Free Republic

<p>TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's next prime minister might be nicknamed "the alien," but it's his wife who claims to have had a close encounter with another world.</p>

Have special plans this 09/09/09? Everyone from brides and grooms to movie studio execs are celebrating the upcoming calendrical anomaly in their own way. In Florida, at least one county clerk's office is offering a one-day wedding special for $99.99. The rarity of this Sept. 9 hasn't been lost on the creators of the iPod, who have moved their traditional Tuesday release day to Wednesday to take advantage of the special date. Focus Features is releasing their new film "9," an animated tale about the apocalypse, on the 9th. Not only does the date look good in marketing promotions, but...

In many places where perpetual, or even frequent, Eucharistic Adoration has been made available, there have been great benefits. But Richard McBrien of Notre Dame is again Eucharist Adoration. In his latest piece for the dissenting, ultra-liberal National Catholic Reporter McBrien wrote this with my emphases and comments: ... The practice of eucharistic adoration began in the 12th century, when the Real Presence of Christ was widely rejected by heretics or misunderstood by poorly educated Catholics. The church saw eucharistic adoration as a way of reaffirming its faith in the Real Presence and of promoting renewed devotion to it. However,...

If you are interested in a boycott of NO-bama’s government/care speech on Wednesday evening, perhaps we all can tune into a separate TV station, such as the weather channel, to give it a higher rating than the WON will receive. Any suggestions?

<p>The parents of a 7-year-old boy who died after an upstate New York car crash have fulfilled his wish that they get married, and they did it at the child's funeral.</p> <p>Amilcar Hill and Rahwa Ghirmatizion (ger-MAT'-ee-zahn) got married during Monday's funeral service in Buffalo for their son, Asa Hill. Asa died a day after his grandfather's car was involved a chain-reaction highway crash last week.</p>

The actor Will Smith is no one's image of a suicide bomber. With his boyish face, he has often played comic roles. Even as the last man on earth in I Am Legend, he retains a wise-cracking, ironic demeanor. And yet, surrounded by a horde of hyperactive vampires at the end of that film, Smith clasps a live grenade to his chest and throws himself at the enemy in a final burst of heroic sacrifice. Wait a second: surely that wasn't a suicide bombing. Will Smith wasn't reciting suras from the Koran. He wasn't sporting one of those rising sun...

EDINBURG — As the old adage goes, it’s better to have a gun and not need it, than to need a gun and not have it. With that in mind, say hello to the B.E.A.R. — the Rio Grande Valley’s newest tool to fight potentially violent standoffs and manhunts. The armor-plated vehicle stands more than 12 feet tall and can carry at least three six-member SWAT teams inside — or rescue 35 schoolchildren. A detachable battering ram at the front of the vehicle promises to smash through suspected drug cartel members’ reinforced lairs or other structures. Eight openings in the...

A young mother's premature baby died in her arms after doctors refused to help because it was born just before 22-week cut-off point for treatment.

Liquor, an inexplicable need to climb out a fourth-floor window, and a bad idea to use bedsheets as the ladder led to the death of a 52-year-old California woman whose body was found in a New Town condominium parking lot Tuesday. Harriett Clark's 40-foot fall to the asphalt fractured several of her ribs, which apparently caused her lungs to collapse, Sgt. J.R. Torres said. Key West Police Department investigators have ruled out foul play in Clark's death at the Sunrise Suites Resort, Torres said Friday. "Everything appears to be accidental," he said. "It appears she was trying to climb down...

WASHINGTON (CNN) — When former Boston Red Sox ace Curt Schilling started making noise last week about pursuing Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, he said he had been contacted by several people about running — but he declined to say by whom. It turns out one of those people was John McCain. McCain’s spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan told CNN Tuesday that the former GOP presidential nominee – a friend of Kennedy’s – spoke to Schilling last week and encouraged him to seek the office. McCain initiated the conversation.

Picture says it all...

BAE Systems has filed a protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), asking the agency to review the decision by the U.S. Army to award a contract to a competitor for the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV) rebuy program. After a detailed analysis of the information provided by the Army, before and during the formal competition debrief, the Company believes that the Army did not properly evaluate the proposals, consistent with the Government's stated requirements, and the Army failed accurately to assess the various risks associated with the different proposals.

They're back. Congress has returned to Washington from its summer break, and the citizens should be wary. House and Senate leaders have made it clear that despite the loud and furious public outcry against any plan to implement government control over healthcare, they are determined to find a way to get it approved anyway.

Opposition to Obamacare—at least so far as the legacy media is concerned—has crystalized around the public, er, government option. So if the President or Congress agrees to pull the plug on the government option, well, continuing Republican opposition would just be unreasonable, right? No. It's not just about the government option and it has never been just about the government option. That part of Obamacare—the part intended to scuttle the health insurance industry—is only one of many things wrong with the President's proposal. Here are some others (taken from the President's proposals and the bills being batted around Congress, all...

About 5,000 rally against high taxes, big government as tea party express stops in New Lenox September 8, 2009 By STEWART WARREN swarren@scn1.com NEW LENOX, Illinois -- Not long after 10 a.m. Monday, the Tea Party Express inched its way toward the enormous crowd. There literally were thousands of people jammed inside the open-air pavilion in front of New Lenox Village Hall. Because so many were waving protest signs and chanting their opposition to powerful Democrats, they didn't see the approach of the big bus. But dozens of others did. They split off from the bigger group, surrounding the vehicle....

Prospects for a government insurance plan appeared to be sinking fast Tuesday as lawmakers returned to Capitol Hill a day ahead of a major health care speech by President Barack Obama. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told reporters a Medicare-like plan for middle-class Americans and their families isn't essential for him to back legislation. Hoyer's comments came shortly after a key Democratic moderate said he could no longer back a bill that includes a new government plan. The fast-moving developments left liberals in a quandary. Progressives have drawn a line, saying they won't vote for legislation if it doesn't...

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Clock Ticking On Bipartisan Health Compromise Gang of Six meeting today to discuss Baucus' new proposal WASHINGTON - Prospects for a government insurance plan appeared to be sinking fast Tuesday as lawmakers returned to Capitol Hill a day ahead of a major health care speech by President Barack Obama. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told reporters a Medicare-like plan for middle-class Americans and their families isn't essential for him to back legislation. Hoyer's comments came shortly after a key Democratic moderate said he could no longer back a bill that includes a new government plan. The fast-moving developments left...

What is happening with alternative "green" energy, involving such environmentally-unsound measures as erecting windmill generators along Appalachian ridgelines which are migration routes for songbirds, raptors, and Monarch butterflies, is a boondoggle, a fiasco, a travesty -- but it is all very politically correct, so none of that matters.