Free Republic

(excerpt of article copied from hard copy edition of FT) - SNIP - These testimonies to irrelevance recalled themselves on the eve of this week’s Nato summit in Istanbul. As we gazed sout-east over the Bosphorus in the direction of Iraq, one of those charged with drafting the leader’s communiqué remarked that the outcome had been another bad-temepered compromise. Nato ambassadors had sweated long and hard to gloss over their differences. But, though thickly applied, the gloss was patchy. The ambiguities of the text, this official said, had left room for the obligatory public spat between France and the US....

LONDON (Reuters) - An Iranian refugee has sewn his eyes, ears and mouth shut in protest at the rejection of his asylum application, a friend says. The move by Shahin Portofeh, 23, comes less than two months after another Iranian refugee, Abas Amini, won the right to stay in Britain after resorting to the same extreme tactic. "I'm standing next to him right now and he is in a lot of pain," said a woman describing herself as a friend and interpreter in Portofeh's bedroom in Coventry. The interpreter, who declined to be named, said Portofeh was lying on his...

Toddler tantrum grounds jet By James Sturcke, Evening Standard 12 March 2003 Like any two-year-old Marcello Ferrand is prone to the occasional tantrum. So when an aircraft crew tried to make him wear a seatbelt he panicked and sat under the seat - the kind of scene any parent will recognise. However, for the staff of a British Airways flight from Milan to Heathrow it demanded immediate action - which resulted in the police being called and Marcello, along with his grandparents, being hauled off the plane. The airline's ground staff then refused to let the elderly couple and Marcello,...

Comedian Allegedly Has Tantrum Over Rental Car Joan Rivers Could Lose Gun Permits POSTED: 11:15 a.m. EST December 28, 2002 Comedian Joan Rivers may lose her permit to carry guns because of a recent incident at a rental car counter, according to a recent report in the New York Post. Rivers, 69, allegedly threw a marker at a Dollar Rent-A-Car clerk after what the newspaper calls a "foul-mouthed tantrum." The report said that Rivers' driver had to wait in line at the rental car business, although the location was not revealed. Griselda Santana, 38, allegedly was the recipient of Rivers'...

Americans who value the Constitution should stand with Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., and oppose George Bush's attempted power grab in conjunction with establishing a Department of Homeland Security. The Bushies are trying to frame the debate as either protecting bureaucracy or providing security for Americans. In fact, the debate is about preventing an authoritarian president from sacrificing the Constitution in the name of providing security. Let me remind you that those who prefer security to freedom will lose both. Bush wants to be able to disregard labor contracts and civil-service rules, as well as move money within the department as...

We have a war-crazed vice president. An addict, a verifiable military junkie. Many of us perhaps do not fully realize this. We are very unfortunately saddled with one of the least charismatic least interesting most intellectually acrimonious and most desperately hawkish, violence-hungry, soulfully inscrutable vice president in decades, and he wants this country at war, now and always. Oh yes he does. Here is Dick Cheney, speaking to veterans of foreign wars, hyping up the need for a dramatic, wildly expensive pre-emptive strike against evil Saddam and evil Iraq because Saddam is without a doubt right this minute developing super-evil...