Free Republic

Iran anger at Lebanon aid 'block' By Frances Harrison BBC News, Tehran The international community is trying to clear aid channels Turkey and Saudi Arabia have stopped Iran using their air space to send humanitarian relief to Lebanon, media in Iran have said. Iran's health ministry has been collecting supplies to send to the Lebanese people, the reports said. But the goods had to be sent via Dubai to Syria because of objections by other countries in the region. This may fuel Iranian anger against nations they feel have not done enough to support Hezbollah against Israel. 'Passivity' Iran's Labour...

SAN FRANCISCO A bridge is being built around a rock slide that closed a main route to Yosemite National Park and disrupted business and life in the area, state transportation officials announced Thursday. The company chosen for the project, Teichert Construction, has started moving equipment and bridge parts to Highway 140, which has been blocked since April 29 by 3 million cubic yards of rock and debris. Construction can't begin until the California Department of Transportation gets all the permits needed to move through the Merced River and build on federal forest service land, but officials hope the project will...

My internet connection is via Comcast Cable. For the last few weeks I have not been able to connect to many political websites... namely "www.powerlineblog.com", "www.captainsquartersblog.com", "www.hughhewitt.com" and "www.biglizards.net" (and some others). Be it known that almost any other wiebsite is reachable. I know the problem does not lie in my computer or with the sites themselves. If I take my laptop (which cannot get to these websites from home) to a Panera, Starbucks or my office, it can connect to them just fine. Bottom line... IS COMCAST FILTERING OUT THESE URLs?

Despite acceding to Beijing's censorship requirements, which yielded Google access to the Chinese market, users of Google.cn in China found the site blocked at the government backbone server. Poor Google. Their stock has been hammered downward after missing market expectations on earnings, and they have received no end of grief from all quarters over their long-delayed entry into the Chinese market. Now even that has been problematic. Instead of the higher quality service Google expected to provide by having servers handle traffic for the censored Google.cn site, Internet users in the populous cities of Beijing and Shanghai found nothing but...

Political wrangling and late primaries caused local election offices in at least eight swing states to miss a Sept. 19 cutoff for sending out ballots that would have ensured their timely return from far-flung locales where mail service is slow. Partisan groups vying to get out the overseas vote had begun posting the substitute write-in ballot, which covers federal but not local races or measures, on their own Internet sites out of concern that its distribution to consulates had made it too hard to get. The Defense Department is offering its new help "at the request of both political parties...

SACRAMENTO - Faced with the prospect of vetoing populist bills to raise the minimum wage, protect car buyers and combat the high price of prescription drugs, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday accused Democrats of sandbagging him to boost their own political fortunes. In an interview on Sacramento talk radio, Schwarzenegger lashed out at the Democrat-controlled Legislature for sending him both ``silly'' bills and politically motivated measures. ``I'm trying to do good things for the people, but they try to jam me so they can go back and say to their district: `Look what this Republican governor did' so they...

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) - A judge has blocked the University of California from raising fees this fall for some law, medical and other professional school students following a lawsuit claiming the hikes are unfair. San Francisco Superior Court Judge James L. Warren issued the preliminary injunction Thursday saying it appears students who sued UC over the fee hikes have "demonstrated a substantial likelihood of success on the merits of their claims." UC, which maintains it must raise fees due to cuts in state funding, planned to appeal, but the ruling was being hailed by students and their lawyers as a...

SACRAMENTO - Sacramento's most powerful Democrat is trying to quietly kill a pair of bills backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that would crack down on special-interest influence in the state Capitol. With less than three weeks left in the Legislature's two-year session, Senate President Pro Tem John Burton said Wednesday that he would continue to block the measures, which would temporarily stop campaign consultants from lobbying the politicians they helped put in office. ``They're dead,'' Burton said of the bills. After the bills won support in the Assembly and a key Senate policy committee, Burton redirected them -- against the...

<p>WASHINGTON - Breaking a months-long impasse, the White House and Senate Democrats on Tuesday struck a deal allowing Senate confirmation of dozens of President Bush's judicial nominations (search) in exchange for a presidential promise not to bypass the Senate again this year.</p>

WILMINGTON, DE (Talon News) -- A mother of a U.S. soldier serving in Iraq is unable to ship over 300 air conditioners to the troops serving in the arid, war-torn country because they are being held up by the United States Postal Service in Wilmington, Delaware. Mrs. Frankie Mayo, who came up with the idea to start Operation Air Conditioner, received word last Friday that the 302 brand new units she tried to send to the American soldiers could not be shipped because they contain Freon, a class 2 compressed gas. But the air conditioners that are waiting to be...

U.S. Questions Cuba About Jamming TV Signals to Iran Friday, July 18, 2003 WASHINGTON — The United States has confronted Cuban representatives in Washington about whether Cuba has been blocking U.S. satellite signals used to broadcast television to Iran. "We have indeed raised the jamming with the government of Cuba. I think I would say the interference with Loral Skynet's (search) commercial satellite transmissions appears to be emanating from the vicinity of Cuba. It does appear to be intentional. So, yesterday, we called in Cuban government representatives in Washington, and we formally requested the Cuban government to look into the...

<p>SACRAMENTO (AP) - Accusing Republicans of blocking a budget solution, Gov. Gray Davis said Wednesday that lawmakers should drop all other business and put off plans for summer recess until a spending plan is adopted.</p> <p>Davis, who has stepped up his criticism of the GOP in the last week, made his strongest comments to date even as he prepared to meet with party leaders on the budget crisis behind closed doors later today.</p>

WASHINGTON--The American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday lost its first attempt to challenge a controversial 1998 copyright law. In a strongly worded decision, a federal judge in Boston dismissed a lawsuit aimed at defanging part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The ACLU's suit, filed against filtering-software company N2H2 last July, claims the law unconstitutionally interferes with researchers' ability to investigate and evaluate the effectiveness of Internet filtering software."There is no plausibly protected constitutional interest that...outweighs N2H2's right to protect its copyrighted property from an invasive and destructive trespass," U.S. District Judge Richard Sterns wrote. Sterns' ruling dealt a sore...

Wednesday! Before 2:15pm EST! Call your Senators and Support Miguel Estrada! February 5, 2003 ACU Members, Supporters, Friends, and Activists: The time has come once again to make your voice heard on Capitol Hill. Today, Wednesday, February 5, at 2:15 pm EST, the entire Senate will vote on the nomination of Miguel Estrada, President Bush's nominee to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and we need to let the Senate know how important it is to confirm this fair, and conservative nominee. The Ultra Liberal Democrat machine is geared-up for this fight. Remember those liberal Democrat Senators...