Free Republic

U.S. panel demands release of Baha'is facing trial in Iran Story Highlights Seven Baha'is in Iran to face trial Saturday, could face death penalty U.S. panel on religious freedom urges their release, calls charges "baseless" The seven leaders are accused of spying for Israel and religious offenses Rights groups say the seven have spent a year in jail without access to lawyer (CNN) -- Seven Baha'i prisoners face a death-penalty trial Saturday in Iran amid calls for their release from a U.S. panel on religious freedom. Responding to a letter from Roxana Saberi, the Iranian-American journalist who spent four months...

Lawmaker says CIA director ended secret program By PAMELA HESS WASHINGTON – CIA Director Leon Panetta has terminated a "very serious" covert program the spy agency kept secret from Congress for eight years, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a House Intelligence subcommittee chairwoman, said Friday. Schakowsky is pressing for an immediate committee investigation of the classified program, which has not been described publicly. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has said he is considering an investigation. "The program is a very, very serious program and certainly deserved a serious debate at the time and through the years,"...

American History Exhumed by: Alana Goodman, July 10, 2009 On October 11, 1809, celebrated explorer Meriwether Lewis—of Lewis and Clarke fame—was found shot to death on the floor of an old tavern at the edge of Indian country in Tennessee. Witnesses and friends traveling with the explorer maintained that Lewis shot himself in the head and chest after a long bought of mental illness and depression. However, some of Lewis’ family members argued that he was murdered in cold blood. Two-hundred years later his descendents are still dead-set on solving the mystery, even if it means digging up and studying...

WASHINGTON -- It’s not news when the White House tries to manage the news. That has always been the case. But it is news when Obama administration officials -- the folks who proclaimed that they would bring unprecedented openness and transparency to government -- fall all over themselves trying to manipulate news briefings and attempting amateurish stagecraft at public meetings. The president relies on a list of handpicked reporters to call on at his formal news conferences -- and the fortunate few are not necessarily accredited reporters but include new age self-appointed journalists or anyone with a laptop. The White...

President Barack Obama sat down with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican on Friday for frank but constructive talks between two men who agree on helping the poor but disagree on abortion and stem cell research. "It's a great honor," Obama said, greeting the pope and thanking him for this first meeting, which lasted 30 minutes. They sat down at the pontiff's desk in the Papal Library and exchanged pleasantries before the media were ushered out of the ornate room. The pope was heard asking about the Group of Eight summit, the meeting of developed nations that concluded before Obama...

In the past several weeks, three of the four BRIC nations — Brazil, Russia, and China —have expressed doubt over the dollar’s reserve status and expressed worries over the U.S. debt. India had been the only BRIC nation that had remained silent on the dollar issue, but that’s changed. I wasn’t sure if India was going to hop on the bandwagon or not. However, they recently started singing with the rest of the BRIC choir in a chorus against the U.S. dollar. In fact, on July 6, both Russia and India collectively said that the world economy is too reliant...

Women should not hold elective office or be in positions of authority over men. A woman's role is to serve her husband, raise children and provide a good household for her family. As we recite in our wedding vows, women are to obey men, not try and govern them. True conservatives should not vote for a women for any office, be it a local, state or national position. It is sad that so many people are willing to have a woman as president. It would be a signal to the world that the U.S. is emasculated, and has relinquished its...

Pennsylvanians: We've been slimed!A strange, mucous-like slime trail that originated in Harrisburg and continued into central Pennsylvania a few days ago was caused by Governor Edward "G. Tax Me" Rendell, according to members of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection cryptozoological clean-up team.Originally, team members feared that it was the trail of a giant snail, not a gelatinous slimeball--or several of Rendell's cronies, said team leader Nick Draffenstoots."There is absolutely nothing to fear, at least from a toxicity standpoint," said Draffenstoots. "On the other hand, if you're afraid of living the rest of your days mired in a sewer pit...

Might this be Obama's "political playbook"? (link included) "Libyan Leader Al-Qadhafi: In America, "A Candidate Who Wants People To Vote For Him Keeps Talking About Change... They Want to Change America and its Current Political System"; "The Whole World Will Return to the Libyan Model" of Government." This might explain some of the "foreign" political doctrines we have been exposed to recently. Is America being changed into the "Libyan Model". This is an informative read... http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=countries&Area=northafrica&ID=SP186308

VIDEO - Amy Holmes tells Will Cain who the new Republican All-Stars could be, and how they will emerge from the scandals and resignations of now.

...."Most newspapermen by definition have to be liberal; if they're not, by my definition, they can hardly be good newspapermen" W. Cronkite "You learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation" -Plato Sarah Palin on Twitter

Paul Tracy thought he had a dangerous job. The Scarborough, Ont.-born driver broke his leg on the third lap of his Indy racing debut in 1991. Since then he has fractured vertebrae, battled cervical muscle spasms and vertigo, while inventing new ways of wrecking his -- and his opponents' --cars. But his perspective changed after yet another helicopter crash claimed two Canadian Forces members -- and injured three others -- in Afghanistan this week. Knowing that men and women are risking their lives every day for what he calls a "necessary evil," the 40-year-old now considers his high-speed collisions merely...

You're a 19 year old kid. You're critically wounded, and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang Valley ,11-14-1965, LZ X-ray, Vietnam . Your infantry unit is outnumbered 8 - 1, and the enemy fire is so intense, from 100 or 200 yards away, that your own Infantry Commander has ordered the MediVac helicopters to stop coming in. You're lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns, and you know you're not getting out. Your family is 1/2 way around the world, 12,000 miles away, and you'll never see them again. As the world starts to fade in and...

Republicans Seeking Redemption by: Anthony Kang, July 10, 2009 The Heritage Foundation hosted Congressman Darrell Issa (R- CA) this past Tuesday as guest-speaker at the Bloggers Briefing. A former CEO and member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Issa has been serving as Ranking Member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee for the past four years along with serving on the House Judiciary Committee. Government’s staggering growth, tax policies, and national healthcare were the main points of concern Issa addressed. Issa continually stressed the need for conservatives in the Republican movement to never lose sight of their...

Since the sixteenth century, conversions and counter-conversions between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism have been the stuff of controversy, polemic, and recrimination. The Lutheran-Catholic concord on the formula cuius regio, eius religio virtually guaranteed the escalation of political strife as parties competed for sovereignty. With the emancipation of church from state in the post-Reformation era, churches in North America have inherited a rather different set of implications for the conversion of political figures. When Newt Gingrich announced earlier this year that he had converted to Roman Catholicism, and when news broke in 2002 that Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas had done...

Like a lot of 17-year -olds, Zac Sunderland can get a bit tongue-tied at times. Only for Sunderland, it's not on account of hormones or nerves. "I've been out at sea for a long time," says Sunderland, who has nearly reached his goal of becoming the youngest sailor to single-handedly circumnavigate the earth in a sailboat. "You kinda forget how to talk. Sometimes I'll get into a port and it'll take a week before the words I'm wanting to say can come out of my mouth the right way. It's annoying." Sunderland, who has yet to get his driver's license,...

July 10, 2009 Obama meets Pope for talk on abortions and stem cell research Richard Owen, Rome Touched by the hand of God ... President Obama meets the Pope for first time President Obama met the Pope for the first time today in a groundbreaking encounter which should help repair the US leader’s relations with America’s Catholic hierarchy. During a private 35-minute meeting, the President told Pope Benedict XVI that he would try to limit the number of abortions in the United States. President Obama supports the right of women to have abortions, but has says the procedure should be...

Today, on July 8, in the year of our Lord 2009, I will celebrate my 39th birthday — for the 44th time. I wrote about this last year when I turned 82, and earlier when I reached 81, and what I recounted then is still relevant and worth updating. Not much is new since then. In October I was involved in a head-on collision with a teenage girl who crossed the median strip and hit me head on, leaving me with a torn rotator cuff in my right shoulder and a spat with the notoriously penny- pinching Allstate, her insurance...

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has always been an intensely independent woman. So it should come as no surprise that her decision to resign as governor befuddled many, especially political elites. The chattering class stands ready to write off her political future, spouting their usual insults, calling Palin “a quitter,” “politically tone-deaf” and “Caribou Barbie.” The reality is, each of these characterizations misses the mark. If they truly reflected any political figure, one would expect his or her career to fizzle in a matter of days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO5pDbf6et8