Free Republic

Animal Rights, Human Wrongs By Iain Murray: 20 Apr 2006 Animal rights extremism -- which the FBI has labeled the biggest domestic terrorism threat -- has encountered a number of serious reverses recently. These reverses are a great victory for science, free inquiry and public health. In particular, Americans could learn from a popular movement in the UK that is standing up to the threats and intimidation of the animal "liberation" movement and asserting the moral arguments for animal testing. The poster child for animal liberation extremism has been Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), a British-based firm that conducts experiments on...

Seven weeks later, the White House still hasn't explained what President Obama did and didn't do during the seven hours of the attack on Benghazi on September 11. And there's been no response from the White House to questions asked by senators or THE WEEKLY STANDARD or David Ignatius in the Washington Post. We have, to be sure, heard from some government officials. But the information they've provided raises still more questions. CIA director David Petraeus authorized a statement pointedly saying that "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to...

Speak only about the greatness of GOD

President Barack Obama will present his “jobs plan” on Wednesday at a company that’s shipping jobs overseas. Obama is scheduled to present his “jobs plan” in Apex, N.C., on Wednesday at the headquarters of WestStar Precision. WestStar Precision is a high-end, specialty manufacturer that just opened a new facility in San Jose, Costa Rica, creating many new jobs there, but not in the United States. “Our main office and manufacturing facility near Research Triangle Park in the Raleigh/Durham area has approximately 11,000 sq. ft. of office space, production area and warehouse,” the company says on its website. “This facility has...

THE LOW POINT of Joey Vento's career probably was facing trumped-up charges that dragged him before the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations. He was accused of discrimination, but no matter how high the kangaroos in the court jumped, they couldn't produce anyone who was discriminated against at his neon-loaded, nurse-clean sandwich shop. At the time of the hearing, Joey told me CHR "violated numerous civil rights of me." The high point of Joey Vento's career was showing up at Geno's before daybreak to prepare his iconic sandwich shop for the day's business. The 5-foot-5, tattooed, gold chain-laden South Philadelphian was...

On Saturday, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Lisa Jackson will be giving the keynote speech at the Energy Action Coalition's Power Shift 2011 conference, a meeting of potentially 10,000 green youth activists in Washington, D.C. According to the schedule, President Obama's former green jobs czar Van Jones will be speaking Friday evening, and members of the International Socialists Organization will be hosting a panel discussion Saturday: Van Jones is a globally recognized, award-winning pioneer in human rights and the clean-energy economy. Van is a co-founder of three successful non-profit organizations: the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Color...

Richard Goldstone’s stunning recantation of his war crimes accusation against the Jewish state has reverberated through the Jewish community here and in Israel. The U.S. reaction was mild; the British was worse, explicitly refusing to call for the revocation of the report. (You can understand why Israel doesn’t consider European countries to be honest peace brokers.) The legitimately pro-Israel groups were delighted by the retraction of Goldstone’s libel. David Harris of the American Jewish Committee told the Jerusalem Post: “Judge Goldstone should apologize to the State of Israel for the accusations of intentionally targeting civilians, which he now admits were...

WASHINGTON -- The White House says President Barack Obama will speak to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Feb. 7, addressing a major trade group that has been sharply critical of some of his domestic policies. The announcement comes amid the changing political terrain in Washington that has given more power to congressional Republicans, traditional allies of the business sector.

PHOENIX — State senators took the first steps Friday to protect businesses from winding up in legal trouble for failing to provide translators for customers who don't speak English. Existing law prohibits discrimination in places of "public accommodation against anyone because of race, color, religion, sex, national origin or ancestry." That category includes restaurants, hotels, theaters and any place that offers services or goods to the general public. SB 1199, as unanimously approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, would spell out that the law doesn't require any business owner to provide a "trained and competent bilingual person" to assist customers....

Members of the business community today are starting to sound off in opposition to President Obama's new plan to crack down on offshore tax evasion, denouncing the initiative as a "foolish" program that would do more harm than good.

Obama to America--Learn Spanish From: floydb310 Views: 46,132 Comments: 107

Neanderthals speak out after 30,000 years 15:00 15 April 2008 NewScientist.com news service Ewen Callaway Reconstruction of a Neanderthal child's face (Image: Anthropological Institute, University of Zürich) Talk about a long silence – no one has heard their voices for 30,000 years. Now the long-extinct Neanderthals are speaking up – or at least a computer synthesiser is doing so on their behalf. Robert McCarthy, an anthropologist at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton has used new reconstructions of Neanderthal vocal tracts to simulate the voice. He says the ancient human's speech lacked the "quantal vowel" sounds that underlie modern speech....

Muslim journalists and bloggers across the Arab world are speaking out to promote civil society and women's rights in Islamic societies. But it is a hard struggle at times, with societal pressure and even fines to contend with. The first so-called "honor killing" that Rana Husseini wrote about was the case of a 16-year-old girl who was killed by one of her brothers after she had been raped by another brother. "The family blamed her, saying that she had 'seduced' the brother," Husseini recalls. That was in 1994 and Rana was only into her first few weeks of working as...

Moderate Muslims Urged to Speak Out Sunday October 1, 2006 2:16 AM By JAN M. OLSEN Associated Press Writer COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) - Moderate Muslims must take a stand against extremists, speakers said Saturday at a conference marking a year since the publication of Prophet Muhammad cartoons that led to violent demonstrations in Muslim countries. The 12 drawings, first published in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten in September, were reprinted in several European countries four months later, prompting angry mobs to attack Western embassies in countries including Lebanon, Iran and Indonesia. The cartoons, which included a drawing of the prophet with...

Mexican President Vicente Fox is expected to arrive in California today, hoping to shore up his argument that Mexico's strong economic ties to the United States make it a natural partner in solving the conundrum of illegal immigration. Fox is scheduled to speak before the state Legislature today and to meet privately with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez. On Friday his itinerary includes addressing the California Chamber of Commerce and Latino business leaders before he flies to Los Angeles. Mexico is California's No. 1 trading partner, "so a growing Mexican economy is also good for California," Schwarzenegger...

WASHINGTON - President Bush plans to address the nation Monday night on the immigration debate, trying to build momentum for legislation that could provide millions of illegal immigrants a chance to become American citizens. The White House said it was seeking time from television networks for the president's remarks. "This is crunch time," Tony Snow, the new White House press secretary said Friday at his first off-camera, or informal, briefing. On Thursday, Senate leaders reached a deal to revive a broad immigration bill that had appeared doomed just several weeks ago. Key to the agreement is who will be negotiating...

On Feb. 21, Doubleday will publish the book that cost me my job: "Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy." The germination began when I heard about the extraordinary efforts made by the White House to ram the Medicare drug benefit through the House of Representatives during the night. Until that point, I had given President Bush the benefit of the doubt—even on things with which I was uncomfortable. For example, I had reluctantly concluded the Iraq War was justified on the basis of what I knew at the time it began. I don't normally...

3/13/2006 - U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. (AFPN) -- Two aviators who brought World War II to the Japanese mainland, and the daughter of the mission’s leader, will speak at the Air Force Academy March 14. Retired Cols. Bill Bower and Dick Cole, along with Jonna Doolittle-Hoppes are the speakers for a lectinar here sponsored by the Academy’s history department. On April 18, 1942, 80 volunteer bomber aircrews led by then-Lt. Col. James Doolittle launched 16 B-25 Mitchell medium bombers from the USS Hornet, to bomb mainland Japan. Colonel Cole and Doolittle were at the controls of the first bomber...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Mel Gibson will give audiences a preview of the ancient language spoken in his upcoming movie, "Apocalypto." During a brief appearance on the Academy Awards on Sunday, Gibson will speak Maya, the only language in the film. His last movie, "The Passion of the Christ," was performed in Latin and Aramaic. "I wanted to shake up the stale action-adventure genre," Gibson told Time for a story on the magazine's Web site. "So I think we almost had to come up with something utterly different like this." "Apocalypto" is set in pre-Columbian Mexico and is being shot...

Hundreds of people marched in support of animal testing at Oxford University's new £18m biomedical research centre on Saturday. Students, academic staff and members of the public gathered near the lab site, being built under strict security. Anti-vivisection activists, who believe animal testing "belongs in the past", want to stop the centre opening. (snip) Laurie Pycroft, the 16-year-old founder of the student movement Pro-Test, which sparked the campaign in favour of the new laboratory, said: "I felt that it was about time to speak out in support of scientific research." At one point, the two rival groups stood just a...