Free Republic

Link only. Veteran flies US flag upside down to protest local policies. Police trespass on his property and remove flag for daring to challenge Liberal rule. SMELL the fascism.

Archaeological Superintendency of Tuscany, Florence Italian archaeologists have discovered lotion that is over 2,000 years old, left almost intact in the cosmetic case of an aristocratic Etruscan woman. The discovery, which occurred four years ago in a necropolis near the Tuscan town of Chiusi, has just been made public, following chemical analysis which identified the original compounds of the ancient ointment. The team reports their findings in the July issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science. Dating to the second half of the second century B.C., the intact tomb was found sealed by a large terracotta tile. The site featured...

WAUSAU, Wis. – An American flag flown upside down as a protest in a northern Wisconsin village was seized by police before a Fourth of July parade and the businessman who flew it — an Iraq war veteran — claims the officers trespassed and stole his property. A day after the parade, police returned the flag and the man's protest — over a liquor license — continued. The American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin is considering legal action against the village of Crivitz for violating Vito Congine Jr.'s' First Amendment rights, Executive Director Chris Ahmuty said. "It is not often...

The South Side man arrested outside President Obama’s Kenwood home with a gun last fall was sentenced to five years in prison today for his aggravated unlawful use of a weapon conviction. Omhari Sengstacke, grandson of late Chicago Defender publisher John Sengstacke, pleaded guilty to a Class 2 felony before Cook County Judge Nicholas Ford last month. The convicted felon, 31, didn’t make any threats against Obama in the Sept. 23 incident but repeatedly approached officers stationed near the then-Illinois senator’s home, saying he wanted to speak with Obama about getting a job, according to prosecutors. In Sengstacke’s BMW, police...

State's unemployment rate jumped to .5 percent Texas Workforce Commission Can't Keep Up to 7.1 percent in May The rising number of jobless Texans has generated more claims than the Texas Workforce Commission can handle. The commission has added hundreds of workers and phone lines to call centers to deal with soaring unemployment claims, but officials acknowledge that they can't answer every call. Claimants are urged to file for claims on the commission's Web site, www.twc.state.tx.us, which also has answers to commonly asked questions. The percentage of claims filed online has risen from about 30 to 50. The state's unemployment...

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin continues to confound political observers. The woman whose sudden entrance onto the national political stage so badly confused the liberal machine last fall has just as suddenly announced her departure, unexpectedly announcing her resignation as Governor last Friday, less than three years into her term. You can evaluate Mrs. Palin’s political effectiveness by looking at how people reacted to her. The barrage of gutter-level personal attacks after Sen. John McCain chose her as his running mate was swift and vicious. So badly flummoxed was the opposition that they stooped to personal attacks that targeted the Palin...

Posted on Fri, Jul. 10, 2009 Man jailed 14 years for divorce contempt freed By Mari Schaefer INQUIRER STAFF WRITER The former Main Line lawyer jailed for more than 14 years on a contempt-of-court charge was ordered released today. H. Beatty Chadwick, who was jailed in April 1995, will walk out of the Delaware County Jail this afternoon. "He's one happy guy," said his attorney, Michael J. Malloy. Chadwick was incarcerated for failing to turn over $2.5 million for distribution in a divorce settlement. He contends the money was lost in a bad investment overseas. His ex-wife, Barbara Applegate, says...

MEXICO CITY — Authorities in northern Mexico will give arms and training to members of an anti-crime group in a Mormon community after two local residents were killed by hitmen with ties to organized crime, residents said Friday. In a step similar to deputizing local residents, members of the hamlet of Colonia LeBaron say authorities in northern Chihuahua state are helping them create a community police force. "There are 77 residents of Colonia Lebaron who are willing to participate as community police," Chihuahua state Attorney General Patricia Gonzalez said. "We are taking the necessary steps to make them community police."...

In less than two weeks, Muslim mobs carried out collective punishment on Copts in three villages stretching from Upper Egypt to the Nile Delta. These attacks included assaults, torching, and looting of Coptic homes and shops, forcing the terrorized villagers to abandon their possessions and flee to safety. In all three recent incidents the accounts of several eyewitnesses, including priests, directly implicated the Egyptian State Security of masterminding the assaults and instigating the mobs, and taking an active role in the violence against the Christians. The reason for the attacks on the two Upper Egyptian villages of Ezbet Boushra-East on...

(07-10) 17:00 PDT OAKLAND -- A man who lay down on the tracks in front of an Amtrak train in Oakland had limbs severed but was taken from the scene alive this afternoon, authorities said. Amtrak spokeswoman Vernae Graham said the eastbound Capitol Corridor train No. 536 was leaving Jack London Square when it struck the man at Webster Street at 3:37 p.m. The man lost some limbs and was hospitalized in critical condition, police said. Further details were not available, and the man's name has not been released.

Youssouf Fofana, leader of a kidnap gang who called themselves "The Barbarians", has been sentenced to life in prison for an anti-Semitic murder of shocking brutality. Fofana, 28, masterminded the kidnap, torture and murder of Jewish shop clerk Ilan Halimi in 2006. Halimi went missing on January 20, 2006 while on a date with a girl he had met at his workplace. The girl, now 21, was one of Fofana's accomplices. She was instructed to lure Halimi to the basement of a building in a Paris suburb where he was subsequently attacked and subdued with ether. Halimi was tortured for...

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's abrupt announcement that she intends to leave office 18 months early caused plenty of GOP operatives to wonder aloud whether she will be dismissed as a quitter if she makes a bid for the presidency in 2012. But the road to the White House runs through Iowa and New Hampshire, and grassroots activists in both kickoff states generally give Palin's decision more-positive reviews. Her prospects seem especially bright in Iowa. "She's still tremendously popular here," said Mary Ann Hanusa, who chairs the Pottawattamie County Republican Party. Hanusa noted that at her group's central committee meeting on...

NDIANAPOLIS, IN—James Davis, 34, Indianapolis, Indiana was sentenced to 120 months in prison today by U.S. District Judge Larry J. McKinney following his guilty plea to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute 50 kilograms of marijuana and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, announced Timothy M. Morrison, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana. This case was the result of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Indiana State Police and the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD). Robert B. Long, Jason P. Edwards, and James Davis were all members of...

It’s hard for anyone under the age of at least 50 to say they truly understood Ted Kenna, except for his family and perhaps anyone who’s almost died in combat. And Ted was probably easier to understand than others famed or prominent among his World War II generation, a laconic, uncomplicated country guy who happened to have been given a medal called the Victoria Cross. Ted Kenna and his wife Marjorie For valour. It’s the highest honour you can get. But judging by the muted reaction to Ted’s death, at 90, a lot of people didn’t really get what he...

MSNBC’s David Shuster and Tamron Hall labeled the circulation of a photo of President Obama...a “right wing smear,” and singled out Fox News and Drudge as culprits. They brought on a Media Matters spokesman, who accused these sites of being motivated by a “racist stereotype of an oversexed black man being a predator.” They let this accusation go unanswered (audio clip from the promos and the segment available here). Shuster and Hall promoted the segment on the Obama picture from the start of the 4 pm Eastern hour of MSNBC’s live coverage. A graphic on-screen at the top of the...

Link is to the first of the videos from my son's Iraq deployment. Iraq'd Up 1, 2, and 3 are in roughly chronological order. All the direct links are below.

In last week’s newsletter, I wrote about how quiet things were with Congress out of town for the Fourth of July recess. But how things can change in just one week! Four immigration-reduction amendments to the Homeland Security spending bill were offered on the floor of the Senate this week, and thanks to you, we won all four! Things were a bit crazy at NumbersUSA’s two Washington-area offices on Wednesday and Thursday. The tech staff was hard at work making sure our website could handle our second busiest day of the year in terms of visitors, while the web content...

Friday 1968 - Eric Clapton announced that Cream would break-up 1989 - The Monkees receive their star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Happy Birthday 1959 - Sandy West, The Runaways 1947 - Arlo Guthrie Saturday 1971, The Bruce Springsteen Band opened for Humble Pie at the Sunshine In, Asbury Park in New Jersey 1993 - Neil Young with Booker T and the MG's, Pearl Jam and James all appeared at Finsbury Park, London Happy Birthday 1959 - Suzanne Vega 1951 - Bonnie Pointer, The Pointer Sisters Sunday 1970 - A solo Janis Joplin plays her first gig backed by...

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break, Strange Days), the Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker is a full-throttle body shock of a movie. It gets inside you like a virus, puts your nerves in a blender, and twists your guts into a Gordian knot. Set during the last month in the year-long rotation of a three-man U.S. Army bomb squad stationed in Baghdad, it may be the only film made about Iraq that gives us a true sense of what it feels like to be on the front lines. It’s an experiential war movie, but also a psychologically astute one,...

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan – A suspected U.S. missile strike hit a Taliban communication center in the country's northwest late Friday, killing at least three people and wounding three more, intelligence officials said. The attack was the fifth in two weeks by attributed to American unmanned drone aircraft targeting Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud and his network of militants. Three intelligence officials said the drone fired a pair of missiles at the communication center in the Painda Khel region of South Waziristan. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.