Free Republic

In his Cairo speech, President Obama went out of his way to say the U.S. had disavowed torture, however defined, of those who fly planes into buildings and otherwise plan mass murder.He reminded the Arab street that the Supermax facility at Guantanamo housing these murderers, past and future, will be closed.What will happen to these Gitmo residents is still unclear. Not a single member of Congress wants them housed in his or her district, and few countries seem willing to take many off our hands.

"Nancy Pelosi has more integrity in her pinky than Dick Cheney and Karl Rove have in their whole bodies combined." Some congressional idiot made that claim to a bevy of media cameras gathered for a press conference designed to help the flailing Speaker of the House try to save face. Of course the Congressional idiot wishes he never had said it now, following the release of President Obama's Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon Panetta that put forward in no uncertain terms that Ms. Pelosi was the one lying to Congress, the administration, the media, and "We the People."...

Just to set the record straight right off the bat, I’m not in favor of torture! Except in the cases of; •truly dangerous people, •who present a specific threat to our national security, •who posses vital information needed to protect 300 million Americans citizens, •and who have trouble coming clean with the facts on their own… of course. I just never thought this would describe a female Speaker of the House! According to investigative DC journalist Bill Sammon, “Nancy Pelosi was told about waterboarding, and now she has been caught in a lie. The jig is up; she will be...

Keith Olbermann wants to torture Sean Hannity. Or is it enhanced-interrogate him? Last week, Charles Grodin was on Hannity, and the conversation turned, as so many do, to simulated drowning. Grodin says waterboarding is torture; Hannity says it's not, and then Grodin asked, "We can waterboard you?" Hannity replied, "Sure...I'll do it for charity. I'll let you do it." And then Keith Olbermann became obsessed with the statement, offering to give $1,000 to military families for every second of waterboarding Hannity could withstand. "And I'll double it, when you admit you feared for your life," he said on the air....

The American Media have read the Mein Kampf, underlined key passages, and put them to use in their propaganda. Recently the media, the pundits, the late show comics, and prominent Democrats - including the Teleprompter of the United States - have repeatedly advanced the completely false charge that "90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges, police officers and mayors ... come from the United States." It's a complete lie. A lie that Democrats have tried to use for political effect. In reality, the overwhelming majority of guns confiscated from drug cartels...

Like the 90% myth regarding American guns seized from the Cartel, the MSM took the story about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed being "waterboarded 183 times" and ran with it - poisoning the American public with a falsehood before the facts could be realized. The MSM will stop at nothing to push their liberal agenda...

Once again, we see the truth take a back seat to the best spin by Democrats. NRO's The Corner blog has an exclusive report on the supposed "180 waterboardings" that the US government conducted on terror suspects and it appears that the truth is a bit different than the spin. You see, it seems that there weren't "180 waterboardings" but were instead 180 "pours." In other words, water was poured on the suspects 180 times. Further, the rules were quite specific. No more than two sessions could be conducted on any suspect within a 24 hour period and no more...

I sincerely hope our justifiable anxiety over government spending and taxes will not obscure our vision in regard to other alarming threats to our liberties resulting from radical policy changes from the Obama administration, including those concerning our national security. The administration's endless multi-continent America-bashing expeditions, its hostility to strategic missile defense, its look-the-other-way approach to the ongoing nuclear and ballistic missile advancements of rogue nations while flirting with dismantling our own, and its reported termination of assembly line production of F-22 fighters -- while China and Russia are engaged in the full-tilt manufacturing of fifth-generation fighter jets -- are...

WASHINGTON – As national security adviser in the Bush White House, Condoleezza Rice verbally OK'd the CIA's request to subject alleged al-Qaida terrorist Abu Zubaydah to waterboarding in July 2002, a decision memorialized a few days later in a secret memo that the Obama administration declassified last week. Rice's role was detailed in a narrative released Wednesday by the Senate Intelligence Committee. It provides the most detailed timeline yet for how the CIA's harsh interrogation program was conceived and approved at the highest levels in the Bush White House. The new timeline shows that Rice played a greater role than...

A 18-page memo, dated August 1, 2002, from Jay Bybee, Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA. [PDF] A 46-page memo, dated May 10, 2005, from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA. [PDF] A 20-page memo, dated May 10, 2005, from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA. [PDF] A 40-page memo, dated May 30, 2005, from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA. [PDF]

A California board has revoked federal water claims that were critical to building a long-stalled dam northeast of Sacramento, effectively ending the project. Tuesday's unanimous vote by the State Water Resources Control Board comes more than four decades after Congress authorized the Auburn Dam to control flooding along the American River. Board members said the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation had not done its job. --snip-- The Bureau of Reclamation could apply for new permits, but Congress first would have to reauthorize the project.

Scroll for updates…Wired News confirms… Sometime early this morning, between approximately 3:00am - 4:00am, members of an infamous group of hackers broke into Gov. Sarah Palin’s private Yahoo e-mail account. The incriminating discussion threads included screenshots of Palin’s e-mail and private e-mail addresses of her contacts. The threads have since been deleted. Hacking e-mail is a federal crime. A TV anchor who broke into his colleague’s e-mail account recently pleaded guilty and faces a maximum five years in prison. The law will catch up to the hackers, but what about the lowlifes who are now gleefully splashing the alleged contents...

NOTE: as I have traditionally done, Christmas songs telling the news of the day will only be the secular songs. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 2007 DFU CHRISTMAS PARODIES: OVER THE RIVER AND THROUGH THE WOODSIT'S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMASPARADE OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERSI SAW MOMMY KISSING SANTA CLAUS GRANDMA GOT RUN OVER BY A REINDEER RUDOLPH THE RED NOSED REINDEER CHIPMUNK CHRISTMAS SONG LET IT SNOW DECK THE HALLS I'M GETTIN' NUTHIN' FOR CHRISTMAS WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN UP ON THE HOUSETOP SLEIGH RIDE TOGETHER WINTER WONDERLAND MIDI - ALL I WANT...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Regulations on salt levels in the delta that connects California's longest rivers to the San Francisco Bay must be enforced, even if it means cutting back on water that's pumped to Southern California and to the Central Valley's farm fields, water regulators said. Wednesday's order marked the first time the California Water Resources Board took a firm stand enforcing salt levels in the San Joaquin-Sacramento River delta, which were first discussed almost 25 years ago. The agency ordered federal and state agencies drawing water from the environmentally troubled region to meet the water quality requirements, or...

SCOTIA, Calif. (AP) - State water officials ordered Pacific Lumber Co. to temporarily halt logging in Humboldt County on Wednesday after environmentalists filed a petition questioning the validity of the company's timber harvest plans. The State Water Resources Control Board issued the stay requested by the Humboldt Watershed Council and the Environmental Protection Information Center to suspend logging in parts of the Freshwater Creek and Elk River watersheds near Eureka on California's far northern coast. In February, the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board agreed to allow Pacific Lumber to cut up to 50 percent of the annual 1,100-acre...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A Southern California water district board member who pleaded guilty to accepting a $25,000 bribe in exchange for voting to award a contract for financial services was sentenced to two years in prison. Tyrone Smith, 47, of Ladera Heights is one of about a dozen officials who had been convicted following a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe in to municipal corruption in Carson. U.S. District Judge Nora Manella on Monday rejected a defense request for six months of home detention. She said that granting such a sentence would send the wrong message to public officials who...