Free Republic

RUSH: Now, Wall Street Journal today is running a little blurb in their political diary at OpinionJournal.com, and it begins this way: "GOP Senator Trent Lott has been itching for a way to get back into the political limelight ever since his injudicious comments at a birthday party for the late Strom Thurmond cost him the job of majority leader. Senator Ben Nelson is a Democrat from Nebraska who is desperate to assert his independence from the Democratic Party whose nominee only won 33% of the vote in his state, Nebraska, in 2004. Now, together these two guys, these two...

Imagine driving south on Saturday for a perfect spring picnic on Turnagain Arm. Shake off that winter weariness, pack a baguette and a jar of Nutella, and find a quiet overlook where you can toss out a blanket and watch the sun sizzle snow off the mountains. It's a relaxing picture, but there's one more reason to make the trip this weekend. Grab your binoculars, and for goodness' sake, stay out of the water. The new moon is here, and it's bore tide time. Like an army marching 25 miles up Turnagain Arm, the bore tide advances in one cascading...

The family of an Australian man held hostage in Iraq has offered to make a charitable donation to the people of that country in order to secure his release. Douglas Wood is being held by a group known as the Shura Council of the Mujahideen, which has threatened to kill him tomorrow if Australian troops are not withdrawn from Iraq. The Federal Government has made it clear it will not heed the demand. Mr Wood's brother, Malcolm, says the offer of the donation is being carried by Sheikh Taj El-Din Al Hilaly, who left Sydney for Baghdad this afternoon. "We...

A leak of highly radioactive nuclear fuel dissolved in concentrated nitric acid, enough to half fill an Olympic-size swimming pool, has forced the closure of Sellafield's Thorp reprocessing plant. The highly dangerous mixture, containing about 20 tonnes of uranium and plutonium fuel, has leaked through a fractured pipe into a huge stainless steel chamber which is so radioactive that it is impossible to enter. Recovering the liquids and fixing the pipes will take months and may require special robots to be built and sophisticated engineering techniques devised to repair the £2.1bn plant.

May 16 issue - It's traditional for out-of-work politicos to head to Harvard's Institute of Politics for genial wonk talk. It's also traditional for failed veep candidates to put major distance between themselves and their old campaign. The two customs intersected when John Edwards stopped by Cambridge last month. Over lunch, Edwards held a Q&A session with students, faculty and political bigwigs, including Kerry-Edwards campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill, a visiting fellow at the institute. Edwards was asked for one lesson he'd learned from the 2004 campaign. His answer: "Don't listen to Mary Beth Cahill." The response in the room...

The figures huddled beside the graveyard on the road that leads into the Pakistani town of Mardan seemed an unremarkable group, their identities obscured behind the head-to-toe burqas that local women traditionally wear. But these were no ordinary women--in fact, they weren't women at all. Instead, the burqas concealed a group of Pakistani commandos who were waiting last week for a killer. U.S. and Pakistani intelligence had received a tip that a suspected al-Qaeda operative would be traveling to Mardan disguised as a burqa-clad woman. Because any plainclothesmen seen grabbing a woman would attract a hostile mob, the commandos had...

May 16 issue - Abu Faraj al-Libbi had no idea he was about to go down. Last Monday, the Qaeda operative, believed to be one of Osama bin Laden's closest henchmen, was hiding out in Mardan, a small frontier town in northwest Pakistan. As he rode along the streets on the back of a motorbike driven by another man, he came upon a group of women dressed head to toe in black burqas. Nothing unusual about that. Except that some of the women were actually men, Pakistani security agents concealing automatic weapons in the billowing folds. They had gone to...

BOLTING bride Jennifer Wilbanks was chased away by her fiance's insistence on abstinence, friends of the sex-deprived couple claim. "She told people the fact that she and (husband-to-be John Mason) were not having sex was upsetting," a friend of Wilbanks said. Friends said Mr Mason was once a "wild" guy who "dated a lot", but became a Christian and "born-again virgin" five years ago. "He's been saving himself for the right woman," Andy Parsons said. Ms Wilbanks' friends say that probably drove the marathon enthusiast to run from the altar. In Ms Wilbanks' home town of Gainsville, girlfriends told The...

BEIRUT, Lebanon — An explosion ravaged a shopping area and set off a fire near a Christian religious radio station in the port city of Jounieh (search) north of Beirut late Friday. At least one person was killed, according to a television station and police reported two dozen injuries. The Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. reported that one Sri Lankan laborer died in the blast. Police said 11 wounded people, three with serious injuries were taken to the hospital, and another 12 suffered minor injuries from cuts of flying glass. They could not confirm a fatality. Three hours after the explosion, rescuers...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 30 - The car carrying the Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena that was struck with a deadly hail of gunfire as it sped toward Baghdad International Airport on March 4 ignored warnings from American soldiers who used a spotlight, a green laser pointer and warning shots to try to stop it as it approached a checkpoint, the American military said in a report released Saturday evening. The gunfire killed Nicola Calipari, an Italian intelligence agent who was in the back seat with Ms. Sgrena. The driver and Ms. Sgrena were wounded. Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, the ground...

Just had a nice jolt . Maybe 5.0 or a little bigger. Not big but a shaker.

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas fired the top West Bank security chief Saturday and said he would retire hundreds of senior officers, serving notice of a shakeup of security forces long demanded by the United States. Abbas had been criticized for not moving fast enough to reform his flabby security apparatus, seen as largely ineffective in reining in Palestinian militants. Saturday's decision sent the strongest signal since Abbas took office in January that he is serious about cleaning house. The Palestinian Authority (search) has 45,000 to 50,000 security officers on its payroll. "We will not allow anyone...

AMMAN, Jordan — Jordan's military court sentenced wanted terror leader Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi (search) to 15 years jail and a detained associate to three years behind bars Sunday for planning an attack on the Jordanian Embassy (search) in Baghdad. The court convicted al-Zarqawi, Iraq's most wanted terrorist, and Al-Miqdad Mohammad al-Dabbas, 24, of conspiracy to attack the embassy, the offices of the Jordanian military attache in Baghdad and unspecified American targets in Iraq. The court has heard that the two Jordanians met in Iraq in November 2003 to plan an attack on the embassy following an August bombing on the same...

Info needed and Prayers Please ! My Mom had chest pains yesterday and had a heart attack . She had 3 stint's put in and they say she needs another one , but they said they don't like to do more than 3 at once. Any information on this would be appreciated . Thank You !

POPE John Paul’s ability to speak in public, including his famous orations in St Peter’s Square, will be seriously curtailed by his recent ill-health, experts have said. Surgeons performed a tracheotomy on the 84-year-old pontiff on Thursday night to assist his breathing. It is now believed the effects of this operation could be permanent, making it much more difficult for the Pope - whose voice is already weakened and at times inaudible as a result of Parkinson’s disease - to speak at length. The procedure at the Gemelli hospital in Rome involved an incision into the trachea, or windpipe, in...

MANILA (AFP) - Eleven people were killed and at least 93 injured in Valentine's Day bombings by suspected Muslim militants that hit Manila and two southern Philippine cities, officials said. Three people were killed on the spot and about 60 injured when a powerful bomb ripped through a bus in the Makati financial district of Manila during the early evening rush hour, Metropolitan Manila police chief Avelino Razon said. The blast set two nearby buses on fire. Five people were killed when a blast hit a bus depot in the southern city of Davao on Mindanao island at dusk, Social...

The dollar cannot avoid further declines against other major currencies unless the US trade and current account deficits improve, legendary investor and businessman Warren Buffett said. "I think, over time, unless we have a major change in trade policies, I don't see how the dollar avoids going down," the world's second-richest individual told CNBC television. "I don't know when it happens. I don't have any idea whether it will be this month or this year or next year, but we are force-feeding dollars on to the rest of the world at the rate of close to a couple billion dollars...

LOGAN, Ohio  — Election officials watched Monday as a technician repeated a repair he had made to a vote tallying computer, then announced they had found no evidence of any sort of tampering, despite a congressman's request for an FBI (search) probe.

I Smell a Rat I smell a rat. It has that distinctive and all-too-familiar odor of the species Republicanus floridius. We got a nasty bite from this pest four years ago and never quite recovered. Symptoms of a long-term infection are becoming distressingly apparent.