Free Republic

<p>Please post your updates from D.C. and from news reports here as well as your photos of the day.</p> <p>Our Walter Reed salute to the troops last night was very well attended. Upwards of 800 people were there over the three-plus hours of the demonstration.</p>

MOSCOW — For hundreds of years, mariners have dreamed of an Arctic shortcut that would allow them to speed trade between Asia and the West. Two German ships are poised to complete that transit for the first time, aided by the retreat of Arctic ice that scientists have linked to global warming. The ships started their voyage in South Korea in late July and will begin the last leg of the trip this week, leaving a Siberian port for Rotterdam in the Netherlands carrying 3,500 tons of construction materials. Russian ships have long moved goods along the country’s sprawling Arctic...

The Daily Mail (www.dailymail.co.uk) from the UK reports that a woman in Great Britain held her baby for two hours until he died while doctors stood by, refusing to help. Why? Because he was born two days too soon. Guidelines in Britain hold that any baby born prior to 22 weeks not be resusitated because such resustation would be futile and the baby would die anyway. Little Jayden was born at 21 weeks and 5 days. Even if the mother pleads for help? Which she did? Sorry—no can do—was the message to her. Such is the effect of clinical care...

The healthcare reform bill puts taxpayers in the position of paying for abortions. The House version of H.R. 3200 would drastically change long-standing federal policy, according to Susan Muskett, senior legislative counsel at the National Right to Life Committee. "It creates a nationwide insurance plan run by the federal government that is explicitly authorized to cover all abortions," she explains. "The federal government would be running a nationwide abortion plan." Muskett says apparently there would be no abortions barred. "Abortionists would submit bills to the federal insurance plan and receive checks from the federal agency," she adds. "The federal government...

Labor Day has come and gone. Today, let's celebrate "Small Business Entrepreneur Day." No day off is needed. Owners want business, not days off they have to pay for! But we should honor them anyway. According to the Small Business Administration, a small business is "an independent business having fewer than 500 employees." That means 99.7% of all employer firms are small businesses; they employ over 50% of all private sector employees. They produce 13 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms. They provide the products and services we rely on. In today’s competitive and struggling economic environment,...

Obama cites new data in making case for health care overhaul, pushes plan at Minneapolis rally

California lawmakers on Friday began approving legislation that would establish the nation's most ambitious renewable-energy standards, even as some warned that the rules would increase energy costs and hurt the state's economy. The Senate and Assembly began voting on two companion bills that would require utilities to get one-third of their power from renewable energy sources by 2020. One bill cleared an initial hurdle in the Senate on a simple majority vote with just a few hours remaining in this year's regular legislative session. If passed and signed into law, the standard would be the most aggressive in the nation....

Stealthy Italian submarine will train with U.S. Navy The ITS Scire is paying a visit to Mayport to take part in a Joint Task Force Exercise. By Timothy J. Gibbons From its high-tech fuel cell engine to its automated torpedo loading system, the ITS Scire proudly shows off the advanced technology crammed into its narrow body. But being on the crew of a cutting-edge fighting vessel doesn't mean one has to ignore the comforts of life - which perhaps is why cans of extra virgin olive oil manage to find a corner amid the fearsome torpedoes. From the espresso machine...

Video HERE

This is a continuation of the Lion's example we did the other day. Every nicety you can think of has been ignored (details under the table). I won't even guarantee that I have copied the win/loss record correctly, as I did this by hand. The probabilities that at least one team wins or losses all games is printed below. This table shows, for each team, the probability of winning 0 games, 1 game, ..., 16 games. It has been sorted so that the team (the Patriots) with the highest probability of winning 16 is first, and the team (the Lions)...

It's "silly season" according to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. You know silly season. It's the time when all of the ridiculous stuff the administration is doing gets revealed - no matter how little the media actually reports any of it. For the president, the season is fall, when leaves and White House plans plummet to earth with equal abandon. In less than a week, three major Obama initiatives have fallen apart. And those three serve as the backdrop to Obama's latest attempt to get health care reform back on track. But no matter what he says Wednesday night,...

Going Through Spiritual Confusion "Jesus answered and said, ’You do not know what you ask’ " —Matthew 20:22 There are times in your spiritual life when there is confusion, and the way out of it is not simply to say that you should not be confused. It is not a matter of right and wrong, but a matter of God taking you through a way that you temporarily do not understand. And it is only by going through the spiritual confusion that you will come to the understanding of what God wants for you.The Shrouding of His Friendship (see Luke...

The Obama election was a milestone in our country's history. Blacks danced in the streets, talked about feelings of finally being able to feel at home in America, and cried for the cameras. But as a black woman in the Age of Obama, I don't see anything that reveals that Blacks in America have anything to celebrate. I grew up in the Deep South during the 1960's, so I'm quite aware of the issues our country faced at that time. Blacks mourned the deaths of two of their most profound leaders, Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This...

SEC watchdog H. David Kotz told the Senate Banking Committee he will issue detailed reports outlining steps the SEC should take to help prevent another colossal Madoff failure. Two reports will outline "concrete recommendations" to enforcement and examinations divisions, which bungled five separate probes into Madoff. A third report will analyze SEC's examinations division failure to look into the investment adviser unit of Madoff's firm after he was forced to register it in 2006.

On July 22, 2009, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) filed a lawsuit in Federal Court in Pittsburgh against the Attorney General of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett (R), and the District Attorney for Allegheny County, Stephen A. Zappala, Jr. (D) to enjoin these officials from applying a law that makes it a crime for an organization or individual to “give, solicit, or accept payment or financial incentive to obtain a voter registration if the payment or incentive is based upon the number of registrations or applications obtained.” ACORN argues that the law and its enforcement precludes ACORN “from...

After a government regulation had thousands of retailers, thrift stores and small businesses worried they would be forced to permanently close their doors and destroy their merchandise due to strict lead and phthalate testing requirements, toymakers and children's product manufacturers are urging Congress to consider the legislation's "unintended consequences" on small businesses. As WND reported in January, Congress passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008, or HR 4040, a retroactive rule mandating that all items sold for use by children under 12 must be tested by an independent party for lead and phthalates, which are chemicals used to...

<p>If Mark Sanford will be stepping down from the governor's office, I propose that we subnit Jow Wilson's name for Governor. He can join with other patriotic governors to get the Federal government out of the lives of the sovereign States.</p>

"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact," said Sherlock Holmes. This explains, I guess, how so many independent voters, moderate Democrats and even moderate Republicans were deceived by the Obama who campaigned for the presidency. The outrageous, obscenely anti-American radical Van Jones has been driven from the White House, tail tucked between his legs, and, yes, that's something to celebrate. It suggests there is a limit even to what President Obama can get away with. It should encourage opposition to other such far-left ideologues, czars with criminal or Communist backgrounds, and policy experiments promising the destruction of entire...

In the summer of 1996, California’s Maxine Waters publicly accused the United States government of introducing crack cocaine into mostly black South Central L.A. She said the government was complicit in destroying the inner city. Thirteen years later, at the hands of the above, we are witnessing the U.S. actually abetting a drug dealer, Hugo Chavez. Hugo Chavez wanted to expand membership in his “Friends of Hugo” club and needed money to retain power. Oil prices were down but cocaine trafficking could fill the gap. It was becoming difficult to export drugs to the US from Venezuela, Cuba, etc., so...

Cable television is a minefield of unspeakable raunch for children, who, like it or not, freely roam the hallways of this medium at night. The Parents Television Council has issued its list of the Top 10 Worst Cable TV Shows for Kids. One hopes that someone out there is shocked. Leading the list is Comedy Central and its vile celebrity roasts. These mean-spirited and vile knockoffs are nothing like the sidesplitting, kid-because-we-love Dean Martin roasts of the '70s. August's roast of Joan Rivers was the ugliest yet. Rivers came out on stage holding hands with six little kids of different...