Free Republic

Today is the first edition of my blog Tremoglie's Tea Time. Here is the first post: All feedback - good or bad - is welcome.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), whose officials in the past have been convicted for being associated with Muslim terrorist groups, said it will announce at a news conference Tuesday that it is launching an “education campaign” and will distribute 100,000 copies of the Koran to local, state and national leaders. The books will provide an English translation and commentary. CAIR said the distribution is prompted by U.S. President Barack Obama’s recent speech in Cairo, in which he said he wants to reach out to Muslims throughout the world. He praised the Muslim community in the U.S, whose values he...

Government experts are scheduled to vote on whether Nyquil and other combination cold medications should be pulled from the market to help curb deadly overdoses. The Food and Drug Administration has assembled more than 35 experts for a two-day meeting to discuss and vote on ways to prevent overdose with acetaminophen — the pain-relieving, fever-reducing ingredient in Tylenol and dozens of other prescription and over-the-counter medications. Despite years of educational campaigns and other federal actions, acetaminophen remains the leading cause of liver failure in the U.S., sending 56,000 people to the emergency room annually, according to the FDA. There are...

NEW YORK – There is a clear trend home prices declines are moderating — another sign the beleaguered housing market is stabilizing, according to data released Tuesday. While the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index of 20 major cities tumbled by 18.1 percent, it marked the third straight month the decline was not a record. And yearly losses in 13 metros improved compared to March.

Recent calls to privatize the U.S. Postal Service are silly, but not because the idea is unsound. First, it's hard to imagine a scenario under which your socialist Congress and socialist president would permit it to happen because to them, the only good business is a government-run or -subsidized enterprise. Further, though privatization of all or parts of postal services in New Zealand, Germany, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden has worked fabulously or shown great promise in improving service and productivity and reducing rates, the USPS is a union shop, and everyone knows to whom congressional Democrats...

If Republicans were wondering how their 2012 presidential candidate is going to compete against President Obama's $600 million fundraising juggernaut, the Supreme Court seems poised to provide an answer: unlimited corporate spending supporting the Republican candidate, or attacking Obama. In a Supreme Court term that has had its share of surprises, the court saved one of the biggest for last. Rather than publish an opinion at the end of the term as expected in an obscure campaign finance case, Citizens United v. FEC, the court issued a rare order for reargument of the case in September (before the usual start...

Catching up on the health-care debate: In discussing KennedyDoddCare at a news conference last week, President Obama beat the tar out of a straw man. "Why would it drive private insurance out of business? If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care; if they tell us that they're offering a good deal, then why is it that the government, which they say can't run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That's not logical." He repeated those talking points in his infomercial on ABC. He knows KennedyDoddCare is being crafted to give...

Talkin' about the Ark of the Covenant, the Ebay Birth Certificate, etc. Just thought y'all Freepers might be interested.

A new study issued by the DVR Research Institute suggests that advertising executives have a keen understanding of the threat posed by time-shifting devices yet are uncertain about what they can do to counteract ad skipping. The four-part report, “Advertising in the DVR Age,” reveals that 83 percent of marketers surveyed believe the increased adoption of DVRs will negatively impact the effectiveness of TV advertising in the course of the next three years. That assertion was echoed by ad agency executives. Per the study, 77 percent of agency higher-ups said that DVR usage will prove to be the greatest challenge...

The Force can be with anyone now. Later this summer, anybody anywhere will have the ability to physically move stuff with their minds like characters do in "Star Wars." No joke. A new toy that harnesses the same technology doctors use to monitor brain waves will arrive in stores in August. The toy moves when it senses a change in the user's brain-wave patterns.

A will drafted by Michael Jackson in 2002 which divides the singer's estate among his mother, three children and one or more charities could play a central role in determining how his tangled financial relationships will be unwound. Several people close to the late Mr. Jackson said that a lawyer for the pop singer could submit the will, believed to be his last, to Los Angeles Superior Court as soon as Thursday. That filing would cap a tense period in which relatives and advisers of the late singer debated what document, if any, was valid. One or two other earlier...

Daily sex can improve the genetic quality of a man’s sperm and could enhance his chances of fathering a child, new research has suggested. Couples who are trying for a baby are often advised to have sex every other day, so that the man’s sperm count has time to recover, but scientists in Australia have discovered that this may lower some men’s fertility. While abstaining from sex for a few days does boost sperm counts, sperm quality as well as quantity is important to male fertility and this can be damaged if a man ejaculates too infrequently.

Before “subprime” became a crisis, ACORN was active in the mortgage market, fighting in support of the policies that helped lay the groundwork for the banking collapse of 2008. ACORN lobbied legislators and banks to ensure that any person, regardless of credit history, income, or assets, would qualify for a mortgage. They mastered the art of pressuring banks – often through radical and controversial methods – to provide subprime loans to all comers. President Obama acted as a lawyer for ACORN in a lawsuit against Citibank forcing it to provide subprime loans. It was many of these “toxic” loans that...

SAN'A, Yemen — A passenger jet from Yemen with 153 people on board crashed in the Indian Ocean early Tuesday as it tried to land during heavy wind on the island nation of Comoros, a Yemeni aviation official said. A Comoros police official said one toddler has been rescued alive from the sea. Bodies were spotted floating in the ocean and the police official said three had been recovered so far

SAN JOSE, Calif. - A shambling sentence about sea fellows who bellow took top honors in an annual contest celebrating bad writing. David McKenzie, a 55-year-old Washington man, won grand prize in San Jose State University's 27th Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest with this: "Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it...

Growing confidence that the U.S. economy is putting the worst recession in decades behind it has pushed the index known as Wall Street's fear gauge to its lowest level since just before Lehman Brothers collapsed last September. The CBOE Volatility Index [VIX 25.37 0.02 (+0.08%) ] , known as the VIX, provides investors with portfolio insurance against fluctuations in the S&P 500 index. It soared to historic highs in the weeks after Lehman's rapid failure pushed financial markets to the brink and left an already crippled economy in tatters. But amid numerous signs the economy is on the edge of...

It works for Fido, so why not you?The same RFID implants used to identify lost pets are now being adapted for use on you and me, and not how one might have originally expected. As with all pioneering technologies, it's leisure pursuits that are getting the first stab at the tech.Specifically: One beach-oriented Barcelona nightclub, the Baja Beach Club, is using the implants to free customers of the burdens of having to carry their purses or wallets. Makes sense: When you're spending the day in a bikini and flip-flops, where do you keep your ID? Instead, the bouncer just scans...

During the past 3 1/2 years, my country has lived through a sad satire of governance. Influenced by the No. 1 promoter of 21st-century socialism, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, our ex-president, Manuel Zelaya, took us down the road of social divide, propaganda and the absolute void of checks and balances with one end in mind: to stay in power indefinitely... Running a campaign disguised as promoting change for the people and true direct participation of the masses, Zelaya started to promote this project with all his might. The judicial branch deemed this project illegal, as did our electoral tribunal and...

He may have faded from the national political scene a year ago, after his dark-horse presidential run came to naught, but Rep. Ron Paul ’s influence is still being felt in campaigns and policy debates across the country. Indeed, the latest legislative priority of the libertarian Texas Republican — auditing the Federal Reserve — has gained support in unlikely quarters. Paul’s legislation, popularly known as the “Audit the Fed” bill, has drawn 244 cosponsors, ranging from Ohio’s John A. Boehner , the conservative Republican floor leader, to Michigan’s John Conyers Jr. , the liberal Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee....

The blunt truth is that even if we had had President Obama's financial regulatory "reforms" in place four years ago--reforms designed to prevent another financial meltdown--we would still have experienced a horrific economic disaster. In other words, the Administration's prescriptions deal with the symptoms--and those badly--not the underlying causes. The astonishing housing bubble could not have happened without the Federal Reserve's easy-money policy, which got under way in late 2003. If not for the excess liquidity created, there would not have been sufficient fuel to distort the housing market and ultimately the financial system. Yet President Obama has remained mum...