Free Republic

On the night Hosni Mubarak fell from power, the crowds that rejoiced in Cairo's central square were so dense, so roiling and rowdy that Mohamed Assyouti couldn't push his way through when his girlfriend, Mariam Nekiwi, was assaulted several yards away. "A group of men surrounded her from four directions and closed her off," he said. First someone grabbed her groin, she said. Other hands groped the rest of her body, pinching hard and yanking at her clothes. She was shoved one way and then the other. The frenzy was so sudden, the crush so stifling, that she could barely...

The Border Patrol is claiming success along a formerly chaotic five-mile stretch of the border between the San Ysidro and Otay Mesa ports of entry, where fencing was raised and reinforced with razor-studded concertina wire. Yesterday, agents in San Diego celebrated the completion of the wire project, begun in December and mostly finished about two months ago. The Border Patrol said both illegal-crossing arrests and assaults against agents in the area are down by more than 50 percent. However, a growing number of apprehensions and assaults are occurring west of the San Ysidro port of entry, and overall arrests in...

October 3, 2007 Sharp yesterday began publicly demonstrating a new technology that could have far reaching effects on the way we interact with the mounting tide of mobile information available to us through diminutive devices such as smart phones, PDAs, cameras and UMPCs – the marriage of sensing function with an LCD screen is not new, but Sharp’s technology puts an optical sensor into each pixel enabling the screen to become a multiple touch-point screen and a scanner. The technology is a simple one to understand, but one that has massive implications as it is a fundamental building block in...

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Japan's Sharp Corp. introduced on Sunday a 108-inch LCD television, which it says is the largest of its kind. The announcement, made at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, came just hours after Korean rival LG Electronics Inc. said it had developed a 100-inch LCD TV. Sharp said the new TV would be available in mid-2007 but did not give pricing details. LCD, or liquid crystal display, is a popular type of flat-panel display technology that consumers have been snapping up over the past year, and high-tech TVs are one of the most important categories...

AUSTIN — Two gubernatorial candidates received rare embraces from leaders of an organization that prides itself on its fierce nonpartisanship and rigid rules for politicians. Democrat Chris Bell got a warm embrace Saturday morning after pledging support for education and healthcare spending, training for livable wage jobs and comprehensive immigration reform all of which make up the "working families agenda" for the Texas Industrial Areas Foundation. Texas comptroller and independent gubernatorial candidate Carole Keeton Strayhorn got a big hug on Friday from the Rev. John Bowie of True Light Baptist Church in Houston after Strayhorn offered passionate support for most...

In 2003, the State House was faced with a projected budget deficit; however, the then-new Republican majority stuck to Texas’ low tax plan. The biennium ended with a small budget surplus—a testament to low taxes. Republicans are now willing to enact a new tax, despite a $10 billion surplus. State Republicans are challenged with important questions: what is a fair tax? What is a safe tax? What is a good tax? However, no tax is fair, safe or good. The only true question is: with a $10 billion surplus, why tax more at all? Texas’ strong economy is due, not...

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. and Iraqi forces have "mostly eliminated" the ability of insurgents to conduct sustained, high-intensity attacks in Baghdad, the top U.S. commander in the Iraqi capital said Friday. Maj. Gen. William G. Webster Jr. said in a video-teleconference interview from Baghdad with reporters at the Pentagon that offensive operations by U.S. and Iraqi troops in recent weeks had sharply reduced the number of insurgent bombings. But he cautioned against concluding that the insurgency has been broken. "It's very difficult to know it's over," Webster said. There were 14 to 21 car bombings per week in Baghdad before...

Even his most ardent opponents are wont to acknowledge Justice Antonin Scalia's intellectual brilliance. If you’ve never watched his devastating fire handily blasting the drunken jurisprudence of postmodernism, you owe yourself a read some evening. It’s an irreverence that arouses the highest form of wrath: that of a left that has been not only defied, but mocked. His specialty is dismembering an opponent with his own weapon. He does it calmly and with a deftness that immobilizes any liberal mind that has been dealt such a terrifying dose of simplicity. Our $164,000 a year is buying us a lot. Contrary...

President Bush is moving quickly to create a new, tighter and more disciplined domestic policy team to pursue transforming the way Americans save for retirement, pay taxes and seek legal damages. Convinced his leadership style and policy vision were vindicated by the election results, Bush is aggressively targeting these domestic programs for the second term by essentially replicating the formula he used to reshape foreign policy in the first. This includes creating a small, loyal and trustworthy team to press for broad changes largely dictated by the White House. To build public support and circumvent critics in Congress and...

An Arborg cattle farmer made a horrific discovery Monday when he found the partially skinned carcass of one of his animals that was missing its tongue and apparently drained of its blood. "The whole thing has turned out to be more sinister than I thought," said Yvonne, a neighbour, who examined the mutilated animal. She asked not to have her last name used to protect her family. "What sort of weirdos have we got travelling in our neighbourhood?" Gordon, who would only allow The Sun to print his first name, said he discovered the carcass on his farm Monday afternoon....

LOS ANGELES, April 2, 2004—Jody Eldred Productions today announced it has just completed filming and is in the final stages of production on an inspirational documentary called, “Changed Lives: Miracles of The Passion,” which will air nationwide Easter weekend. With rave reviews from Diane Sawyer on ABC’s “Good Morning America” and Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s “Scarborough Country,” this one-hour T.V. special was shot in High Definition and documents the true stories of people whose lives have been forever changed by Mel Gibson’s incredible motion picture “The Passion of The Christ.” “I knew instantly that people’s lives were going to be...

Dave McNeely Thursday, May 8, 2003 Rick Perry may be wishing John Sharp had won the lieutenant governor's race last year instead of David Dewhurst. Then, Perry could blast Democrat Sharp for what the Texas Senate is doing. That's harder to do to a fellow Republican, as Perry is finding since Dewhurst hammered out a school finance bill. If it were Sharp, it would be open season. It's ironic, because Perry did everything he could to undermine the candidacy of Sharp, a one-time buddy at Texas A&M University. Perry beat former Comptroller Sharp for lieutenant governor in 1998, with huge...

Colossal squid a formidable customer 03.04.2003 - By PAULA OLIVER It has eyes as big as dinner plates, swivelling, razor-sharp hooks and a taste for anything that swims by. A colossal squid, a creature previously thought to lurk only deep in the world's coldest oceans, has been caught on the surface of the Ross Sea by a group of fishermen. The exact point where the sea monster was found is being kept secret, but it appears that the fishermen were pulling in their catch when they noticed that something large was attacking the fish. "They knew they were on to...

Election may have hurt racial unity Thursday, December 5, 2002 ''Election Day was a humiliation for the Texas Democratic Party." That comes not from a Republican, but from Democratic media consultant Dean Rindy of Austin. His analysis was e-mailed around after the Democrats' latest wipeout. Sure, President Bush was popular. So? Democrats never gave voters reasons to support them, did a miserable job on turnout and managed to turn off white voters. "This was the greatest fiasco in the history of Texas politics," wrote Rindy, who had some regional Texas clients but none statewide. "Democrats spent over $100 million. The...

After he lost the lieutenant governor's race four years ago to Republican Rick Perry, Democrat John Sharp said Texas wasn't a Republican state, just a Bush state. Even with George W. Bush coasting to re-election, Sharp came within 2 percentage points of winning. This year, Bush closed a 15-day national campaign tour in Texas, and Republicans urged a straight-ticket vote to help the president. Bush might as well have been on the ballot, judging from Tuesday's results. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Bush's popularity skyrocketed. It remained high even as Democrats pointed out that the economy was sputtering. Meanwhile,...

Sanchez, Demo pals make rounds in SE Texas BY TRICIA CORTEZ Times staff writer BEAUMONT - It wasn't just a massive weather system that moved into the home of Spindletop Monday, where Texas oil first gushed in 1901. A caravan, led by Tony Sanchez and his "Tony Express" a.k.a. the "Lower Rates Express," rolled into the Golden Triangle cities of Beaumont, Port Arthur and Orange in southeast Texas, where high school bands played and the Democratic faithful came out. Amid pouring rain, two tour buses and a slew of Suburbans also made stops in Liberty, Clear Lake and Galveston. In...

TOKYO (Reuters) - Sharp Corp, Japan's largest maker of liquid crystal displays (LCDs), unveiled a screen Tuesday with microprocessor circuitry applied directly onto the glass, enabling it to function like a computer. Reuters Photo The company hopes to have products available by 2005 using the advanced circuitry, perhaps even a "display card" that could store data and be carried around for use with various gadgets from games machines to mobile phones to car navigation systems. "This could be something the size of a business card, perhaps with a wireless function and touch-screen input," Mikio Katayama, head of Sharp's mobile display...

For Democrats, faith, politics can clash Diocese bars Sanchez, Sharp from speaking because of their support for abortion rights By Ken Herman AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Tuesday, June 25, 2002 The brief, silent pause between the end of the question and the start of the answer spoke volumes about the delicate balance between religious piety and party loyalty. "That's a very difficult question," Democratic governor candidate Tony Sanchez said when asked if Catholicism, his religion, is wrong on abortion. "But I think the only thing that is really important to me is how I think about abortion. I consider myself a devout...