Free Republic

OK, now things are getting weird. This Reuters photograph shows blatant evidence of manipulation. Notice the repeating patterns in the smoke; this is almost certainly caused by using the Photoshop “clone” tool to add more smoke to the image. (Hat tip: Mike.) It’s so incredibly obvious, it reminds me of the faked CBS memos. Smoke simply does not contain repeating symmetrical patterns like this, and you can see the repetition in both plumes of smoke. There’s really no question about it. But it’s not only the plumes of smoke that were “enhanced.” There are also cloned buildings. (See below.) [More...

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh is scheduled to visit the United States in November for a round of meetings with President Bush and other high ranking US officials. As the representative of the Yemeni people, Saleh deserves a great deal of respect and hospitality. Yet it has become increasingly apparent that the regime, under the total domination of President Saleh, is engaged in a wide variety of criminal activities to the detriment of regional stability and the Yemeni people themselves. Drug Smuggling: One regionally destabilizing regime activity is drug smuggling. A variety of illegal drugs are smuggled via the Indian...

The Chronicle of Higher Education yesterday published a story on Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers. It spoke of her “playing a key role” in the late 1990s in establishing the Louise B. Raggio lectureship at Southern Methodist University, Miss Miers’ alma mater. The article says Miss Miers “pushed for the creation” of the Raggio speakers’ series. The Raggio lectureship brought an apparently unbroken string of pro-abortion speakers to the university’s Dallas campus. Among those tapped to enlighten young law students were Gloria Steinem, founder of Ms. Magazine and a veteran campaigner for liberal abortion laws. Also holding forth were Congresswoman...

Part of an email I received yesterday from a USMC Master Gunnery Sergeant, serving in Iraq: I think you would be amazed at the morale of the young military people here. I know I am. I’ve been in for over 28 years and I have seen good and bad. These youngsters are getting the job done in a way I would never have imagined. They go on convoys, get shot at or have IEDs go off, then they return still in high spirits. The trick here is to convince the bad guys they have been beat. The idiots at the...