Free Republic

Paralyzed veteran Tomas Young, an outspoken critic of the Iraq war, wrote what he said was his final letter to former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney before he dies in hospice. In an interview with Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges, Young said he had made a decision to go into hospice care, to stop feeding and fade away, "instead of committing the conventional suicide." Normally, to enter hospice care a physician must determine that an individual has less than six months to live. Then 22, Young was wounded in Sadr City in April 2004, only five days...

"It's the first time anyone actually gave a dollar amount regarding the Rush Limbaugh Sandra Fluke incident. Monday evening Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey said the advertiser boycott cost his company "a couple million" dollars in ad revenue in the first quarter and "a couple million" in the second quarter. He said things look like they will be back to normal in June. Cumulus carries Rush Limbaugh 38 markets and blames 1% of the 3.5% drop in revenue for the quarter on the Rush boycott. Dickey said Cumulus was "hit pretty hard by this."

"The Brooklyn Museum will retain a controversial video featuring ants crawling on a crucifix as part of a larger show on American portrait art that opens Nov. "

WIESBADEN, Germany — Overseas military customers ordering gifts online from certain retailers might get an unpleasant surprise when shipping and handling fees are tacked on at the end of the purchase. Those same customers might be most surprised to find that retail giant Walmart had the biggest markup. On a $120 purchase, Walmart.com charged $10.35 to ship to an APO address, compared with $2.10 to a stateside address. For most items, Amazon.com charged the same to ship to an APO address as a stateside address. And Target offered shipping on a $120 purchase to an APO address for less than...

TERRORISTS FREE TO KILL ONCE AGAIN AS THEY SLIP THE GRASP OF GITMO'S KID GLOVES. The Pentagon now confirms that at least 74 former Guantanamo detainees have resumed terrorist activities after claiming they weren't terrorists. Such recidivism points up an alarming intelligence failure. These dangerous prisoners should never have been cleared for release. Why did interrogators fail to find the cracks in their stories and alibis? Why wasn't more intelligence gathered to predict they'd rejoin al Qaeda or the Taliban? In a word, politics. Gitmo interrogations have been emasculated to placate critics of waterboarding and other "torture," say two senior...

Obamas may come out of woodwork: Just days before the election, the media focused briefly on the news that Barack Obama's paternal aunt was living illegally in public housing in Boston. While the story didn’t get much traction, it offered a glimpse of things to come: With the spotlight shining so hard on the next president, distant family members are likely to get caught up in the glare. The Obama family tree, by contrast, is a veritable ancestral Banyan, with roots and branches extending to four continents. There are many half-siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles. That means there may be...

LOS ANGELES (March 21) - After serving six years in prison for trying to bomb police cars in the 1970s, former Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson has been released on parole and reunited with the family she hid with for years. Olson, 61, formerly known as Kathleen Soliah, walked out of the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla on Monday, state Department of Corrections spokesman Bill Sessa said. In 2001, Olson pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 14 years in prison for attempting to bomb Los Angeles police cars in 1975 with the SLA, the urban guerrilla group...

Comments 1 Bureau of Economic Analysis 2 Department of Treasury 3 Congressional Budget Office 4 Bureau of Labor Statistics 5 United States Census Bureau 6 United States Census Bureau 7 Kaiser Study of Employer Health Care Benefits 8 United States Census Bureau 9 Energy Information Administration 10 Higher Education Coordinating Board of Washington State 11 Bureau of Economic Analysis 12 Insurance Information Institute 13 United States Census Bureau 14 OANDA.com: The Currency Website 15 Speaker of the House Fact Sheet, 11/29/07 16 Energy Information Administration 17 Testimony of Andrew Kohut; President, Pew Research Center; 3/17/07

By Larry Elder Feb 16, 2006 The "funeral" of Coretta Scott King turned into an ugly, disrespectful political rally.   Rev. Joseph Lowery, co-founder -- along with Martin Luther King Jr. -- of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, castigated President George W. Bush for insufficient disaster relief, failing to provide health care and failing to cure poverty. "We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there," said Lowery. "But Coretta knew and we know that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war, billions more, but no more for...

Multibillionaire commodities king Bruce Kovner is the patron saint of the neoconservatives, the new Lincoln Center's crucial Medici, owner of a vast Fifth Avenue mansion and the most powerful New Yorker you've never heard of. If no one knows anything about Bruce Kovner, it is because he likes it that way. Yet the unassuming manner is camouflage for one of the most powerful people in the country, culturally, financially, and politically. Kovner, 60 years old and divorced, manages the largest hedge fund in the world and every year ratchets higher on the Forbes list of the richest Americans (most recently,...

Veterans who volunteer at Riverside National Cemetery have written a letter to President Bush and other politicians decrying a policy that requires maintenance workers to pull up and burn flags planted by graves. For the past four months, flags have been removed by maintenance workers who burn them under order of the cemetery's new director, the veterans said. "This is a veterans cemetery," said Bob Markham, 73, of Redlands, a volunteer who spent 22 years in the Air Force. "If you can't put a flag on a veteran's grave here, where can you? These young kids were killed defending our...

The rule of law--it's what America is based on. We have very specific rules in this country designed to promote the general welfare and protect the citizenry, and if we don't obey those laws, we are punished. That's the way it's supposed to work. Judge Roy Moore did not obey the law. He defied a Federal court order to remove a statue of The Ten Commandments he had placed in the courthouse where he worked as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. So his fellow justices fired him as they should have. Hundreds of newspapers across the country applauded...

"Six out of the top ten nonfiction hardcover books on the current New York Times bestsellers list* are political commentaries. Which would you most like to read?"