Free Republic

In his speech in Constitution Hall this week, former Vice President and renewable energy investor Al Gore extolled a stretch goal challenging America to achieve 100% renewable power within 10 years. The quote: "Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years." And my favorite part: "When President John F. Kennedy challenged our nation to land a man on the moon and bring him back safely in 10 years, many people doubted we could accomplish that goal. But 8 years and 2 months later,...

Home inkjet printers and their ilk have for a while now embodied the best and worst of the technological state of the union, as it were. Simply put, they are mainstream products with incredibly high-end engineering, but also represent a ludicrously false economy in the worst way. And for a decade, printer companies having been laughing all the way to the bank at our expense.

Canadian dependence on the United States is particularly true in health care, the most eminent Canadian idea looming in the American context. That is, public health care in Canada depends on private health care in the U.S. A small news story from last month illustrates this: A Canadian woman has given birth to extremely rare identical quadruplets. The four girls were born at a U.S. hospital because there was no space available at Canadian neonatal intensive care units. Autumn, Brook, Calissa, and Dahlia are in good condition at Benefice Hospital in Great Falls, Montana. Health officials said they checked every...

News that attendees at a U.S. hacking conference have seen a demonstration of how to clone a digital passport has raised fresh concerns about the security of proposed new forms of ID and travel documents in the U.K. A security researcher called Lukas Grunwald showed attendees at the Black Hat convention in Las Vegas how to clone passports, using a German passport for his demonstration. However, standardization across ePassports means the exploit would work on any other passport that uses RFID chip technology to store details of the individual--such as those now being issued in the U.K. or U.S. The...

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist died Saturday evening of cancer, ending a 33-year Supreme Court career during which he oversaw the court's conservative shift, presided over an impeachment trial and helped decide a presidential election. His death creates a rare second vacancy on the nation's highest court. Rehnquist, 80, was surrounded by his three children when he died at his home in suburban Arlington. His wife died in 1991. ''The Chief Justice battled thyroid cancer since being diagnosed last October and continued to perform his duties on the court until a precipitous decline in his health the last couple of...

Second Lt. Ilario Pantano announced his resignation from the Marine Corps yesterday, a week after he was cleared of charges of murdering two Iraqi insurgents in the "triangle of death" south of Baghdad. [....] [....]Lt. Pantano is giving up a commission that had become one of the many symbols of patriotic duty in America. The Corps does not usually accept 31-year-old officer candidates, but the Manhattan native was determined to rejoin the Corps after al Qaeda's September 11 attacks. He talked his way back in, excelled at infantry training and won command of a 35-man platoon that went to Iraq...

Soaring oil prices -- crude is more than $55 a barrel and unleaded gasoline more than $2 a gallon -- are not much of an economic or political issue. Yet. In absolute terms, today's prices are still half of the 1970s peaks, and the U.S. economy depends much less on petroleum than then. (Computers run on electricity, not gasoline.) But imagine what would happen if al Qaeda hit the giant Ras Tanura terminal in Saudi Arabia, where a tenth of global oil supplies are processed every day. Prices could soar past $100 a barrel, and the U.S. economy could go...

Many Microsoft Windows users who downloaded the recently released AntiSpyware program from Microsoft, or had it installed through an automatic Windows update, woke up to a surprise. Unintentionally, the heuristics of the software detected Internet Explorer as spyware, and removed the program from their systems. AntiSpywareMicrosoft has pulled the program from its website until the problem can be corrected. Elias Weatherbee, a Microsoft representative, said the program was "only in beta" and that "a fix was forthcoming." "It shows how powerful our AntiSpyware program is," said Weatherbee. "Not only is it able to remove spyware from the system, but also...

Some people are very upset that a bookstore in Arizona is selling a book called Grand Canyon: A Different View. The bookstore is operated by the National Park Service, you see, and the different view presented in the book is that the mighty gorge came about as the result of the flood. You know, The Flood. The one starring Noah. Thus has censorship come full cycle from the days of John Scopes.

Pinellas Pasco, Group 18, Judicial Candidate George Greer uses a previous quote as if current by the former Florida Supreme Court's Chief Justice Harry Lee Anstead as a political endorsement of himself, in a recent "numbering in the thousands" absentee ballot mailer. The quote says: "Only those judges who have demonstrated the highest judicial competence and personal character can receive this award, and you have distinguished yourself among the judiciary by having been selected twice to receive this honor ... You are truly a credit to the judicial branch." Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Harry Lee Anstead At the request...

There are an estimated one million porn sites on the Internet, and most of them are easy to find. “Basically, if you want to see it, you can,” said Mark, 17. And many porn sites are hardcore. “Very vulgar, lewd type of material,” said Jeremy, 19. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 70 percent of 15- to 17-year-old males have visited a pornographic website. Another survey found that among 16- and 17-year-olds, four percent visit porn sites regularly. “I’m hanging around kids my age, and they all pretty much get their fair share of that stuff I would say daily,”...

When Donald Trump writes his next book, he'll have plenty of expertise in how to write Chapter 11. Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, the company that controls the real estate mogul's casinos, said yesterday that it plans to seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The move all but wipes out existing shareholders who already endured a 99 percent drop in the stock's value. Trump Stays Meanwhile, Trump keeps his job as CEO at the ailing company, which has paid him US$1.5 million in salary for at least the past three years. And the company, which has lost money for the 10...