Free Republic

After the Internet, the next big thing will be cheap and clean energy. Coal, oil and gas pollute and are increasingly expensive: We need alternatives. Because nuclear energy (stored among particles inside atoms) is millions of times more dense than chemical energy (stored among atoms in molecules), nuclear reactors belong high on our long list of energy alternatives. Nuclear energy is released during fission and fusion. During fission, large elements like uranium are split into smaller elements. During fusion, small elements like hydrogen are combined into larger elements. These two processes have occurred naturally since the beginning of time --...

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - A young woman who worked at a Denny's Restaurant on Albuquerque's West Side was killed Saturday morning during what police describe as a takeover-style robbery, and officers are still searching for suspects. Police by mid-afternoon Saturday detained two possible suspects from the 10 a.m. robbery at the Denny's on Coors Boulevard at Iliff Road NW. "Four masked men came in with guns," Brian Thompson told News 13. "Two went toward the back. That's all we could see because we all hit the ground." Albuquerque police spokeswoman Nadine Hamby said witnesses told police they saw between two and...

As the Iranian election aftermath unfolded in Tehran--thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to protest their anger at perceived electoral irregularities--an unexpected hashtag began to explode through the Twitterverse: "CNNFail." Even as Twitter became the best source for rapid fire news developments from the front lines of the riots in Tehran, a growing number of users of the microblogging service were incredulous at the near total lack of coverage of the story on CNN, a network that cut its teeth with on-the-spot reporting from the Middle East. For most of Saturday, Cnn.com had no stories about the massive protests...

Just for entertainment: I saw this on Friday but forgot to post it. The blog "A Hamburger Today" has been running these insane burger creations for a couple years, and The Big McFatty Melt is just a new one on that theme. http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2009/05/the-big-mcfatty-melt.htmlhttp://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2009/05/the-big-mcfatty-melt.html

[angkor comments: Jihad conference in Nashville this weekend; Geert Wilders scheduled to speak; event cancelled by Loews Vanderbilt Plaza Hotel, had to be rescheduled elsewhere] When the invitation from the New English Review arrived earlier this year, I was delighted. A counter-jihad conference in Tennessee! Geert Wilders would be appearing via teleconference, and the other speakers, including Nidra Poller (who had been at the Brussels Conference in 2007) would make for an excellent (if intensive) weekend. I talked to the Baron about his possible attendance,even though it might be a bit much coming so soon after the conference in Denmark....

I’m absolutely convinced Newt Gingrich would love to be president. But every time he starts making noises like a candidate, he seems to back off as if remembering his sky high negatives and problematic personal life. This is a shame because if ever we needed an idea man in the White House - someone who could grasp the essentials of a problem and offer a solution (some more viable than others), it is the former speaker, public intellectual, and I believe, the primary carrier of the Reagan legacy today. Listening to Gingrich speak is a treat for the mind and...

77% See Politicians Unwillingness to Cut Government Spending as Bigger Problem Than Voter Resistance to Tax Hikes Friday, May 22, 2009 For nearly four-out-of-five U.S. voters, the problem is not their unwillingness to pay taxes. It’s their elected representatives’ refusal to cut the size of government. Seventy-seven percent (77%) of voters say the bigger problem in the United States is the unwillingness of politicians to control government spending. Just 14% say the problem is that voters are unwilling to pay enough in taxes, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. These findings parallel results in California just before...

President Obama has heeded his generals and decided not to release more photos of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, and good for him. Now he needs to put our national security ahead of politics once again and reverse his dangerous decision to release trained terrorists currently held at Guantanamo Bay into American suburbs. America, meet the Uighurs. Seventeen of the 241 terrorist detainees currently being held at Guantanamo Bay are Chinese Muslims known as Uighurs. These Uighurs have been allied with and trained by al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist groups. The goal of the Uighurs is to establish a separate sharia state....

By Amy Gardner Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, May 15, 2009 The intensifying debate over what to do with 241 detainees in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has pushed the candidates for Virginia governor to address widespread speculation that at least two locations in the state, including Alexandria and Fairfax County, could receive prisoners. Although the three Democrats and one Republican broadly agree that detainees should be kept out of Virginia if possible, the issue has caused some state political leaders to divide along party lines over President Obama's promise to close the prison, which has become...

U.S. officials said yesterday that they are renaming the swine flu crisis the "2009 H1N1 virus outbreak" and warned other countries not to "ban or prevent" imports of U.S. pork or other products. "This really isn't swine flu. It's H1N1 virus," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said. "We want to say to consumers here and abroad that there is no risk to you. There is no scientific evidence whatsoever that there is any link between consuming pork, prepared pork products and the H1N1 virus," U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk added. Prices of U.S. pork, corn and soybeans dived Monday after Russia,...

Geely GE: Although Geely claims to be 're-inventing the classic' Rolls-Royce bosses are considering their options and have consulted lawyers Photo: AP The Geely GE was launched at the Shangai Motor show this week where it was immediately branded a "Phantom knock-off". The 5.4 metre prototype, painted black and given pride of place on a raised plinth in the middle of Geely's stand is undeniably based on the shape of the Rolls in the shape of its cabin, windows and down-sloping rear deck. Although Geely claims to be 're-inventing the classic' Rolls-Royce bosses considering their options and have consulted...

MUMBAI -- With his master's degree in electrical engineering at North Carolina State University almost complete, Ravi, 24, received a promising job offer from a technology firm. He called his parents back in India, happy that he was on track for an H-1B work visa, which is seen as a steppingstone to U.S. citizenship. But just before Thanksgiving, Ravi got a call from his future employer. "They told me that because of the economic downturn they couldn't hire me in anticipation of tougher times ahead. They were laying off other American employees, and cutting my job would be a proactive...

PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA (AP) - The man who ran the Khmer Rouge's notorious S-21 prison in Cambodia accepted responsibility Tuesday for torturing and executing thousands of inmates and expressed "heartfelt sorrow" for his crimes. Kaing Guek Eav (pronounced "Gang Geck Ee-uu"), better known as Duch ("Doik"), told the U.N.-backed genocide tribunal he wanted to apologize for his actions under the Khmer Rouge, whose radical policies while in power from 1975 to 1979 left an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians dead. Duch, 66, who commanded the group's main S-21 prison, accepted responsibility for the crimes committed there, "especially the torture and execution...

Terror Trials in U.S. Are A Worry Classified Data Just One Hurdle By Jerry Markon Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, March 6, 2009; Page A04 When suspected al-Qaeda sleeper agent Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri was indicted on criminal charges last week, the Obama administration said it was sending a message that the U.S. courts can deal with terror suspects. But Marri says he was subjected to painful stress positions, extreme sensory deprivation and violent threats and was denied access to lawyers when he was held in a military brig in South Carolina. Those claims are likely to become part of...

Dr. James Hansen continues to draw fire for global warming claims Change is coming to Washington, D.C. tomorrow -- or, at least, more warnings of climate change. On March 2, D.C. will be the site of a snowstorm and the largest public protest of global warming in history. Irony aside, the protest might also help usher in the public unraveling of NASA’s chief climate scientist, Dr. James Hansen. Hansen, best known for his alarming testimonies on climate change, has drawn fresh criticism from colleagues and lawmakers alike after endorsing tomorrow’s Capitol Climate Action protest. Calling for “mass civil disobedience,” the...

Anyone know the status of the communist-inspired "...largest mass civil disobedience for the climate in U.S. history" (sic) by the socialist at "Capitol Climate Action"? I saw comments on Twitter that it's been cancelled due to the big March snowstorm here in tropical and globally warming DC, but the rather secretive Communist Climate Action web site says: http://www.capitolclimateaction.org/?tag=snow Snow is no wet blanket Monday, March 2nd, 2009 We’re up and at ‘em here at headquarters. We pushed through the snow, got into the office early, and immediately started taking phone calls from media wanting to know if the event is...

Anyone know where/if the Rush Limbaugh speech at yesterday's CPAC is available directly from CPAC/Townhall like the other 75 full-length, uncut speeches they provide? I really don't want to watch this 10-part splce and dice from CNN if it can be avoided. If not, it looks like "someone" (I wonder who) cut a deal with CNN.

A federal appeals court yesterday blocked the transfer to the United States of a small band of Chinese Muslims held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The decision by a three-judge panel reversed a lower court ruling that ordered the government to release the 17 Uighurs and resettle them with Uighur families in the Washington region. The government no longer considers the Uighurs to be enemy combatants and has been trying to find nations willing to take them in. U.S. authorities do not want to send the men home to China, where they are considered terrorists and...

No, those aren’t giant ants swarming around the Washington Monument all the way up to the U.S. Capitol Building. This is the first satellite image of the inauguration taken at 11:19 AM EST today by the GeoEye-1 satellite. This is the same satellite that supplies Google with images for Google Maps and Google Earth, so we may see this image show up there one day as well. All those clumps of people in between the Washington Monument and the Capitol are clustered around Jumbotron screens. The image was taken from 423 miles in space and shows objects as small as...

Terrorists may've filmed 26/11 carnage by Baljeet Parmar Monday, January 19, 2009 4:20 IST Mumbai: Eyewitness accounts of some survivors from Hotel Trident and the discovery of a sophisticated video camera from a room in Hotel Taj have raised questions over whether the carnage unleashed by terrorists on November 26, 2008 was recorded. It is feared that some people sympathetic to the terrorists' cause may have prepared live videos of the attack at the hotels. At least two survivors of the Trident attack who feigned death to save themselves have told a foreign publication that they saw two people focusing...