Free Republic

KESHVANPALAYAM, India (AFP) - India's untouchables, reeling from the tsunami disaster, are being forced out of relief camps by higher caste survivors and being denied aid supplies, activists charged. Kuppuswamy Ramachandran, 32, a Dalit or untouchable in India's rigid caste hierarchy, said he and his family were told to leave a relief camp in worst-hit Nagapattinam district where 50 more families were housed. "The higher caste fishing community did not allow us to sleep in a marriage hall where they are put up because we belong to the lowest caste," Ramachandran said. "After three days we were moved out to...

Not everyone gathered at the Democratic convention in Boston is a Democrat. And not all the Democrats are wild about John Kerry.BostonYEARS AGO, back when he first worked for Florida Rep. Andy Ireland--back, in other words, when he was a Democrat--Ed Gillespie would have fit right in here.But things change. When Ireland switched parties in 1984, Gillespie switched too. "I liked President Reagan's approach to governing and it just made sense to me," Gillespie told the New York Times recently. It was a wise decision. Or at least a profitable one. These days, of course, Gillespie heads the Republican National...