Free Republic

Everybody is looking for stimulus money. From bridge builders to food stamp recipients, from roofers to subway riders, from teachers to housing project residents, people are eager to feel some part of a tidal wave of federal dollars in their lives. The mob is eager, too. Federal and state investigators who track organized crime believe that organized crime figures have geared up to take advantage of the swift and enormous cash influx — if they have not already — looking, as the old Sicilian expression goes, to wet their beaks. Nimble, innovative and with a seemingly boundless appetite for the...

The economic downturn has made an already competitive retail landscape especially brutal and unforgiving. Exhibit A is the rivalry between discount retailers Wal-Mart (WMT) and Target (TGT). The clear winner in the current downturn was Wal-Mart. Amid millions of job losses and plunging stock and housing markets, new customers flocked to Wal-Mart, at the expense of almost every other U.S. retailer except ultralow-price dollar stores. It appears that "cheap chic" -- Target's famous selling point -- is not the primary concern of recession-battered consumers. Last quarter, the average U.S. Wal-Mart store actually saw traffic increase 1.3% from the year before....

Has anyone else noticed the strong absence of the good Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson? Or have I been watching the White House too much? Have they lost their former jobs as extortion pimps? Just askin'.

There is rising disillusion among liberals and peace activists that a president who built his campaign on his opposition to the war in Iraq now views America's other conflict as a "war of necessity". Mr Obama has already added 21,000 extra troops to the 38,000 stationed there by George W Bush. In the next few weeks, he is likely to receive requests from the Pentagon for more when Gen Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanisan, submits a report on the progress of the war. It is expected to paint a grim picture and offer the president three options for...

It rotates. It has blinking lights, a disco ball, and a pole. And it's probably one of the wrongest toys you can give to any girl. Because, unlike the USB Pole Dancer, this one is actually for kids.

You may be familiar with a video that gives very depressing numbers regarding muslim immigration and fertility rates worldwide. But don't worry! The BBC is here to teach us the truth, because our minds ain't right. Watch this, and then your mind'll be right.

Most people north of the equator have an observable suntan by August. Ironically, a desire to be outside is often coupled with another strong desire to get out of the sun, as indicated by sales of sun umbrellas and other types of sunshades. From a biological standpoint, energy from the sun always needs to be controlled. This means that there is complex biological machinery in place to manage sunlight in some way. The machinery itself would not exist without information in DNA prescribing its materials, manufacture, and operation. Suntans result from this special biological machinery and function like the skin's...

Binyam Mohammed, who planned terrorist attacks on U.S. cities, has been set free. Let’s imagine we’ve captured a highly trained terrorist al-Qaeda was attempting to embed in the United States, à la Mohamed Atta and company, to carry out mass-murder attacks in American cities. For eight years, our national-security debate in the United States has been divided into two camps on these cases. In the first are those who accept the post-9/11 law-of-war paradigm. They would have that enemy combatant detained for intelligence purposes (and to remove him from the battlefield) until he could be tried for war crimes by...

My theory—call it the “Oakley effect”—is that really smart people often don’t know how to accept and react constructively to criticism. (A neuroscientist might say they “have underdeveloped neurocircuitry for integrating negatively valenced stimuli.”) This is because smart people are whizzes at problems that only need one person to figure out. Indeed, people are evaluated from kindergarten through college prep SATs on the basis of such “single solver” problems. If you are often or nearly always right with these kinds of problems, your increased confidence in your own abilities would be accompanied by an inadvertent decrease in your capacity to...

Report: ObamaCare Is Bad Medicine for PA National health care would harm state’s economy and add $4,400 in costs for every man, woman, and child in Pennsylvania—without significantly reducing the number of uninsured! HARRISBURG, PA — The Commonwealth Foundation released a report today showing that President Obama’s proposed takeover of health care by the federal government would have dramatically negative effects on Pennsylvanians. The report, written by a research team headed by noted economist and former presidential advisor Dr. Arthur Laffer, entitled, The Prognosis for National Health Insurance: A Pennsylvania Perspective, finds that President Obama’s health care proposal would have...

More Hope & Change-- Barack Obama gave his marching orders: Obama: "They Bring a Knife...We Bring a Gun" Obama to His Followers: "Get in Their Faces!" Obama on ACORN Mobs: "I don't want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry! I'm angry!" Obama To His Mercenary Army: “Hit Back Twice As Hard” His supporters followed through... But, don't expect the state-run media to report on this. The Tucson area Tea Party Coalition held a meeting at Rincon High School in Tucson this weekend. Over 1,000 people showed up at the event... including one violent counter-protester. The...

Members and citizens supporting the Republican Party rallied against the Obama administration outside the Texas Capitol Saturday afternoon. The Texas State Sovereignty or Secessions movement is backed by those who think the federal government is getting too involved in state and local government affairs. One of the options they're considering is seceding from the United States. "They're coming together to talk about the option of sovereignty, to rally support for state sovereignty, to encourage our state leadership, to exercise the sovereignty that Texas ought to be standing on," Republican Gubernatorial Candidate, Debra Medina, said. Medina said another way to allow...

Italian coastguards on Sunday turned back a boatload of 75 migrants off the coast of the island of Sicily, news agency ANSA reported. The migrants, thought to be Somali, were travelling in a rubber dinghy which was intercepted by coastguards around 44 kilometres (27 miles) from the shores of the Italian island. The group, which included 15 women and three children, was transferred to a an Italian police patrol boat and sent back immediately for Libya.

If it wasn’t before, the ultimate purpose of Dictator Barack Hussein Obama should now be clear to even his most die-hard fans. With Obama’s planned and now-revised Cybersecurity Act of 2009, his inordinately broad and sweeping powers to take control of the Internet AND private networks is making its way through the Senate. The bill gives Obama’s Executive Branch the power to shut down the Internet for any reason he considers to be a “Cybersecurity emergency.“ That, of course, is anything Obama decides to declare an emergency. Those who have been living in a cave for the last several years...

The Wall Street Jounral has a terrific editorial this morning on how valuable the CIA interrogation program was in uncovering life-saving intelligence. Though the Journal does not get into it, Binyam Mohammed was released outright by the Obama administration in February. He is now living freely in England. That's our new counterterrorism approach: Release the terrorist who planned mass-murder attacks against U.S. cities but investigate the CIA agents who prevented mass-murder attacks against U.S. cities. I suppose that's what happens when control of the Justice Department shifts from the lawyers who spent the last eight years going after the terrorists...

I am informing fellow Freepers of some of the buses and origins of Patriots headed for DC on 9/12. I am proud to be part of the coming March on the Capital. Our 2 Knoxville,Tennessee buses haven't been added to the list in this current update. Probably many more than this impressive list. 9/12dc.org list -(8/30/09 8:30 PM) AR Little Rock maryweb@suddenlink.net Mary 10th 13th AL Birmingham kristin.brantley@yahoo.com Kristin 11th13th AL North Alabama: http://shoals2dc.webs.com/travelwithus.htm AL Birmingham: http://shelbycoteaparty.wordpress.com/ AL South Alabama: http://www.wetumpkateaparty.com/Wetumpka_T.E.A._Party/Prattville.html AL Florence therevolutionparty@gmail.com Denel 11th 13th AR Jonesboro/Paragould B740@aol.com Brinda No Hotel in and Out CT Hartford Ken Mandile,...

Examiner: How are you feeling today, Kelly? Kelly: Fine. Great! Examiner: Your cholesterol levels are elevated again. Kelly: Yeah. Examiner: And your blood pressure's still high. Kelly: Probably because I rushed. Didn't want to have to pay the 50 bucks. I used to get 50 bucks for signing up. Now I have to pay if I don't sign up. Examiner: But it's all voluntary. Remember that. OK. Your blood glucose levels are fine, but your waist measurement is borderline. Kelly: I started walking more. Examiner: Your risk for stroke and heart disease is high. I see, though, that you've agreed...

Finding could offer insight into autism and other disorders Related Links: Dr. Ralph Adolphs Pasadena, Calif.—In a finding that sheds new light on the neural mechanisms involved in social behavior, neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have pinpointed the brain structure responsible for our sense of personal space.The discovery, described in the August 30 issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, could offer insight into autism and other disorders where social distance is an issue.The structure, the amygdala—a pair of almond-shaped regions located in the medial temporal lobes—was previously known to process strong negative emotions, such as anger and...

MACKENZIE RIVER DELTA, Northwest Territories – Only a squawk from a sandhill crane broke the Arctic silence — and a low gurgle of bubbles, a watery whisper of trouble repeated in countless spots around the polar world. "On a calm day, you can see 20 or more `seeps' out across this lake," said Canadian researcher Rob Bowen, sidling his small rubber boat up beside one of them. A tossed match would have set it ablaze. "It's essentially pure methane." Pure methane, gas bubbling up from underwater vents, escaping into northern skies, adds to the global-warming gases accumulating in the atmosphere....

Just when viewers became exhausted by TV's gavel-to-shovel coverage of Ted Kennedy's funeral, along came former Vice President Dick Cheney to stir the pot. Cheney gained national attention with his spirited attack on Attorney General Eric Holder's plan to investigate charges that CIA interrogators allegedly tortured suspected terrorists. It's an opportune time, then, to glance back at the careers of both men, who have spent their lives in public service. Despite his checkered past, Kennedy has always been a media darling, while Cheney has been portrayed as both a hero (as Secretary of Defense during the Gulf War) and a...