Free Republic

She hasn't even officially announced her presidential campaign yet, but already Rep. Michele Bachmann is virtually tied with Mitt Romney in the 2012 Iowa caucus polling season. In the first summer poll, published just minutes ago, the Minnesota congresswoman who was born in Iowa has 22% to Romney's 23% lead in the still developing field of Republican presidential prospects, according to the closely-watched Des Moines Register Iowa Poll. Business executive and tea party favorite Herman Cain finished well behind with 10% in the poll. No other Republican attracted double-digit support. The former governor from next door Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty, lags...

HE EU was under fire last night for seeking a ban on plastic shopping bags to fight pollution. Shops in Britain could be outlawed from stocking them, or alternatively there might be a new tax to dramatically reduce their use. But angry retailers say any move would hit sales, while doing nothing to save the environment. Richard Dodd of the British Retail Consortium said yesterday: “A Europe-wide ban on bags is unnecessary. It is likely to alienate customers from the green agenda, which is the opposite of what the European Union is trying to do. It is not appropriate for...

US conservative standard bearer Sarah Palin has accused critics of unfairly singling her out, after a slip of the tongue rekindled questions about her credibility. After mistakenly urging radio listeners to "stand with our North Korean allies," the Alaskan, who looks increasingly likely to run for the White House in 2012, protested that President Barack Obama had made similar slips and not been singled out. "They couldn't resist the temptation to turn a simple one word slip-of-the-tongue of mine into a major political headline," Palin wrote on her Facebook page late Thursday. The former governor pointed to instances in which...

I was checking around online to find a convenient place nearby to get an annual flu shot, as is my habit, but so far, every place offering shots this year I have gone to is stating something along the lines of this: "The H1N1 component is included in this year's Seasonal Influenza Immunization." They don't offer a "plain vanilla" flu shot, so to speak, that is, a regular flu shot, WITHOUT any H1N1. If I am unable to find a flu shot offered without H1N1 included, then I will be skipping it this year. My wife is a health care...

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Google, perhaps the most recognizable name in technology, has begun its battle for perhaps the most indispensable piece of technology in most of our everyday lives. Cell phone manufacturer HTC's G1, the first Google phone, is now officially on sale at T-Mobile stores. While there weren't day-long, around-the-corner-type lines for the retail launch like there were for the iPhone, there were still plenty of folks nationwide waiting in the cold for at least a few hours to get their hands on one. "I'm not going to charge it," one buyer said. "I'm just going to rip it open, play with...

Toyota Motor slashed its profit forecast Thursday, warning the global auto industry faces an "unprecedented" crisis as Asian stocks tumbled on fears the US is sinking deeper towards recession. The Japanese giant became the latest automaker to reveal plunging profits due to the financial crisis, following on the heels of BMW, Nissan and Honda. Toyota , vying with General Motors for the title of the world's top automaker, cut its annual profit forecast by more than half after a terrible year so far. It now expects a 68 percent plunge in net profit to 550 billion yen (5.6 billion dollars)...

Someone floated the idea and they all went with it. But once in the water, trying to swim a few lengths was suddenly out of the question. In fact, there was treading room only when thousands of swimmers crowded into a pool in Penglai in Sichuan, western China. Families are gradually returning to the area after May's devastating earthquake-In one of the world's most populous countries, the fact there was no elbow room in the pool was not going to stop the fun. The resort has become popular with China's rising middle class who take day-trips to the scenic spot....

PSYCHIATRISTS have detected the first case of "climate change delusion" - and they haven't even yet got to Kevin Rudd and his global warming guru. Writing in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Joshua Wolf and Robert Salo of our Royal Children's Hospital say this delusion was a "previously unreported phenomenon". "A 17-year-old man was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne with an eight-month history of depressed mood . . . He also . . . had visions of apocalyptic events." (So have Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery, Profit of Doom Al...

Imagine what life would be like floating around the world on a giant island capable of holding 50,000 people and completely sustaining itself. Well, welcome to "Lilypad City." Designed like a lily pad, the innovation by award-winning Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut could be used as a permanent refuge for those whose homes have been covered by water in the future. "I think trying to accommodate the millions of people left homeless by environmental changes will prove to be one of the great challenges of the 21st century," he told the Daily Mail. "Some countries spend billions of pounds working on...

A year ago, Justin revealed his fear of heights and told us about Kent Couch who has a thing for tying helium balloons to a lawn chair so he can float across the sky. Last year, he made it 193 miles before landing in sagebrush in eastern Oregon. Couch will be at it again tomorrow. This time he wants to fly from Oregon to Boise, Idaho. That's 300 miles. To do this feat, he's attaching 150 latex party balloons to his new lawn chair. This feat is not easy on lawn chairs, so both times Couch has done this, he's...

With the blankest of blank expressions on their faces, these mysterious figures have been popping up in the most unlikely of places. The faceless mutants have a penchant for A-list celebrity bashes and have been spotted at Elton John's White tie ball and Harrods summer sale, opened by Sex and the City star Kim Cattrall. With a membrane of skin stretched tightly over their eyes, noses and mouths, the alien-like figures were most recently snapped 'watching' a match perched on Murray Mount at Wimbledon. Close inspection of the pictures rules out an alien invasion - small perforations around the eye...

General Motors is considering a new Chevrolet mini car for the United States as it reworks its product lineup to cope with a dramatic consumer shift to more fuel efficient vehicles, a spokesman said. GM spokesman Dee Allen said bringing the Chevrolet Beat to the U.S. market is among the options the company is studying. About the size of a Honda Fit or Toyota Yaris, the Beat is a front-wheel-drive, three-door hatchback. The Beat, to be built in South Korea, will be rolled out in other global markets faster than it would in the United States, Allen said. The car...

A gas used in the making of flat screen televisions, nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), is being blamed for damaging the atmosphere and accelerating global warming. Almost half of the televisions sold around the globe so far this year have been plasma or LCD TVs. But this boom could be coming at a huge environmental cost. The gas, widely used in the manufacture of flat screen TVs, is estimated to be 17,000 times as powerful as carbon dioxide. Ironically, NF3 is not covered by the Kyoto protocol as it was only produced in tiny amounts when the treaty was signed in 1997....

Sexy CBS siren Lara Logan spent her days covering the heat of the Iraq war - but that was nothing compared to the heat of her nights. The "60 Minutes" reporter and former swimsuit model apparently courted two beaus while she was in Baghdad, and has been labeled a homewrecker for allegedly destroying the marriage of a civilian contractor there, sources said. Passions got so hot in the combat zone that one of her lovers, Joe Burkett, brawled in a Baghdad "safe house" with her other paramour, CNN war reporter Michael Ware, a source said. The wife of Burkett, a...

Two U.S. senators called on U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to back off its assertion that it can search laptops and other electronic devices owned by U.S. citizens returning to the country without the need for reasonable suspicion of a crime or probable cause. Senators Russell Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, and Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, both urged CBP to reconsider its policy that apparently has lead to frequent searches of laptops, digital cameras and handheld devices at borders. "If you asked [U.S. residents] whether the government has a right to open their laptops, read their documents and e-mails,...

White House officials signaled to influential conservatives this weekend that Michael B. Mukasey, a nominee of President Ronald Reagan who is the former chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, is the likely choice to replace Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, several Republicans close to the process told The Politico. "It came down to confirmability," said a former Justice Department official close to the conversations. Democrats and liberals are expected to view the choice as conciliatory, the Republicans said. Conservatives had been rooting for former Solicitor General Theodore B. (Ted) Olson, but Senator Majority...

NEW YORK (AP) - If you're looking for a Manhattan apartment, be prepared to shell out about $2,000 a month—unless, of course, you'd like a bedroom to go with it. Studio apartments in New York's most expensive borough went for an average of $1,995 a month last year, according to an analysis released Friday by Citi Habitats, a Manhattan rental brokerage firm. That's up from $1,659 in 2002. The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment shot up to $2,737, compared to $2,227 in 2002, and two-bedroom apartments climbed to $3,893, from $3,198 in 2002. Three-bedroom apartments saw the largest percentage...

LONDON (AFP) - A female Muslim juror has been arrested in Britain after allegedly listening to an MP3 player under her hijab headscarf during a murder trial, police said Monday. The woman in her early 20s was spotted by a fellow juror listening to music as she was meant to be helping try the case of a pensioner accused of bludgeoning his wife to death after 50 years of marriage. She could now be charged with contempt of court and, if convicted, may be punished with an indefinite jail sentence and an unlimited fine. Details emerged after the defendant was...