Free Republic

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce accused President Barack Obama on Saturday of giving misleading remarks in his latest radio address about possible illegal foreign involvement in the 2010 midterm elections. In his weekly speech, Obama reiterated his oft-repeated criticisms of the Supreme Court's Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling, saying the high court's early 2010 decision to throw out most bans on corporate and union broadcast advertising buys "overturned decades of law and precedent" and "gave the special interests the power to spend without limit -- and without public disclosure -- to run ads in order to influence elections."

Homeland Security: President Obama promised lobbyists wouldn't run his White House. They're just doing it from across the street — at a Shariah-compliant coffee chain tied to a radical jihadist group. That's right: According to the New York Times, prominent K Street lobbyists are buttonholing Obama officials at a Caribou Coffee shop on Pennsylvania Avenue, raising far more than just ethics questions. What the Times story neglects to mention is that Caribou Coffee is a Shariah-compliant firm owned by an Islamic bank based in Bahrain. One of its founders and a current adviser are leaders in the radical Muslim Brotherhood....

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is inviting medical high rollers to join her at the swanky new W Hotel in downtown Washington. The price of this one-hour soiree? As much as $5000. Hoping to capitalize on the passage of the health care bill — and the massive government expenditures it dictates, estimated to be at least $1 trillion — Speaker Pelosi’s staff is inviting (pdf) “the health care community” to join her in the Studio Room of the W Hotel in what Carmela Clendening (also listed on the invitation) said is an annual rite. She told Pajamas Media that this specific...

I concur with the following response from my agent to Helen Thomas' lamentable remarks about Israel, and will no longer be working with Helen on our book projects. -- Craig Crawford "It is with a heavy heart that Nine Speakers, Inc. announces its resignation as the agent for Helen Thomas, Dean of the White House Press Corps. Ms. Thomas has had an esteemed career as a journalist, and she has been a trailblazer for women, helping others in her profession, and beyond. However, in light of recent events, Nine Speakers is no longer able to represent Ms. Thomas, nor can...

Dyson's Latest: A Fan with No Blades British inventor James Dyson—creator of the bagless vacuum and air blade hand dryer—has devised a cooling fan that uses 98% less power than air conditioning For once James Dyson has invented something without cutting-edge technology – a fan without blades. With an eye on the lucrative US market for air conditioning, the creator of the bagless vacuum cleaner is launching his bladeless fan on both sides of the Atlantic today. Instead of pushing coolness around a room, the loop of the Dyson Air Multiplier "accelerates and amplifies" air, expelling 405 litres a second.

(IsraelNN.com) Weapons are flowing freely into Shechem and other Palestinian Authority-controlled towns in Samaria thanks to the recent removal of IDF checkpoints. So reports a senior IDF source who spoke to the Hebrew-language Arutz Sheva this week on condition of anonymity. The weapons come to Shechem from the south, the source explained. Weapons are smuggled from the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt to Israel's Negev desert. From there, they are smuggled to the Hevron region, where the Judea and Samaria security barrier remains incomplete.

OBUMMERCARE ... Let me get this straight. Obummer's health care plan will be written by a COMMIE-tee whose head says he doesn't understand it, passed by a CONgress that hasn't read it and whose members will be exempt from it, signed by a President who smokes, funded by a treasury chief who did not pay his taxes, overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that is broke. What could possibly go wrong?

Amid reports that Defense Secretary Robert Gates is heading to Israel next week for talks on Teheran's nuclear program, a senior US defense official has told The Jerusalem Post that an Israeli strike on Iran could be profoundly destabilizing and would affect US interests. Israel needed to take its relationship with America into account in contemplating any such attack, he warned. Gates, who last week described the Islamic republic's nuclear drive as the greatest current threat to global security, is set to spend six hours here next Monday, discussing the Iranian threat with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister...

...Wright's strong sentiments were echoed in the Sunday morning service attended by NewsMax. Wright laced into America's establishment, blaming the "white arrogance" of America's Caucasian majority for the woes of the world, especially the oppression suffered by blacks. To underscore the point he refers to the country as the "United States of White America." Many in the congregation, including Obama, nodded in apparent agreement as these statements were made...

JERUSALEM – The board of a nonprofit organization on which Sen. Barak Obama served as a paid director alongside a confessed domestic terrorist granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a "catastrophe" and supports intense immigration reform, including providing drivers licenses and education to illegal aliens. The co-founder of the Arab group in question, Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, also has held a fundraiser for Obama. Khalidi is a harsh critic of Israel, has made statements supportive of Palestinian terror and reportedly has worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization while it...

Middle East jihad leaders have reacted to a shocking new book released last week in which they were interviewed by a Jewish reporter on all sorts of topics from why terrorists kill and maim through who they want to see in U.S. high office in 2008.

Islamabad - A tribal council in central Pakistan has ordered the surrender of the wife of a rapist to the child victim's father for retribution, media reports said on Tuesday. The council, called a punchayat, was convened in a village near the Punjab Province city of Multan, located 380km south of Islamabad, after police refused to register a case against a local man for assaulting the minor. Brothers of the accused man had initially offered one of their four daughters in compensation for the crime, the newspaper Daily Nation said. But the council decreed that the father of the victim...

RALEIGH, N.C. - MySpace.com will provide a number of state attorneys general with data on registered sex offenders who use the popular social networking web site, the company said Monday. Attorneys general from eight states demanded last week that the company provide data on how many registered sex offenders are using the site and where they live. MySpace initially refused, citing federal privacy laws. MySpace obtained the data from Sentinel Tech Holding Corp., which the company partnered with in December to build a database with information on sex offenders.

December 1, 2006 -- YES, it's been quite a week for the 10 members of the Iraq Study Group, the committee formed last spring to offer recommendations on a path forward in Iraq. They had a wonderfully invigorating leak session the other day with The New York Times, which was the first recipient of the group's key top-level save-America recommendation. Co-chairmen James "Is There An Arab Dictator Nearby Whose Butt I Can Kiss" Baker and Lee "Yes, I'm Still Alive" Hamilton didn't even bother to pretend to brief the president or key lawmakers first. The president could wait his turn....

AUSTINTOWN, Ohio - Buffeted by Hollywood heartthrobs Luke Perry and Adam Brody, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton lent her own star power to a fellow Democrat yesterday in the crucial presidential battleground state of Ohio. Clinton, Perry and Brody were on hand to boost Sherrod Brown's chances for the Senate at a massive rally in Austintown - where, many said, New York's junior senator was the main draw. Clinton was indeed the star attraction, but she made sure to note the presence of Perry, the former "Beverly Hills 90210" star and an Ohio native, and Brody, who stars in "The O.C."

Iran's gulf of misunderstanding with US By Gordon Corera Security correspondent, BBC News Anti-American protests in Tehran are a regular event The US and Iran almost never speak to each other. "It's the most unusual relationship we have with any country in the world," explains US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns. "It's been 27 years since we've had a normal diplomatic, social and political relationship. And so for instance I am one of the people responsible for Iran in our government and yet I have never met an Iranian government official in my 25-year career." The fiery...

In Mongolia archaeologists discover permafrost mummy with fur coat. Written by Ulaanbaatar correspondent Thursday, 17 August 2006 Research workers of the German archaeological institute have discovered a mummy in permafrost at excavation work in Mongolia of approximately 2,500 years old. At the "sensational find" of a sepulchre chamber of the Scythian rider people a crew of the German television sender ZDF were present. In front of the camera the archaeologists opened the sepulchre where the mummy of the Scythian soldier was stored. The mummy, conserved in permafrost, carried still a fur coat and had a decorated gilded head ornament. According...

Judge lets teens finish season before serving sentence for fake deer prank KENTON, Ohio - A judge decided two high school athletes can complete the football season this fall before they serve 60-day jail sentences for a car crash caused by a decoy deer placed in a country road. Two teens were injured. “I shouldn’t be doing this, but I’m going to. I see positive things about participating in football,” Judge Gary McKinley said Tuesday. Dailyn Campbell, a 16-year-old quarterback for Kenton High, and 17-year-old teammate Jesse Howard will serve their time in a juvenile detention center. They were also...

Sleep with Neanderthals? Apparently we (homo Sapiens) did By Faye Flam The Philadelphia Inquirer Though it's been 150 years since mysteriously humanlike bones first turned up in Germany's Neander Valley, the find continues to shake our collective sense of human identity. Neanderthals are humanity's closest relatives, with brains at least as big as ours, and yet we don't know whether we should include them as members of our own species. No longer does science consider them our direct ancestors but some suspect Neanderthals and modern homo Sapiens interbred during the 20,000 some-odd years we co-existed in Europe. The archaeological record...

Forgotten army sides with Hizbullah Jonathan Steele in Marjaayoun Monday July 31, 2006 The Guardian (UK) A Lebanese man wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, walks past a bomb crater in the eastern Bekaa valley. Photograph: Samer Husseini/AP "Any Hizbullah in the town?" I asked the Lebanese soldier who had hitched a lift outside this mixed Christian and Shia area just five miles north of the Israeli border. "A few," he replied, as his right eye creased into a cheerful wink. We dropped him in Marjaayoun's cobbled main square, where three other soldiers in...