Free Republic

James Zumwalt is a retired Marine lieutenant colonel who served in the Vietnam war, the 1989 intervention into Panama and Operation Desert Storm. The son of the late Navy Adm. Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., he's also a best-selling author, speaker and business executive. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. On Jan. 2, 2000, less than 48 hours into a new millennium, the U.S. Navy lost a 20th century hero and revered, visionary leader. Adm. Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., 79, had succumbed to mesothelioma -- a lung cancer caused by asbestos exposure, incurred during his naval career. He...

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The candidate qualifications bill would authorize Arizona's secretary of state to keep a presidential candidate off the state's ballot if the candidate or party doesn't provide required information on the candidate's eligibility. Peter Spiro, a Temple University law professor, said there's an emerging thread in legislation on presidential candidates' qualifications "that somebody who is a dual citizen at birth is ineligible for the presidency." However, Spiro said, "there's no evidence that an individual has to be born to U.S. citizens to be eligible for the presidency."

Prompted by an international tribunal's decision last year ordering new hearings for 51 Mexicans on death rows in the United States, the State Department said yesterday that the United States had withdrawn from the protocol that gave the tribunal jurisdiction to hear such disputes. The withdrawal followed a Feb. 28 memorandum from President Bush to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales directing state courts to abide by the decision of the tribunal, the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The decision required American courts to grant "review and reconsideration" to claims that the inmates' cases had been hurt by the...