Free Republic

ANCHORAGE -- In November 2006, as Sarah Palin celebrated her gubernatorial victory at the Hotel Captain Cook in Anchorage, she told the crowd she would bring a "new energy" to the governor's office, stand up to "Big Oil" and usher in a new era of ethical reforms. But less than three years later, Palin is calling it quits, and Alaskans offer mixed assessments of her legacy as she steps down with 18 months left in her term.

The United States should be planning for a possible second round of fiscal stimulus to further prop up the economy after the $787 billion rescue package launched in February, an adviser to President Barack Obama said. "We should be planning on a contingency basis for a second round of stimulus," Laura D'Andrea Tyson, a member of the panel advising President Barack Obama on tackling the economic crisis, said on Tuesday. Addressing a seminar in Singapore, Tyson said she felt the first round of stimulus aimed to prop up the economy had been slightly smaller than she would have liked and...

Desperate for a glimpse into Adolf Hitler's unpredictable mind, British spies hired an astrologer during World War II to match the forecasts of the Nazi leader's personal astrologers, documents declassified Tuesday show. They soon regretted it.... Agents complained de Wohl's flamboyantly gay demeanor was destroying their carefully constructed cover story that his hotel apartment was paid for by a wealthy female patron and that his special operations liaison officer was a mistress. Agents also complained of his boasting about connections to the War Office and Naval Command. Prime Minister Winston Churchill didn't believe in astrology, but in mid-1941 he sent...

`Uighur Bloodbath Sparked by Fired Han Chinese Worker` JULY 07, 2009 08:22 The bloody clashes in China’s far western Xinjiang province were sparked by a rumor that intensified the long-standing tension between Han Chinese and Muslim Uyghurs, the British daily The Times said yesterday. The Times said Early Light toy factory in Shaoguan, Guangdong province, hired 800 Uyghurs in May and last month. A fired Han Chinese man held a grudge against Uyghurs on the belief that he was laid off due to newly hired Uyghurs. The man uploaded June 16 an online post that said, "Six Uyghur workers raped...

Beautiful phrase begging to be on a bumper sticker. From AMERICAN THINKER this morning: CAP TAXES. TRADE CONGRESS.

Professional politicians and political journalists don't waste energy on political corpses. They reserve their energy -- positive or negative -- for viable politicians. Thus, an intriguing part of the Sarah Palin phenomenon is the intensity of response to her every word and move -- from both Republican and Democratic Party professionals and from the conventional media. The negative but sustained passion being expressed by the professional Washington political class against her tends to belie its almost unanimous assertion that she is washed up. I happened to be on CNN on Friday just as the story was breaking of Mrs. Palin's...

Americans use more 200 million pounds of fireworks each year, the majority on July Fourth. Because fireworks emit carbon dioxide (CO2) as they burn, however, the fireworks industry may come under tighter regulation if cap-and-trade legislation passes in the Senate in coming months. A cap-and-trade bill already passed in the House on June 26, which has raised concerns that Americans will soon be paying more for energy. The House bill, called the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, introduces the possibility of calculating the amount of carbon emitted by products and labeling the products with this information. “The...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Three major hospital associations have offered to contribute about $155 billion over 10 years to help pay for a U.S. healthcare overhaul, The Washington Post reported on Monday, citing industry sources. The agreement with the Obama administration and leaders of the Senate Finance Committee was expected to be announced on Tuesday by Vice President Biden, the newspaper said. Two hospital sources said most of the savings -- about $100 billion -- would come through lower-than-expected Medicare and Medicaid payments to hospitals, the Post reported. About $40 billion would be saved by slowly reducing the subsidies paid to...

Chinese Han mob marches for revenge against Uighurs after rampage Jane Macartney, Urumqi Thousands of Han Chinese roamed in a mob through the streets of the western city of Urumqi today looking for vengeance after Sunday's deadly riots as China's leaders struggled to regain control of the country's only Muslim-majority region. Men and women of all ages, girls in high heels and young men in smart white shirts carried wooden staves, billiard cues, iron bars and even machetes as they surged through towards the main city bazaar. They were determined to wreak damage on the business heart of the Muslim...

President Obama has repeatedly expressed his concern about our rising unemployment. The worst losses of jobs are in manufacturing, because building autos has gone overseas, and in construction, because the housing industry has tanked. When Obama announced his stimulus appropriation, he promised millions of "shovel-ready" jobs. Many people worried about increasing the national debt to create government jobs, but his proposal was attractive because it conjured up visions of crews in hard hats repairing our nation's infrastructure, roads, bridges and electrical grids, and building long-needed highways and schools. We were told that the purpose of this extraordinary deficit spending in...

"Naval Academy Professor Challenges Rising Diversity," ran the headline in The Washington Post. The impression left was that some sorehead was griping because black and Hispanic kids were finally being admitted. The Post's opening paragraphs reinforced the impression. "Of the 1,230 plebes who took the oath of office at the Naval Academy in Annapolis this week, 435 were members of minority groups. It's the most racially diverse class in the nation's 164-year history. Academy leaders say it's a top priority to build a student body that reflects the racial makeup of the Navy and the nation." Who can be against...

The French Republic is not blessed or burdened with a First Amendment. So when President Nicolas Sarkozy recently suggested that France ban the wearing of the burqa in all public places, the Chamber of Deputies took it up. Unlike the headscarf, which covers a woman's hair but leaves her face visible, the burqa is a head-to-toe covering that makes walking draperies of women. Some, like the chador worn in Afghanistan, feature a mesh covering for the face. The Saudi version usually sports a slit for the eyes. Here's an online catalogue's description of one: "Khimar and niqab set made of...

SNIPPET: "(CNSNews.com) – Unemployment hit 9.5 percent in June, according to the Department of Labor, putting the figure 2.5 percent higher than the White House had predicted it would be if a government stimulus spending program went into place. Moreover, the new figure is nearly one percent higher than where the White House said it would be without any stimulus spending at all. In fact, the White House never predicted that unemployment would rise above nine percent regardless of whether Congress spent the nearly $800 billion in so-called economic stimulus spending it recommended at the time. The predictions came from...

These thousands of people in the photo at left are all out in support of the new Honduran government. Where is the frenzied media coverage of this? Obama, and the Clinton led State Dept. are letting the people down again, and giving real democracy-in-action the cold shoulder. In fact, our U.S. State Dept.,[ Rice--Clinton] has become somewhat of an embarrasment for the majority of Americans in this country. Bloomberg reports: "The U.S. State Department called for the restoration of “democratic order” in Honduras, and for Zelaya’s reinstatement. " [They have it backwards] ["Democratic order was restored when the Honduran courts...

Listen to Quinn and Rose on XM Satellite Radio, Channel 158, 6am - 10am EST, or on any of these stations – click You can listen later on podcast at-click For all conservative shows online - click @@

Vice President Joe Biden is expected to announce Wednesday that three major hospital associations have agreed to provide as much as $160 billion in savings to pay for a health care overhaul, according to sources close to the negotiations. The timing of the announcement is aimed at sustaining momentum for health reform as Democratic congressional leaders embark on a critical five-week period in which they hope to pass bills out of the Senate and House by the August recess.

As I gazed onto a parade route sprinkled with red, white and blue everything on July Fourth, I thought about what patriots past and present have sacrificed for our freedom. I also thought about the people in Iran fighting for "azadi," the Persian word for "freedom." The White House has offered what amounts to diplomatic dribble in response to their plight for liberty. I'm not saying our president should send a militia to muscle the mullahs, but shouldn't he at least show stronger solidarity for the protesters? Isn't it time his actions superseded his rhetoric? Negotiating with extremists has never...

When a pro-terrorist organization announces its intention to launch a financial jihad against the West, it is well worth learning their methods --- especially when they promote a religious pseudo-financial scheme through largely unregulated practices purported to be safer than the conventional. But ultimately, the new assets are constructed with as little, and perhaps considerably less, transparency than the last wave of toxic assets that hit the economy, with catastrophic results. The Muslim organization Hizb Ut Tahrir capitalizes on Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna's 20th century derivative, encouraging followers to build a parallel financial structure. Al-Banna envisioned the resultant Shari'a-compliant...

PRESIDENT Obama went to Moscow desperate for the appearance of a foreign-policy success. He got that illusion -- at a substantial cost to America's security. The series of signing ceremonies in a grand Kremlin hall and the litany of agreements, accords and frameworks implied that the United States benefited from all the fuss. We didn't. We got nothing of real importance. But the government of puppet-master Vladimir Putin (nominally just prime minister) got virtually all it wanted. In Moscow, this was Christmas in July. Ignore the agenda-padding public-health memorandum and the meaningless "framework document on military cooperation" (we've had such...

Two tours in Vietnam. A Purple Heart. A welding accident. A wheelchair. Death at 61. A bill for $277,186.96. Two months after Roger Lennon died, the woman who took care of him for more than a dozen years got a bill in the mail. The state of Iowa said the Bettendorf veteran owes almost $300,000 for the medical care he received in the state-run veterans home. "I called them and said, 'Is this a joke?'" Sarah Miller said. "Who has that kind of money? And I was with Roger every time he was signed into the Iowa Veterans Home in...