Free Republic

WASHINGTON, April 17, 2006 – Recent news reports citing an imminent U.S. military attack against Iran are flat wrong, a senior Defense Department official said here today. Such reports constitute "wild speculation," DoD spokesman Bryan Whitman told Pentagon reporters, reiterating previous policy remarks President Bush has made on the Iran issue. The president has chosen diplomacy in concert with the international community as the preferred approach in persuading the Iranian government to jettison its nuclear programs, Whitman said. Yet, it would be unrealistic, Whitman suggested, for people to believe that DoD doesn't have plans for all types of potential military...

Final Soluton to U.S. "Abortion Problem" is Clearly Laid Out in Contstitution Says Writer FRONT ROYAL, Virginia, March 11, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Today's LifeSiteNews Special Report analyses the American Constitution and what is says about who has ultimate authority over U.S. laws concerning abortion. Rand Brown, a student at Christendom College in Front Royal Virginia states in his article that the final solution to the "Abortion Problem" lays "not where most pro-life Americans think it to be".Brown relates that Congress "can overthrow a Supreme Court ruling precisely because it, and not the Judiciary, is the voice of the American people....

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Hamas has apparently won the Palestinian parliamentary election, a senior official of President Mahmoud Abbas's long-dominant Fatah faction said on Thursday. A Hamas victory, if confirmed by official results, would put it in position to dominate a new Palestinian cabinet, which would dramatically shake up the Palestinian Authority and likely put peacemaking with Israel in a deep freeze. "It seems that Hamas will form the next government," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, after a Hamas leader claimed victory in Wednesday's vote. Fatah and Hamas had both said earlier that a coalition...

The disciplinary arm of the N.C. State Bar dropped charges of felonious misconduct against two former Union County prosecutors Friday because of a 1999 clerical error at the state Supreme Court. The State Bar had charged Kenneth Honeycutt and Scott Brewer with lying, cheating and withholding evidence in a 1996 death penalty case. The ruling Friday marks the second time that Honeycutt and Brewer won on procedural grounds before the bar's Disciplinary Hearing Commission, which sits as judge and jury in disciplinary cases. . . . Prosecutors around the state are concerned that the case is damaging their reputation and...

Jefferson 'perplexed' by aide's guilty plea; says he did no wrong By: CHEVEL JOHNSON - Associated Press Last modified Friday, January 13, 2006 10:32 PM PST Louisiana Congressman, William Jefferson, D-New Orleans, left, and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, appear before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Housing and Community Development meeting in New Orleans Friday afternoon Jan. 13, 2006. The subcommittee came to New Orleans to discussing the housing problems caused by Hurricane Katrina. (AP Photo/Bill Haber) NEW ORLEANS -- Two days after his former aide's guilty plea implicated him in a bribery case, Rep. William Jefferson said Friday he...

Dawkins is wrong about God Roger Scruton Faced with the spectacle of the cruelties perpetrated in the name of faith, Voltaire famously cried ‘Ecrasez l’infâme!’ Scores of enlightened thinkers have followed him, declaring organised religion to be the enemy of mankind, the force that divides the believer from the infidel and thereby both excites and authorises murder. Richard Dawkins, whose TV series The Root of all Evil? concludes next Monday, is the most influential living example of this tradition. And he has embellished it with a striking theory of his own — the theory of the religious ‘meme’. A meme...

In 1998, when Rob Reiner led the fight for an initiative that would add a 50-cent-per-pack tax on cigarettes to pay for child development programs, a common media theme was that the actor-director might be naive, but, boy, wasn't his idealism refreshing? Imagine, a wealthy Hollywood type putting up his own time and money because he was so worried about nurturing children. But five years after the passage of the California Children and Families First Initiative, Reiner and his allies have abandoned any claim to the moral high ground. Their role in the misuse of taxpayer dollars for what is...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 19, 2005 – President Bush respectfully disagreed with Americans who fault his rationale for maintaining U.S. military forces in Iraq, during a White House news conference today. Bush said many Americans, like himself, are convinced that the United States must continue fighting terrorists in Iraq until the new Iraqi government and security forces get onto their feet. The president said he too wants U.S. troops to depart Iraq as soon as possible, but not until victory is achieved over the terrorists there. "We must win, for the sake of our security," he said. On the other hand, "there...

The No-It-All's were wrong again...   Wanna see each it REALLY large? CLICK HERE  This cartoon is free to use for anything non-commercial... blogs, forums, emails, etc...   :) Linda Eddy  

A relative of mine, immediately after graduating from college, went to work for a bank. Even though he had a university degree, he was assigned the job of repossessing cars. We kidded him a lot about that. He eventually ended up a vice president, but his entry into the banking industry was about as low as you can get, and we never let him forget it. In similar fashion, the Enterprise car-rental firm goes to college campuses to recruit management trainees, but among the first jobs these trainees handle is washing and cleaning cars coming off rental. When I moved...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20, 2005 – The successful parliamentary elections in Afghanistan Sept. 18 have proven wrong all critics of U.S. efforts in that country, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a Pentagon news briefing today. Critics of the war in Afghanistan were not just wrong, they were harmful because they made the cause seem hopeless, Rumsfeld said. The millions of Afghan citizens who turned out to vote proved them wrong, and terrorists weren't able to affect the elections, he said. "Terrorists have done everything in their power to try to intimidate the millions of Afghan voters and the literally thousands...

Most published scientific research papers are wrong, according to a new analysis. Assuming that the new paper is itself correct, problems with experimental and statistical methods mean that there is less than a 50% chance that the results of any randomly chosen scientific paper are true. John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at the University of Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece, says that small sample sizes, poor study design, researcher bias, and selective reporting and other problems combine to make most research findings false. But even large, well-designed studies are not always right, meaning that scientists and the public have to...

WHO DIED AND left Cindy Sheehan in charge? Not her son, Casey. When he was killed in Iraq, he left only a bereaved, bereft mother. We put her in charge — the press, the politicians, the people. We put her in charge not just of her own message and her mission, which is all she had asked for, but we cranked up her voice to equal volume with the man she's calling out: POTUS himself, George W. Bush. "We" are the TV bloviators who prefer talking-head chatter to the shoe-leather work of reporting; the only shoe leather some of them...

LONDON (Reuters) - United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Thursday African leaders must speak out against what he called the wrong policies of any governments on the continent. Annan told the Financial Times in an interview it was vital for African countries to break their silence to protect the continent's credibility in the eyes of the world. "What is important -- and what is lacking on the continent -- is (a willingness) to comment on wrong policies in a neighboring country," he said before attending a summit of the Group of Eight (G8) top industrialized nations in Scotland. Annan...

Stonehenge druids 'mark wrong solstice' By Charles Clover, Environment Editor (Filed: 21/06/2005) Modern-day druids, hippies and revellers who turn up at Stonehenge to celebrate the summer solstice may not be marking an ancient festival as they believe. The latest archaeological findings add weight to growing evidence that our ancestors visited Stonehenge to celebrate the winter solstice. Analysis of pigs's teeth found at Durrington Walls, a ceremonial site of wooden post circles near Stonehenge on the River Avon, has shown that most pigs were less than a year old when slaughtered. Dr Umburto Albarella, an animal bone expert at the University...

A Jersey City man,who is employed by a NYC bank,may have been trying to offer a whole new level of personal service when he (allegedly) lay in ambush,near a jogging trail,wearing only a condom. Unfortunately,this "experiment in personalized service" came to an abrupt conclusion,after the female jogger he approached turned out to be an off-duty police officer. Click the link for further details,please.

Cassie Bernall - Yes, I believe in Jesus. Hippy News Media - CBS CNN Newsweek toombstones "Democracies Vote. Democrats Don't. Stop the filibuster." "Liberals are a minority for a reason. We think they're wrong." Hugh Hewitt for CU president. Return to foundation. Thank you, soldier.

The gate guarding the home of Richard Attaway is where White and Prairie County Sheriff’s deputies were supposed to arrest him on federal and weapons charges. But instead of raiding 140 Alice Lane, they ended up about 400 feet off, at the home of Searcy police detective Anne Owens. "The initial address they gave us was not the correct address,” explains White County Lt. John Slater. He says the Prairie County Sheriff's Office asked them to assist in the arrest of Attaway. According to Slater, the Prairie County Sheriff's Office was given an address at the intersection of Georgia Ridge...

In an effort to convince us that Bush's plan for Personal Retirement Accounts will destroy Social Security, Paul Krugman has lost it. Completely lost it. To call him illogical is not sufficient. The man has gone stark raving mad. Like the rest of the MSM, this socialist tries to make the case that by giving a slight advantage to poor people in computing that portion of benefits still conferred on us under the old Social Security law, Bush will eventually eliminate Social Security. Krugman opines, "If the Bush scheme goes through, the same thing will eventually happen to Social Security....

Hugh Hewitt has posted a challenge to bloggers and others to offer up suggestions on how CBS can pull itself -- and by extension the other dying dinosaurs of the Old Media -- out of its likely fatal ratings spiral. In order to solve a problem, of course, one must first understand what the nature of that problem is. At CBS and the rest of the Old Media the problem is not one of cosmetics but rather one of philosophy and therefore it is not something that can be quickly fixed with a new set or by promoting of the...