Free Republic

President Barack Obama will address a joint session of Congress on health care reform in prime time on Wednesday, Sept. 9, a senior official tells POLITICO. Obama plans to give lawmakers a more specific prescription for health care legislation than he has in the past, aides said. Congress technically returns to Washington on Sept. 8, the day after Labor Day. But many members had planned Sept. 9 as their first workday, so Obama is seizing the first moment when he will have maximum impact. The address to Congress, the second since Obama took offiice, is a way for White House...

IS this bizarre creature really an alien baby or just part of an elaborate hoax - and was it the cause of a mysterious revenge death? Mexican TV revealed the almost unbelievable story - in 2007, a baby 'alien' was found alive by a farmer in Mexico. He drowned it in a ditch out of fear, and now two years later scientists have finally been able to announce the results of their tests on this sinister-looking carcass. At the end of last year the farmer, Marao Lopez, handed the corpse over to university scientists who carried out DNA tests and...

CHINA IS A FARAWAY COUNTRY of which we know little. The Isle of Wight, on the other hand, is a small island two miles off England's south coast where my mother-in-law lives. And there...between the crumbling fiber-glass dinosaurs of Black Gang Chine and the rain-soaked falconry shows at Robin Hill...chit-chat says England's baby boomers gave up saving long ago. "Spend! Spend! Spend!" remained their grim cry this Bank Holiday weekend, despite the death of cheap credit, liars loans and self-cert improvement mortgages. Margaret Thatcher screwed their parents' state pensions; now they're getting screwed by her answer. Company schemes are falling...

The Energy Department fired back at a Spanish university study that found government subsidies to support renewable energy development in that country actually cost jobs. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory said the report from King Juan Carlos University in Madrid uses flawed methodologies and fails to account for the export potential of new green technologies and other positive economic impacts of government renewable-energy subsidies. “The primary conclusion made by the authors — policy support of renewable energy results in net jobs losses — is not supported by their work,” the NREL concludes in a response released last month. The debate...

A pandemic and disaster preparation bill (S. 2028) passed unanimously by the Massachusetts Senate earlier this year is receiving wide-spread criticism as citizens mobilize to oppose its passage in the commonwealth’s House of Representatives. “Under this bill, Massachusetts becomes a medical police state. There is no debating it,” wrote Natural News editor Michael Adams in an August 28 article entitled "Wake Up, America: Forced vaccinations, quarantine camps, health care interrogations and mandatory 'decontaminations,'" where he suggested America was delving into medical fascism. “The citizens of Massachusetts will have no rights, period. The Constitution is ancient history. You are now the...

Levi Johnston should have thought twice before he spilled the beans on Sarah Palin in this month’s Vanity Fair magazine. In an article called ‘Me and Mrs. Palin’, the 19-year-old father of Tripp ‘turns a number of commonly held beliefs about the former governor – the purportedly loving mother, devoted wife, and prolific hunter – upside down’. Hang on a minute: this is the grandmother of his son. Whatever you make of the Republican politician, she doesn’t come off worse in this lazy, base ‘exposé’ - Johnston does. And how is he going to explain this interview to his son...

VOM: Pray for Muslims On Sept. 1, The Voice of the Martyrs received a letter from the wife of one of many Christians being held in prison in an Islamic country. In her letter, she shared how her 3-year-old daughter struggles with her husband’s imprisonment and asked for continued prayers. Her letter reads: “Thanks for your e-mail and love and prayers. I am doing OK. Worry tries to take over me and my mind keeps thinking worries I shouldn't. But the Lord continues to calm me down and give me peace and patience to wait. This week [my husband] is...

Review "Royal Skousen has single-handedly brought the textual analysis of the Book of Mormon to a professional level on par with the finest classical and biblical scholarship. This volume is the culmination of his labors, and it is the most textually significant edition since Joseph Smith's work was first published in 1830. It takes us back to the original manuscript (as best we can reconstruct it) and sometimes beyond, to the very words that were first spoken by Joseph Smith to his scribes."-Grant Hardy, from the Introduction (Grant Hardy ) Product Description First published in 1830, the Book of Mormon...

President Obama's White House does not exactly have a stellar record when it comes to personal information and the Internet. In less than one month, the president's new media team has come under fire for asking citizens to report "fishy e-mails" about Obama's health care reform plan and for e-mail messages from David Axelrod that somehow went to people who did not sign up for them.So when the Executive Office of the President seeks a contractor to archive the usernames and possibly other data from social network users, it is certainly worth asking them why. We did. We have not...

Belarus: Church Evicted Forum 18 News reports that on Aug. 20, New Life Full Gospel Church in Minsk, Moscow, was issued an eviction notice by government officials, forcing them to abandon their church building purchased in 2002. The church is adamant they do not fear the government’s threats. “We’re here praying and believe God will protect us,” Sergei Lukanin, the church’s lawyer told Forum 18 News. “As a lawyer I believe the state could do anything, including the use of force. But as a believer I rely on God.” Government authorities have not disclosed why the church is being evicted,...

Opponents of health insurance reform have power. Some reap huge profits from the status quo. Others take large campaign contributions from those who profit. So they'll do anything to keep the current system in place. When fact-based arguments don't work, they attack President Obama with outlandish lies about a government takeover and euthanizing the elderly. And once that doesn't work, they'll go even further. We don't know what they'll do next. What we do know is that we'll have to be prepared for anything -- ready to set the record straight, ready to make sure the media and Congress see...

President Barack Obama will address a joint session of Congress on health care reform in prime time on Wednesday, Sept. 9, a senior official tells POLITICO. Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/26700.html#ixzz0Pyt224Ru

SHARPES, Fla. (AP) - A former inmate in Florida was injured while trying to sneak back into jail. Sylvester Jiles suffered severe cuts from barbed wire while trying to climb a 12-foot fence at the Brevard County Detention Center Monday night. The 24-year-old former inmate was released last week from the jail after accepting a plea deal on a manslaughter charge.

(AP) - Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced former governor of New York, has a teaching position at City College. Mr. Spitzer, who resigned in a prostitution scandal in March 2008, is an adjunct professor in the political science department. Ellis Simon, a spokesman for the Manhattan college, says the three-hour class is called "Law and Public Policy.''

A photo of two Democratic legislators playing solitaire has ignited controversy at the state Capitol and in the blogosphere. The Associated Press picture has appeared in any number of venues, and it shows two lawmakers sitting in the back row of the historic Hall of the House in Hartford during the lengthy debate over the two-year, $37 billion state budget. On the left is Rep. Barbara Lambert, a freshman Democrat from Milford who won her first legislative election in November 2008. She replaced longtime Milford Democrat James Amann, who ended his legislative career as the House Speaker and is now...

The death toll from the catastrophic flood that engulfed Russia's biggest hydroelectric power station rose to 17 on Thursday but 58 people were still reported missing, officials said.

On Labor Day, attend the Friends of America Rally. Over 75,000 Friends of America who have already registered will gather at this event. Hank Williams, Jr. and John Rich will be performing and Fox News Host Sean Hannity will be speaking at this free event on Monday, September 7th from 10.30 am until 8 pm. Ted Nugent will be the event’s emcee. The Rally is going to be held on a previous surface mine, just south of Logan, West Virginia. Due to overwhelming demand, this event has sold out.

Russian Empire’s gold found in Lake Baikal? 01 September, 2009, 19:04 MIR submersibles have discovered fragments of an early 20th century train at the bottom of Lake Baikal, which may possibly carry so-called “Kolchak gold”, part of the gold reserves of the Russian Empire. The remains of the train cars, presumably of the Civil War times, were discovered within the MIR submersibles’ expedition to the depth of almost 700 meters in the southern part of Lake Baikal. Some parts of the discovered train were lifted from the bottom. Legends have grown around the story of Admiral Kolchak, a Russian naval...

Humans come in a rainbow of hues, from dark chocolate browns to nearly translucent whites. This full kaleidoscope of skin colors was a relatively recent evolutionary development, according to biologists, occuring alongside the migration of modern humans out of Africa between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago. The consensus among scientists has always been that lower levels of vitamin D at higher latitudes — where the sun is less intense — caused the lightening effect when modern humans, who began darker-skinned, first migrated north. But other factors might be at work, a new study suggests. From the varying effects of frostbite...

Predator drone's hellfire missile turns insurgent's car into a car-b-que. Note: Short and sweet (24 seconds)....