Free Republic

OXON HILL, Md. -- The U.S. Air Force’s former top intelligence officer warned a roomful of generals this week that the U.S. has lost its air power advantages and is dangerously ill-prepared to stop the gap-closing efforts of China and Russia. Lt. Gen. David Deptula, a former F-15 pilot, challenged Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ fundamental belief that U.S. air power vastly overmatches any foreign military. “For the first time, our claim to air supremacy is in jeopardy,” Deptula told the Air Force Association’s national convention on Monday. At the same forum last year, Gates defended ordering a halt to the...

In recent months, the "tea party" movement has swept across the political landscape, sending shivers through both major political parties and shaking up this year’s midterm elections. What began as a minor insurgency featuring protesters waving signs of dubious syntax, followed by racially tinged conspiracies about President Obama’s lineage and religion and ostentatiously displayed firearms – and cheered on by some conservative commentators and bloggers – is now winning elections that could determine the balance of power in the US Congress. (The main question here is, does the trend favor Republicans or Democrats?) There is no such thing as the...

Last night, conservative tea party candidates toppled RINO's or uninspiring establishment Republicans in almost every consequential race across several states. Delaware Delaware will forever be known as the Waterloo of the RINO's. Although we have been crushing them throughout the primary season, this is the most direct and dramatic defeat we have ever dealt them. After Lisa Murkowski was defeated in Alaska, she called Mike Castle to warn him that Christine O'Donnell was a potential threat and that she needs to be eradicated. Murkowski lamented the fact that she didn't run a vicious campaign to tear down Joe Miller, thus...

One of the most depressing trends in British and American politics is that opponents of immigration are currently winning the debate. In Britain the government is in the process of instituting, over the objections on Vincent Cable, a draconian cap on non-EU immigration. Similarly, all the major candidates for the Labour leadership have hardened their stances on immigration, although David Miliband has had the courage to criticise the cap. The situation is even worse in American since Jan Brewer's crackdown on suspected illegal immigrants turned her into an icon of the right, and resurrected her re-election campaign. President Obama has...

A biotech company plans to announce Tuesday that it has won a patent on a genetically altered bacterium that converts sunlight and carbon dioxide into ingredients of diesel fuel, a step that could provide a new pathway for making ethanol or a diesel replacement that skips several cumbersome and expensive steps in existing methods. The bacterium’s product, which it secretes like sweat, is a class of hydrocarbon molecules called alkanes that are chemically indistinguishable from the ones made in oil refineries. The organism can grow in bodies of water unfit for drinking or on land that is useless for farming,...

Forty-four percent of Americans now see the upstart "tea party" movement in a favorable light, according to a new Christian Science Monitor/TIPP poll. What's more, about 40 percent of tea party sympathizers say they would not attend a tea party event, meaning they are essentially "closet admirers" of the small-government movement, says TIPP pollster Raghavan Mayur. "The general party line says the tea party is fringe, but I think most of the public hasn't bought that point of view ... and sees the tea party movement in a positive to neutral light," says Mr. Mayur, president of TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence...

LOS ANGELES -- Officials say a body has been found in a men's restroom at Los Angeles International Airport. Airport spokesman Albert Rodriguez says a cleaner made the discovery around 7:45 a.m. Wednesday in a restroom in Terminal 3.

-What should I do to feel better about any bad events that I had lived or seen? -What is the meaning of new life? forgetting the past, deleting it or just fix the mistakes of current moments? -What is our messages as human being to the world? -Do you think our people in all the world acting their humanity in best way? if they do then why we have poverty, wars, all kind of crimes & extortion for human rights & women rights? I think I'm reaching to point, to find answers about everything even those tiny small silly things!...

CALIFORNIA — Acting Police Chief Tracy Vitale has been placed on administrative leave amid questions over her citizenship. (snip) Vitale's attorney, Chuck LoPresti, said the acting chief was adopted in Germany by her American parents, and brought to the U.S. at age 3. She has always felt that her parents completed all of the paperwork needed to insure her citizenship. When she applied for any police job, she has answered "yes" to the question of whether she is a citizen because she has always believed that's the case. But in this case, someone has asked the borough to question Vitale....

rove

Washington (CNN) - Republican Senator Jim DeMint conceded to CNN that he is trying to send a message to the GOP establishment by backing conservative candidates like Christine O'Donnell in Delaware, but rejects concerns that his moves could rob the GOP of the Senate majority. "The GOP establishment is out," DeMint said in an interview in his Senate office, "what we're going to do is help the American people take back their government, and I hope the Republican Party will be the party that carries that banner." DeMint was an early supporter of O'Donnell, a candidate many Republicans did not...

Commentary: Ultrapolarization is creating yawning gap in the centerWASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Tuesday’s stunning primary results made it official: The tea-party movement has captured the Republican Party. The so-called establishment in the GOP is now at the mercy of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and other self-appointed prophets of the conservative movement that have succeeded in channeling the recession-fueled anger of a good chunk of the voting public. The unlikely victory of Christine O’Donnell against Republican stalwart Mike Castle in the Delaware Senate primary showed that Sharron Angle’s primary victory in Nevada and Joe Miller’s...

Apparently laid to rest more than 10,000 years ago in a fiery ritual, one of the oldest skeletons in the Americas has been retrieved from an undersea cave along Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, researchers say. Dating to a time when the now lush region was a near desert, the "Young Man of Chan Hol" may help uncover how the first Americans arrived—and who they were. About 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Cancún, the cave system of Chan Hol—Maya for "little hole"—is like a deep gouge into the Caribbean coast. In 2006, after entering the cave's opening, about 30 feet (10...

As a result of our request, more than 160 individual requests from parentshave been sent to the Minnesota Department of Health seeking information on how their child's newborn bloodspots (DNA) was used. That's a great start, but we need many more parents to act. OUR GOAL - There are 73,000 children born every year in Minnesota. We want at least 3,650 parent requests sent to the health department. That's just 5% of the number of baby DNA specimens collected and retained in ONE year. Child Health Profiles: We expect to find one or more of the nearly 59,000 children used...

From On Living Simply, Sermon XLIII. (HT: American Orthodox Institute Observer, et al.):Should we look to kings and princes to put right the inequalities between rich and poor? Should we require soldiers to come and seize the rich person’s gold and distribute it among his destitute neighbors? Should we beg the emperor to impose a tax on the rich so great that it reduces them to the level of the poor and then to share the proceeds of that tax among everyone? Equality imposed by force would achieve nothing, and do much harm.Those who combined both cruel hearts and sharp...

Cashier goes postal over $50 bill Here's a tip for anyone who ever ends up being served by Renu Zaman: Have exact change. The 22-year-old gas station clerk near Naples has been charged with aggravated assault after he beat a customer with a stick for trying to pay for a six pack of beer with a $50 bill, reports the Naples News. Yes, he beat a man for trying to pay for his items. It's unclear how much the beer cost, but Zaman wasn't too thrilled about having to make change for the victim. So instead of breaking down...

MSNBC continued their (insert sarcasm) fair, objective-free balance of the Tea Party begging the question: “The Tea Party is against spending, but what are they for?” For the segment they brought on Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis and GOP strategist Joe Watkins. Kofinis hit the talking points harder than ever by saying the “tea party is a flesh eating bacteria for the GOP.”

Whoopi Goldberg blasts people who protested N.Y.C. mosque on Sept. 11.

I believe Rove has destroyed what was left of his career overnight.