Free Republic

All of a sudden, seems as if everybody's talking about Barack Obama and Tony Rezko. Even Jay Leno. Rezko already was a big story in Chicago, accused of influence-peddling in the Blagojevich administration and set to face trial Feb. 25. Having a hard time keeping track of the facts? Here are eight things to know: 1. They met in 1990. Obama was a student at Harvard Law School and got an unsolicited job offer from Rezko, then a low-income housing developer in Chicago. Obama turned it down. 2. Obama took a job in 1993 with a small Chicago law firm,...

London - British public safety officials today increased the national alert level to "Quite Elevated Indeed" -- the highest category possible -- and appealed to UK citizens to "keep a sharp lookout for diverse people engaged in activities." "We ask the public to report any behaviors by various people that may or may not be of a suspicious nature," said Lt. Clive Jameson of the Metropolitan Police Service. "We further ask the public to be especially vigilant for activities of broad stratas of people who may be from countries of some sort, especially those within the eastern and/or western hemisphere."...

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Death Newsflash: we're all going to die. But here are 20 things you didn't know about kicking the bucket. By LeeAundra Temescu DISCOVER Vol. 27 No. 09 | September 2006 1 The practice of burying the dead may date back 350,000 years, as evidenced by a 45-foot-deep pit in Atapuerca, Spain, filled with the fossils of 27 hominids of the species Homo heidelbergensis, a possible ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans. 2 Never say die: There are at least 200 euphemisms for death, including "to be in Abraham's bosom," "just add maggots," and "sleep...

Sometimes, I think that I am repeating myself over and over again. It seems that my liberal friends in the Legislature keep doing the same things over and over again, and never realize that it is what they are doing that is hurting the rest of us. The latest thing is affordable housing. About a month ago, playing off of the theme of her husband’s presidential campaign, Senator Hillary Clinton said, “It’s the American dream, stupid,” obviously implying that Democrats should focus on making sure people can buy a home—the “American dream”. This has led to a lot of the...

1 The placebo effect DON'T try this at home. Several times a day, for several days, you induce pain in someone. You control the pain with morphine until the final day of the experiment, when you replace the morphine with saline solution. Guess what? The saline takes the pain away. This is the placebo effect: somehow, sometimes, a whole lot of nothing can be very powerful. Except it's not quite nothing. When Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin in Italy carried out the above experiment, he added a final twist by adding naloxone, a drug that blocks the effects...

In a Nov. 12 Orange Grove column ["Beware of stealth socialism"], I discussed the problems created when government pension funds are invested in private companies. The Register has since highlighted a heretofore-unconsidered problem - political patronage. A media group sued CalPERS to force it to divulge money-management fees it paid to financial companies. CalPERS stonewalled, and for good reason. The information it finally released showed it paid Yucaipa Cos. $8.6 million to manage a reported $50 million. If these numbers are correct, that's a whopping 17 percent fee, or about 17 times higher than what reputable mutual finds charge. The...

Bush Calls for 'Big Things' From Congress 2 hours, 31 minutes ago By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - President Bush welcomed newly elected members of Congress to town Monday with a call "to achieve big things," beginning with help for foreigners devastated by the tsunami. Bush has pledged $350 million for countries hit by waves after an earthquake shook the floor of the Indian Ocean and has held out prospects for more aid. He said he'll call on Congress to make good on the pledge and to support the U.S. military's effort to bring relief in the region....

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted to blow up the boxes of state government. Now, incoming Senate leader Don Perata is giving the upper house a makeover. Perata, an Oakland Democrat, outlined his plan Wednesday to combine and eliminate several Senate committees, cut the number of members on each panel and reduce the amount of bills introduced next session. In some cases, the changes reflect core Democratic values, such as taking a "smart growth" approach to housing and transportation needs by combining the two issues into one committee. But Perata also hopes the moves will force inexperienced lawmakers to focus on fewer...

Care packages of candy bars and beef jerky are a welcome taste of home to soldiers in Iraq, but an inventor has something they could really use: a way to make them invisible to the eyes of the enemy. Ray M. Alden has designed a system of tiny lenses and mirrors he says could be used to camouflage almost any object - a tank, a Humvee or an individual soldier - in any environment.With such a device,fighting forces would have less to fear from the urban combat they still face in the treacherous alleys of Iraqi cities, where they are...