Free Republic

Verizon Communications (VZ.N) Chief Executive Ivan Seidenberg said on Thursday that the U.S. economy is still contracting and that growth in small businesses was "not as fast as you'd like." "At this point in the cycle very little job creation is occurring," he told a Goldman Sachs conference, citing comments from a meeting with business leaders a day earlier

The European telescope sent far from Earth to study the oldest light in the Universe has returned its first images. The Planck observatory, launched in May, is surveying radiation that first swept out across space just 380,000 years after the Big Bang. The light holds details about the age, contents and evolution of the cosmos. The new images show off Planck's capabilities now that it has been set up, although major science results are not expected for a couple of years. "The images show first of all that we are working and that we are able to map the sky,"...

Luigi Zingales, Paola SapienzaStop Subsidizing the Street Bailouts hurt much-needed entrepreneurship in the banking sector. Summer 2009 The word for “crisis” in Chinese, weiji, is written with two characters: one (wei) means danger; the other (ji) means opportunity. That’s because every crisis challenges the status quo and in so doing creates the opportunity for something new to emerge. “This process of Creative Destruction,” wrote economist Joseph Schumpeter, “is the essential fact about capitalism. It is what capitalism consists in and what every capitalist concern has got to live in.” We have experienced the destruction wrought by the financial crisis....

This month, with Judge Hadjis’s Marc Lemire decision, the wheels fell off the CHRC racket “Nice to see you all,” said Athanasios Hadjis, the Canadian “Human Rights” Tribunal’s vice-chair (i.e., judge), as he surveyed his courtroom in Ottawa last year. “More of an interest than there was before.” Indeed. The packed benches that greeted him were a rare sight at a CHRT trial, and especially at the Marc Lemire trial, where the prosecutors—the Canadian “Human Rights” Commission—had demanded that everyone other than them be banned from the courtroom, including the defendant, who would be graciously permitted to watch proceedings by...

Here is audio of Glenn Beck telling Mika Brzezinski "shut the hell up." Mika is a co-host of “Morning Joe” and an MSNBC anchor who attacked Beck. (Audio)

Pelosi concerned political rhetoric will foster climate for violence By Michael O'Brien - 09/17/09 12:22 PM ET Americans should be vigilant of politically-motivated violence spurred by harsh rhetoric, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) warned Thursday. Pelosi, referencing the assassination of gay rights activist and San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978, said Americans must "curb our enthusiasm" in some political debates. "I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because I saw this myself in the late '70s in San Francisco, this kind of rhetoric was very frightening and it created a climate in which violence...

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” – Martin Luther King Jr. Your blues, author BeBe Moore Campbell famously wrote, ain’t like mine. I’ve occasionally borrowed that phrase to explain how bigotry as experienced by majority and minority is not the same: the one has access to levers of power enabling it to express its hatred in public policy, the other has access only to fists and words. But there are times that observation is simultaneously true, and irrelevant. This is one of them. There is, after all, a certain egalitarian outrageousness in what happened to 18-year-old Brian Milligan....

H'aint Bush's Fault Now is It? A lie travels around the world while truth is still strapping its boots on ...

Some jobs require a bit more on the resume than just having good references, experience and a knack for the position you're applying for. A certain amount of ideological responsibility is needed for you to serve in some positions, for example, members of the FBI can't get actively involved in politics. Why? Because their job is to be loyal to the government and the constitution, as private citizens they can vote for who they want but as representatives of the government they have to tow a different line than the rest of us. This may not sound fun or fair,...

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia's most wanted Islamist militant was killed in a police shoot-out in Central Java, police said on Thursday, lifting a major security threat ahead of a planned visit by U.S. President Barack Obama. Malaysian-born Noordin Mohammad Top, who set up a violent splinter group of regional militant network Jemaah Islamiah, was widely considered the mastermind of the bomb attacks on two luxury hotels in Jakarta in July, as well as other attacks in Bali and in Jakarta which killed scores of Westerners and Indonesians. National police chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri announced Top's death at a news conference,...

Anyone who followed the 2008 election in even a cursory manner must rememeber the interview Sarah Palin granted Charlie Gibson in September. Much like liberal comrade Katie Couric, Gibson used the opportunity to ask Palin every difficult question conceivable, a stark contrast to the kid glove treatment received by media darling Barack Obama. In a now-famous exchange, Gibson asked Palin about the “Bush Doctrine,” as though it was a well accepted concept that had been widely circulated. Like many of us in the audience, Palin struggled to understand what Gibson meant by the term, and she received ridicule and criticism...

Poll: Plurality of Americans Want Abortion Funding Banned in Health Care Bills Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A new poll shows a plurality of Americans want abortion funding banned in any health care "reform" legislation that becomes law. The Rasmussen survey also shows that just 13 percent want the health care bills to make it a requirement that abortions are funded. http://www.LifeNews.com/nat5480.html

James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles have rocked our world like no two twenty-somethings I can recall. As of when this column was finished on Wednesday afternoon, as chronicled at Andrew Breitbart’s breakout BigGovernment.com site since September 10, multiple ACORN offices had been caught on tape providing guidance to O’Keefe and Giles, who are 25 and 20, respectively(!), on how to obtain home financing for a prostitution business that would include Giles and 13 illegal immigrant girls, with the ultimate purpose of generating funds for a future congressional run by O’Keefe. Helpful instruction from ACORN employees, many of whom are now...

The Treasury Department said Thursday it will issue $112 billion in notes next week. A record $43 billion in 2-year notes will be sold on Tuesday, followed by $40 billion in 5-year debt on Wednesday. The final offering will be $49 billion in 7-year notes on Thursday. The amounts are each $1 billion more than last month -- the most ever for each security -- and in line with estimates of some of Wall Street's biggest bond dealers. The government will also sell $85 billion in shorter-term bills. After the announcement, 2-year note yields, which move inversely to prices, remained...

Bob Dylan has shape-shifted more times in his career than any other pop musician. His music has always reflected that need to seek out new forms of self-expression. What's less known is that his paintings function in the same way -- providing virtual chapter markings and sign posts in a lifetime filled with twists and turns. In a museum show that's scheduled to open in Europe in 2010, Dylan will exhibit nearly 100 of his works, including the world premiere of 30 large-format paintings from the artist's upcoming "Brazil" series. The show will also feature original paintings from Dylan's "The...

The State Worker: Cash Poor, Furlough Lawsuit Rich Jon Ortiz Sep. 17, 2009 Legal fistfights have broken out from Hawaii to Maryland over public employee furloughs, but no place slugs it out like California. By this column's count, there are now 19 furlough lawsuits in California courts. About 729,000 public employees in 21 states have taken or will soon take furloughs. Most of those plans have gone forward without a single legal punch. But no other local, regional or state government in the nation has reduced employee hours and pay by three days per month, or 14 percent. "And our...

WASHINGTON – The chairman of a new congressionally appointed panel has promised a no-holds barred investigation into last year's devastating economic collapse. The inquiry will look into whether any of the nation's biggest financial firms and the regulators in charge of monitoring them were guilty of criminal misconduct. Phil Angelides, appointed this year by Democrats to lead the 10-member Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, said the group will examine the conduct of top officials at such firms as Lehman Brothers, Citigroup, AIG and Bear Stearns, as well as mortgage buyers Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

Fox All-Star Charles Krauthammer blasts the accusation of racism from the left...

The ongoing controversy over the community organizing group ACORN -- spurred by several undercover videos shot for a conservative blog known as biggovernment.com -- has emboldened Republicans to use the group's troubles as a political cudgel against Democrats. "If the Democrats continue to ignore the apparent fraud taking place with taxpayer money, they will pay a price politically," predicted former Florida governor Jeb Bush (R) in an e-mail exchange with the Fix late Wednesday. Bush's Republican colleagues are already moving to exact that political price. Minnesota Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who is widely expected to run for president in 2012,...

The robot is able to leap over fences and walls Video footage has been released of a robot that can leap over obstacles more than 7.5m (25ft) high. Most of the time, the shoebox-sized robot - which is being developed for the US military - uses its four wheels to get around. But the Precision Urban Hopper can use a piston-actuated "leg" to launch it over obstacles such as walls or fences. The robot could boost the capabilities of troops and special forces engaged in urban warfare, say researchers.