Free Republic

LOS ANGELES, Sept 3 (Reuters) - A huge wildfire burning in the mountains above Los Angeles, the largest ever in the county, was started by arson and will be investigated as a homicide, authorities said on Thursday. The arson declaration was made after investigators found evidence of arson at the point of origin for the so-called Station Fire, which has blackened an area the size of Chicago, started. "Arson investigators from the U.S. Forest Service (and other agencies) ... have concluded that the Station Fire was the result of an arson," Forest Service Commander Rita Wears told reporters at a...

A group of rabbis and Jewish mystics has taken to the skies over Israel, praying and blowing ceremonial horns in a plane to ward off swine flu. About 50 religious leaders circled over the country on Monday, chanting prayers and blowing horns, called shofars. The flight's aim was "to stop the pandemic so people will stop dying from it", Rabbi Yitzhak Batzri was quoted as saying in Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. The flu is often called simply "H1N1" in Israel, as pigs are seen as unclean. SWINE FLU Swine flu is a respiratory disease thought to spread through coughing and sneezing...

Outrage: Red Chinese flag to be flown on September 20 at the White House. (anyone able to organize a protest?)

Rep. Rangel must step aside as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. FOR POLITICIANS with major bad news to release or to make public, there's no time like the dead of August to do it. The thinking goes that the public won't remember a thing come September. We hope Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) will have no such luck. His belated revelation of previously unreported income, property and bank accounts demands that he step aside as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Mr. Rangel's amended financial disclosure form, which exposes omissions from his 2002 through 2006...

It seems to be in vogue today to change the wording of the Pledge of Allegiance. The atheists want to drop the phrase "under God." The Barackamites want to pledge support to The One. Herewith is my version: I pledge allegience to the Flag of the United States of AmericaAnd to the the Constitution thereof and to the Republic created thereby, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all

You are all so well informed that I am sure you are aware of: Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a not-for-profit group charged with spending tens of millions of dollars it obtained through its affiliation with a school-improvement foundation created by late Ambassador Walter H.Annenberg. Obama chaired the Chicago Annenberg Challenge's board of directors. Ayers served on the Chicago School Reform Collaborative, which made recommendations to the board on which organizations should get grants. The groups worked on school-reform efforts between 1995 and 2000. This from Michelle Malkins web page of today. If you read it, you will readily see why we...

It was an amazing scene just blocks north of Times Square Thursday morning as a yellow cab caught fire and exploded, but no injuries were reported and the driver escaped unharmed, fire officials said. The cab was parked at the corner of 53rd Street and 7th Avenue when a small fire erupted in the car around 9:30 a.m, fire officials said. The fire spread to the gas tank, causing the vehicle to explode. Huge plumes of gray smoke were seen billowing from the front of the burning car. The blaze frightened pedestrians and office workers in the area, but there...

School districts from Maryland to Texas are fielding angry complaints from parents opposed to President Barack Obama’s back-to-school address Tuesday – forcing districts to find ways to shield students from the speech as conservative opposition to Obama spills into the nation’s classrooms. The White House says Obama’s address is a sort of pep talk for the nation’s schoolchildren. But conservative commentators have criticized Obama for trying to “indoctrinate” students to his liberal beliefs, and some parents call it an improper mix of politics and education. “The gist is, ‘I want to see what the president has to say before you...

People have long associated anchor babies with Mexico, but that association is obsolete. Get ready for anchor babies from around the world. Ah, the joys of diversity! And those births will be greeted by the obligatory emotional, celebratory news stories from OBL traitor-reporters. Even in Trinidad, people know all about the anchor baby scam. While we were there for 20 days in late July through mid-August on our annual visit to my wife’s family, two separate Indian couples informed my wife that they planned on going to the U.S. to have their babies. One woman, who looked to be in...

The increasingly nasty fight between South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer escalated further this week with charges from a legislative ally of Bauer that Sanford and his supporters are spreading malicious rumors that Bauer — a Republican like Sanford — is gay. GOP state Sen. Jake Knotts made the charge in a letter to state legislators Wednesday that was obtained by POLITICO. In an interview in June with The State newspaper, Bauer voluntarily brought up the subject of his sexual orientation. Asked if he was gay, he responded: “One word, two letters. No.” But the rumor...

A top environmental official of the Obama administration issued a statement Thursday apologizing for past incendiary statement and denying that he ever agreed with a 2004 petition on which his name appears, a petition calling for congressional hearings and an investigation by the New York Attorney General into "evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur." Van Jones, the Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, is Number 46 of the petitioners from the so-called "Truther" movement which suggests that people in the administration of President...

I have nothing but good things to say about the American Obama ideal. But its rationale and its outcome are fundamentally flawed from the idealistic indulgence upon which it was conceived. Here was a man, who was reared by elderly European-Americans, the product of a European-American woman and an African man, who was able—through all the trials and tribulations of his personal plight—to make himself into an educated, intelligent, and cultured individual. And Americans, in droves, who—thirsty for redemption from their own warped version of American national legacy, bitter on the reality of national priority and blind to the value...

Republicans should never do to President Obama what many Democrats did to President Bush.In his column for the Washington Post on Tuesday, the influential conservative George Will provided intellectual fodder for the campaign among some Republicans to hang the Afghanistan war around the Obama administration's neck. Washington, he wrote, should "keep faith" with our fighting men and women by "rapidly reversing the trajectory of America's involvement in Afghanistan." "Obama's war," a locution one is now beginning to hear from other conservatives, is an expression of discontent that has been smoldering beneath the surface for several months. The weakening public support...

This column was written as a follow-up to the piece that ran here Tuesday demanding an end to the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. Both are getting wide attention.Since U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq's cities, two months have passed, and so has the illusion that Iraq is smoothly transitioning to a normality free of sectarian violence. Recently, Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. troops there, "blanched" when asked if the war was "functionally over." According to the Washington Post's Greg Jaffe, Odierno said: "There are still civilians being killed in Iraq. We still have people that are attempting to attack the...

Obama's campaign site trashes most Americans as "right-wing domestic terrorists" The "post-partisan" candidate for "change" is no longer merely suggesting that anyone who questions his time-disproven health care ideas is a "right-wing extremist" and potential terrorist. Now, he flat-out calls opponents of ObamaCare "right-wing domestic terrorists" on his own site.Ironically, he does this while refusing to acknowledge our fight against actual terrorists--as part of his trademark Orwellian "call everything the opposite of what it is" approach to the national debate.And yes, according to Rasmussen, 53% of Americans do in fact oppose ObamaCare. So when Obama's "Organizing for America" site marked the anniversary of 9/11 by calling it terrorism to disagree with Democrats...

Conventional wisdom is that the Fed’s printing presses are running overtime and the economy is awash with liquidity. Earlier this week the National Association for Business Economics reported that almost half the economists they surveyed believed that Federal Reserve Policy is inflationary. Too bad the NABE-surveyed economists and conventional wisdom are wrong. Economists, pundits and journalists who climb the soap box to lecture Bernanke & Company about the evils of printing too much money need to take a second look at Federal Reserve policy. If the Fed critics were correct, then overly aggressive monetary policy would be increasing the amount...

9/3/2009 - CAMP UR, Iraq (AFNS) -- Operations continue as normal at Camp Ur. The focus remains the same: keep the base running and the mission on target. Iraqi army soldiers routinely work with their U.S. counterparts, but one important difference now is that the Iraqis have taken command of the controls. "It's a historic time for anyone serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom," said Lt. Col. Steven Ramsay, the Tallil Logistics Military Advisory Team senior adviser. "We have committed to turning over all operations to the Iraqi people and they are committed to taking over and succeeding." Colonel Ramsay and...

From a blog: You may recognize Elston McGowan. He is the Public Service Director of SEIU Local 2000 and a local Baptist minister. He is also one of the SEIU thugs who beat Kenneth Gladney after the Russ Carnahan town hall meeting in St. Louis last month. McGowan said Gladney, who is half his size, actually attacked him. He claims he was the victim even those he was hauled to jail for the attack. ** 24th State is reporting tonight that Elston McGowan is asking the SEIU for workman's comp for the injury he suffered at the Carnahan rally while...

Many of my friends on the left consoled me last November by saying I'd probably have more fun and more material working from the opposition. Holy crap were they right! That is, it's fun until this poop-flinging bunch of lefty monkeys completely dismantles the Constitution and exiles me to a patchouli camp in Berkeley. For the moment, however, it's an unmitigated blast watching Team Lightbringer egregiously overreach and stunningly underachieve. There's enough toolishness coming from the left to keep a staff of bloggers busy but I'll stick with the topic from the previous two days: the Obama "Can't Start 'Em...

Tony Greenwich, Connecticut isn’t immune to the fear and loathing that has been seen at townhall meetings across the country during the Congressional recess this summer. Wall Street traders and their wives showed up fully charged to debate health care reform last night... It was a bit of a mob scene. At one point Congressman Jim Himes, who represent Greenwich in Congress, went out to speak to the fifty or so people locked out of the meeting because of space restrictions. He was escorted by 8 armed police officers. The Congressman was “rattled” by questions ... At one point the...