Free Republic

(11-01) 17:31 PST WASHINGTON, (AP) -- Half of government farm payments over the past decade have gone to just 22 of the 435 congressional districts, according to an analysis by the Environmental Working Group. The group wants the federal government to cut payments to large farm operations and revise provisions that allow some to collect millions of dollars a year in subsidies. The Senate could vote on the issue this week. "The whole system is tilted to a handful of big farm operations, and everybody else comes up short," said Ken Cook, the group's president. "We were surprised at the...

The stepfather of 27-year-old Yvette Martinez, who disappeared in Nuevo Laredo a little more than a year ago with her friend, Brenda Cisneros, 23, spoke out against Mayor Elizabeth Flores on national television Thursday. "I wish I had money so I could sue the mayor for slander," William Slemaker said. "She continues to slap us in the face with her comments." Slemaker expressed outrage with the mayor after she suggested Wednesday during a live telephone interview on MSNBC's "Live and Direct with Rita Cosby" that most, if not all, Americans missing in Nuevo Laredo had ties, whether directly or indirectly,...

President George W. Bush asked Congress on Tuesday to consider giving him powers to use the military to enforce quarantines in case of an avian influenza epidemic. He said the military, and perhaps the National Guard, might be needed to take such a role if the feared H5N1 bird flu virus changes enough to cause widespread human infection. "If we had an outbreak somewhere in the United States, do we not then quarantine that part of the country? And how do you, then, enforce a quarantine?" Bush asked at a news conference. "It's one thing to shut down airplanes. It's...

The FBI says it sometimes gets the wrong number when it intercepts conversations in terrorism investigations, an admission critics say underscores a need to revise wiretap provisions in the Patriot Act.

In his televised address on September 15, President Bush declared that "It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces--the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment's notice." Senator John Warner (R-Va.), chair of the Armed Services Committee, goes further. In the wake of Katrina, he's suggested weakening Posse Comitatus, the longstanding federal law that restricts the government's ability to use the U.S. military as a police force. Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita called Posse Comitatus a "very archaic" law that...

The Army is using Blackhawk helicopters (search) to search for thousands of cattle feared stranded in the high water left behind by Hurricane Rita. A spokesman for the Louisiana Cattlemen's Association says since all the coastal parishes had cattle, the number in trouble could be more than 30,000.

Imad Yarkas, one of 24 defendants on trial, was sentenced to 27 years in prison for the guilty verdicts of conspiracy and of being a leader of a terrorist organization.

Bush indicated that he wants more authority for the armed forces in natural disasters. The military is barred by law from performing any domestic law enforcement functions Bush first broached that idea in a speech to the nation from New Orleans last week. The president said he wants to examine whether the Defense Department should take the lead in a natural disaster "of a certain size" as it would after any terrorist attack. "That's going to be a very important consideration for Congress to think about," he said.

The 1914 Oxford edition of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Edited by W. J. Craig, ranks among the most authoritative published this century. The 37 plays, 154 sonnets and miscellaneous verse constitute the literary cornerstone of Western civilization.

When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people from whom its legitimate powers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted; and so far from being a guarantee for the enjoyment of those inestimable and inalienable rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression; when the Federal Republican Constitution of their country, which they have sworn to support, no longer has a substantial existence, and the whole nature of their government has been forcibly changed without their consent, from a restricted federative republic, composed...

In the nearly two weeks since Hurricane Katrina, the government of New Orleans has devolved from its traditional status as an elective kleptocracy into something far more dangerous: an anarcho-tyranny that refuses to protect the public from criminals while preventing people from protecting themselves. At the orders of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, the New Orleans Police, the National Guard, the Oklahoma National Guard, and U.S. Marshals have begun breaking into homes at gunpoint, confiscating their lawfully-owned firearms, and evicting the residents. "No one is allowed to be armed. We're going to take all the guns," says P. Edwin Compass...

Van Heerden and Rodney Mallett, communications director for the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, say there do not appear to be any choices other than to pump the water into Lake Pontchartrain or the Mississippi River, which flows into the Gulf of Mexico, a key maritime spawning ground. "I don't see how we could treat all that water," Mallett said. The result could be an second wave of disaster for southern Louisiana, said Harold Zeliger, a Florida-based chemical toxicologist and water quality consultant. "In effect, it's going to kill everything in those waters," he said.