Free Republic

A MUM has been arrested over claims she gouged out the eyes of her five-year-old son with a SPOON as part of a Satanic ritual.

An aide described as Donald Trump’s “Karl Rove” declined to discuss details of the real estate mogul’s ongoing investigation in Hawaii into President Obama, saying it would be “completely counterproductive” to tip Trump’s hand, allowing Obama to then shield himself from the investigation. Michael Cohen, Trump’s aide, did not provide any other details about the investigation besides that “people,” plural, are in Hawaii. Trump has made questioning Obama’s birthplace a signature issue of his campaign despite ample evidence the president was born in Hawaii in 1961. The move is part of a political strategy to appeal to Republican primary voters...

Shirley Sherrod, ousted from her position with the U.S. Department of Agriculture after an internet video produced by conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart surfaced, has filed suit in District of Columbia Superior Court alleging defamation, false light and infliction of emotional distress. Breitbart confirmed that his company, breitbart.com, LLC,had been served with a copy of the suit over the weekend. In addition to Breitbart, producer Larry O’Conner and an unknown ‘John Doe’ are also named in the suit. Sherrod resigned as Georgia’s Director of Rural Development after the video clip appeared last July. The edited clip showed a speech she gave...

MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) - A close aide to Hillary Rodham Clinton dismissed as "psychobabble" the fuss over the secretary of state's barbed response to a questioner asking for her famous husband's opinion instead of her own. Clinton ignored questions about the episode as she wound down a marathon African trip Thursday. Clinton had reacted strongly earlier this week when a Congolese student in Kinshasa asked her for the opinion of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, about an international economic issue.

I find it more than odd that Obama stays silent over Beijing as everyone on the left has taken a stand on boycotting the opening ceremonies. On top of that, the world has shown its disdain for Chinese tactics in Tibet as Obama has stood on the sideline saying, "I am of two minds about this." Surely Obama and his marketing people are hard at work trying to find a nuanced way to stand against the brutality of China, while still staying away from supporting a boycott. Why, you ask? It's simple, Obama has made talking to our enemies a...

Mutant monkeys get hooked on a drug called mum 15:35 01 April 2008 NewScientist.com news service Ewen Callaway A gene mutation determines whether or not macaque infants make a fuss when their mothers are missing, say researchers. A similar mutation has been linked to alcoholism and drug abuse in humans. The work could explain why some children are cry babies and some are more independent, says Christina Barr, a neuroscientist at the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in Bethesda, Maryland, US, who led the study. "There are some kids that go with the flow and there are some...

NEW ORLEANS -- Who knows what lurks in the heart and mind of Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry? Not the traveling press corps, that's for sure. Kerry has been under wraps for the last month, declining to subject himself to what must surely be the painful process of answering national reporters' questions. Kerry used to regularly assure his audiences that, if elected president, he would hold a press conference every month to communicate with the nation's citizenry. (That was a not-so-subtle dig at President Bush, who has held only 12 formal press conferences during his four years in office,...

A mother listened on the phone as her estranged husband killed himself and their four young children, an inquest has heard. Farm labourer Keith Young, 38, drove his boys Joshua, seven, Thomas, six, Callum, five and Daniel, three to a beauty spot near Llangollen, North Wales. Mr Young, from Winsford, Cheshire, then gassed them by running a petrol lawnmower in the back of the family car. He was separated from his wife Samantha but was seeing the boys on an access visit. At an inquest in Wrexham, North East Wales, coroner John Hughes recorded a verdict of unlawful killing on...

A Brazilian woman who had gone to hospital to have a dead foetus removed from her womb discovered her baby was alive. Edaiane Bosada Marques, was eight months pregnant, but had been told five days earlier that her baby had died. Doctors from Itacolomy hospital in Sao Bernardo do Campo, Sao Paulo, said they could not detect the baby's heart beat during a scan. But when they operated to remove what they thought was a dead foetus they found a live baby girl, reports Jornal de Tarde newspaper. Mrs Marques said: "If there is such thing as complete happiness that...

A woman has sparked controversy by revealing she is trying for her ninth surrogate baby. Carole Horlock, 36, who has two children of her own, has given birth to eight surrogate children. Now she has signed a £15,000 expenses deal to produce a child for a couple living in the Home Counties. The announcement comes just 12 weeks after she gave away her eighth surrogate baby, and she says she'll "retire" only after producing her tenth. Miss Horlock, a launderette manager from Stevenage, Hertfordshire, said: "People call me rent-a-womb, which is unkind. But I do what I do for the...

Woman discovers she isn't her daughter's real mum A Brazilian woman who took a DNA test to prove the identity of her daughter's father was shocked to find out she wasn't her real mother. Tereza Menas and her former boyfriend took DNA tests because her nine-year-old daughter wanted her father's name on her birth certificate. But when the tests came back the results said neither were the girl's biological parents. Two further tests gave the same result. It's now believed staff at the Santa Casa Hospital, where she had her baby in 1994, may have swapped Mrs Menas' baby for...