Free Republic

Georgia’s army was in complete disarray tonight after troops and tanks fled the city of Gori in panic and abandoned it to the Russians without firing a shot. As Russian armoured columns rolled deep into central and western Georgia, seizing several towns and a military base, President Saakashvili said his country had been cut in half. For the first time since the crisis erupted last Thursday, Russia admitted that its troops had moved out of Abkhazia, the other breakaway region under Moscow’s protection, and seized the town of Senaki in Georgia proper.

I hope this is ok to post here. I am trying to find some information for my husband on something we got when his father passed away a couple of years ago. It is clearly a blood chit from pictures I've seen online, but it doesn't really look just like the ones I can find online. It has only an American flag on it, with characters (beats me if they are Chinese or Korean, he flew over both during his career as a marine pilot). I would love to be able to translate it, as we plan to frame it...

Can anyone recommend good neighborhoods in Houston Texas that are not a nightmare commute to downtown?

<p>A Northwest Airlines flight bound for Memphis was forced to return to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Wednesday because of a bomb threat, though authorities did not believe the bomb was on board the plane, an airport spokeswoman said.</p> <p>Airport police were questioning a man who told a gate agent there was a bomb on Northwest Flight 980 shortly after the plane left Seattle around 12:33 p.m., airport spokeswoman Terri-Ann Betancourt said.</p>

State Rep. Avon Wilson died Monday at her Roswell home after a long battle with cancer. She was 76. Wilson, a retired school teacher and former director the Adult Basic Education Program at Eastern New Mexico University-Roswell, had represented District 59 in the New Mexico House since 2000. The district includes part of Roswell. She was a member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Labor and Human Resources Committee. Wilson, a Republican, also served on the Welfare Reform Oversight Committee, which meets between sessions. Throughout her illness, said State Rep. Dan Foley, R-Roswell, Wilson would ask about...

HOMESTEAD -- Illegal immigrants and their allies in Florida gathered Monday at marches, prayers and demonstrations on a planned national day of economic protest, boycotting work, school and shopping to show their importance to the country. At the state's first event of the day, police estimated that about 1,200 people marched in the rural city of Homestead, home to one the state's largest Mexican immigrant populations and many major growers of fruits, vegetables and nursery plants. Protesters waved Mexican, U.S. and Central American flags, recited the pledge of allegiance in English and held a moment of silence for those who...

NOGALES, Mexico -- Swaddled in dirt in the inky night, the newborn trembled as a stranger struggled to snip her umbilical cord with nail clippers. A smuggler and other migrants had bolted when the baby's 18-year-old mother screamed with labor pains.

I have never done this before, but I know that prayer is powerful, and I would like to ask everyone who will to pray for my father in law. He is a wonderful man, a retired Marine pilot, and rancher and has been like a father to me. Right now he is in the hospital after suffering a heart attack, and it seems that every time things look good, something goes wrong (congestive heart failure, probably from a drug given in the ER and then 2 stents failing). It has been like a rollercoaster the past week and a half....

Scholars say Matos is part of a growing number of Latin women converting to Islam for its emphasis on family, piety and clearly defined women's roles, values converts say were once integral to Hispanic culture but have waned after years of assimilation. The women are among 40,000 Hispanic converts to Islam in the United States, according to the Islamic Society of North America.

Let's be good cosmopolitans and offer sociological explanations rather than moral judgments about students having sex during the day in high schools, as The Post reported. Sociology discerns connections, and there may be one between the fact that teenagers are relaxing from academic rigors by enjoying sex in the school auditorium and the fact that Americans soon will be able to watch pornography and prime-time television programs such as "Desperate Housewives" — and, for the high-minded, C-SPAN — on their cell phones and video iPods in public.

I hope this ok to post, and I hope I put it under the right category. This slideshow is fascinating, but long. However, it's worth going through and reading all of the commentary by this resident of the French Quarter who stayed for Katrina. His view of reporters is especially interesting.