Free Republic

The world's tiniest surviving baby made her public debut at a US hospital, a wrinkled, but perfectly formed three-month-old who was the size of a cell phone at birth. Rumaisa Rahman weighed in at just .24 kilos (8.6 ounces) when she was delivered September 19 -- 36 grams (1.3 ounces) lighter than the previous record holder. Doctors said they waited to announce the record-setting birth of Rumaisa and her slightly larger twin until the newborns were nearly ready to leave the hospital, and until after it was clear they were healthy. The infant was delivered 15 weeks before her due...

James Brown, the "Godfather of Soul" and a legend in rap, rock and funk, has announced that he has prostate cancer. AP Photo Reuters Slideshow: James Brown In a statement released to The Associated Press on Friday morning, Brown, 71, said that he will undergo surgery for the ailment on Dec. 15. "I have overcome a lot of things in my life. I will overcome this as well," Brown said. Brown, best known for seminal hits like "I Feel Good," "Please, Please, Please," and "Cold Sweat," is also a diabetic. Dubbed the hardest working man in show business, he just...

Her voice was distinctive but could it be that this was actually Hillary Rodham Clinton expressing her point of view on the radio station of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation? KILI-FM scored a coup on November 2, 2004 that most radio stations would die for. On the same day former president Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson, and Senator Ted Kennedy graced the airwaves on this tiny, reservation radio station. All of the on air personalities encouraged the voters of the reservation to turn out and vote for Tom Daschle. Their plea was strong and did cause a record turnout for a...

The most stirring democratic event since the transformations after the fall of the Berlin Wall is occurring now in Kiev's Maidan Square. "Maidan" is Ukrainian for "independence." This is the Orange Revolution, which the whole world has witnessed and, more importantly, adopted. Western European governments support the claims of the opposition, editorialists applaud their aspirations to join the ranks of free, self-determined people. Will they now do the same come January 30 for the people of Iraq? Ukraine's experience has become a democratic benchmark. By briefly overlaying Iraq on Ukraine, we may better understand Iraq's prospects. Vladimir Putin last week...

We have been writing lately about Republicans. Let's pay some attention to Hillary Clinton, just for fun. I wrote a book about her more than four years ago. The idea came from a friend, a bright former-Republican-now-Democrat who thought my Wall Street Journal pieces on Mrs. Clinton's looming senatorial candidacy could be turned into something longer that made the case against her. I immediately thought: Yes, that could make a difference. I went to my publisher, who agreed, and I hit it hard, speaking to Mrs. Clinton's friends and enemies, scouring the record. What I concluded was that Mrs. Clinton...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In wine, the experts say, vintage is everything. If that's the case, 2004 has turned out to be a very bad year for the United Nations. But the United Nations' vinegar may yet prove to be a very good thing for the rest of us -- particularly if the decision is made to break open the casks, pour out the putrid contents and start over. For adherents of "internationalism" and "collective security" at the United Nations, 2004 has been a tough year. The "Oil-for-Food" scandal, a story that first broke on Fox News, now has "legs" of...

The tough questions directed at Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld regarding armored vehicles were apparently fed to several soldiers by an embedded reporter from the Chattanooga Times Free Press. The reporter set off a firestorm when one of those soldiers was called on to address Sec. Rumsfeld in Kuwait Wednesday at a townhall meeting. SPC Thomas Wilson of the 278th of the Tennessee National Guard, now stationed in Kuwait but destined for duty in Iraq, asked, "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?" The...

With less than two weeks until the presidential election, recent polls taken in key battleground states indicate that the list of undecided states has been shortened to only six. A composite of state polls shows Kerry with razor thin edges in New Hampshire, New Mexico, Iowa, and Ohio. Bush holds similarly slim leads in Florida and Wisconsin. All of the other highly contested states have sizable leads for either President George W. Bush or his Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry and appear to be secure. However, a late surge by one candidate in any of these fringe battleground states could...

A bull moose was suspended 50 feet in the air after its antlers became tangled in a power line under construction southeast of Fairbanks. The incident happened on October 5 on the Pogo Mine Road. The moose apparently became tangled in electrical wires while the line, under construction to the Teck Pogo gold mine about 80 miles southeast of Fairbanks, was close to the ground. Workers noticed something wrong after tightening the line, and backtracked to find the moose hanging by its antlers. The moose was alive when it was lowered to the ground, but Department of Fish and Game...

Japan's patent office has blocked a company from making "pachinko" pinball machines named after Adolf Hitler, Moses and other historical figures, officials said Wednesday. Fuji Shoji Co., based in Osaka, submitted the names of 34 well-known people, including the Wright Brothers and Tchaikovsky, for trademarks on their garish, upright pinball machines. The Patent Office rejected the applications in May, Fuji said, but word of the decision was first publicized in Japan this week. The office is barred from granting trademarks that may disrupt public order and morals, a patent official said. He refused to provide further details. Kyodo News agency...

- Voters unable to decide between the presidential contenders on their political merits now have another criterion -- their musical tastes. The website Bluebeat.com is holding an online "election" pitting the musical choices of Democratic contender John Kerry against those of Republican incumbent George W. Bush. Listeners vote by opting online for the musical playlist they prefer. The website lists Bush's favorite song as "Wake Up Little Susie" by The Everly Brothers. Kerry's favorite is Bruce Springsteen's "No Surrender", it added. The partisan playlists contain candidate favorites, as well as dozens of tracks by Democratic-leaning performers (the Dixie Chicks (news...

Ann Coulter’s new release, How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to Ann Coulter, is a thorough compendium of newspaper columns and magazine articles written by one of America’s most famous politicos. The individual pieces are grouped thematically with headings like “This is War, Barbra Streisand Feels Your Pain (According to Her Publicist)” and “Give Us Twenty-two Minutes, We’ll Give Up the Country.” Many of the columns have been reworked or published without their original third party editing. The combination of unreleased material alongside greatest hit makes “Coulterpalooza” an ideal way to describe it. 1...

Jobs and health care will be key topics Thursday as President Bush and Sen. John Kerry focus their efforts on three showdown states. Kerry begins his day hunting geese in Ohio followed by a rally in Columbus. (Kerry targets Ohio geese, voters) He then makes his seventh visit this year to Minneapolis, considered vote-rich Democratic territory. While Kerry campaigns in the Midwest, Bush returns to Pennsylvania with stops in Downington and Hershey. (CNN.com's Candidate Tracker) Kerry will deliver a speech on science and technology, with an economic twist, arguing that expanding stem-cell research would make the United States more competitive...

Students on a campus tour stared at the line of bras, panties and boxers hanging from trees and windows. “Its not everyday you see underwear hanging,” Jonathan Rodriguez said. “Either it’s something big or the dryer broke.” Residents of Brazos Hall donated underwear to hang on the walls and trees outside the dorm in an attempt to heighten awareness for breast and testicular cancers. For the third year in a row, the undergarments, better known as the bra bridge, serve as an eye catcher for a greater cause during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Along with the bra bridge, Brazos House...

The following guest editorial was written by Maureen K. Bailey, a public policy analyst with the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Columnist Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe recently took aim at Catholic health care providers — and at laws that protect them from forced participation in abortion. She attacks "the 'conscience clauses' being pushed to let healthcare workers and whole institutions opt out of providing healthcare, especially reproductive care, on religious grounds." In conclusion Goodman asks: "At some point doesn't religious practice become medical malpractice?" Goodman is practicing some journalistic malpractice of...

The US Supreme Court turned down a key element of a Republican strategy to tighten the party's control of the House of Representatives, possibly setting the stage for bitter litigation over the outcome of congressional elections on November 2. AFP/File Photo The court refused Monday to uphold a Republican-engineered redistricting scheme in the state of Texas that is likely to win the party up to six additional House seats and sent back for review an earlier US federal court ruling that had found it legal. "The judgment is vacated and the cases are remanded to the United States District Court...

Al Gore can't seem to discuss politics these days without letting loose with bitter, mean-spirited, ad hominem attacks on President Bush, as if that were somehow a substitute for rational discussion. In his latest effusion, he talked of Bush's "love of power for its own sake." He said the president had cloaked "an astonishingly selfish and greedy collection of economic and political proposals" in "phony moral authority" and was making a "radical effort to take what rightfully belongs to the American people" and give it to "the wealthy and privileged." He added that whenever Bush sees a little old lady...

Thirteen years after the end of the Cold War the two main candidates for the U.S. presidency agree that the threat of nuclear attack has never been greater. The biggest nuclear shock of 2004 was the discovery of a global black market run by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan that supplied sensitive atomic technology and know-how to Iran, Libya and North Korea -- and possibly other countries. That has made proliferation an important campaign issue of the U.S. campaign, with Democrats and Republicans exchanging verbal blows over who is most fit for the task of confronting rogue nations and preventing...

President Bush and Sen. John Kerry can be grateful that at least one British rock star is keeping his opinions to himself. Unlike Sting - who this week told a German newspaper that Kerry lacks humor but that he would "rather vote for a chimpanzee than Bush" - Mick Jagger believes in letting England's former colony sort out its own affairs. On Monday, when we ran into Jagger at the premiere of "Alfie" (he and Dave Stewart did the soundtrack), we asked if he'd been following the presidential race. "How can you avoid it?" laughed the Rolling Stone, who'd been...

There he goes again. President George W. Bush, having run out of attack slogans, has gone back to the old Republican standby of accusing his opponent, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., of being a liberal. What's wrong with that? It's ironic that the Bush 43 is accusing Kerry of being a "tax-and-spend liberal." This is the same president whose legacy will include a huge budget deficit that will be with us long after he has left office. The attempted demonization of the word "liberal" began with Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign in 1980 and was picked up by George H.W. Bush in...