Free Republic

You decide, Is Biden asleep, bored or both?

From a practical standpoint, however, as usual, free market ideology wins as well. As a typical American, who has a mortgage and pays taxes, I still want to end employer based health care. The reason is because I want more choice.

First Free Republic post after experiencing 9/12 euphoria.. How about we keep the momentum going? I'm prepared to cancel my subscription to the "Washington Compost" tomorrow if they choose to distort the truth. Wouldn't it be powerful to have "tens of thousands" of us send the same message to our local newspapers. Money talks.

For the first time, hundreds of prisoners held by the U.S. military in Afghanistan will be allowed to call witnesses in their defense as part of a new system being started this week, administration officials told The Washington Post. The new review procedures will be applied to more than 600 Afghans who are being held at the Bagram military base, the Post reported. Each detainee will now be given a U.S. military official to represent their interests and look at the evidence against them, the Post reported. The officials are not lawyers.

Creation, starring Paul Bettany, details Darwin's "struggle between faith and reason" as he wrote On The Origin of Species. It depicts him as a man who loses faith in God following the death of his beloved 10-year-old daughter, Annie. The film was chosen to open the Toronto Film Festival and has its British premiere on Sunday. It has been sold in almost every territory around the world, from Australia to Scandinavia. However, US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per...

(MOBILE, Ala.) Sept. 10 - The lesson here is never threaten an expecting mother, especially if she's armed with a shotgun. "I was angry," Randi Fairley says. "I was really mad that he was in my house." At around 4 A.M. Sunday, Fairley was wide awake, because her unborn daughter was kicking. That is when she heard a noise; it sounded like someone touching a potato-chip bag downstairs. "I came and looked over the stairs," Fairley says. "I saw this kid, down at the bottom of the stairs. He was about to grab my computer." Fairley is six and a...

Today, the comic strip "Geeks On Caffeine" explores how a legislator labors over her decision on whether or not to support a public option for health care reform. It's an internal conflict you might find surprising... NOTE: The author of this comic requests that you visit his web site and please refrain from copying the cartoons within this thread. Thanks!

September 13, 2009 Ugly Corpse Of ‘HillaryCare’ Haunts Obama Tony Allen-Mills in Washington WATCHING President Barack Obama deliver his stirring speech on healthcare to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, may have experienced a powerful sense of déjà vu. In 1993 her husband, President Bill Clinton, stood at the same podium beneath the US Capitol dome and issued a spirited defence of his own sweeping proposals — much influenced by her ideas — for a new system of national health insurance. Within a year the reform effort that became known as “HillaryCare” was...

Kim Jong Il Reportedly Calls for Third Nuclear Test Saturday , September 12, 2009 North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, during his most recent meeting with party and military leaders, reportedly gave instructions that the reclusive regime prepare for a third nuclear test, this time using enriched uranium, according to reports from Free Radio of North Korea, based in South Korea. Kim "emphasized the importance of improvement of nuclear technologies with the aim of attracting the U.S. to direct bilateral talks," according to the radio station's source. The meeting during which this order was reportedly given took place on Aug....

Obama screwed Chicago yesterday, saying Michelle would lead the US delegation in Copenhagen the day Olympic bid is decided for 2016 games on October 2. He used the excuse of work on health care reform. Some speculate he will fly in at last moment and create an even bigger buzz. But if he does not show, I think Chicago loses, a real kick in the rear to Daley, who has done much for him (starting with gift of Axelrod in 2004 senate campaign). I do not believe Chicago could lose if he were there, and looked delegates in the eye,...

One of the most common reactions to Obama and the lilt of his oh-so-smooth rhethoric is to believe that he is a voice of calmness, the voice of reason. Even people who disagree with the content of his words seem to find their flow to be soothing, reassuring. On a daily basis, society seems to slip farther and farther into incivility, hate speech, and cultural confrontation. By contrast, Obama's even-toned speeches, bright eyes and easy smile offer a refuge from the screaming mobs on either side of the liberal-conservative schism. True? Absolutely false. Obama's rhetoric is a key element in...

Sitting on the floor, wearing traditional Islamic clothes and holding an old notebook, Abu Hamizi, 22, spends at least six hours a day searching internet chatrooms linked to gay websites. He is not looking for new friends, but for victims. "It is the easiest way to find those people who are destroying Islam and who want to dirty the reputation we took centuries to build up," he said. When he finds them, Hamizi arranges for them to be attacked and sometimes killed. Hamizi, a computer science graduate, is at the cutting edge of a new wave of violence against gay...

According to the popular television personality and psychologist, Dr. Phil --­ who wades through the intimate details of his guests' as well as his professional clients' lives -- there is an epidemic of "sexless marriages" these days. His observations coincide with recent articles in popular magazines like Time and Newsweek and in more upscale journals like The Atlantic, Salon, Psychology Today and First Things. In the midst of a sex-saturated culture, overflowing with dramatic images of the female anatomy, a new phenomenon has developed: men losing interest in sex. Even the prolific political columnist, Mark Steyn has weighed in, asking,...

September 12, 2009 Priceless!... DC Protesters Chant "Glenn Beck" Behind CNN Live Shot This was just priceless... I totally swiped this from HotAir.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue weighed in on the growing debate among pro-life Catholics regarding President Obama’s position on abortion coverage in the health care reform bill: Richard Doerflinger, a prominent voice for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on life issues, welcomes President Obama’s pledge not to include abortion coverage in the health care reform bill. He is joined by Sister Carol Keehan, who heads the Catholic Health Association. On the other hand, people like Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life maintain that Obama’s proclamations represent “bogus claims.” Also unconvinced are such organizations as the National Right...

Passenger rail, Amtrak in particular, has been a conservative whipping boy for decades. This point of view needs serious re-examination, because national transportation strategy is an issue of US national competitiveness, and passenger rail has a significant role to play. In short, the US has no transportation strategy, while the fragile air transportation network, decaying roads and bridges, crushing highway congestion, and wobbly urban transit systems only add cost and dysfunction to an already struggling economy. A major federal government role in building and maintaining significant national assets that make the country competitive is entirely consistent with conservative philosophy. The...

Hi everyone...I received an email from my WONDERFUL DIL, requesting prayer for the mom of a friend of hers. Please read on.~~~ Long story short...my mom collapsed wednesday night at home, her heart stopped and she wasn't breathing. we called 911 and they came and got her to the hospital where she has been unconcious and breathing on a ventilator since. they ran an EEG to see her brain activity and came up with good news and bad news. good news is that her brain stem is still showing activity, that controls your bodily functions, ability to breath, etc. She...

Why small-scale, local power -- the microgrid -- could be the answer to our energy crisis. And why the big utilities are fighting it with all they've got. ___ In April 2007, a helicopter landed in a backyard in Johnson Valley, California, a desert hamlet of 440 residents on the outskirts of Joshua Tree National Park. "One of the neighbors went out and asked them what they were doing just a few hundred feet from his house," Jim Harvey, a local landowner, recalls. "They said, 'We're the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and congratulations! You're the lucky lottery...

Years ago our fathers founded this nation on the premise of the rights of man. As they expressed it, "the inalienable right of man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." In those days they knew what those words meant, not only the ones who expressed them, but the ones who heard and believed and accepted and subscribed to them. Because until that time, men did not always have those rights. At least, until that time, no nation had ever been founded on the idea that those rights were possible, let alone inalienable. So not only the ones who...

Jaycee Lee Dugard Abductor Phillip Garrido 'Wanted Cute Blond Girl' Phillip Garrido selected the pretty blond girl with the gap-toothed grin as his prey during a "child shopping" trip because she looked "cute" , his wife Nancy has told investigators in California. Philip Sherwell in Antioch 12 Sep 2009 But the couple decided not to try and snatch 11-year-old Jaycee Dugard that day in June 1991 because she was walking through South Lake Tahoe with a bunch of school friends. Instead, they apparently trailed her to her home before returning the next morning to complete their horrific mission. Mrs Garrido...