Free Republic

The next big thing in cell phones, the New York Times reports, will be pornography. As more advanced phones feature full-motion Internet video, they will become portals for X-rated content. This is in keeping with a technological dynamic as important as Moore’s Law, which says computer chips roughly double in power every 18 months — to wit, every technological advance serves the more efficient delivery of pornography. We live in a world seemingly designed to gratify the teenage boy in the movie Animal House who is looking at a copy of Playboy when miraculously a cheerleader is thrown through his...

MENTION "blood for oil," and most people think of Iraq. But the place where the scramble for control of the planet's fossil-fuel resources is actually pointing toward a shooting war is the Pacific rim — and the United States would find itself in the crossfire. Oil and gas are the lifeline of today's economies; Hurricane Katrina (and now Rita) showed us what even a brief interruption of supplies can cost. Now imagine the impact on a major industrialized country — one even more dependent on imported oil than we are — when that lifeline is severed not for a month...

THE 2,749 people who were murdered in downtown Manhattan on Sept. 11 did not think of themselves as freedom fighters. They did not walk into the Twin Towers on that awful morning on a mission to end disease, halt poverty, or rid the world of slavery. And the brave firemen, cops and rescue workers who lost their lives trying to save the many innocents did not step into hell with the intention of waging war, feeding the hungry or ending government oppression. Every person who was slaughtered on 9/11 died, simply, because he showed up for work. But now, the...

AS SEN. Hillary Clinton ratchets up her attacks on Presi dent Bush, some Democrats think they smell an explanation: the threat of a 2008 Al Gore presidential bid that could come at her from the left on Iraq. The former vice president is suddenly re-emerging as a vocal and visible Bush-basher — he's slated to star at a Democratic National Committee fund-raiser for big donors in Washington next Tuesday. "He's keeping a very strong public profile. He was the first major Democrat to oppose the Iraq war. He's keeping in touch around the country and doing a lot of speeches....

Comedian Bud Abbott owned more than 1,500 porn flicks. Liberace not only loved candelabras, but placing bets with a Buffalo bookie. And Robert Blake once got turned down for a crime-fighting role on a TV show because he believed that "killers aren't at fault, society is." It was all documented by the FBI. A massive trove of files that the feds kept on some of America's best-known celebrities has been released, thanks to a Freedom of Information request filed this year by The Associated Press. The AP asked the bureau for its "High Visibility Memorandum" files - which concern celebrities...

Do you know why France is never hit by hurricanes, even though she once owned Louisiana? It’s because France signed the Kyoto Protocol. Do you know why la petite Camargue in the south of France, with its famous bulls and free-range horses, was flooded twice this summer? It’s because George Bush did not sign the Kyoto Protocol. Do you know why President Chirac did not get impeached after 15,000 people died in the 2003 French heat wave? Impeached? He didn’t even get pinched! It wasn’t his fault. How could it be his fault? He was on vacation. If some people...

President Bush yesterday warned Syrian President Bashar Assad to stop letting foreign terrorists sneak into Iraq, as he flew to New York and switched from hurricane relief to foreign policy with an aggressive agenda at the United Nations. Today, Bush addresses the General Assembly as analysts check his clout around the world at a time when his support at home is sagging. Bush is weaker at home than he was before the Iraq war, but Secretary-General Kofi Annan's support, too, is waning. He's under fire over the oil-for-food scandal and other corruption. Bush hosted a reception for world leaders last...

The heartless husband-and- wife owners of a New Orleans-area nursing home where 34 helpless people died in Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters were charged yesterday with negligent homicide and thrown in jail. The state had offered Mable Mangano and Salvador Mangano Sr. buses to evacuate their residents in need, but the callous couple refused assistance, Louisiana's top prosecutor said. They "were asked if they wanted to move [the patients]," said Attorney General Charles Foti. "They did not. "They were warned repeatedly that this storm was coming. In effect, their inaction resulted in the deaths of these patients." The case represents the first...

Daily briefing from OEP, Sept. 12 From OEP information Department of Health & Hospitals At this time, state officials, working in conjunction with coroners from local parishes, have confirmed 197 deaths. Fatality Breakdown by Location •Parish Coroners •St. Charles - 3 •Jefferson Parish - 25 •St. Tammany Parish - 5 •Iberia Parish - 3 •Temporary Morgue at St. Gabriel-- 161 Most coroners' office were closed on Sunday. These numbers have been reported to state officials by local coroners.

Creators Syndicate national columnist and InsiderAdvantage CEO Matt Towery spent time Wednesday with Hurricane Katrina evacuees and reports the following: “I talked with one woman who was trapped in her home in New Orleans’s ninth ward. She was up to her neck in water for three days. She explained to me the reason why she and many others in her neighborhood did not try to break through the roof of her house or escape through a window. ‘When I looked outside, it appeared to me that the water was higher outside than it was inside the house.’ Whether or not...

A 9/11-themed art exhibit at Cooper Union has bombed with families of terror attack victims, who say its vitriol against President Bush, seeming mockery of war hero Pat Tillman and other anti-American images denigrate the memory of their loved ones. "What is the matter with these people? Where is their sense of decency?" asked Debra Burlingame, whose brother was a pilot aboard the airliner hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon and who has been among relatives fighting the location of the International Freedom Center at Ground Zero. The artworks bashing Bush and the military are included in a program called...

September 9, 2005 -- JUST over a month ago, Iraq's interim govern ment signed an agreement with the Islamic Republic in Tehran under which up to 5,000 Iranians would be allowed to visit the Shi'ite cities of Karbala and Najaf in southern Iraq. The agreement also provided for a speedier repatriation of Iraqi refugees from Iran. The agreement attracted little attention, largely because Iranian pilgrims had been flooding the Iraqi "holy cities" since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Estimates show that more than 10 million pilgrims, mostly Iranians, have visited Karbala and Najaf in the past three years....

PERHAPS the gravest weakness of contemporary liberalism is its tendency toward preening vanity — the regrettable undercurrent that suggests the views liberals espouse demonstrate just how much better, kinder, more thoughtful, more large-hearted and more caring they are than those who might think differently about policy. On no subject is this preening vanity more evident than when it comes to race, and the preening has been especially pronounced in the past week. It is now generally accepted in liberal-left circles that the federal government's response to the New Orleans horror was not rapid enough because the majority of the victims...

The former director of a Boys & Girls Club who arranged an $875,000 loan to ultra-liberal radio network Air America was known as "the Lenin of the North Bronx" while he led Co-op City's legendary rent strike. Charles Rosen was booted from the top post at the Bronx-based Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club in June after the city yanked $9.7 million of the agency's contracts and launched an investigation into the group's finances, including the loans. Rosen, who engineered the loan to the radio network as it desperately sought cash to start up during the 2004 presidential campaign, is...

ON AUGUST 16, ELIZABETH Edwards, the wife of the failed vice presidential candidate, sent out an email. She urged recipients to sign an online petition in support of Cindy Sheehan, the bereaved mother of a 24-year-old soldier who was killed in Iraq last year. Since August 6, Sheehan has been camped outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, demanding to meet with the president to discuss American withdrawal from the Middle East. Democrats, Edwards wrote, should support "Cindy's right to be heard." Democrats, she continued, should "listen to Cindy." Two days after Edwards's email, in an appearance at a "listening...

If American liberals had four legs and fur, they would have been put on the Endangered Species List following last year’s presidential election. Defining who is liberal has become a national sport among politicians, as Democrats frantically run from the moniker, while Republicans hurl the invective blindly at everyone on the other side of the aisle. New research done by the Bay Area Center for Voting Research (BACVR) reveals who the real liberals in American are and the answer is not the tree-hugging, ponytail wearing ex-hippies you might expect. Instead, the new face of American liberalism is of a decidedly...

NEW ORLEANS — Mayor Ray Nagin ordered 1,500 police officers to leave their search-and-rescue mission last night and return to the streets to stop looting that has turned increasingly hostile as the city plunges deeper into chaos. "They are starting to get closer to heavily populated areas — hotels, hospitals — and we're going to stop it right now," Nagin said. The number of officers called off the search-and-rescue mission amounts to virtually the entire police force in New Orleans. The out-of-control thievery had escalated while cops joined National Guardsmen in focusing on saving lives. In some cases, New Orleans...

WHILE most Americans were obsessing over Cindy Sheehan last week, the most important global power realignment since the fall of the Berlin Wall was under way. Russia and China were holding their first ever joint military exercise off China's eastern coast, a week-long sea, land and air operation involving more than 10,000 soldiers, sailors, paratroopers and marines, which ended Aug. 25 with salutes, smiles and congratulations from the Kremlin and Peking's Forbidden Palace — and with Pentagon officials reaching for the aspirin bottle. Although Americans don't know it yet, America's reign as the world's undisputed superpower is officially over. A...

August 29, 2005 -- MODERN warfare is increasingly de pendent on advanced computers, and no country's armed forces are more reliant on the Digital Age than ours are. This is both the American military's greatest technological strength — and, regrettably, its greatest weakness. Today, the Pentagon uses over 5 million computers on 100,000 networks at 1,500 sites in 65 countries worldwide. Not surprisingly, potential adversaries have taken note of our slavish dependence on cutting-edge, network-centric warfare. Last year, the Department of Defense suffered a record 79,000 computer network attacks, including some that actually reduced the military's operational capabilities. In the...

Every time I turn around, another anti-war person is saying how much he or she "supports" the troops. No matter how vicious the attack on the policy in Iraq or the Afghanistan situation or the proactive strategy to confront worldwide terror, it always seems there's a "support the troops" caveat at the end of the blistering dissent. Okay, fine, opposing the Iraq war doesn't mean disrespect for the military, that's true. But the benefit of the doubt only goes so far. Now there's a litmus test, a way to expose the folks who really don't support the troops no matter...