Free Republic

The Democrats finally have their issue. Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., resigned his seat in the House of Representatives Friday after news leaked that he had sexually harassed an underage male congressional page. Foley repeatedly e-mailed and instant messaged the page, revoltingly asking him to undress, to measure his genitals with a ruler, to list details regarding frequency and method of masturbation, and to tell Foley when he was aroused. "[I'd] love to slip [your shorts] off you … and [grab] the one-eyed snake," Foley messaged the teen. Why repeat these perverse details? To demonstrate that House Republicans were not simply...

Congress is unlikely to approve a bill giving President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program legal status and new restrictions before the November midterm elections, dealing a significant blow to one of the White House's top wartime priorities. House and Senate versions of the legislation differ too much to bridge the gap by week's end, when Congress recesses until after the Nov. 7 elections, according to two GOP leadership aides who demanded anonymity because the decision had not yet been announced. House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters Tuesday that his chamber would bring up a bill by Rep. Heather Wilson...

Come to the National VFTT Boot Murtha Rally Sunday, Oct. 1st in Johnstown, PA Rally Location: Cambria County War Memorial Arena, 2 p.m. in downtown Johnstown, PA. Pre-Boot Murtha Rally Event: FLIGHT 93 MEMORIAL MOTORCYCLE RIDE! Riders will gather after 10:00 AM at the Zepka Harley-Davidson showroom at 960 Eisenhower Blvd. in Johnstown for an 11:00 AM departure. David Beamer, Todd's dad, will be speaking prior to send-off. The ride to the memorial will be approximately 45 minutes, and a short reflection period will follow at the memorial. The group will then return to the War Memorial Arena, arriving not...

Democrats are outraged over President Bush's new series of national security speeches. There he goes again, politicizing the war. The Democratic leadership obviously believes the president should muzzle himself so close to the November elections because what is important for national security might also help Republicans, and that must be avoided at all costs. Democrats are furious over Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's speech to the American Legion this week, in which he compared today's appeasers to those of the World War II era and warned that we mustn't turn a blind eye to today's terrorists like many did to yesterday's Nazis....

The chief justice of the state Supreme Judicial Court yesterday apologized for a joke she made at the beginning of her commencement speech at Brandeis University in May, when she quipped to spectators gathered beneath blue and white balloons, ''No red states here." The remark by Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall, who wrote the court's landmark 2003 decision allowing same-sex marriage, triggered a confidential complaint to the Commission on Judicial Conduct. The commission released an extraordinary statement yesterday from the state's top jurist, who said she regretted making what might have been construed as a political statement. ''The comment was...

ITALIAN state television has exhumed old hatreds between the political Right and Left in Italy with the dramatisation of a World War II massacre that was banished from the history books. RAI this week broadcast Il Cuore nel Pozzo (The Heart in a Pit) about the slaughter in the 1940s of about 15,000 Italians living in disputed territory in the mountains of modern-day Slovenia and Croatia. The film portrays screaming children ripped from their mothers' arms and families set before firing squads - not by Benito Mussolini's Fascists, but by Italian communists and Yugoslav partisans. "This tragedy was hidden to...

BELGRADE, ZAGREB -- Friday – Serbia has put veterans of the WWII Chetnik royalist army on the same footing as those of the Communist Partisan movement with new legislation passed this week. Chetniks are now entitled to the same pension and as Partisans under the new Veterans’ Rights Act. The new law also covers military and family disability payments. The rights now enjoyed by the Chetnik veterans were awarded to the followers of former President-for Life Josip “Tito” Broz at the end of the war. The amendments cover fighters who joined the Chetniks between April 1941 and May 1945 and...