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GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A restorer's work has found a hidden image of a butchered pig in a painting from the collection of Michigan's Calvin College. The 17th century Dutch work Barn Interior is one of 16 paintings that Calvin alumnus Cornelius Van Nuis gave the Grand Rapids school two years ago. Egbert van der Poel's work shows a woman and two children inside the barn. Van der Poel lived from 1621 to 1664. Last summer, Calvin director of exhibitions Joel Zwart sent Barn Interior to Chicago art conservator Barry Bauman. "What with chemicals and soot and dirt in the...

Writing on Commentary's blog, Jennifer Rubin is wondering why Mr. Obama isn't the beloved figure he used to be less than a year ago and is offering liberals a bit of advice on how to redeem the presient's reputation. You see, no longer able to ignore the plummeting popularity of their beloved messiah, our liberal brethren have now segwayed into a flabbergasted state of frustration as they struggle to understand what it is the common man wants from their virtually perfect president. Attributing his nearly 20 point free fall in less than a year to his (as of yet unseen)...

President Barack Obama and his family returned to the White House today from a weeklong vacation on Martha's Vineyard interrupted by some big national stories. But the president is planning to take the rest of the week off. "The president will continue his vacation through the end of the week,'' the White House press secretary announced this evening -- with a note that the media will be informed "if any public events are added to the schedule.''

Teen convert claims Ohio mosque tied to terrorists MIKE SCHNEIDER and ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS Associated Press Writers Aug. 31, 2009 ORLANDO, Fla. -- An attorney for an Ohio teen who says she ran away from home because she feared punishment for converting to Christianity from Islam is alleging the family's mosque in Ohio has ties to terrorists. Rifqa (Reef-kuh) Bary's attorney filed a sworn statement from the 17-year-old in family court in Orlando on Monday. In the affidavit, the teen says her family regularly attended gatherings at the Noor Islamic Cultural Center in suburban Columbus, Ohio. The documents claim the center...

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Eager to draw attention Bob McDonnell's conservative roots, campaign advisers to Democrat Creigh Deeds on Monday called McDonnell's newly-discovered 1989 graduate thesis a "devastating" revelation that threatens to sink the Republican's campaign for the Virginia governor's mansion. The 93-page research paper — first revealed in Sunday's Washington Post — articulated a Christian conservative worldview that criticized "cohabitators, homosexuals and fornicators" and described working women and feminists "detrimental" to the family.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Josef Stalin was in the dock on Monday when a Russian court held a preliminary hearing in a libel case brought by his grandson over a newspaper story which said the tyrant had ordered the killings of Soviet citizens. Rights groups say the case shows a creeping attempt in modern Russia to paint a more benevolent picture of the Soviet Union's most feared leader, under whose rule millions perished. Stalin's grandson, Yevgeny Dzhugashvili, is seeking 9.5 million roubles ($299,000) from the Novaya Gazeta newspaper and 500,000 roubles from the author of an article published last April claiming...

Morgantown, W.Va. (AP) -- A tree-sitting protest designed to halt blasting at a Massey Energy mountaintop removal mine in southern West Virginia ended Monday when the activists descended from the trees and were arrested. State Police confirmed that Laura Steepleton and Nick Stocks were taken into custody after spending six days in a poplar at the Edwight mine in Raleigh County. Stocks, 25, was charged with trespassing, obstructing and littering, and State Police Sgt. M.A. Smith warned of other possible charges. Steepleton, 24, was expected to face the same charges. Both were to be arraigned later Monday. The protesters are...

Aug 31, 2009 Election For Kennedy Seat To Be Held Jan. 19th Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick Announces Date Of Special Election To Fill Late Edward M. Kennedy's Senate Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick says the special election to fill the seat of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy will be held Tuesday, January 19, 2010. The primary election will be Tuesday, December 8, 2009. Possible contenders include Kennedy's widow Vicki, nephew and former Rep. Joseph Kennedy, Attorney General Martha Coakley and several members of the state's congressional delegation, reports CBS station WBZ-TV in Boston. Patrick says Vicki Kennedy has told him she...

Governments Use More Internet Political Filters Battles are playing out on the internet over control of information about political events. The latest evidence of these clampdowns comes in a report on the Middle East and north Africa by the OpenNet Initiative (ONI), a collaboration of researchers based in the UK and North America. Among the restrictions it reports are clampdowns on Facebook in Syria and the use of hidden cameras in Saudi Arabia's internet cafes. Most of these actions are aimed at stifling political debate. "Political filtering is the common denominator," says Helmi Noman of the Berkman Center for Internet...

A Floridian biology teacher fired after posing for racy pictures has landed a new career – in pornography. Tiffany Shepherd, 31, made headlines in April after bikini-clad pictures of her on a fishing charter got her canned from Port St. Lucie High School. She turned to doing porn, she told a Florida news outlet, after losing custody of two of her three kids to her ex-husband and sending out 2,500 resumes – some even to prisons – without landing a new teaching job. "I'm not particularly proud of it. To be honest, I hate it," Shepherd told Page2live.com. "I'm an...

Just turned on CSPAN. Looks like a Senate Republican town hall is just starting in LA, with David Vitter, a few LA congressmen, and a physician member of Congress. Should be an hour and a half. Big crowd. Turn it on if you can.

Here is video of Glenn Becks opening segment today where he said the reason President Obama has surrounded himself with radicals like Van Jones is because they are leading a "silent revolution" to remake America in their own left-wing image. Beck covers again the background of Obama's "Green Jobs" Czar Van Jones, and also touched on the possibility of Obama being able to seize control of the internet in a "state of crisis or emergency." . . . . (Watch Video)

"Tonight, we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done. " President George W. Bush, September 20th, 2001 How our nation, and its leaders have forgotten.

Election for Kennedy Seat To Be Held Jan. 19thAug 31, 2009 3:15 pm US/Eastern BOSTON (WBZ) - Gov. Deval Patrick says the special election to fill the seat of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy will be held Tuesday, January 19, 2010. The primary election will be Tuesday, December 8, 2009. Possible contenders include Kennedy's widow Vicki, nephew and former Rep. Joseph Kennedy, Attorney General Martha Coakley and several members of the state's congressional delegation. Patrick says Vicki Kennedy has told him she is not interested in being appointed as an interim replacement. THE LAW Still unresolved is whether Massachusetts will...

David Kaiser is a respected historian whose published works have covered a broad range of topics, from European Warfare to American League Baseball. Born in 1947, the son of a diplomat, Kaiser spent his childhood in three capital cities: Washington D.C., Albany, New York, and Dakar, Senegal.. He attended Harvard University, graduating there in 1969 with a B.A. in history. He then spent several years more at Harvard, gaining a PhD in history, which he obtained in 1976. He served in the Army Reserve from 1970 to 1976. He is a professor in the Strategy and Policy Department of the...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Nearly a third of all cocaine seized in the United States is laced with a dangerous veterinary medicine - a livestock de-worming drug that might enhance cocaine's effects but has been blamed in at least three deaths and scores of serious illnesses. The medication called levamisole has killed at least three people in the U.S. and Canada and sickened more than 100 others. It can be used in humans to treat colorectal cancer, but it severely weakens the body's immune system, leaving patients vulnerable to fatal infections. Scientific studies suggest levamisole might give cocaine a more...

Speech of Debra Medina, candidate for the Republican Party's nomination for the office of Governor. Recorded on August 29, 2009 at the Capitol, Austin, Texas.

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