Free Republic

3/23/2006 - MINOT AIR FORCE BASE, N.D. (AFPN) -- The smell and taste of cookies hot from the oven for many evokes happy memories of childhood. For one Airman here, his fresh-baked cookies landed him on national television. Senior Airman David Sutherland, a 741st Missile Squadron chef, was selected by the Food Network and competed March 20 in Denver at the Cookie Challenge for recognition as the best amateur cookie baker with a chance to win $10,000. “The competition was an exciting opportunity,” Airman Sutherland said. “It was a neat challenge to present my cookies.” Airman Sutherland has been baking...

First in Europe and now in the United States, Muslim groups have petitioned to establish enclaves in which they can uphold and enforce greater compliance to Islamic law. While the U.S. Constitution enshrines the right to religious freedom and the prohibition against a state religion, when it comes to the rights of religious enclaves to impose communal rules, the dividing line is more nebulous. Can U.S. enclaves, homeowner associations, and other groups enforce Islamic law?Such questions are no longer theoretical. While Muslim organizations first established enclaves in Europe,[1] the trend is now crossing the Atlantic. Some Islamist community leaders in...

US warns of challenge from Iran Iran has begun the process to produce its own nuclear fuel Washington has warned that Iran's nuclear programme is one of America's biggest challenges, and refused to rule out any option including military. Senior officials were speaking a day after United Nations nuclear watchdog the IAEA decided to report Iran to the Security Council. America's UN envoy told the BBC the issue would strongly test the council. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said earlier that Iran might present the US with its toughest challenge. Iran has vowed to resist international pressure, insisting it has...

A war of words between the US and Iran continues to escalate, with both side digging in over Iran's controversial nuclear program. After months of argument, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has referred the matter to the United Nations Security Council next week. Iran insists its program is for peaceful purposes. However, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says that no country poses a greater challenge to America now than Iran. "We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran, whose policies are directed at developing a Middle East that would be 180 degrees different...

WASHINGTON, March 1, 2006 – Cadets representing 11 National Guard Youth ChalleNGe programs from 10 states were on hand here today to accept awards for excellence in the their programs. Cadets from 11 National Guard Youth ChalleNGe programs from 10 states attended the 2006 National Guard ChalleNGe Program Award Luncheon. The awards program, presented by the United Service Organizations of Metropolitan Washington, recognized excellence in several key components of the ChalleNGe program. Photo by Samantha L. Quigley  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Although the programs were being honored, Army Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum, chief of the National...

Is prison reform yet another crucial issue on which Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger started out talking big but then abandoned after running into obstacles? The jury is still out, but the evidence of recent days is awfully damning. On Sunday, Department of Corrections chief Roderick Q. Hickman quit, reportedly frustrated by Schwarzenegger's failure to support his push to overhaul the vastly dysfunctional prison system. Hickman had been opposed at every turn by the prison guards union, which has such clout that it controls many key policy, hiring and personnel decisions, and has made the covering up of prisoner abuse the state's...

U.S. Air Force Capt. LeeAnn Roberts instructs Iraqi trainees and a coalition soldier on proper firing techniques at the Al Kasik Training Base firing range, Iraq, Jan. 30, 2006. She is the first female coalition military assistance training team instructor assigned to the base, and the only female out of 8,000 assigned personnel. U.S. Air Force photo U.S. Air Force Capt. LeeAnn Roberts Female Officer Overcomes Cultural Challenge to Train Iraqis By U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Mark Woodbury Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq Public Affairs AL KASIK, Iraq, Feb. 13, 2006 — For one U.S. Air Force captain, breaking...

Professor challenges evolutionBy NAN AMA SARFOStaff Writer February 09, 2006 A Pitt professor challenged a part of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution in an article published in the scientific magazine The New Anatomist last week. Jeffrey Schwartz — a Pitt professor in the department of anthropology and the department of history and philosophy of science — collaborated with Bruno Maresca, a professor of biochemistry at Italy’s University of Salerno, for the article, which refutes Darwin’s Theory of Evolution using modern knowledge about cell biology. The two decided to collaborate after Maresca contacted Schwartz after reading his book, “Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes,...

US will not avoid Iran challenge, says Bush By Alec Russell in Washington (Filed: 02/02/2006) President George W Bush rammed home yesterday the pledges in his State of the Union address that America would not retreat from its global responsibilities or shrink from the challenge of Iran's nuclear ambitions. "We must never lose sight of our capacity to lead this world towards peace," he told a rapturous crowd in Nashville, Tennessee. "If we ever get weary or tired or uncertain or withdraw within our boundaries the enemy is not going away," he added in an echo of Tuesday night's annual...

A co-author of San Francisco's successful ballot measure opposing military recruiters on public high schools and college campuses has announced he might run as a Green Party candidate against U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. Activist Todd Chretien, 36, of San Francisco has formed an exploratory committee and expects to announce a final decision in the next 10 days. In a news release, Chretien said he wants to make the election a referendum on the war in Iraq, forcing Feinstein to come to grips with polls showing a majority of California voters oppose the war. "The Republican Party may be afraid...

CNSNews.com) - The House is expected to vote Wednesday on a bill that would restrict lawsuits against gun makers and gun sellers for the criminal misuse of their products. But even before the voting begins, a gun control group announced it would challenge the measure on constitutional grounds. The Senate passed the "Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act" in July, and the House is expected to follow suit. The National Rifle Association says the bill will stop "meritless, reckless lawsuits" that are filed with the goal of bankrupting the gun industry. But lawyers at the Brady Center to Prevent...

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has flown home to fight for his political survival after collecting diplomatic dividends at the United Nations for a pullout from the Gaza Strip. Mr Sharon faces a showdown with rival Benjamin Netanyahu, who is trying to unseat him as head of their rightist Likud party. The move could bring down the Government, force early elections and keep peacemaking with the Palestinians on hold. In a show of confidence on the flight home, Mr Sharon told reporters: "I'm not concerned and neither should you be." A week before a fateful meeting of Likud's Central Committee,...

SOUTH GATE – Manuel Espino looked at a sea of empty chairs in the South Gate High School auditorium and contemplated the magnitude of the challenge facing Mexico's political parties. Espino, the leader of President Vicente Fox's National Action Party, or PAN, came to this city bordering Los Angeles on Saturday to court Mexicans who recently won the right to cast absentee ballots in next year's presidential election. But nothing was going as planned. A powerful politician whose appearances in Mexico command big crowds and thundering applause, Espino expected supporters to fly in from all over the United States to...

The Iranian government is facing a new security challenge from a small, armed Iranian Kurdish group emboldened by the political gains of Kurds in neighbouring Iraq. Pejak, the Party for a Free Life in Iranian Kurdistan, has emerged as behind recent unrest in the predominantly Kurdish north-west of the country, renewing a separatist armed struggle that halted a decade ago. Of Iran's 70m population, about 10 per cent is estimated to be Kurdish. Iranian Kurds were suppressed during Iran's 1979 revolution. But the main Kurdish opposition groups in the Islamic republic, including the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) and...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A trade tribunal has rejected a Canadian company's challenge to California's ban on the gasoline additive MTBE under the North American Free Trade Agreement. Methanex Corp., which produces an MTBE component called methanol, had filed a $970 million claim against the United States under NAFTA six years ago. The Vancouver-based firm claimed the state ban was aimed at removing foreign competition for American makers of ethanol, a potential substitute for MTBE, or methyl tertiary-butyl ether. The U.S. State Department has not officially announced the ruling and declined to comment on the case, said spokesman Steven Pike....

A front page story in the Boston Globe claimed that: "Senator John F. Kerry, ending at least two years of refusal, has waived privacy restrictions and authorized the release of his full military and medical records." In another Globe story Kerry had promised "The truth in its entirety will come out." But did it? Kerry's election hopes faltered last summer and fall as accusations of fraudulent and incomplete military records were aired. The fact that Kerry repeatedly refused to sign a single-page military form called the Standard Form 180, that would have released all his military records to the public,...

WENATCHEE, Wash. - A judge Friday refused to throw out a Republican challenge to the election of Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire, saying voters deserve a full accounting of how the balloting was conducted. The Democrats asked for a dismissal after the Republicans rested their case following four days of testimony aimed at proving that errors, illegal votes and fraud combined to deprive GOP candidate Dino Rossi of victory last fall. The Republicans are asking Superior Court Judge John Bridges to nullify Gregoire's 129-vote victory and open the way for Rossi to be declared the winner or a new election held....

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LONDON, May 11 (IranMania) - Two of Iran's most senior dissident pro-reform Shiite clerics have hit out at the Islamic regime ahead of next month's presidential election, accusing hardliners of failing to deliver on revolutionary promises of fundamental freedoms. In interviews with AFP, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri and Grand Ayatollah Yusef Saanei also voiced pessimism over the prospect for a free and fair poll on June 17. "My point of view, and I cannot say more than this, is that things are not going in the right direction," said Montazeri, who is in his mid 80s and is one...

SAN FRANCISCO - There's no question Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign on behalf of his government reform proposals has cost him popularity and political capital. But with initiative petitions being turned in and new campaign commercials beginning to air statewide, the ever-optimistic governor may have turned a corner in the fierce battle to place his reform agenda before voters. Despite weeks of televised attacks by nurses, teachers and other Democrat-leaning interest groups, Schwarzenegger appears to have gathered enough signatures to force a special election on three initiatives aimed at changing the way government does business. None of the three -- changing...