Free Republic

I can't copy it to the thread. It is in pdf format. I think my middle schoolers could pass this test with no problems.

No excerpt allowed.

TUSCALOOSA | Forces beyond his control have led Jay Dukes to make a painful decision. He is selling his black 2002 Dodge Ram 1500 for less than half of what he paid for it. It’s a beautiful truck, with aggressive-looking angles, 20-inch chrome wheels and the signature grille that just oozes testosterone.

NORFOLK — While the rescue Sunday of seven Russian submariners took place half a world away, experts working around the clock near Norfolk Naval Station coordinated the dramatic effort. As many as 48 people laboring in four shifts orchestrated the rescue from the small Norfolk office. On Monday, they celebrated the success of their first mission and its significance in future life-saving operations. “I think the world does not yet know how much of a springboard this is really going to make,” said William Orr, coordinator of the International Submarine Escape and Rescue Liaison Office.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) -- Investigators said the brakes were faulty on a school bus that crashed Wednesday, and the driver should not have been behind the wheel. None of the 34 students on the bus was injured. Alexandria police said a suspension of the operator's driver's license went into effect just hours before the accident. Abdelrazeg Abdallah, 31, of Falls Church, was charged with driving on a suspended license. He was also charged with reckless driving.

LOS ANGELES — The parents of a 7-year-old girl on Tuesday sued the makers of Children's Motrin (search) and several other companies that distribute the painkiller, claiming their daughter lost her eyesight and suffered other severe side effects after taking the medication. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Sabrina Brierton Johnson (search) of Los Angeles, seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages against health care giant Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), subsidiary McNeil Consumer & Specialty Pharmaceuticals, and several other firms, including retailers Ralphs Grocery and Albertsons Inc.'s Sav-On pharmacies.

IN a historical profession that is scornful of what it calls dead white males, Joseph J. Ellis has emerged as an eloquent champion and brilliant practitioner of the old-fashioned art of biography. He concentrates mainly upon the founders of the American republic, and while those who have particular favorites among the founders may cavil at his interpretations, Ellis has a gift for getting inside the skins of his subjects and showing what made them tick. Now he has taken on the greatest and most enigmatic founder. To describe George Washington as enigmatic may strike some as strange, for every young...

FAIRFAX — A court hearing for convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad was delayed briefly today after Muhammad wriggled out of a chain strapped around his waist during a recess. Muhammad was placed back into restraints without incident, but for a few minutes he was in the courtroom with a lengthy chain gathered in his hands that could have been used as a weapon. Lt. Tony Shobe, a spokesman for the Fairfax County Sheriff's Office, which handles court security, said deputies did not notice the missing chain when they brought Muhammad from a holding cell back to the courtroom after a...

President Reagan was arriving back in Washington fresh from his summit with Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland, when Forrest McDonald saw him in October 1986. “He was fresh off of the plane and gave a speech to the press. There might have been 400 people there," McDonald remembers. The speech was about the summit, which had ended shortly before Reagan departed on Air Force One. Because of its content and the timing of the speech, it had to have been written on the plane. McDonald obtained a copy and followed it as Reagan spoke. “He never looked once at a...

Description: Forrest McDonald is Distinguished University Research Professor emeritus at the University of Alabama. His new book, "Recovering the Past: A Historian's Memoir," recounts the story of his life and his career as a professor, historian, and author. Mr. McDonald's previous books are "Let There Be Light: The Electric Utility Industry in Wisconsin, 1881-1955" (American History Research Center, 1957), "We the People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution" (University of Chicago Press, 1958), "Insull" (University of Chicago Press, 1962), "E Pluribus Unum: The Formation of the American Republic, 1776-1790" (Houghton Mifflin, 1965), "The Torch Is Passed: The United States in...

A Posthumous Letter to the President Several years ago this fledgling called the Internet erroneously broadcast news of your passing. It was nineteen ninety-seven or perhaps ninety-eight. More than a few tears fell into the quiet that night, and for a brief moment my household ceased to exist. For solace I offered the vast darkness of this eWorld a question: How will my children ever know you? No one could answer, and I promised that I would raise my voice one more time when this dreaded day finally arrived. History will remember your accomplishments far better than I could ever...

VIRGINIA BEACH — For the third time this month, a suitcase holding human remains has been found, this one floating near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. The remains were sent to the State Medical Examiner’s office in Norfolk for examination and police said Sunday night that they believe they are related to those recovered earlier. Don Rimer , a police spokesman, said the latest discovery came just before noon Sunday when a recreational boater alerted police that he had found a suitcase floating off the second island of the bridge-tunnel. ..........

WASHINGTON -- Richard Clarke is the White House terrorism czar. His stock in trade is the stuff of techno-thrillers -- biological bombs in the Wall Street subway, chemical clouds of death in the Pentagon parking lot, cyberwar attacks crippling the nation's computers. Pale as skim milk, his once-red hair gone white at 48, he works long days and nights in Oliver North's old office at the National Security Council, keeping a profile so low that almost no one outside his top-secret world knows he exists. As chairman of the government's chief counterterrorism group for the past seven years, he has...

For many, meeting the president of the United States would be an intimidating affair. Forrest McDonald, however, approached George W. Bush with nary a shiver. “I walked up, pointed my finger at him and said, 'I know you, you’re the president of the United States,’ " McDonald said. To which George W. Bush replied, “Oh, you’re the famous historian." Which he certainly is. McDonald, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Alabama, is one of America’s most noted scholars on the Constitution and the founding fathers. And on Dec. 11, he attended a holiday dinner at the White...

WASHINGTON — Federal investigators have documented 1,300 cases of lost, stolen or abandoned radioactive material inside the United States over the past five years and have concluded there is a significant risk terrorists could cobble enough together for a dirty bomb.

One evening this summer, former diplomat Joseph Wilson sat amid the African-themed decor of his spacious Washington home, sipping a glass of beer and talking about a trip he took to Niger for the CIA. His wife, Valerie, was in the kitchen, preparing chicken for a cookout and arranging red, white and blue napkins. Suddenly a giggling boy streaked nude into the living room and jumped into his father's lap. Bath time was nigh. Valerie Wilson rounded up the towheaded 3-year-old and his twin sister, efficiently taming the household whirlwind. When Valerie E. Wilson -- maiden name Plame -- introduced...

NORTHPORT | Family, friends and police came and went Wednesday, but no one brought the news Beth Lowery was waiting to hear. Lowery sat in the parking lot of her mobile home in Willowbrook Trailer Park for hours, hoping that the youngest of her three children would return. Last seen by family members at 7 a.m. Tuesday, Heaven LaShae Ross, 11, disappeared somewhere between her home and a bus stop about 50 yards away on Hunter Creek Road. “It’s like a black hole opened up and swallowed her," said family friend Debbie Rogers. Lowery said her daughter was abducted and...

Sixteen people were arrested in the rotunda of the state Judicial Building Wednesday after refusing to leave while protesting the removal of the Ten Commandments monument. Also, earlier the eight associate justice of the Alabama Supreme Court failed to approve a proposal to override Chief Justice Roy Moore by moving the monument to a nonpublic area of the Judicial Building. Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition said the 16 were charged with trespassing and released on their own recognizance. As of 6:40 Wednesday evening, three protesters were still in the building.

ADRIAN -- A police traffic stop more than 30 years ago in downtown Adrian has become an issue in California politics. A Siena Heights College student arrested by Adrian police in 1972 for carrying a handgun in the glove compartment of his yellow Volkswagen is leading a campaign to recall California Gov. Gray Davis. The former Siena Heights student is U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, a San Diego Republican who is the only declared major-party candidate to replace Davis as governor. The Siena Heights alumnus is also a member of the university's board of directors, according to information on his Web...

NORFOLK -- Utility crews have restored most of the power to the Norfolk Naval Station after a massive outage early Monday cut off electricity to about half of the world's largest Navy base. The power loss -- the most extensive at the base in recent history -- was triggered by six downed poles near the Sewells Point substation at Hampton Boulevard and North Gate Road, officials said. The poles broke about 20 to 30 feet above the ground. ``We don't know what the cause of this is,'' Capt. Frank Aucremanne, commanding officer of the naval station's public works center, said...