Free Republic

The more Al Gore opens his mouth, the more grateful Americans should be that he didn't win the presidency in 2000. Normally his rants sound like sour grapes and can be ignored, or relegated to the Jimmy Carter school of bitterness, but not lately. Last Sunday, Gore spoke to the Jeddah Economic Forum in Saudi Arabia. He trashed his country on the soil of one of the most repressive regimes on earth - a monarchy that incubated 15 of the 19 hijackers who killed 3,000 of his fellow citizens on Sept. 11, 2001, and is the home country of Osama...

Iran's president lashed out Wednesday at the United States and vowed to resist the pressure of "bully countries" as European nations circulated a draft resolution urging that Tehran be brought before the U.N. Security Council for its nuclear activities. In a speech to thousands of supporters hours after President Bush's State of the Union address, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad derided the United States as a "hollow superpower" that is "tainted with the blood of nations" and said Tehran would continue its nuclear program. "Nuclear energy is our right, and we will resist until this right is fully realized," Ahmadinejad told the...

A MAN who helped burn an Australian flag after Sydney's Cronulla race riots has been sentenced to three months in jail. Hadi Khawaja, 24, of Peakhurst, yesterday pleaded guilty to charges of malicious damage and entering enclosed property with intent to commit a serious offence during public unrest. Khawaja, who has been an Australian citizen since 1986, admitted damaging an Australian flag at the Brighton-le-Sands RSL on the evening of December 11 as retaliatory violence spread through Sydney suburbs. His teenage co-accused, who cannot be named, is alleged to have climbed the flagpole and thrown the flag down to Khawaja...

A UKRAINIAN rower plans to set off today on a solo crossing of the Indian Ocean from Western Australia to Madagascar. Theodore Rezvoy, 37, is due to leave Carnarvon today in his boat, Ukraine, for the 6882km journey to Diego Suarez. If he succeeds, he will become only the third person to have completed that route. Mr Rezvoy is dedicating his bid to fellow ocean rower Paul McCarthy, an Australian air force medical officer who was killed in the Sea King helicopter crash on the Indonesian Island of Nias this year. The 30-year-old was one of nine Australians who died...

WASHINGTON — The government is asking a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit from an atheist who wants to bar the saying of a prayer at President George W. Bush's inauguration , calling the practice widely accepted and more than 200 years old, according to a court filing released Monday. Michael Newdow , best known for trying to remove "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance, filed suit last month in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. He said the use of a prayer is unconstitutional. Newdow said that two ministers delivered Christian invocations at Bush's first...

IT was car maintenance Basil Fawlty style. An Adelaide man has been quizzed by police after taking to his own car with a sledgehammer when it refused to start. A police spokesman said patrols attended a house at suburban Salisbury Heights yesterday after reports of a man damaging a car. When they arrived they found the car with extensive damage, but were somewhat dumbfounded to be told it was the man's own vehicle. "The man stated he became frustrated when the car wouldn't start," the spokesman said. In an episode of the popular British comedy Fawlty Towers, irascible hotel owner...