Free Republic

WASHINGTON - President Bush has taken the most dramatic options off the table as he tries to change direction in Iraq, leaving him with a list of modest military and diplomatic moves to announce in the new year. Bush probably will ignore the boldest suggestions from a bipartisan commission that studied U.S. options in Iraq, adopting some of the group's lesser prescriptions alongside those drafted by his civilian and military advisers. The White House National Security Council has compiled recommendations from several agencies as the administration's internal reassessment of Iraq policy nears an end. Bush plans to address the nation...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Qatar's attempt to end a growing crisis in the Palestinian territories appeared to end in failure Tuesday after Hamas rejected the plan's key demands that it recognize Israel and renounce violence. Fatah faulted Hamas for the breakdown in negotiations — the latest setback to international efforts to establish a unity government and restore much-needed aid to the Palestinians. However, Palestinian Information Minister Youssef Rizka of Hamas said the U.S. was to blame for dismissing a separate Palestinian plan that would establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank but not explicitly recognize Israel. The document...

Israel rejects Syria's arms embargo pledge By Patrick Bishop in Beirut and Tim Butcher in Jerusalem (Filed: 02/09/2006) Israel last night rejected Syria's pledge to Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, that it would prevent weapons being smuggled to Hizbollah across its border with Lebanon. Syrian soldiers on parade at Riyyak airbase President Bashar al-Assad of Syria told Mr Annan during talks in Damascus that he was prepared to deploy his military forces along the Lebanese border to enforce the arms embargo on Hizbollah demanded by security council resolution 1701. Mr Assad has previously warned that Damascus would take...

The state Board of Pardons refused Thursday to recommend commutation of the life prison sentences for a man who committed one of Delaware's most notorious crimes and then killed a San Francisco businessman. The board deliberated less than three minutes in deciding not to recommend commutation for Charles Cohen, 41, who pleaded guilty but mentally ill in the brutal 1988 murders of his parents, Martin and Ethel Cohen. "In light of the heinous nature of these crimes, the opposition of the state Board of Parole, and the obvious threat to society, we will not recommend that commutation be granted," Lt....

SAN FRANCISCO - A federal judge ruled Tuesday that a Bush administration plan to allow commercial logging in the Giant Sequoia National Monument violates environmental laws. U.S. District Court Judge Charles R. Breyer sided with environmental groups that sued the U.S. Forest Service over plans to manage the 328,000-acre preserve, home to two-thirds of the world's largest trees. In the lawsuit filed last year, the Sierra Club and other conservation groups said the forest management plan was a scientifically suspect strategy meant to satisfy timber interests under the guise of wildfire prevention. In September last year, Breyer issued a preliminary...

Oakland International Airport security officials on Friday rejected National Guard troops that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had activated on Thursday, saying they had the necessary security and law enforcement resources in place to respond to this week's terror threat. Airport managers, anti-terrorism officials, and representatives of local and regional law enforcement agencies met Friday morning at Oakland airport and decided unanimously to decline the deployment, said Fred Lau, the airport's federal security director. "We told the National Guard we would not require the deployment," Lau said. The airport's decision came as California National Guard troops deployed to the state's other major...

WASHINGTON - A Republican election-year effort to fuse a cut in inheritance taxes on multimillion-dollar estates with the first minimum wage increase in nearly a decade was rejected by the Senate late Thursday. Republicans needed 60 votes to advance their bill, which links a $2.10 increase in the $5.15 federal minimum wage over three years to reductions an estate taxes next decade. The bill got a 56-42 vote, four votes short of succeeding. The House passed it last Saturday. For Republicans, the combination could have neutralized a Democratic campaign issue while also advancing an estate tax cut, a priority that...

Israel rejects UN aid truce call> Many have been forced from their homes, but others remain trapped Israel has rejected a United Nations call for a three-day truce in southern Lebanon, as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrives in Israel. The UN says children, the elderly and disabled people are trapped and supplies are short. But an Israeli spokesman said there was no need for a truce as a humanitarian corridor to the area had been opened. Israeli missiles landed near the main Lebanese border crossing into Syria on Saturday, witnesses and officials said. In a separate incident, two...

SEOUL, South Korea - South Korea said Friday that it had turned down a North Korean proposal to hold military talks this week, citing tension over the North's test-firing of seven missiles. North Korea said its missile barrage was not an attack on anyone. The rejection of the North Korean offer came despite South Korea's vow to press ahead with political and economic engagement with its neighbor as a way to solve the longrunning conflict on the divided Korean Peninsula. North Korea made the proposal on Monday, two days before its military fired a salvo of missiles into the sea...

Justice Minister Haim Ramon on Monday warned of a harsh military response in the Gaza Strip if an abducted Israeli is harmed by his Palestinian captors. Justice Minister Haim Ramon made the threat after the militants holding Israel Defense Forces Corporal Gilad Shalit implied the soldier would be killed if Israel does not begin releasing Palestinian soldiers by Tuesday morning. "If God forbid, they should hurt the soldier, our operations will be far far worse," Ramon told Channel 2 TV. The bureau of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Monday that Israel rejected an ultimatum issued earlier in the day by...

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, July 2, 2006 – News reports published June 30 that claimed coalition forces fired rockets in Afghanistan's Kunar province, allegedly killing a school headmaster and injuring two others, are false, military officials here said today. A Combined Forces Command Afghanistan statement said the three people noted in news articles are, in fact, Taliban extremists responsible for conducting attacks against Afghan and coalition forces. According to the statement, three extremists attacked a coalition patrol on a road in the province's Pech district June 29, and the soldiers responded with small-arms and mortar fire, all positively observed by...

SAN DIEGO A three-judge federal panel on Wednesday rejected a last-ditch appeal by the city of San Diego to keep a giant cross standing on city property after a 17-year legal tussle. The city is under federal court order to move the 29-foot-tall cross from a La Jolla hilltop before Aug. 2 or face $5,000 daily fines. The failed appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was intended to stay that order and allow the cross to remain standing until appeals currently pending in state courts can be heard. City Attorney Michael Aguirre said that Wednesday's ruling, issued...

Khamenei rejects 'carrots and sticks' nuclear deal (Filed: 16/06/2006) The supreme leader of Iran yesterday gave the sternest rejection to date of the international package of incentives designed to coax Teheran into abandoning its nuclear ambitions. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said: "The Islamic Republic of Iran will not bend to these pressures." He was referring to the diplomatic "carrots and sticks" agreed earlier this month by America, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia. These included an offer of help with a civilian nuclear programme and the threat of travel bans for senior Iranians. His comments came as Washington used a meeting...

WASHINGTON - The Senate rejected a call for the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq by year's end on Thursday as Congress erupted in impassioned, election-year debate over a conflict that now has claimed the lives of 2,500 American troops. The vote was 93-6 to shelve the proposal, which would have allowed "only forces that are critical to completing the mission of standing up Iraqi security forces" to remain in 2007. The vote came alongside a daylong debate in the House, where Republicans defended the war as key to winning the global struggle against terrorism while Democrats excoriated President...

A San Francisco Superior Court judge on Monday threw out the city's voter-approved ban on handguns, ruling that state law trumps local jurisdictions in gun control matters. Proposition H, approved last November with 58 percent of the vote, banned the possession, manufacture, distribution, sale and transfer of firearms and ammunition within San Francisco. (Exceptions were made for specific professional purposes, such as police or security work.) The National Rifle Association sued the city, arguing that state law preempts local gun control ordinances. The judge agreed. Both the National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment Foundation called the decision a victory...

Democratic lawmakers have denied David Crane, one of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's friends and economic advisers, a seat on the California State Teachers' Retirement System board. The Senate Rules Committee voted 3-2 along party lines Wednesday to reject the Republican governor's appointment of Crane to the board. Democrats said they were concerned he would not protect teachers' pensions. Schwarzenegger last year was forced to withdraw an attempt to alter public employee pensions after police and firefighters launched an ad campaign against it. The governor wanted to shift retirement plans for teachers and other public employees to a defined-contribution system - one...

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court rejected an appeal from news organizations fighting to protect confidential sources, refusing to consider the case of four reporters in legal trouble over their stories about former nuclear weapons scientist Wen Ho Lee The court's action, released Monday, was taken without comment. Late last week, Lee settled his privacy lawsuit, and he will receive $1.6 million from the government and five news organizations. Journalists had been in civil contempt of court for refusing to disclose who leaked them information about an espionage investigation of Lee, a nuclear weapons scientist fired from his job at Los...

Hamas rejects Abbas call for peace talks with Israel By Harry de Quetteville in Ramallah (Filed: 28/05/2006) Hamas, the radical Islamic group that won January's election, yesterday rejected a deadline issued by the Palestinians' moderate president, Mahmoud Abbas, to choose between violence or peace talks with Israel. At the same time, a Hamas militia involved in factional clashes with Palestinian police in Gaza that have left 10 dead, was sent back onto the streets, only a day after it was withdrawn. Mahmoud Abbas: Deadline Its return seems to signal the end of a short-lived effort to defuse tensions between Hamas,...

UNITED NATIONS - The Iranian military on Wednesday rejected a statement from a top Revolutionary Guards commander that Israel would be Iran's first target in response to any U.S. attack, an Iranian news agency reported. Brig. Gen. Alireza Afshar, deputy to the chief of Iran's military staff, said the statement by Mohammad Ebrahim Dehghani "is his personal view and has no validity as far as the Iranian military officials are concerned," according to the Entekhab News Agency. A translation of Afshar's remarks was provided to The Associated Press. Dehghani was quoted by the Iranian Student News Agency on Tuesday as...

San Francisco Board of Supervisor regects the military and the USS Iowa