Free Republic

Dear Occupy Wall Street Protesters, It took me awhile to figure out what was bothering me about you. It certainly wasn't because I'm indifferent to the recession. In the last three years, I've had my ass kicked a lot harder than most of my friends, what with losing my house, my car, and my savings, so yeah, protest seems appropriate. Especially, as we enter a third year with no sign of progress.

You can’t make this stuff up. (Boston Herald) — The downtown protest group Occupy Boston threw its proverbial doors open yesterday, and played host to supporters of accused terrorist Terak Mehanna, who are looking to raise awareness of the Sudbury man’s upcoming trial. The Tarek Mehanna Support Committee came to Occupy Boston’s ever-evolving tent city on the Rose Kennedy Greenway to say Mehanna, a Muslim American pharmacist, is a victim of anti-Muslim sentiment. The U.S. government says Mehanna, 28, provided “material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization,” and acted as a “media wing” for al-Qaeda Occupy Boston hosted the...

"In September, Treasury completed its latest audit, showing that U.S. gold reserves total 9,300 tons with a market value of $320 billion, Thorson said. The recent run-up in gold prices -- the precious metal is trading at about $1,515 an ounce -- puts the market value at $340 billion as of Wednesday, according to Thorson's testimony. He added that each gold bar weighs about 27 pounds and is worth around $500,000. Paul said that his questions were partly in response to the numerous Internet conspiracy theories, including those that accuse the government of secretly selling all of the gold in...

First lady Michelle Obama told reporters Wednesday that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid doesn’t owe her an apology over his racial comments about her husband’s electoral chances because she knows Reid so well. “Harry Reid has no need to apologize to me because I know Harry Reid. I measure people more so on what they do rather than the things they say,” said Obama, in a roundtable with several media outlets, including POLITICO.

Scofflawyers need to pay up, Franchot saysJudge denies his request for their Social Security numbers, but other approaches to loophole on table Friday, June 22, 2007 by Douglas Tallman | Staff Writer ANNAPOLIS — Comptroller Peter V.R. Franchot’s zeal to collect more taxes has led him to request the Court of Appeals to provide the Social Security numbers of Maryland lawyers. Chief Judge Robert M. Bell has denied the request, but the comptroller and the judge are discussing other ways to assist the tax-collection effort, Franchot said. Lawyers fail to pay between $2 million and $3 million in taxes a...

Americans Owe Confederate History Respect By CHRIS EDWARDS The Time Has Come To Take A Stand After attending the Confederate Memorial Day service on June 1 in Higginsville, I found myself believing our nation should be ashamed for not giving more respect and recognition to our ancestors. I understand that some find the Confederate flag offensive because they feel it represents slavery and oppression. Well, here are the facts: The Confederate flag flew over the South from 1861 to 1865. That's a total of four years. The U.S. Constitution was ratified in April 1789, and that document protected and condoned...

You owe us $21,685,135,571.48 By Henry Samuel in Paris (Filed: 08/10/2003) Haiti has demanded that France hand over the staggering sum of $21,685,135,571.48 - today's equivalent of the 90 million francs that Haiti was forced to pay French landowners in 1825 in exchange for independence. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's president, said the sum did not take into account interest, penalties or the suffering and indignity inflicted by slavery and colonisation. The French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, has rebuffed the demand, saying that the European Union had given Haiti more than $2 billion in aid in recent years. But with the...

Hospitals owe debt to Islam By Steve Connor 11 September 2003 Modern medicine owes much to the scholars of the medieval Islamic world, who pioneered the diagnosis and treatment of human disease, a science historian told the conference. The very first hospitals were built around AD800 in Baghdad and they were much more sophisticated than the simple monastic hospices that grew up in Western Europe several hundred years later, said Emilie Savage-Smith of St Cross College in Oxford. The largest Islamic hospitals were built in Egypt and Syria in the 12th and 13th centuries. Patients were treated in wards dedicated...