Free Republic

Jen Psaki, who was named to serve as President-elect Biden's White House press secretary, is facing fresh scrutiny over a photo that shows her wearing a Russian hat that bears the communist hammer-and-sickle logo.

One cannot understand how Pope Francis surrounds himself with revolutionary leaders, assumes their ideas are good, and gives them a virtually unconditional support without first hearing renowned specialists who contend—with concrete data to back them up—that private property, free enterprise and the principle of subsidiarity have been a source of social progress and poverty reduction around the world, in spite of deficiencies that should be corrected. Socialism, on the contrary, has been and continues to be (e.g. communist Cuba and Venezuela) an economic system that intrinsically produces poverty, class struggle, and social conflict “Chavez died. Fidel is sick. Francis has...

A new EU poster places the hammer and sickle emblem above the Christian Cross and symbols of other religions. MEP Dan Hannan is rightly angry over this atrocity at his blog: “For three generations, the badge of the Soviet revolution meant poverty, slavery, torture and death. It adorned the caps of the chekas who came in the night. It opened and closed the propaganda films which hid the famines. It advertised the people’s courts where victims of purges and show-trials were condemned. It fluttered over the re-education camps and the gulags. For hundreds of millions of Europeans, it was a...

BOSTON (Reuters) – Bone marrow transplants, already used to treat some children with sickle cell disease, also may cure some adults with this deadly genetic defect that causes red blood cells to contort, U.S. scientists said on Wednesday. > Destroying a patient's bone marrow and replacing it with healthy marrow from a donor, often a sibling, is considered too risky for adults. > This approach leaves enough space inside the patient's bones for the donated marrow to find a home and produce enough healthy red blood cells to compensate for the defective ones. >

Three military veterans in the Senate -- one a Vietnam POW, one a military lawyer, one a veteran of both World War II and Korea, and all Republicans in good standing -- want Congress to prohibit the "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of all people detained by the U.S. military, no matter what their status. The Bush administration has threatened to veto their effort. Here are 10 reasons the bill Sens. John McCain, John Warner and Lindsay Graham are championing deserves support, and why the White House is wrong to oppose it: • It is ludicrous on its face to...

Instant Poll: What does education need most? Star Tribune March 1, 2005 EDNEEDSPOLL More money Better teachers Responsible administrators Closer government oversight None of the above

Who proposes a new tax hoping to see not a penny in revenue? A Montana legislator who wants to change the way Wal-Mart pays its workers there. Sen. Ken Toole, D-Helena, is sponsoring a bill that all but names Wal-Mart as the object of the tax: A big retailer that doesn't pay an entry-level salary of at least $22,000 a year and that hires more than half part-timers will be charged a progressive tax of 1 to 2 percent on its gross receipts over $20 million a year. It's just the latest proposal by local governments to try to collect...

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind The Passion of the Christ Spider-man 2 Collateral Troy Other/don't know

Archbishop Harry Flynn, the spiritual leader of Twin Cities Catholics, and Bishop Peter Rogness, the head of St. Paul's Lutheran Synod, spent Wednesday afternoon with some of Minnesota's poorest citizens, touring a health-care clinic on St. Paul's west side, chatting with toddlers at a child-care center and serving a meal at Loaves and Fishes. It was a powerful statement by two of the state's most influential clerics, but it also sent a much-needed message at a time when Minnesota is retreating from its neediest citizens. As the Legislature begins grappling with the third state budget deficit in as many years,...

Francisco Serrano says he had nowhere to go when he arrived back in Minnesota with $200 in his pocket on Christmas Eve. So he took refuge in a place he knew well — Apple Valley High School. He posed as a student for three weeks, sitting in on classes, showering in the locker room, and sleeping in the theater. "Anywhere I could hide,'' Serrano said by phone from the Dakota County Jail in Hastings, where he remained Wednesday after his second arrest at the school. Serrano attended Apple Valley High as a 19-year-old sophomore during the 2002-03 school year and...

Earlier this month, in a speech that got less attention than it deserved, Bill Clinton gave a plain accounting of the swamp this nation is in for lack of a progressive policy -- or any real policy -- on how we produce, consume and conserve energy. U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases keep rising, warming the atmosphere and isolating us from a world community working concertedly to reverse this march toward catastrophe. U.S. oil imports are 50 percent higher than they were in the late 1980s, binding us politically to unstable or unsavory governments in the Middle East, and tying our...

Seven-year-old David Mota is a changed boy. Gone are his frantic trips to the emergency room with near-crippling pain. Gone, too, are his bouts of pneumonia. Indeed, his mom Mildred believes her son will outlive the average 42-year life span of children born with sickle cell disease, the most common genetic disorder in the United States. ''It's the drug,'' said Mota, a Miami Beach single mom. She was referring to a new medication -- hydroxyurea -- doctors are prescribing to help children avoid painful joint and tissue swelling. The drug is one of several recent developments -- a new clinic...

CYNTHIA McKINNEY IS AN AMERICAN HERO!My Opinion on the Way You are Handling the McKinney Case by Paul Walker I would appreciate it very much if you would cease the politically-motivated dirt-digging and attacks on Ms McKinney's character and instead do an objective jounalistic investigation into the claims that she has put forward. No matter what her motives may be, the facts are the facts. Fact: Carlyle Group directly benefits from an eternal Orwellian war against the "Evil Ones".Fact: The bin Ladins and the Bushes have been in bed finacially raking in hundreds of millions together on big oil,...