Free Republic

Bosnian Serbs in the Republika Srpska are glad that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled the Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence was legal. The Bosnian Serbs have wanted to exit Bosnia and join Serbia for quite some time. The Bosnian government officially says its borders are fixed, but then, Serbia's are not. One Bosnian Serb official made the interesting argument that the ICJ's ruling supersedes the Dayton Accords which ended the Bosnian War and established Bosnia's current government. In August several other Balkan countries also indicated they are very interested in the ICJ's July 22 decision. The court declared...

Marcel Williams is plopped down on a couch in his family's duplex apartment. The stillness is unusual for the 14-year-old, who a few years ago roamed football fields as a star running back for the national champion Flagler Junior Pee Wee Bulldogs. Since then, Marcel said he had been earning A's and B's at Buddy Taylor Middle School, where he also expected to continue playing football this year. Instead, school just started and Marcel finds himself slouched on the couch, expelled from the classroom and the football field until next year because of something called "tea-bagging" -- a crude taunt...

As head of the Philadelphia Housing Authority, Carl R. Greene presided over a workplace of fear. For women, his subordinates say, there could be ogling, groping, and pressure for sex. For men and women alike, there were insults and humiliation. "You're stupid. You're lazy. I can't believe your parents wasted college education on you," Greene yelled at one young aide, she recalled. "I can't believe you're so incompetent." She left his sixth-floor office in tears, mascara streaming down her cheeks. Greene called out after her, telling his assistant: "Fix her up. Get her some makeup. I don't want her to...

EDITOR'S NOTE — The USS George Washington supercarrier recently deployed off North Korea in a high-profile show of U.S. sea power. AP Tokyo News Editor Eric Talmadge was aboard the carrier, and filed this report. ABOARD THE USS GEORGE WASHINGTON — Nothing projects U.S. global air and sea power more vividly than super carriers. Bristling with fighter jets that can reach deep into even landlocked trouble zones, America's virtually invincible carrier fleet has long enforced its dominance of the high seas. China may soon put an end to that. U.S. naval planners are scrambling to deal with what analysts say...

Officials in Santa Ana today announced the arrest of a man they say allegedly ejaculated into a female co-worker's water bottle. Prosecutors say the woman unknowingly drank from the bottle and got sick this past January. Michael Kevin Lallana, 31, and the woman worked at Northwestern Mutual Mortgage Co. in Newport Beach. Prosecutors said Lallana left the semen-tainted water bottle on her desk, and she drank from it when she returned to her office. Lallana allegedly repeated the crime in April, after he and the woman had been transferred to the company's office in Orange. Prosecutors said the woman again...

...U.S. naval planners are scrambling to deal with what analysts say is a game-changing weapon being developed by China — an unprecedented carrier-killing missile called the Dong Feng 21D that could be launched from land with enough accuracy to penetrate the defenses of even the most advanced moving aircraft carrier at a distance of more than 1,500 kilometers (900 miles)...

The remains of a pregnant teenager were found in a landfill after months of searching through mountains of trash, authorities said Thursday. Anyssia Escamilla, 17, disappeared in May. Shortly afterward, her 18-year-old boyfriend Jesus Avitia Jr. was charged with her death. A cadaver-sniffing dog found the body Wednesday evening, and Escamilla's identity was confirmed through her dental records. 1/4 Escamilla, the mother of a 3-year-old son from another relationship, was reported missing on May 11 when she failed to return home from Bloomington High School, about 50 miles east of Los Angeles. Police said Avitia told investigators he killed Escamilla...

Two Rochester women of Somali descent are among a group of 14 Somali-Americans to be indicted for providing support to a Somali terror organization with ties to al-Qaida. Amina Farah Ali and Hawo Mohamed Hassan, both naturalized American citizens, have been charged with providing financial support to Al-Shabab, a group that has been fighting to establish an Islamic state in Somalia. The U.S. State Department has classified Al-Shabab as a terrorist organization. The women were arrested by FBI agents Thursday morning, officials said. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said of the charges: "These indictments and arrests -- in Minnesota, Alabama...

San Antonio police Saturday night arrested a 38 year old teacher in the Northside ISD and charged her with engaging in sexual activity with a 12 year old boy. An arrest warrant obtained by 1200 WOAI news claims that Lucinda Caldwell, 38, is a fifth grade teacher at Cable Elementary School on Pinn Road. The affidavit claims Caldwell picked up the boy at his far west side home Friday night and drove to a hotel, where the sexual contact allegedly took place. But when she tried to return the youngster to his home early Saturday, his dad was waiting, so...

Today marks the 17th anniversary of Clinton White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster's death. Although ruled a "suicide" by official Washington since 1995, all credible forensic evidence in the case - circumstantial, physical, and laboratory - points to a homicide and a multi-pronged cover-up to shield the homicide's perpetrators from objective criminal investigation, indictment, and prosecution. As Newt Gingrich once noted to a reporter, you wold have to be brain dead to believe the official story. The general conclusion one can draw from the historical facts at hand is that in the United States legal system today - contrary to...

(Reuters) - Chelsea Clinton's hush-hush wedding may as well be classified but one thing is no secret: There will be tears. The only child of former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will marry longtime boyfriend Marc Mezvinsky this month in a ceremony that has withstood leaks better than many secrets in Washington. "You should assume that if he makes it down the aisle in one piece it's a major accomplishment," Hillary Clinton said of her husband in comments to NBC broadcast Monday from Pakistan.

GURNEE, Ill. (AP) -- Police said authorities at Six Flags Great America ejected two off-duty employees from the theme park after they allegedly attacked a female colleague dressed as "Porky Pig." Gurnee Police Sgt. Jon Ward says two young men took a photo with Porky on Monday afternoon, and then punched the mascot in the head 10 to 15 times.

A Michigan woman said she was remorseful for having sex with the teenage son she gave up for adoption as a baby before being sentenced Monday to at least nine years in prison. “I don’t understand it,” Aimee Louise Sword said, referring to her actions. Sword, a 36-year-old Waterford Township resident, was charged with three counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. In early June, she pleaded guilty as part of a plea bargain to one count of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. Sword’s son was 16 when he testified at the preliminary exam in January that Sword contacted him in May...

Bill Clinton is not giving away his daughter Chelsea’s hand in marriage for another three weeks. But he is going to get a little practice at the altar on Saturday, when he officiates at the wedding of Representative Anthony D. Weiner and Huma Abedin, a longtime aide to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The ceremony will be at Oheka Castle in Huntington, N.Y., in the early evening.

Bill Clinton on Robert Byrd's Association with the KKK: "What does that mean? It means he was a country boy from the hills and hallows of West Virginia, he was trying to get elected"...Oh ok, that explains it...(Video)

An unrepentant cop killer was spared the needle Wednesday after a federal appeals court overturned a jury verdict sentencing him to death. Ronell Wilson, 28, will return to Brooklyn Federal Court for resentencing after the reversal by the U.S. Court of Appeals. The decision to take Wilson off death row was immediately ripped by Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. "Commissioner Kelly believes that the murder of a police officer is an attack on society itself and should be punished with the death penalty," said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne. The panel ruled the prosecution erred in its closing argument by telling jurors...

FED up with the Me-Me-Me MySpace generation? Inclined to believe today’s young ’uns are blindingly self-aggrandizing and entitled? According to a major new study of college students, you may well be right. Vindication for crotchety Gen-Xers — already depressed to find themselves the elders in this social relationship — arrived in a paper presented in May at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science in Boston. “Changes in Dispositional Empathy in American College Students Over Time: A Meta-Analysis,” by Sara Konrath, a researcher at the University of Michigan, found that college students today are 40 percent less empathetic...

www.catholicnewsagency.com Woman describes how porn addiction destroyed marriage, calls for more scientific study Related articles: Hearing on the Brain Science Behind Pornography AddictionChildren’s Access to “Adult” Pornography Online - and What Parents Can DoThe Harmful Effects of Pornography New York City, N.Y., Jun 15, 2010 / 01:23 am (CNA).- In a previously published National Review Online article, a woman who chose to remain anonymous shared the painful story of her husband's pornography addiction and its detrimental effects on their marriage. After citing various statistics on the nature and affects of pornography, she called on the scientific community at large...

Pittsburgh police this morning arrested a 14-year-old boy on charges he raped a 14-year-old girl at a North Side city school. The boy, whose name was not released, is accused of grabbing the girl by the arm, throwing her down a set of stairs and assaulting her in the basement of Pittsburgh King, a pre-K-8 school, as the school day ended about 3 p.m. Friday. Police arrested him at school today.

On a late May afternoon last year in southwest Baltimore, a 2-year-old female pit bull terrier was doused in gasoline and set alight. A young city policewoman on her regular patrol of the neighborhood of boarded-up row houses and redbrick housing developments turned her squad car onto the 1600 block of Presbury Street and saw a cloud of black smoke rising from the burning dog. She hopped out, ran past idle onlookers and managed to put out the flames with her sweater. The dog, subsequently named Phoenix, survived for four days with burns over 95 percent of her body, but...