Free Republic

The Maryland Senate narrowly overrode Gov. Larry Hogan's final veto from last year's General Assembly session, paving the way to reinstate voting rights to felons before they complete probation or parole. The 29-18 vote on Tuesday puts the law on the books 30 days from now and represents a political defeat for Hogan, a Republican. The bill was the sixth that Hogan vetoed last year, and the sixth the Democrat-controlled General Assembly reinstated. The vote, twice delayed in order to muster enough support, followed an expansive debate that touched on resolving racial disparities in the criminal justice system and protecting...

If you can't stand the heat, get out of your second kitchen. Ed Miliband today sought to cool the row over his unusual domestic arrangements, insisting he prefers the 'functional kitchenette' where he was seen posing for TV cameras. The Labour leader, who has repeatedly insisted he is not interested in photo opportunities,was filmed sipping tea at home with his wife Justine in a modest kitchen at his £2million North London home. Now it has emerged that the image of the Labour leader as a man of the people with a run-of-the-mill home was not all it appeared. For Mr...

CAIRO: There are diverse aspects to the ancient Egyptian civilization that many of us are fascinated by: the building of pyramids, the tombs that store mummies or hoards of gold, as well as the captivating paintings on the walls. But few of us direct our attention to the ancient Egyptians’ cuisine and their kitchens. The issue would have remained sidelined, even despite of the fact that the walls in temples and tombs are replete with images showing the Pharaohs’ meals as well as the poultry and animals that made up part of their dishes. But when a tour guide’s interest...

IT may be the least likely movie title of the year but Tupperware! is set to win the seal of approval from film-goers everywhere. The big budget drama, which is about to start filming, tells the story of the nifty airtight plastic containers - found in just about every home in the UK. Even the Queen uses Tupperware, as the Daily Mirror's Ryan Parry discovered when he famously infiltrated Buckingham Palace in 2003. A Broadway musical about the brand, Sealed For Freshness, is also due to open next month - with both show and film timed to coincide with the...

FORT LEE, Va., (Army News Service, March 24, 2006.) – Napoleon Bonaparte once said that “an army fights on its stomach.” On today’s battlefields, Soldier-chefs deploy a mobile food service system that meet the challenge presented by Soldier’s stomachs in a matter of hours. Unlike the singular movements of large armies of Napoleon’s early 19th-century Europe, many of today’s U.S. troops are deployed as modular units in a fast-moving, world-wide environment. This creates a challenge to get hot, quality chow to Soldiers on the move. The Army’s Field Operations Training Branch has answered the call to serve rapidly-deployed troops with...

In addition to military use, the Mobile Kitchen Trailers will also be used in humanitarian missions such as earthquakes and flood-relief operations. KABUL , Afghanistan, Aug. 4, 2005 — With help from Germany and other coalition partners, the first seven of a planned 320 Afghan National Army cooks graduated from a three-week training course on the Mobile Kitchen Trailer. Capable of feeding 250 soldiers at each meal, the Mobile Kitchen Trailer is about the size of a pick-up truck bed and can be pulled by any type of military vehicle with the proper hitch assembly. It is configured with four...

(CNSNews.com) - Two of Sen. John Kerry's surrogates on Monday accused President Bush of politicizing the military strategy in Iraq, but when a reporter asked how the senator's plan would be better than Bush's, a Kerry aide promptly halted the discussion. The episode took place during a 2:15 p.m. conference call that featured two military advisers to the Kerry campaign. They spoke about a press report that suggested the United States would hold off on any major combat operations in Iraq until after the Nov. 2 election. At the start of the question-and-answer portion of the call, Agence France-Presse reporter...