Free Republic

Two days after Christmas last year, Rep. Bill Owens, D-N.Y., and his wife, Jane, boarded a first-class flight to Taiwan for a four-day tour of the island. Owens and his wife roomed at $500-a-night luxury hotels and enjoyed fine meals between meetings with Taiwanese officials and a day trip to Taipei’s famed National Palace Museum. Interactive Timeline How Lobbyists Arranged Rep. Bill Owens’ Trip to Taiwan The Chinese Culture University in Taiwan had ostensibly invited the congressman and his wife “to promote international cultural exchange.” In fact, lobbyists for Taiwan’s government had organized the trip. Congressional ethics rules prohibit members...

The central Republican message of the Obama era is that these are, at least potentially, the end times. Polls show that a significant percentage of the GOP's base believes fairly out-there stuff about the world we live in. President Obama himself may well be a foreign-born Manchurian candidate, hell-bent on destroying the American capitalist way of life. Or so the far Right would have you believe. But even mainstream conservatives espouse a remarkable range of ideas about the fiscal cliff that we are perched upon as the Federal deficit surges, with some claiming that we are close to a Greece-style...

PLATTSBURGH -- After hearing overwhelming support for a resolution opposed to war in Iran, Plattsburgh city councilors agreed to send a message. ... The council voted unanimously to support Provost's resolution calling for all diplomatic efforts to be exhausted before entering into war with Iran. The measure was altered somewhat as a compromise. Taken out were specific paragraphs that directly criticized President George W. Bush, accused the administration of lying, pointed out the number of soldiers and people killed and wounded in the war with Iraq, and the cost of the war. Councilor William Provost (D-Ward 6) "That was democracy...

Some of my readers might notice the news sidebar on this site. That’s the place where I tag news items of interest as deemed by me, The Editor. Never one to hold out on another Adirondacker, especially one of the few really good bloggers in our area, my technique was shared with the Almanack. I suppose the definition of what is “Adirondack” news can be loose and free, even I stray occasionally. OK, so I tagged an article about the Canadian forces surrounding a group of Taliban in Afghanistan. With the obvious mainstream media bias, good news from our conflict...

OAXACA, Mexico (AFP) - Mexico demanded that protesters in the southern city of Oaxaca immediately lift barricades and evacuate occupied buildings, as federal forces massed for possible action. Some 70,000 Oaxaca teachers and supporters have been on strike in the city for five months demanding higher pay and the resignation of the state governor. A statement from the Mexican interior ministry demanded "the immediate handover of the streets, plazas, public buildings and private property" taken over by protesters. President Vicente Fox ordered federal police to Oaxaca on Saturday after a US cameraman for the Indymedia independent media website and two...

<p>OAXACA, Mexico -- A teacher was hacked to death in this historic Mexican city that has been paralyzed for months by protests and violence, police said late Thursday. A colleague claimed the man was killed for opposing a teachers' strike. Thousands of trade unionists and leftists have been camped out in Oaxaca since May, building barricades, taking over buildings and burning buses. The protesters are demanding the resignation of Oaxaca Gov. Ulises Ruiz, accusing him of rigging the 2004 election to win office and sending armed thugs against dissenters. Victor Alonso Altamirano of the Oaxaca state police said teacher Jaime Rene Calva Aragon was on his way to a meeting Thursday evening when he was killed by two assailants wielding hefty ice picks. Fellow teacher Alma Rosa Fernandez accused militant leftists of killing Calva for opposing a statewide teachers' strike that was a catalyst for the wider protests.</p>

Translated by Mark: Daniel Nieto Ovando, 24 and father of 3 children ages 5, 2 and 1, literaly lost his head when he hit a wire strung across a street in the Volcanes colonia which is just to the north of Colonia Reforma. According to neighbors, this blockade had been erected only the night before so that Nieto Ovando would not have known about its danger. The young dairy worker was on his way home from work at about 3:00 this morning on his motorcycle when he hit the wire, decapitating him and killing him instantly. The "guardians" of the...

Original in Spanish.

If a U.S. attempt to kill Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's second in command, was indeed a failure last week, it could prove a costly one. In human terms alone, the price was high. Local reports say 18 people, mostly women and children, were killed by the CIA-directed missile strike on the village of Damadola, close to Pakistan's northwest border. U.S. officials say al-Zawahiri was the intended target. DNA tests on the victims will determine whether al-Zawahiri was among the dead, but at week's end Pakistani officials were saying he had not even been in the village. An Arabic TV station, quoting...

Burlington, Vermont -- January 4, 2005 There was outrage Wednesday when a Vermont judge handed out a 60-day jail sentence to a man who raped a little girl many,many times over a four-year span starting when she was seven. The judge said he no longer believes in punishment and is more concerned about rehabilitation. Prosecutors argued that confessed child-rapist Mark Hulett, 34, of Williston deserved at least eight years behind bars for repeatedly raping a littler girl countless times starting when she was seven. But Judge Edward Cashman disagreed explaining that he no longer believes that punishment works. "The one...

It started with the shooting Friday night of a New York State trooper near Plattsburgh. When an alert was sent to Canadian customs agents in Quebec warning of an "armed and dangerous" suspect, some 50 employees walked off the job for four hours at about 15 of 44 border crossings just before 9 a.m. yesterday. The result was long lines for Canada-bound traffic of up to 90 minutes at St. Bernard de Lacolle, the busiest crossing in the province, officials reported. It took management staff at the checkpoints about two hours to clear the backlog and process waiting cars, said...

MADRID One year after the worst terrorist attack in Spanish history, the Spanish police continue to uncover and thwart new plots involving Islamic militants... Despite sweeping measures to improve their ability to investigate potential terrorist threats since the March 11, 2004, bomb attacks that left 191 train victims and a policeman dead, ...there are hundreds of people scattered in cells around the country committed to attacking centers of power in Spain. "We have been lucky that our investigations have managed to abort other plots before acts of terrorism took place," Juan Fernando López Aguilar, the justice minister, said in an...

MONTPELIER, Vt. -- More than a year after the collapse of his presidential campaign, the fight over public access to Howard Dean's gubernatorial records goes before the state's high court next week. The state is appealing a ruling from Superior Court Judge Alan Cook in February of last year saying that 86 boxes of records sealed by Dean when he left office in 2003 are presumed to be open. Cook ordered that Dean and the state had to identify each of the hundreds of thousands of documents in the boxes and say why each should be covered by executive privilege....