Free Republic

A former U.S. Attorney appointed by President Obama who previously came under scrutiny by the Jewish Orthodox community may soon be confirmed by the U.S. Senate for a federal judgeship, after she received a majority vote from the Senate Judiciary Committee. Stephanie Rose, 39, was recently nominated for a lifetime appointment by President Obama in the Southern District of Iowa. Rose’s appointment is controversial within the Orthodox Jewish community because of her previous involvement in the prosecution of Sholom Rubashkin, the former CEO of a now-bankrupt, Iowa-based Kosher meatpacking company that was accused of employing hundreds of illegal immigrants and...

Victims' Relatives Say Justice Dept. Bid To Shield Royal Family From Lawsuit Undermines Fight Against Terror. Relatives of Sept. 11 victims say they're angry that the Justice Department is supporting the Saudi royal family's bid to be removed from a 9/11 lawsuit. The families of some victims have accused the royal family of financially backing terror groups that carried out the 2001 attack. Their complaint alleges that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Saudi High Commission for Relief to Bosnia and Herzegovina (SHC), and four Saudi Princes (acting in both official and personal capacities) made donations to charitable organizations with...

NEW YORK (AP) — Relatives of Sept. 11 victims say they're angry that the Justice Department is supporting the Saudi royal family's bid to be removed from a 9/11 lawsuit. The families of some victims have accused the royal family of financially backing terrorist groups that carried out the 2001 attacks.

FARGO, N.D. - Ozzy Osbourne wants an apology from the Cass County sheriff for staging a sting operation in the rocker's name without his permission. Osbourne claims his reputation was tarnished when Sheriff Paul Laney invited 500 people with outstanding warrants to a phony party at a Fargo nightclub before the rocker's concert with Rob Zombie at a nearby arena. More than 30 showed up and were arrested. "Instead of holding a press conference to pat himself on the back, Sheriff Laney should be apologizing to me for using my name in connection with these arrests," Osbourne said in a...

Senior Israel Defense Forces officers expressed dissatisfaction yesterday with the announcement by Chief of Staff Dan Halutz that he had recently instructed the Field Security Directorate at the General Staff to keep track of their telephone conversations. According to a report in Haaretz yesterday, Halutz instructed the Field Security Directorate to provide him with the telephone logs of the generals, their department heads and their secretaries, in order to crosscheck whether they have had contacts with journalists. [ . . . ] According to the disgruntled officers , the chief of staff's action "stinks of McCarthyism" . . .

'Big-mouth' bin Laden angered his lieutenants By Francis Harris in Washington (Filed: 06/04/2006) A senior lieutenant to Osama bin Laden has told US interrogators that the al-Qa'eda leader's big mouth was a security liability. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed also complained that the schemes bin Laden approved lacked destructive ambition. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Court papers released in America also depict the world's most notorious terrorist group as riven by internal disputes and hobbled by favouritism. The allegations have emerged from CIA interrogations of Mohammed, the Kuwaiti accused of masterminding the September 11 conspiracy. His comments were released as part of the evidence...

Evelyn Leopold http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/un_annan_dc;_ylt=Ak8uJ3VvSPKytd39jkRAoTys0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ-- UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Terrorism and conflicts across the Middle East will be major global issues in 2006, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said at a year-end news conference on Wednesday and he also lashed out at the media for its coverage of the oil-for-food program. Annan said he faced getting tough management reform proposals through the U.N. General Assembly and trying to solve the ongoing conflict in Sudan's Darfur region and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But he said he expected terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and the Middle East -- the slayings in Lebanon, the...

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Conservatives who had warned Republicans about compromising on President Bush's judicial nominees delivered another message the day after the deal: Those who betrayed us will pay a political price. Furious with the outcome, conservative leaders promised to energize their rank-and-file for the next elections while warning some of the centrist Republicans who harbor presidential aspirations to forget about 2008. "A complete bailout and betrayal by a cabal of Republicans," said James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, a Colorado-based conservative Christian group, who promised that voters will remember "both Democrats and Republicans who betrayed...

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- An upstate New York college is being urged to cancel a speaking engagement by a man who has compared victims of the World Trade Center attacks to Nazis. Hamilton College has invited Ward Churchill to take part in a panel discussion next month. Churchill is chairman of the ethnic studies department at the University of Colorado at Boulder. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he called the victims "little Eichmanns," comparing them to Adolf Eichmann, the architect of Hitler's plan to eradicate Europe's Jews. In his essay, the professor said the victims worked for a "mighty...