Free Republic

THE CHINA PUZZLE PART I By: Linda Prussen-Razzano According to information compiled by The Brookings Institute, our national defense, on paper, appears quite sound. In 1997, America had a total of 12,500 nuclear warheads stockpiled (8,750 active, 2,500 hedge/contingency, and another 1,250 awaiting disassembly). We currently have 80 SSNs (attack submarine, designed to seek and destroy enemy submarines and surface ships) and 18 SSBNs (nuclear-powered submarines armed with long-range strategic missiles). Our army stands 1.2 million strong. And, as par for the course, we still have pockets of extreme financial waste; between October 1992 and October 1995, the Department of ...

The possibility that U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays will face challenges when he seeks reelection to Congress next year provided some grist for the message mill in the past week. Advertiser callers were divided. Some supported him, some hoped the challengers would prevail and others said that in either case it would be "good to have a real campaign." The Republican incumbent has been nominated by acclamation and has had only token opposition from Democrats in the last several elections. In recent weeks, however, James Campbell, a New Canaan resident and teacher, and Ann Coulter, a local resident who is now ...

New research on the Nazi confiscation of registered guns--and execution of gun owners--provides a poignant lesson on why Americans have always opposed the registration of peaceable firearms owners. President Bill Clinton has come out in favor of the registration of all law-abiding American gun owners. "People ought to have to register guns like they register their cars," he said.1 Already, the Clinton-Gore administration is misusing the national instant check system to retain the identities of firearms purchasers. Government records on gun owners supposedly protect society. It would be instructive at this time to recall why the American citizenry and Congress ...

Bush the Younger: Gutsy, quick, compassionate Christopher Matthews, chief of The Examiner's Washington bureau, is host of "Hardball" on CNBC. Washington Bureau Hearst Newspapers 1701 Pennslyvania Ave. NW Washington, D.C. 20006 New Castle, N. H. A passionate, brilliant pollster from another country once confided the three keys of political success. Motive, passion, spontaneity. Think of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, Margaret Thatcher and, yes, Ronald Reagan. They knew why they were there, as did we. They carried their feelings on their sleeves right where we could see them. Just as vital: They could speak with spirit ...

AT LEAST three people have been killed and a state of emergency declared in the Solomon Islands after an explosion of ethnic fighting. The Red Cross said that 10,000 people were trying to flee the main island, Guadalcanal, where native people have attacked immigrants from the outlying islands. The government of the South Pacific nation has appealed to the self-styled Guadalcanal Liberation Army (GLA) to lay down its arms and has asked for police support from Australia and New Zealand. The Commonwealth Secretariat in London said it had been asked for assistance by Bartholomew Ulufa'alu, the Prime Minister, and was ...

Deal reached with Russia on Kosovo -Schroeder COLOGNE, Germany, June 18 (Reuters) - U.S. and Russian negotiators in Helsinki reached a deal in Helsinki on Friday on Moscow's participation in Kosovo peacekeeping, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said. ``According to the information I have just received, they have agreed. That wouldn't surprise me as they had been going well,'' he told reporters in Cologne during a summit of the Group of Seven world leaders. He said he could give no details of the deal but said Russia should not have a separate sector. For education and discussion only. Not for commercial ...

Helms signals won't block Holbrooke nomination WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sen. Jesse Helms, the powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, signaled Friday he would not block Richard Holbrooke's nomination as U.N. ambassador. Helms, who had criticized Holbrooke's ethics and given mixed signals on how he would handle the nomination, said in a speech on the Senate floor that Holbrooke ``probably will be confirmed in a week or so as the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.'' The comment came one day after Holbrooke told Helms in testimony before the committee that he may have been careless with the ...

HILLARY Clinton's political campaign will have money problems. Don't misunderstand. the first lady seems perfectly capable of raising as much money as she wants, as long as she keeps chowing down at benefits in the Big Apple. The problems that she'll encounter have more to do with her attitude toward money back in her Arkansas days when she got into several financial schemes - yes, including Whitewater - that would have gotten any ordinary person, much less a lawyer who should have known better, into deep legal trouble. I reported a long time ago that Independent Counsel Ken Starr was ...

Have you ever stopped to consider how liberals deal with the issue of guns and children? When it comes to guns, they demand abstinence. However, contrast this to the approach taken by liberals to solve unwanted pregnancies. When dealing with that issue, it's safe sex. In other words, providing sex education classes, teaching children how to be safe when engaging in sexual activity, and handing out condoms. Now for liberals to be consistent, the solution to youth gun violence should not be advocating abstinence. No, it should include gun safety courses in schools, teaching children safe shooting techniques, and providing ...

HELSINKI, June 18 (Itar-Tass) -- The talks now underway here between the Russian and U.S. defence and foreign ministers "have firmly established that the Russian peacekeeping force activities in Kosovo will be fully under political and military control of Russia," Russian Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev told here reporters on Friday.

Clinton: NRA Wins in House Vote By LAURIE KELLMAN The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) - The Republican-controlled House narrowly voted to loosen restrictions on sales at gun shows, handing a victory to the National Rifle Association in the wake of a spate of school shootings. President Clinton conceded momentary defeat. Asked today if the NRA beat him, Clinton snapped: ``They did.'' The 218-211 vote, he added, ``was a great victory for the NRA but it was a great defeat for the safety of our children.'' Attorney General Janet Reno concurred, saying the vote is ``a very big step backwards.'' and ...

WASHINGTON--A Senate challenge from Hillary Rodham Clinton would seem like a "rematch" to Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-Ill.), he said Thursday. "She was out campaigning so often for Carol that sometimes I felt I was running against Hillary Moseley-Braun instead of Carol Moseley-Braun," Fitzgerald said. Clinton, who grew up in Park Ridge, is starting to raise money for a possible Senate campaign next year in New York state, where she has never lived. Dick Morris, former political adviser to President Clinton, recently wrote in the Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper, that the first lady should wait until 2004 and run ...

Well well. You’ve come back even after the scolding I gave you last time. I’m impressed. If you’ve read much at all of my past columns here, you’d know what I am about to reveal next couldn’t surprise you any more than if you woke up with a 50-pound tuna in your bed singing show tunes in a top hat. I was once, in my college days, a flaming liberal. Bleeding heart, baby. No government program was too big and there was no problem that I didn’t care enough about to spend a whole lot of money on. Other people’s ...

Bush rides popular father's presidential coattails By Thomas Ferraro WASHINGTON (Reuters) - So why is Texas Gov. George W. Bush, who Americans admit they do not know much about, the runaway top choice in the polls to be the next U.S. president? Listen as Robert Launier, a manager at HADCO Corp. -- a circuit board manufacturer in Derry, N.H. -- explains why he likes the guy. ``I don't know his politics, but he comes across well,'' Launier said as Bush toured the plant this week. ``And I've always liked his dad,'' former President George Bush. By a nearly two-to-one margin, ...

Komsomolskaya Pravda 15 June 1999 Viktor Baranets, Komsomolskaya Pravda military correspondent, report: "Serbs Kissed the Dust-Covered Armor of OUR BTR's.... Details of the Historic Double-Quick Forced March" The Day Before The NATO troops were preparing for a ground operation in Kosovo, paying no attention to Russia's demands. Our intelligence reports from Yugoslavia to the General Staff said that the Kosovo Serbs were hurriedly preparing to flee north and were already beginning to torch their homes. The first columns of refugees were observed. Ivashov and other generals were summoned for intensive consultations to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Ivashov gave ...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. LOS ANGELES, June 18 (UPI) - Jay Leno, Steven Seagal and a host of other celebrities may soon join the ranks of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department as "executive reserves," the Los Angeles Times reports (Friday). The idea is to entice more celebrities into taking part in various Sheriff's Department events.

The new ambassador to Luxembourg, James Hormel Randi Lynn Beach/AP President: OK, I Was Naughty Over Gay EnvoyClinton goes back to his courteous ways to clear path for Richard Holbrooke Having made his point and rewarded his contributor, Bill Clinton is no longer in a fighting mood. The President blinked Wednesday in his staredown with Sen. James Inhofe over gay ambassador James Hormel, promising to notify the Senate of any appointments he plans to make while they’re out of town. It was a courtesy Clinton had observed until the Hormel decision, when, with Senate leaders holding the nomination hostage ...

Letter to Editor: On the day The Post reported that independent counsel Kenneth Starr had won a victory in the court of appeals sustaining the fraud indictment of Webster Hubbell, an editorial called for Mr. Starr to step aside, shifting the two Hubbell prosecutions to the Justice Department [June 2]. The Post noted that Mr. Hubbell served the Clinton administration as associate attorney general but concluded that this conflict is "more theoretical than real" because of "political pressure" for adequate prosecution. Alas, the intense but unavailing political pressure on Attorney General Janet Reno to appoint an independent counsel to investigate ...

Clinton Concedes Gun Control Defeat House Loosens Gun Show Restrictions   By LAURIE KELLMAN .c The Associated Press   WASHINGTON (June 18) - The Republican-controlled House narrowly voted to loosen restrictions on sales at gun shows, handing a victory to the National Rifle Association in the wake of a spate of school shootings. President Clinton conceded momentary defeat.   Asked today if the NRA beat him, Clinton snapped: ''They did.''   The 218-211 vote, he added, ''was a great victory for the NRA but it was a great defeat for the safety of our children.''   Attorney General Janet ...

(When George W. Bush)...spied a kissable baby -- an infant of indeterminate sex -- in a crowd in New Hampshire he cried out to the photographers: "Baby picture! Baby picture!" When the photographers swarmed around him he took the baby from its mother and kissed its proffered chubby cheek. When a photographer demanded he do it again, the governor obliged, grinning. The next day in Tennessee, when young Albert set out to work the crowd he spied a woman on the rope line with a baby. He made his way over to Mom and baby and reached across the ...