Free Republic

PENROSE -- A metal stamping plant owner says he plans to sue EPA criminal investigators for at least $10 million over a fruitless investigation that nearly ruined his business. Steve McNabb, whose wife, Jan, owns American Carolina Stamping, this week said he is gathering information to sue members of the Environmental Protection Agency's Criminal Investigation Division for discrimination and retaliation during a more than four-year investigation of the Transylvania County company. EPA officials Friday said they would not comment on specifics because of a Freedom of Information Act request made by U.S. Rep. Charles Taylor, R-Brevard, regarding the investigation. McNabb...

Destroying the unqualified and unjustified myth that "only religious fanatics oppose Darwinism", Dr. William Dembski's collection of essays presents a powerful and convincing case that exposes the many flaws and problems of Darwinism. Rather than having an agenda, the intellectuals that contributed to Uncommon Dissent exemplify the objective, rational, and scholarly manner in which they have both examined the various evolutionary theories and exposed these theories' many inconsistencies, oversights, and errors. The eloquence and thoroughness with which these essays critically analyze the Darwinian dogmas reveal that fanatical devotions to unproven theories are prevalent mainly in the mainstream secular scientific community...

The American Colonist's Library A TREASURY OF PRIMARY DOCUMENTS Primary Source Documents Pertaining to Early American HistoryAn invaluable collection of historical works which contributed to the formation of American politics, culture, and ideals  The following is a massive collection of the literature and documents which were most relevant to the colonists' lives in America. If it isn't here, it probably is not available online anywhere. ARRANGED IN CHRONOLOGICAL SEQUENCE (500 B.C.-1800 A.D.)  (Use Your Browser's FIND Function to Search this Library)  Given the Supreme Court's impending decision, the ultimate historic origins of the national motto, "In God We Trust" and...

Translations of ' martyrdom letter ' carried by killer - Death threat letter to cabinet minister Geert WildersNovember 5, 2004MIM: Below is the english translation of the letter which was stuck into the body of Theo Van Gogh with knife . Beneath that letter is the one which was found on the terrorist who killed him and hoped to be shot and martyred. Today the NRC Handelsblad published an 'open letter' which the killer had written to Geert Wilders a member of the Dutch cabinet. The original text and translation are also to be found below:The letter can be seen...

NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Al-Qaida is using the recent deadly hostage crisis at a Russian school as a recruiting tool, even though there's no direct evidence linking Osama bin Laden's terror network to the attack carried out by Chechen rebels, NBC News reported Tuesday. Citing a posting on the Internet, NBC News said an al-Qaida statement celebrates the deadly attack in the southern Russian city of Beslan. The posting claims the attack changed the course of the war between Chechen insurgents and Russia and urges Muslims to send money and fighters to Chechnya. Russian officials have claimed al-Qaida had a...

Picture yourself as a human resources director, examining the qualifications of a job applicant. The applicant has glowing letters of recommendation from his subordinates, but most of his colleagues on the same level say he is unfit, as do almost all of his superiors. This is where we, the voters, find ourselves as we evaluate John Kerry as an applicant for president of the United States. John Kerry has made his four-month Vietnam service the centerpiece of his campaign, ignoring his more recent 19 years in the U.S. Senate. But a recent book and series of TV ads by the...

I can appreciate why people are turned off by dirty politics, by which I mean the unsubstantiated mudslinging against candidates designed to mislead and smear rather than inform. But I lament the level of cynicism to which we've descended that makes us turn a deaf ear to negativity that may well be true and relevant. I'm referring primarily to the public uproar surrounding the new book Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John F. Kerry, in which a group of swift boat officers who served alongside John Kerry in Vietnam tell a devastating story that, if true,...

Our first election without the First Amendment is, as Alice put it, "getting curiouser and curiouser." The Boss has become a major player. Bruce Springsteen, that is, has entered the presidential fray. He has joined a bevy of other popular performers who will use their valuable musical talents in a 34-show, 28-city, nine-swing-state tour to raise money to defeat Republican President George W. Bush and elect Democratic Senator John Kerry.Under our laws, if Springsteen were to hold concerts to raise money directly for the John Kerry for President campaign, he would be committing a crime. After all, his musical services...

(CNSNews.com) - Four months after the founder of the terrorist group Hamas was assassinated by Israeli-fired helicopter missiles, his followers may be planning for the first time to shift their target of attack from the Middle East to the United States, according to a Muslim think tank in a Washington, D.C., suburb. Ahmad Rashad from the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR), based in Springfield, Va., wrote about Hamas' strategy in the Internet magazine, The Palestine Chronicle. Rashad is identified at the end of the article as a "research associate" at UASR. "In recent years, it has been increasingly...

Suppose a white car cruises by, and one of the occupants tosses trash at the feet of six bystanders. Then, when the eyewitnesses are asked about the incident, each describes the vehicle as a green pickup. While the actual event may not merit an essay, the fact that all six observers, independently of each other, erroneously saw a green pickup would certainly be worthy of a few paragraphs. Psychologists and others would be curious about how such a thing could happen. This is similar to the media response to a report, written by a staff member of the 9/11 Commission,...

There have been weeks of wall-to-wall coverage of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, including much misinformation. We should be very skeptical of the more serious charges, because, as John Kerry demonstrated in 1971, no lie is too big for the extreme left when it comes to smearing U.S. armed forces. Although I deplore the behavior of the prison guards, I can do so without asserting they violated the Geneva Conventions. They didn't. The treatment of uniformed soldiers is covered in the third Geneva Convention, while the fourth covers "persons taking no active part in the hostilities" (Article...

When ABC's "Nightline" aired the names of soldiers killed in Iraq Friday night, the Hendersonville father of one who died wanted to watch. He couldn't watch it on WLOS-TV because the broadcast company that owns the Asheville ABC affiliate pulled the Ted Koppel news show. "I'm outraged that this private company gets to decide what should and shouldn't be on the public airwaves," said Chuck Norman, whose 21-year-old stepson, Army Cpl. Robert "Bobby" Roberts, was killed Nov. 22. Norman, who helped raise Bobby from age 4, said he looked forward to hearing his son's name and seeing his picture on...

Can anyone imagine reporters during World War II asking President Franklin Roosevelt if he'd like to apologize for the number of American dead and wounded, or Harry Truman if he'd like to repent for dropping bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which forced Japan to surrender? Those were different times - when "psycho" meant you were crazy and "babble" meant you didn't make any sense.Both psycho and babble were on display at President Bush's news conference Tuesday night (April 13). Four times, by my count, reporters tried to get the president to admit he had done something wrong. What they really...

It was a cool Saturday afternoon in the middle of August when I decided to ride into town to pick up something to read. It was my first visit to Brunswick, Maine and I had a few hours to kill before attending a wedding at Bowdoin College.Just as I was pulling into a parking space on Main Street, I heard a man in a Volkswagen blow his horn at a Volvo that was in front of him. The man in the Volvo continued to back up until he bumped into the Volkswagen. The drivers of both cars were trying to...

Many years ago, shortly after getting my driver's license, I rounded up two buddies and went for a drive. Sorry to say, but while traveling on a two-lane road, as a random juvenile prank, I refused to allow another driver to pass me -- speeding up when he got beside me -- and was charged with failure to yield right-of-way. When the officer asked for my statement, I reeled off an elaborate spin about how I was protecting the other guy -- he really didn't have room to pass, or some such nonsense. The nugget in this story, however, was...

Five days after a series of bombs exploded on Madrid’s commuter trains killing over 200 people Spanish investigators and Western intelligence agencies are said to be almost certain that Islamic terrorists were to blame for the attacks—and not the Basque separatist group ETA, as the Spanish premier and his interior minister had initially declared. If the attack was indeed the work of al-Qaida or one of its many affiliates, it was singularly successful in achieving its presumed political objectives. Until the morning of March 11 the Popular Party (PP) government of the outgoing prime minister José Maria Aznar looked poised...

While working my way through traffic snarls on the freeways of Los Angeles I listened intently to a radio talk show. When a caller urged that all citizens should go about armed, the program host exclaimed, "My God, that would be like the Old West. We can't go back to that." The host obvi­ously thought that by invoking the image of the Old West he had made a damning argument against gun-toting. It was the umpteenth time I had heard such a response to a proponent of an armed citizenry. Yet the facts of frontier life suggest that the Old...

"Stop! Police!" These are two simple words that are easy to understand if you speak English. But in a region where the Hispanic population has exploded over the past 10 years, the meaning may not be as clear. "ÁAlto! ÁPolic’a!" might make a difference if you speak Spanish. But in the case of the lethal March 5 shooting of a Hispanic suspect, law enforcement officials and residents say that whether the deputies knew Spanish would not have made a difference. Running from or attacking police is, or should be, a known wrong among all cultures, said Hendersonville Police Chief Donnie...

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites), D-Mass., talks to reporters on Capitol Hill Thursday, March 11, 2004, following a luncheon meeting with fellow Democratic senators. Standing behind Kerry, left to right, are Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook)

It does not diminish the Herculean effort in Iraq, the sacrifice of young men and women fighting for the freedom of others that they enjoy or the political price being paid by the Bush administration to question whether the interim constitution signed in Baghdad on Monday (March 8) will end the post-war fighting and establish respect for the human rights of all.On Jan. 23, 1973, President Richard Nixon announced "peace with honor" had been achieved following a costly war launched for the express purpose of preventing a Communist takeover of South Vietnam by the North. Nixon said the agreement between...