Free Republic

A knife-wielding burglar got a shock when he attacked a pensioner in his home - a couple of right hooks to the face. Gregory McCalium had not realised that 72-year-old victim Frank Corti was a retired boxer. This police mugshot of 23-year-old McCalium, taken soon after he was arrested at Mr Corti's home, shows the facial injuries the OAP inflicted as he made a citizen's arrest. Today, McCalium is beginning a four-and-a-half year prison sentence after a judge told him he 'got what he deserved.' A court heard how Mr Corti - who served with the Royal Engineers in North...

Republicans believe a handful of junior House Democrats may have taken a career-ending vote by supporting the controversial energy bill last week and are planning to launch an ad campaign in targeted districts to try to seal their fate. The National Republican Congressional Committee is planning to air TV and radio commercials and unleash robocalls against Democrats who hail from districts that could be adversely affected by the narrowly passed legislation or are GOP-leaning... Those likely to find themselves with targets on their back after the 219-212 vote: freshman Reps. Harry Teague of New Mexico, Betsy Markey of Colorado, John...

There are approximately 8 1/2 days remaining on the auction. Bidding has just exceeded $900k with no cap. Seller agrees to allow buyer to verify in person with document specialist prior to paying. If buyer deems document fraudulent, buyer can walk.

This new technology deserves a great deal of attention. I think there is a tremendous opportunity here, as I will explain. Most of us have seen the amazing 4D photos of unborn children (I've inserted one to the left). Now a student at the Royal College in Britain has taken the next step of using these photographs to create an individualized, life-size model of the pictured unborn child. LifeNews: Stunning new technology is allowing parents to go beyond a 3D or 4D ultrasound to bond with their unborn child in ways never imaginable. A student at the Royal College...

The arrest and deportation of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya by the country's military Sunday was wrong and should be reversed. Quite possibly, it will be: Facing the united condemnation of governments in the Americas, and under heavy pressure from the United States -- on which Honduras depends for aid, free trade and remittances from workers -- those who deposed Mr. Zelaya may not hold out for long. If their goal is, as they declare, to defend the country's democracy, they will have a better chance of doing so if they allow the president to return... The Obama administration, however, shouldn't...

We know reading about deficits and taxes is a sure cure for insomnia, but make sure to read this quick opinion piece on why taxes are going higher.

The RedEye gang discusses with their clothes on.

The House of Representatives passed the 1,200-plus page Waxman-Markey Cap-and-Trade tax bill by a narrow margin as the last piece of business on Friday before heading home for the Fourth of July recess. Once again House members had to vote on a bill they hadn’t read, since co-sponsor Henry Waxman (D-CA) added a 300-page amendment just after 3 o’clock Friday morning. Fearing the vote on the controversial American Clean Energy and Security Act – the largest tax increase in American history – would not go their way, Democrats called one lawmaker in from rehab to help out. According to The...

With each passing day, various Democrats, members of the media, and even certain Republicans, declare the conservative movement or the heyday of the Reagan era a relic of the past. Really? Well, in the age of Obama, a recent Gallup poll shows exactly the opposite. The survey says that 40 percent of Americans now describe their political views as “conservative,” with 35 percent saying “moderate” and 21 percent saying “liberal.” As an independent conservative and a former low-level writer for President Ronald Reagan, I maintain that conservative principles are more relevant than ever and that Ronald Reagan’s core beliefs speak...

WASHINGTON -- The first $250 payments to veterans as part of President Obama's recovery plan were sent Monday, and officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs said all payments will be distributed by June 30. As part of the recovery plan, VA is making one-time payments of $250 to eligible veterans and survivors to offset the effects of the current economy. VA estimates $500 million in payments will be made to approximately 1.9 million veterans and eligible beneficiaries as part of this measure.

For those who wish to think clearly about Iran, there are two fundamental facts: * the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran have been at war with us ever since the overthrow of the shah in early 1979; * the savagery they have unleashed on the people of Iran is precisely what they want to do to us. The Iranian leaders and their terror instruments, from Hezbollah to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have been killing Americans for 30 years, from the Marine barracks in Beirut in the 1980s to the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan at the moment, where...

There’ll be a tradeoff in the Senate: Sotomayor for Cap and Trade. Her reversal probably assures her confirmation as the lesser of two evils. Here’s it works. The reversal fans the stink from Sotomayor. Three hundred boxes of probably damaging new Sotomayor documents have just surfaced. The Marxist controlled media couldn’t smother the truth about this racist fraud forever. Reid’s problem The House Marxists voted to collectively jump off a cliff with Cap and Trade. While many voted “No” many others voted “Yes” and are now politically screwed. Jim Inhofe sees no more than 34 “Yes” votes in the Senate....

June 30, 1862 Battle of Glendale (White Oak Swamp) The Seven Days' Battles continues at Glendale (White Oak Swamp), Virginia, as Robert E. Lee has a chance to deal a decisive blow against George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had already won the Seven Days' Battles, but the Confederates' attempt to rout McClellan cost many Southern casualties. The Seven Days' Battles were the climax of McClellan's Peninsular campaign. For two months, the Union army sailed down Chesapeake Bay and then inched up the James Peninsula. In late June, the two forces began a series...

There was symmetry in the news that barraged us one day last week -- Michael Jackson, not to mention Farrah Fawcett, had died, and the governor of South Carolina had made a nitwit and a creep out of himself over a woman in Argentina. Politics, entertainment -- you can't tell where one leaves off and the other takes up. The weirder, the better, as with the late Mr. Jackson and the politically late Mark Sanford. We eat it all up with big spoons: on TV, on the Internet, in the papers. Have you heard …? If one hasn't, one soon...

The NY Daily News is promoting the August edition of Vanity Fair, in which a vicious hit piece full of lies, distortions and innuendo savagely attacks everything about Sarah Palin, not the least of which is her character. The load of garbage disguised as an article was written by the liberal magazine's national editor Todd Purdam. If you don't know where he's coming from, consider that Purdam formerly worked for the New York Times, the newspaper of the Democrat Party's liberal wing.  He is married to Dee Dee Myers, who was Bill Clinton's White House press secretary from 1993 to 1994....

WASHINGTON -- Aiming to keep the focus on creating out-of-control bureaucracy, President Barack Obama put a plug in for administration efforts to make pencil-pushing more overwhelming while using less energy. "I know pencil-pushing may not seem sexy, but this simple action holds enormous promise because 97 percent of our future economy in America depends on having the most efficient bureaucratic tools as we take over more businesses and create more government offices," the president said, standing alongside Energy Secretary Steven Chu at the White House.

Where in the World is Obama's Missing Thesis? By Ed Lasky Barack Obama wrote his senior thesis at Columbia University on Soviet nuclear disarmament. Inquiring people have sought a copy of this thesis to no avail. Columbia says it cannot be found; Barack Obama says he lost it. How likely is that a person so impressed with himself that he writes an autobiography just a few years later would "lose" his senior thesis? After all, a Presidential Library must be filled. And as Jim Geraghty at National Review and others have noted there are a lot of blank spots --...

"Undercover" (1943)"Underground Guerrillas" (U.S. 1944)On July 27, 1943, Ealing Studios in Great Britain released the movie Undercover on the guerrilla resistance movement in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia. Undercover was re-released by Columbia Pictures on September 14, 1944 in the United States under the title Underground Guerrillas. The movie was originally entitled Chetnik and was to document the Yugoslav Chetnik resistance movement headed by Draza Mihailovich. Because the movie was released when British support for Mihailovich was waning, however, the film was re-edited and references to Mihailovich and the Chetniks were deleted. The movie is invaluable, nevertheless, as a cinematic account of the...

Che Guevara was a cowardly murderer, and those walking around the US with his stinking, bearded countenance adorning their apparel are ignorant fools.I can understand why he is a hero in Latin America, where the rich dump all over the poor and call it capitalism and democracy. But here in America--the most egalitarian and upwardly mobile society in the world--the most famous t-shirt salesman in the world is a mark of ignorance.A Che logo screams "I am blissfully ignorant of history and I despise the capitalist freedom that brought me this gucci bag and these $200 Raybans." Capitalism Is Dead!...

This year, the economy promises to make Independence Day less explosive than usual. “In yet the latest reminder of the economic crisis,” The Washington Post reported recently, “more than 40 communities across the country have already cancelled their Fourth of July fireworks.” Families are cutting back too, of course. The savings rate has risen to its highest level in 15 years and consumer spending is down as people focus on making ends meet. At least one industry, though, is bucking the cost-saving trend: higher education. In recent decades, the cost of college has increased roughly 8 percent every year --...