Free Republic

After the Obama administration announced last week that the funds would be distributed to the area, House Minority Leader John Boehner said, “Lo and behold, the government has announced that the mouse is getting its money after all. Speaker Pelosi must be so proud.”

After years of nude scenes, Oscar-winner Kate Winslet is getting ready to put it all away once and for all. In a new interview with Harper’s Bazaar, the actress says she knows that her age will catch up with her one day, but is happy to have done a full-frontal or two in her heyday. “If people are noticing my boobs in a movie and saying they do what real boobs do, then that’s great. I’ll be 34 in October. I can’t keep getting away with it. There was much of it in ‘The Reader’ because the story required it,...

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association officially announced that we will experience the El Nino phenomenon this year through to 2010. El Nino has arrived. With a 1 degree Celsius increase in a band of the eastern Pacific Ocean, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association made the announcement yesterday. The climate phenomenon, El Nino-Southern Oscillation or ENSO, that warms the eastern Pacific waters, decreases trade winds, and shows up every three to seven years, last came in 2006. It’s known to cause droughts in Southeastern Asia and floods in Central and South America, as well as bring damaging storms to...

John Calvin's birthday deserves to be celebrated, not least because he was one of the truly great Christian exegetes and indeed systematic theologians of all time. Never mind that I disagree with a great deal of what he has to say about God, his sovereignty, the nature of his grace, election, predestination, human freedom, and perseverance of the saints. I will reserve comments on those sorts of things for my essay which will appear in the September issue of Christianity Today. Here I want to say some positive things. A personal word is necessary at this juncture. I attended a...

Featured Term (selected at random):PHARISAICAL SCANDAL Being disedified by the innocent actions of others. People are said to be pharisaically scandalized if they maliciously misinterpret the good or indifferent actions of a person. they are scandalized because their own extraordinary moral weakness or ignorance finds occasion to evil in what they hear or see someone doing. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

The newest trend in Internet fraud is "vacation hacking," a sinister sort of tourist trap. Cybercriminals are targeting travelers by creating phony Wi-Fi hot spots in airports, in hotels, and even aboard airliners. Vacationers on their way to fun in the sun, or already there, think they're using designated Wi-Fi access points. But instead, they're signing on to fraudulent networks and hand-delivering everything on their laptops to the crooks. "More and more people are traveling with Wi-Fi devices like smartphones and laptops," says Marian Merritt, Internet safety advocate at the computer-security giant Symantec. "Airports and airlines and hotels are responding....

Chinese Riot Police Deployed in Urumqi

VATICAN CITY (AP) — President Barack Obama sat down with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican on Friday for a meeting in which frank but constructive talks were expected between two men who agree on helping the poor but disagree on abortion and stem cell research.

Michael Jackson took more than 10 Xanax pills a night, "asking his employees to get the prescription sleep medicine under their names and also personally traveling to doctor's offices in other states to obtain them," according to CNN. The bombshell reports comes from a 2004 Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department document that contains confidential interviews with two of Jackson's former security guards. The interviews were conducted as officials prepared for the singer's 2005 child molestation trial.

Will federal prosecutors come after you someday? Bill Anderson explains, in a must read column, about the growing power of federal prosecutors who are able to apply vague statutes to behavior that historically has not been illegal. Anderson details how prosecutors can pile bogus charge after bogus charge on the innocent. Yet, even Anderson's warning does not go far enough to explain how this growing power suffocates a society, kills its ability to advance, and makes life less human for us all. For every person a prosecutor goes after, there are thousands who will be "more careful", meaning less free...

A Permit has been obtained for the West Steps of the Denver Capitol for an Evening Constitution Day Tea Party and Candlelight Vigil for Freedom on September 12, 2009 in Denver Colorado. Guests are invited to come early to hear a broadcast of the American Constitution accompanied by Patriotic Hymns. This 68 minute reading will begin at 5:30 PM and will be followed by a reading of The Declaration of Independence and then the Bill of Rights. The Tea Party will officially begin at 7PM with the Pledge of Allegiance and the singing of our National Anthem. A series of...

The White House ignores unanswered questions about the President Obama's dismissal of AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin becomes more of a scandal with every White House action. AmeriCorps is a program of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which is a federal agency. Both the White House and the general counsel at the corporation have been stonewalling congressional investigators. If their actions in firing Mr. Walpin were on the up and up, they wouldn't have anything to hide. It's also curious that they are selectively releasing certain documents to The Washington Post within minutes of The Post's requests after...

President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama meet with Pope Benedict XVI, Friday, July 10, 2009, at the Vatican.(AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)

U.S. President Barack Obama (L) greets Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican July 10, 2009. Obama arrived at the Vatican on Friday for his first meeting with Pope Benedict and what the White House says will be frank discussions on issues they agree and disagree on. U.S. President Barack Obama, his wife Michelle Obama meet with Pope Benedict XVI (C) at the Vatican July 10, 2009.

As California lawmakers struggle with a budget gap that has now grown to $26.3 billion, one of the hottest topics for many taxpayers is the cost to the state of illegal immigrants. The question of whether taxpayers should provide services to illegal residents became a major political issue in California's last deep recession, culminating in the ballot fight over Proposition 187 in 1994. That history could repeat itself in the current downturn, as activists opposed to illegal immigration have launched a campaign for an initiative that would, among other things, cut off welfare payments to the U.S.-born children of illegal...

U.S. consumer sentiment soured in early July, slipping to its weakest since March, when confidence in the financial sector and economy were at a low ebb, the Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers showed Friday. Consumers' escalating concerns about an extended economic downturn, job security and erosion of wealth were the main factors depressing sentiment, the survey said. Its preliminary index of confidence for July fell to a reading of 64.6 from the final reading for June of 70.8. July's preliminary reading was well below economists' median forecast for 70.5. The index of consumer expectations fell to 60.9 from June's...

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Friday acknowledged the tough going for his health care overhaul in Congress but rejected the notion the legislation is doomed if lawmakers fail to act by August. "I never believe anything is do or die," Obama said. "We're closer to that significant reform than at any time in recent history," Obama told reporters at a news conference in Italy. "That doesn't make it easy. It's hard. And we are having a whole series of constant negotiations." Conservative Democrats are demanding significant changes before they will support a sweeping health care overhaul, forcing the House...

The government could lose out on more than $2.7 billion if federal officials continue to undervalue part of the financial bailout package, a government watchdog panel will say on Friday. The Congressional Oversight Panel, working with a team of Harvard Business School professors, estimated that taxpayers had lost one-third of the value of the very small number of warrants that had already been sold by the Treasury Department

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WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Friday acknowledged the tough going for his health care overhaul in Congress but rejected the notion the legislation is doomed if lawmakers fail to act by August. "I never believe anything is do or die," Obama said. "We're closer to that significant reform than at any time in recent history," Obama told reporters at a news conference in Italy. "That doesn't make it easy. It's hard. And we are having a whole series of constant negotiations." Conservative Democrats are demanding significant changes before they will support a sweeping health care overhaul, forcing the House...