obligation to safeguard them, issue this communique: The two Presidents noted with satisfaction the warm, cooperative ties between the two nations, including the very close security relationship which contributes...

COURT OVERTURNS SOTOMAYOR; SIDES WITH WHITE FIREFIGHTERS

The on-line rape of his 5-year-old adopted son by Duke University's openly-gay, Frank Lombard, is no anomaly. Instead, Lombard's molestation fits the pattern that emerged in the latest review of the scientific literature about gay fathers. Lombard lives with his gay partner, another Duke University employee. The Arrest Warrant documents that Lombard sodomized one of his two adopted African-American sons and made the boy give him oral sex on-line. He offered other gays the same opportunity. Although the boy was drugged, "it is likely he developed interest in gay sex through these activities," said Dr. Paul Cameron, an expert in...

HANOVER, Mass. — A Massachusetts prosecutor says a 6-year-old girl was kidnapped by a would-be rapist but managed to escape from his apartment despite being in leg shackles. Plymouth District Attorney Timothy Cruz says the girl was found Saturday afternoon as police searched the apartment complex in Hanover, about 20 miles southeast of Boston, where she and the suspect live. Her mother reported her missing at about 1:30 p.m. Cruz says the girl pointed officers to an apartment where she was taken. They arrested 26-year-old Justin Shine after a struggle.

SCOTUS released their opinion today on Ricci v. New Haven. They overturned the case in it's totality - Kennedy wrote it 5-4 decision. Here's Sotomayor's opinion. The SCOTUS opinion will be posted as soon as it becomes available. In part - "city's fear of litigation cannot justify the refusal to apply the test."

Countries in North Africa are boosting precautionary measures in heightened efforts to prevent bubonic plague from spreading to their territories.According to the London-based Al-Quds Al-'Arabi, Algeria has documented 50 cases of the plague, some within 15 kilometers (9 miles) of the border with Libya, where two people have died of the disease. As a result, Algiers has tightened medical surveillance on its borders with Libya. Officials there fear that Bedouin are crossing the borders from the Illizi province into Libya and passing the disease back into Algeria, according to local Algeria and Moroccan press. Rodents in the area have been...

CLAYTON, Ga. — Naked time got a little out of hand for a former Gainesville mayor. Authorities arrested Mark Musselwhite and charged him with public indecency last weekend after state Department of Natural Resources officers found him sitting nude at his Rabun County campsite. Officers had received a complaint about a naked man walking along a nearby road earlier in the day, but the 43-year-old Musselwhite said he was not the same man.

Back in 2008, New York Times correspondent David S. Rohde, along with Afghan reporter Taki Luden, were abducted in Pakistan by the Taliban. Because they felt it might adversely affect hostage rescue efforts, the Times requested a news black-out. The Associated Press and other news agencies respected the request and only broke the story recently, after Rohde and Luden had scaled a wall and made their escape. It would be nothing other than a story with a happy ending, except that the Times has time and again ignored the government’s requests that it not report the specific ways in which...

TOKYO — Toyota Motor Corp. says it has developed a way of steering a wheelchair by just detecting brain waves, without the person having to move a muscle or shout a command. Toyota's system, developed in a collaboration with researchers in Japan, is among the fastest in the world in analyzing brain waves, it said in a release Monday. Past systems required several seconds to read brain waves, but the new technology requires only 125 milliseconds — or 125 thousandths of a second.