Free Republic

The singular focus of the Tour de France this season was established when Lance Armstrong announced last fall he would be returning to the race he has won seven times. . Defending champion Carlos Sastre said Armstrong could use a lesson in respect after the Texan reportedly called the race last year “a bit of a joke.’’ Sastre, a 34-year-old Spanish veteran, said Armstrong, 37, is entitled to his opinion, but he insists it’s the wrong one. “It’s his point of view, it’s his words - his life,’’ Sastre said yesterday. “He is a great champion, he won seven Tours...

KABUL, Afghanistan -- As Marine Corps forces roll into southern Afghanistan, they face an enemy familiar to US officials -- Mullah Zakir, a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner who now leads a reconstituted Taliban. Abdul Qayum Zakir, also known as Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, is from Helmand Province and has taken a circuitous route to become head of the radical Islamic group. Zakir was a senior fighter during the Taliban regime in the 1990s. In a memorandum prepared for his administrative review board at Guantanamo, Zakir apparently "felt it would be fine to wage jihad against Americans, Jews, or Israelis if they...

WASILLA, Alaska -- Sarah Palin resigned as Alaska's governor because the volume of state investigations and public-record requests scrutinizing her activities kept her from doing what she wanted, said one of her closest confidantes. Kristan Cole, who has been friends with Gov. Palin since both were in the same elementary school nearly 40 years ago, said she heard personally from the governor over the Fourth of July weekend. She was one of the few to speak with Gov. Palin, who stunned the political world when she announced Friday she was resigning, effective July 26. The governor gave no specific reason...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Shares of major metal manufacturers traded sharply lower Monday, a day after Vice President Joe Biden said the White House "misread" the economy, prompting concerns that an economic recovery could be slower than expected. In an interview with ABC's "This Week" broadcast Sunday, Biden said the administration "misread how bad the economy was," but stood by its stimulus efforts. Those comments will likely dampen investor confidence, said David Silver, an analyst with Wall Street Strategies. During the second quarter, commodity prices "went through the roof," and investors snapped up metal makers stocks on word that the...

Couple pleads guilty in toxic pet food case By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Las Vegas-based company and its owners have pleaded guilty to distributing a tainted ingredient used to make pet food that killed potentially thousands of dogs and cats. Sally Qing Miller, 43, and her husband, Stephen S. Miller, 56, along with their company, Chemnutra Inc., pleaded guilty Tuesday to one count of selling adulterated food and one count of selling misbranded food, both misdemeanors. They initially were charged with 13 counts of introduction of adulterated food into interstate commerce, 13 counts of introduction of...

Twitter has reacted to this raid by removing the term from its trending topics, but evidence can still be found on Twitter Search. Twitter saw a huge influx of fake accounts on Sunday, pushing the NSFW trending topic, #gorillapenis, all the way to the top of the list. Popular image board 4chan /b/, along with other various sites, appears to be behind this latest raid on Twitter. 4chan, a hub of Internet culture and memes, has long been the spawning point of various raids on sites, most recently YouTube Porn Day. Before that, they were responsible for hacking Time Magazine's...

When a politician drops a bombshell, it is natural that there be all sorts of puzzled queries as to the meaning of that surprise announcement. Sarah Palin, in her first gubernatorial term, announced her resignation as Alaska's governor on Friday. Immediately the speculation started as to what could be behind such a sudden decision. All this is understandable and very much expected. What isn't expected, what isn't natural, what is downright despicable, however, is how some liberals like The New York Times' Maureen Dowd reacted. Understandably all sorts of ideas, however far fetched, were floated as to the possible motive....

July 06, 2009 03:49 PM Eastern Daylight Time  Fitch Downgrades State of California GOs to 'BBB'; Maintains Rating Watch Negative NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Fitch Ratings has downgraded the state of California's (the state) long-term general obligation (GO) bond rating to 'BBB' from 'A-'. The bonds remain on Rating Watch Negative. The rating action affects the state's GOs and lease appropriation and related bonds as detailed at the end of this release. The downgrade to 'BBB' is based on the state's continued inability to achieve timely agreement on budgetary and cash flow solutions to its severe fiscal crisis. Since no agreement was reached...

GASTONIA, N.C. -- South Carolina Law Enforcement agents are investigating in Gaston County, N.C., after a man suspected of trying to burglarize a home was shot to death by police. SLED officials could not confirm whether the shooting was linked to the recent slayings of five people near Gaffney, S.C. They said they are checking any cases with similarities to the serial killings. [snip] Gaston County police said they received a call about a possible burglary early Monday, and when three officers arrived, they found three people inside the home in the 700 block of Dallas-Spencer Mountain Road. Two were...

Bank of America will accept California IOUs, but it won’t credit depositor accounts for at least a week. The fine print was included in an interview in Monday’s American Banker with a BofA spokeswoman.

Scientific foundation for climate fears 'falling apart' Monday, July 06, 2009By Marc Morano – Climate Depot MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen mocked man-made global warming fears in a July 2, 2009 radio interview on WRKO's Howie Carr program. (Full audio of Lindzen's interview available here.) Lindzen noted that man-made climate fears were "divorced from nature" and he said the scientific foundation for climate fears is "falling apart." "How did we get a population that can be told something that contradicts their senses and go crazy over it?" Lindzen asked on the program. Lindzen recently co-signed an open letter to...

A California mom says her public school administrators violated her daughter's First Amendment rights when they ordered the seventh-grader to take off her pro-life T-shirt. Anna Amador has gone to court on behalf of her daughter, who she says was ordered by her principal to change her shirt on "National Pro-Life T-Shirt Day." The shirt the girl was wearing displays two graphic pictures of a fetus growing in the womb. The incident occurred in April 2008 at McSwain Elementary School, a K-8 school in Merced, Calif. Amador alleges in her legal complaint that school Principal Terrie Rohrer, Assistant Principal C.W....

Enlarge Caffeine treatment removed the beta amyloid plaques from the brains of the Alzheimer's mice. Credit: Photo courtesy of Florida Alzheimer's Disease Research Center Coffee drinkers may have another reason to pour that extra cup. When aged mice bred to develop symptoms of Alzheimer's disease were given caffeine - the equivalent of five cups of coffee a day - their memory impairment was reversed, report University of South Florida researchers at the Florida Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. Back-to-back studies published online today in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, show caffeine significantly decreased abnormal levels of the protein linked to...

Many conservatives have meditated upon the level of and the source of the left’s absolute hatred toward Sarah Palin. I have no quarrel with their perceptions; I have to say that David Letterman’s crass attempt at humor was the epitome of the supposedly presentable liberal exhibiting his skunky nether regions. I would add though that I think George W. Bush attracted just as much insane, slanderous foaming at the mouth. Perhaps with Sarah, due to some lingering notions of chivalry, the repeated eviscerations just seemed worse. But since both of them came in (and still do) for such malignant personal...

It is no secret that people have long protested not only the Harry Potter books but the movies as well. Many of those people who protest do so with their religious conviction in mind. Back in 1999, an Associated Press writer reported that a group of parents wanted the books kept from classrooms. One parent, Elizabeth Mounce, was quoted as saying, "'The books have a serious tone of death, hate, lack of respect and sheer evil.'" At the time, the school principal, Jerry Locke, asked teachers to stop reading the books in classrooms until the issue was resolved. He...

A California mom says her public school administrators violated her daughter's First Amendment rights when they ordered the seventh-grader to take off her pro-life T-shirt. Anna Amador has gone to court on behalf of her daughter, who she says was ordered by her principal to change her shirt on "National Pro-Life T-Shirt Day." The shirt the girl was wearing displays two graphic pictures of a fetus growing in the womb. The incident occurred in April 2008 at McSwain Elementary School, a K-8 school in Merced, Calif. Amador alleges in her legal complaint that school Principal Terrie Rohrer, Assistant Principal C.W....

Boston City Hall, a drab concrete monument to 1960s Brutalism run by a self-described urban mechanic who despises voice mail, isn’t exactly known as a hotbed of technological innovation. But within, a few young, tech-savvy aides are trying to drag municipal government into the age of mobile gadgetry. And they think they’ve hit on something big: a “killer app’’ that marries 21st-century technology with Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s old-school devotion to pothole politics. City officials will soon debut Boston’s first official iPhone application, which will allow residents to snap photos of neighborhood nuisances - nasty potholes, graffiti-stained walls, blown street...

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras -- Thousands of people swarmed Tegucigalpa's airport Sunday in a raucous and sometimes violent cry to demand the return of toppled President Manuel Zelaya, whose homecoming was postponed when authorities here refused to let his plane land. Zelaya was spirited out of his country a week ago, when soldiers executing a court order for his arrest hustled him onto a plane to Costa Rica. Zelaya, accompanied Sunday by....

On FOX News' "Your World" this afternoon Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) says health insurance companies should be "afraid" that they will go out of business if a government-run health care program passes.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Vatican technicians entered the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in the dead of night, drilled a small hole in the tomb under the main altar and extracted fragments of what was inside. The results were a closely held secret for more than two years. Pope Benedict XVI announced June 28 that tests performed on bone fragments from the tomb demonstrate they could be the remains of the Apostle Paul, because carbon-14 tests concluded the bones belonged to a human being who lived between the first and second century. Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo,...