Free Republic

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday will open a debate that has stymied them for at least a decade: the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant housing finance agencies nearly felled by the credit crisis. Congress is facing the daunting task of remaking the companies after steep mortgage losses led the Treasury in September to seize control of the two financing agencies. The stakes are high, with President Barack Obama counting on the reach of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to carry out his plans to improve housing affordability for nine million Americans. Decisions made...

In the wake of each election, we must always remember how proud History is of our endeavor. While most of History is littered with violent exchanges of power, the United States rather calmly transitions between one Presidency and the next. And so it will be again despite the loss of this election. We must also keep things in perspective. After all, when Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton and the rest fought to secure our freedom, there was no working democracy in the world. Prior to World War II, there were but six such outposts of Liberty and the majority of democracies in...

Pigeon's epic journey back to her owner Last Updated: 2:42AM BST 19/06/2008 A racing pigeon has flown back to her original owner, 10 years after he gave the bird away. 'Boomerang' turned up at the home of pigeon-fancier Dino Rearden on Father's Day, a decade after he gave her to a friend. The 13-year-old pigeon had already made a name for herself in 1998, when she made a 1,200 mile trip from a pigeon breeder in Algericas, Spain, back to Mr Rearden's home in Skipton, North Yorks. The 76-year-old, who bred pigeons for the RAF during the Second World War,...

Legendary rockers Journey have hired a Filipino fan to front the band after parting ways with Jeff Scott Soto earlier this year. The band discovered Arnel Pineda, from Quezon City in the Philippines via YouTube, when they saw footage of him singing Journey songs in his homeland with his band The Zoo. Original frontman Steve Perry was replaced in 1998 with Steve Augeri who was forced to leave the band due to health problems. But Pineda almost missed his dream job after initially assuming emails from guitarist Neal Schon were a hoax. “My friend Noel picked up the message on...

MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C., March 5, 2008 – Although the American dream means different things to different people, one Marine with U.S. Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command believes he is living his version of it. Cpl. Marek Vyskocil, the training noncommissioned officer for Marine Special Operations Advisor Group, said he has everything he could ask for in life, but that his journey began far from American soil. Vyskocil’s journey to America, the Marine Corps and MARSOC began in his home country of Czechoslovakia. He grew up in Havirov and learned to speak several languages due to...

BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq, Jan. 29, 2008 – The Air Force Theater Hospital's 98 percent survivability rate for injured U.S. servicemembers would be meaningless if the wounded were unable to survive their journey out of the combat zone. Four years into the war, the process of saving lives and safely transporting critically injured and ill troops out of Iraq has become one of the greatest military feats in modern history, according to Air Force Lt. Col. Beverly Johnson, chief nurse for the Contingency Aeromedical Staging Facility here. The CASF is a minor conglomerate of different functions. It's at once...

.NEVER FORGETAfter appearing in the Sundance & Newport Beach Film Festivals, and being awarded serveral Awards in the process, the ImaginAsian Motion Picture Production .."JOURNEY from the FALL".. finally premieres across America. This film accurately and sadly shares the horrible human consequences resulting from the 1975 Fall of Saigon. A Fall brought about when a post-WATERGATE Democrat Congress cut off all our funding for the then Free South Vietnamese People to fight for their own Freedom with against Communist invaders.This just as the Communist Soviet Union gave $6 Billion in military aid, according to uncovered KGB Files, to Communist North...

Check these videos out: Don't Stop BelievingLightsThe guitarist is 9 years old. The lead singer is 7 years old.

QUETZALTENANGO, Guatemala -- Across Central America, growing numbers of impoverished children appear to be setting out for the United States on their own, risking robbery, rape and death as they try to sneak illegally through Mexico and across the U.S. border. Last year, 6,460 underage illegal immigrants from Central America were detained in the United States while traveling without their parents and sent to government shelters, a 35 percent increase over the previous year. Many others likely slipped in undetected.

Journey to the heart of Bushlandia The wide open spaces of Idaho have little room for anti-war sentiment Oliver Burkemann in Boise, Idaho Saturday June 3, 2006 The Guardian (UK) The governor of Idaho, an affable rancher named Jim Risch, stretched back in his chair and outlined his alternative history of the last few years in America. "Hurricane Katrina - they heaped that on George Bush!" said Mr Risch, in his shirt-sleeves in the blasting dry heat of an afternoon in Boise, the state capital. "Here in Idaho, we couldn't understand how people could sit around on the kerbs waiting...

El Paso, Texas, Mar 14 (EFE).- The Rio Grande, deserts of Arizona or the U.S. Border Patrol generally are not the most daunting obstacles to entry into the United States for many Central American emigrants, most of whom have made a perilous journey across the big nation of Mexico. Mexican immigration authorities intercepted and deported 232,000 Central Americans last year, compared with a total of 72,561 people from Central and South America who were caught and sent home during the 2005 fiscal year by the U.S. Border Patrol. Two men who managed to make it all the way from the...

LOS ANGELES - A NASA spacecraft bound for Mars is nearing the end of its seven-month journey but still faces a white-knuckle arrival at a planet known for swallowing scientific probes, mission managers said Friday. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or MRO, is on course to enter orbit around the Red Planet on March 10. If successful, it will spend the next two years photographing the surface and scouting for future landing sites. The spacecraft is performing so well that engineers have canceled two final maneuvers to adjust its course in the last leg of the trip, said James Graf, project...

The fat man's walk across the United States has taken him from Oceanside to Ohio, and now on a detour to North Hollywood. The reason is simple: He isn't looking the part. Despite losing weight, Steve Vaught still has a prodigious gut. Vaught's walk has attracted worldwide media attention that promises to intensify as he approaches his destination of New York City. His book chronicling his quest to regain control of his life by crossing America on foot is scheduled to be published soon. Which he said means he needs to slim down – and fast. “Visual impact is everything,”...

TOKYO - A Japanese spacecraft on an unprecedented mission to bring asteroid material back to Earth is set to start home despite showing signs of trouble earlier, an executive of Japan's space agency, JAXA, said Sunday. On Saturday, the Hayabusa probe apparently landed on the Itokawa asteroid and collected surface samples. After the landing, the probe hovered about three miles from the asteroid and appeared to be shaking due to a possible gas leak from a thruster, JAXA said. The probe shut down all its engines Saturday and switched to solar power while JAXA investigated the problem. But the probe...

by Dennis Gerard Embo Other Articles by Dennis Gerard Embo A Story of Apostasy and Return 07/23/05 When I left the Pasadena, California-based Worldwide Church of God (WCG) in early 2000, barely a year prior to my return to the fold of the Catholic Church, Catholicism wasn’t even an option on my “OK, what next?” list. I’d left Catholicism almost thirty years prior in order to follow the WCG’s nearly 70-year-old founder, an ad-man-turned-televangelist named Herbert Armstrong. In This Article...The Radio “Apostle”Turning the Ship AroundAnd Grace Will Lead Me Home The Radio “Apostle” At that time Herbert and son Garner Ted...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has embarked on a multistate fundraising swing to raise some of the estimated $50 million his advisers say he'll need to wage an all-but-certain special election campaign. Schwarzenegger arrives in Tampa on Friday before schmoozing with Gov. Jeb Bush and deep-pocket donors Saturday at a lunch in Miami. He then heads to Illinois and Texas, where he ends with a cocktail and dinner party Monday night in Dallas. The trip comes at a critical time in California and for the Republican governor. Democrats and the state's powerful labor unions are attacking his...

This is the result of a DNA study done by Professor Stephen Oppenheimer and funded by The Bradshaw Foundation. As you go on the journey, here are some things I would like you to make note of and I would appreciate your comments:1. 135-115,000 years ago, notice that the first human excursion out of Africa failed/Died out.2. 74,000 years ago Toba exploded and reduced the worldwide human population to 2-10,000. Note the (about) 10,000 year absence of humans in India, Pakistan and parts of SE Asia. Also, there are two populations of 'out of Africa' humans that are seperated from...

On Thursday, June 10th, Turner Classic Movies will alter its programming in order to honor actor and former President Ronald Reagan with a 15-film tribute. Here is the new lineup: 8:00 AM Love is On the Air (1937) (first starring role) 9:00 AM Accidents will Happen (1938) 10:15 AM Angels Wash Their Faces (1939) 11:45 AM Tugboat Annie Sails Again (1940) 1:15 PM Santa Fe Trail (1940) 3:15 PM One for the Book (1947) 5:00 PM Night Unto Night (1949) 6:30 PM Prisoner of War (1954) 8:00 PM Kings Row (1942) 10:15 PM Desperate Journey (1942) 12:15 AM The Last...

Journeying with the Magi Louise Perrotta You want to cheer when the magi appear on the horizon in chapter 2 of Matthew’s Gospel. After all, the Savior of the world, God in the flesh, has been born! History’s central event has taken place! And although Jesus slipped in among us more like an undercover agent than a conquering hero, how right and fitting that a special delegation would make a special effort to welcome the newborn King. Perhaps, like me, you feel indebted to the “wise men from the East” as you read the twelve verses where they make their...

A Triumph and a Tragedy by James Akin I broke off a piece of the popsicle in my hand and placed it carefully in the mouth of my dying wife. Renee lay on her back, restless in the hospital bed, suffering from an advanced case of colon cancer which we had discovered a little more than a month before. She ate several more pieces of popsicle as I broke them off for her, then said she could eat no more, so I let her rest. When our parish priest arrived he and I went into a conference room down the...