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My son just called and asked me who else was killed in the plane crash that took Richie and the Bopper. Any help appreciated!

Despite stiff and unexpected Iraqi resistance, the U.S. invasion of Iraq is likely to succeed in toppling Saddam Hussein -- and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Bush, the Republican Party and American neoconservatives. Wars have unintended consequences as well as unexpected developments. The White House, the Pentagon, our troops and the public were surprised that Saddam Hussein did not "collapse after the first whiff of gunpowder," as Richard Perle, the principle architect of the war, had optimistically predicted. The promised "cakewalk" quickly bogged down into a stalemate, and other major setbacks have occurred. The Pentagon has been sobered by...

The New York Times reported Friday that a nationwide poll conducted Thursday evening found that more than two-thirds of Americans support President Bush’s handling of the Iraq crisis. The Times said “support for President Bush's policy in Iraq has surged” – jumping more than 10 points from a week ago to 70 percent support today. But the paper noted strong partisan divisions in the nation and claimed the situation is “reminiscent of the partisan divide that marked the later years of the Vietnam War.” “While 93 percent of Republicans said they approved of Mr. Bush's handling of Iraq, just 50...

The headline in last Friday's (Oct. 25) Washington Times said,"Thank God, It's Over." Two suspects in the terror rampage that killed 10 people and wounded three may be in custody, but it's not over. It has only just begun. The Western diplomat murdered in Jordan on Monday is just the latest incident of targeted Americans. While the Beltway sniper suspects may have acted independently of any known terrorist organization, it is not necessary to be commissioned by a foreign national in order to effectively carry out the wishes of America's enemies. It is past time to stop worrying about political...

Everywhere you turn these days, someone on the left is denouncing President Bush as Hitler, Satan, a terrorist or a tyrannical emperor. A Yale law professor said Bush is "the most dangerous man on Earth." A famous editor referred to Bush as "a lawn jockey" and "Pinocchio." Some of the angry rhetoric flirts with the fringe idea that the United States planned the terrorist attacks. A Purdue professor said "there is no ground to be certain" that America and Israel aren't behind the 9/11 attacks. A Columbia law professor compared 9/11 to the Reichstag fire in Nazi Germany -- Bush...

New Jersey FReepers, in your opinion would Douglas Forrester or Diane Allen be more likely to beat Torricelli in November?

On the Palestinians, the Israelis, and what now? Q: Given that peace is always better than war, why don't the Israelis just give the Palestinians what they want and be done with all this violence? A :It wouldn't end the violence. And what the Palestinians want is the destruction of Israel. Arafat and the Arabs/Islamists are pledged to it. The Arabs/Islamists have attacked Israel at least four times - the first time, notably, on the very day of Israel's creation as a state by the United Nations. Q: But all they want is their land back. Don't the Palestinians have...

Is the Bush Administration involved in the Enron scandal? http://www.vote.com

With a war on, a lot of news is getting crowded off the front pages, some of it even good. For example,the U.S. Labor Department has finally issued regulations enforcing the Supreme Court's 1988 Beck decision. That decision gave union members the right to demand a refund of their dues not used for collective bargaining. Labor unions have fought the decision, and the Clinton Administration refused to implement it lest this bountiful source of coerced political cash dry up. Thirteen years is a long time for union members to wait to finally have a say in how their hard-earned money ...

When the new school year begins, Deena Esteban will not be among the legions of educators welcoming students back to class. That's because Mrs. Esteban, a 43-year-old art teacher in Prince William County, Va., lost the job she loved after being convicted of a felony last fall. Her crime? Bringing a gun to school. Mrs. Esteban's story is a textbook case of zero-tolerance tyranny. Teachers are the forgotten casualties of the education establishment's absolutist war on guns. Mrs. Esteban had never been in trouble with the law. The married mother of two owned a .38-caliber revolver for self-defense and -- ...

OKLAHOMA CITY -- The Oklahoma Farm Bureau announced today that it has set up a legal foundation and is mapping plans to file a lawsuit protesting the federal government's actions to protect a minnow. Earlier this year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared waterways in western Oklahoma and parts of three other states as a critical habitat region under the Endangered Species Act, a move to further protect the Arkansas River shiner. Steve Kouplen of Beggs, Okla., Farm Bureau president, said the action could spark "a flood of burdensome regulations" that would encroach on farmers' property rights. "We are ...

How would you like to get $50,000 tax-free from Uncle Sam by just writing a letter and getting a friend to attest to your claim that you had applied to the Department of Agriculture for a farm loan and had been turned down because of your race? Impossible, you say? Not if you were black and had joined in a class-action lawsuit known as Pigford vs. Glickman (Dan Glickman, Clinton’s last secretary of agriculture). On Jan. 17, 2001, as the Clinton era was coming to an end, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) Web site showed that 12,000 blacks who had ...

I scanned a newspaper editorial cartoon to post to FR. First I tried copy; when I went to FR "more choices" paste was not an option shown. Next I tried "copy to" and highlighted "post article to FR". When I clicked it jumped to the post page, the cursor blinking in the text box, but nothing pasted! Then I tried saving the cartoon in "my documents" and importing it from there. Still no "paste" available.

From 6 to 9 PM this evening, the Wall Township Republican Club "meet the candidates" picnic offered a chance for some of us to get up close and personal with the candidates. Wall is a rapidly growing part of the Jersey Shore; two to ten minutes from the beaches at Belmar, Spring Lake, Sea Girt and Manasquan, bisected by the Garden State Parkway. We've always been a Republican stronghold, but with all the new developments bringing in north Jersey Democrats that seems to be changing. The event was held at the Oak Tree Lodge, a great little picnic ground, on ...

The patriot: He was prepared to shed blood to defend liberty. What separates American terrorist Timothy McVeigh from thousands of other gun-worshipping zealots? April 9, 2001 | "Who is Timothy McVeigh?" This question opens "American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing," by two Buffalo News reporters, Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck. Their heavily promoted new book, based on years of research into the case and more than 75 hours of interviews with McVeigh himself, provides the answer we already knew: He is a quintessential product of America's right-wing subculture of hatred. The only surprising thing about "American Terrorist" ...

The following is an e-mail to and a response from Steve Case about Turner's anti-Christian bias. The message: "Mr. Turner's well publicized comment Ash Wednesday about christians being "Jesus freaks" who should be working for Fox News really hit home. His leftist and pro-evil attitude as reflected on the "Clinton News Network" is part of the reason I have long since disregarded CNN as a news source. Any questions about why Fox with just over half the available homes is cleaning your clock? Do the words "fair and balanced" ring a bell? I can hear both sides! Too bad, you ...

People favoring child molester voted multiple times Question: Do three out of five WorldNetDaily readers really believe that a homosexual policeman who seduced a 16-year-old boy, plied him with alcohol and had homosexual relations with him should not be prosecuted? WND's editors didn't think so either, when examination of yesterday's WND Daily Poll yielded uncharacteristically large -– and bizarre –- results. With an unusual 15,000-plus votes registered by mid-afternoon, and especially the greater than 60 percent affirmative response to what amounts to an agreement with child molestation, our staff knew something was wrong. As it turns out, WND's systems administrative ...

Although diversity training has become commonplace at law enforcement agencies across the country, a program starting today in Berkeley appears to be the first of its kind to make it mandatory for all Police Department employees to take awareness classes on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues. Each sworn officer, dispatcher and secretary in the 324-employee department will be required to sign up for the six-hour course -- two-thirds covering issues specific to transgender men and women, with the remainder devoted to gay, lesbian and bisexual issues. San Francisco, New York and Washington, D.C., have cultural awareness training for new ...

If the feds had their way, environmental consultant John J. Zentner, 46, would be in jail right now. One of his cell brethren eventually would ask, "What are you in for?" "Moving frogs," he could say. The Orinda, Calif., resident and his company pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor counts of violating the federal Endangered Species Act. He agreed to serve 200 hours of community service, to have his firm pay a fine of $65,000 and to pay a personal fine of $10,000. All for moving some 60 California red-legged frogs and 500 tadpoles from a watercourse to a pond. But ...

Sleeper tax could steal a slice of the tax-relief pie Relatively few taxpayers now feel the bite of the alternative minimum tax. But under President Bush's proposals, their numbers will go up -- and their tax savings would shrink. You are already hearing lots of criticism of President Bush’s $1.6 trillion tax-cut proposal. Business wants more breaks. Democrats want to the trim the proposal back. There’s a big battle brewing about whether to eliminate the estate tax. But the most severe attack on Bush’s proposal may be for one thing that it doesn’t do: repeal the alternative minimum tax (AMT). ...