Free Republic

SNIPThe fact that Ferguson bought the 9-mm. Ruger legally in a state (California) that has some of the tougher restrictions on buying guns, and used it in New York, a state that also has some of the strictest gun controls, shows how ineffectual our gun control laws are. The Brady bill, which took years to pass and was hailed as a breakthrough in creating a national system of gun control, could have done nothing to stop Ferguson. Sheryl McCarthy, Rampage Theories Miss The Key Point. , Newsday, 12-13-1993, pp 03.

Mattel Stifles Tarzan's Hand Action EL SEGUNDO, Calif. (AP) -- Mattel Inc. is changing the packaging of its Tarzan action figure after some people said the doll's movements were sexually suggestive. Raising the right arm of the 12-inch-high ``Rad Repeatin' Tarzan'' switches on a recording of his jungle yell. The problem is that the spring-loaded arm can be pumped rapidly up and down from Tarzan's chest to below his loin cloth, a motion that some people call suggestive. Although nobody has complained to the company, Tarzan's performance has been noted in messages on some Internet chat rooms since the doll ...

Milosevic won't free Australians - Downer By Deborah Charles BELGRADE, June 19 (Reuters) - Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on Saturday Yugoslavia has rejected his request to free two Australian aid workers detained during NATO's bombing campaign. Downer, who arrived in Belgrade on Friday to try to secure the release of CARE Australia workers Steve Pratt and Peter Wallace, said Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic refused, citing domestic political concerns. ``The difficulty here at the end of the day is the balance of domestic political factors,'' Downer told reporters. ``He is clearly of the view he does not want to ...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Most of the 45 House Democrats who bucked their party by voting to loosen background checks at gun shows hail from districts with lots of hunters or other conservative voters. They're much more likely than other Democrats to have received donations from the National Rifle Association. And some had to stave off strong Republican challenges last fall. "Democrats are reflecting, in many of these cases, their constituents and their districts," said Democratic political consultant Peter Fenn. The bill that carried the divisive amendment ultimately failed in the House on Friday, but the battle over the amendment ...

By The Associated Press UROSEVAC, Yugoslavia (AP) -- William Cohen walked into a hero's welcome Saturday in this war-weary town in southeastern Kosovo. Chants of ``USA, USA'' and ``Cohen, Cohen'' -- thank-yous for a new future -- greeted the American defense secretary. ``Hello, peacemakers,'' one ethnic Albanian man shouted as Cohen and his entourage strolled in bright sunshine through Urosevac's main square to meet Army airborne troops who are in the vanguard of a rapidly expanding NATO peacekeeping force. Another man, overcome with joy, grabbed Cohen in a long bear hug and kissed him firmly on the cheek as U.S. ...

G-8 Hopeful China Will Join WTO The Associated Press COLOGNE, Germany (AP) - Negotiations could resume soon to bring China into the World Trade Organization by year's end, Canadian officials at the world leaders' summit said Saturday. That optimistic assessment came despite the apparent failure of a U.S. diplomatic mission to Beijing to mend relations after NATO accidentally bombed China's embassy in Yugoslavia on May 7. China suspended crucial WTO talks with the United States after the bombing, which killed three Chinese journalists. A WTO deal would compel China to lower significantly its tariffs and abide by international trade standards, ...

Kremlin says Clinton-Yeltsin meeting crucial COLOGNE, Germany, June 19 (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Saturday it regarded talks between presidents Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton on Sunday as vital for lifting Russian-U.S. relations from their lowest ebb since the Cold War. Clinton and Yeltsin are due to meet in the German city of Cologne for the first time in 10 months -- during which relations have been soured by the Kosovo crisis. ``The meeting with Mr Clinton could be absolutely crucial,'' presidential press secretary Dmitry Yakuskhkin told reporters in Cologne, where the United States and Russia are both taking ...

Russia Blocks Kosovo Rebuild Plan By TERENCE HUNT The Associated Press COLOGNE, Germany (AP) - Russia blocked world leaders Saturday from adopting a Kosovo rebuilding program that excludes Slobodan Milosevic's regime. The leaders held out the possibility of fixing Belgrade's bombed-out power plants and roads for humanitarian reasons. ``One cannot make the Serbian people suffer for their president,'' German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said. ``One cannot leave them without power in winter or without heat.'' Though Russia's objections prevented a tough stand against the Yugoslav president, the leaders prepared to offer Russian President Boris Yeltsin a badly needed economic boost. Yeltsin, ...

"JUST EXACTLY HOW GOOD DOES A NUKE WARHEAD HAVE TO BE?" By Charley Reese ======================================================== Congress says that because of China stealing our nuclear secrets, the Chinese can now build a better nuclear warhead. Dearly beloved, what the heck is a better nuclear warhead? Come on--from a consumer's (that's a euphemism for victim) viewpoint, if the darn thing can get to one's vicinity and explode, what further quality improvements matter? Better grade of radiation? A prettier mushroom cloud? Methinks we are in "Dr. Strangelove" country. Militray men reponsible for murdering millions of people may have all kinds of esoteric discussions ...

The big power Group of Eight leaders agreed Saturday to go on a drive to raise public awareness of the millennium bug, which threatens to bring some computer systems to a halt at the turn of the year. ``The leaders will to a much greater extent be drawing attention to millennium problems in all press conferences,'' Klaus Gretschmann, chief economic adviser to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, told reporters during a two-day summit meeting in Cologne. It was clear that while some countries were well prepared to cope with the bug, others were not, he said. ``The United States and Britain ...

First Lady To Move To New York By Fall - Report WASHINGTON (Reuters) - First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton is planning to move to New York by the fall to position herself for a run for the U.S. Senate from the state, U.S. News and World Report magazine said Saturday.In its June 28 edition that goes on sale Monday, the magazine said in its ``Washington Whispers'' column that Mrs. Clinton is prepared to leave the White House early -- and live apart from President Clinton -- for the sake of a Senate campaign that she has not yet formally launched.``She ...

BUDAPEST -- As NATO and Yugoslavia work to implement the peace accord they signed last week, the Yugoslav Jews who sought haven here are beginning to contemplate what life will be like if and when they return home. For many of them, there is the looming concern of how they will be received in Yugoslavia. Shortly upon their arrival here after the NATO strikes began in late March, they feared that the exodus of 500 of Yugoslavia's 3,500 Jews would spur resentment among their neighbors. But now that fear may not materialize, given the fact that some 200,000 Serbs have ...

BELGRADE - Three days after NATO troops refused a mother superior's pleas for protection, Kosovar rebels looted her monastery and raped a young nun, officials said yesterday. French commandos and members of the French Foreign Legion arrived as the Kosovar Liberation Army guerrillas were leaving the isolated mountain religious community in Devic, about 30 miles northwest of the Kosovo capital of Pristina. The Post reported Monday how Mother Macaria drove to Pristina on Sunday to plead with arriving British troops for protection for herself, a priest and nine nuns at Devic. "Please come and save us. You have the guns, ...

Who put the cat among Kosovo's chickens? US NEWS.COM Nobody ever thought peacekeepers would face a walkover in Kosovo. But the lightning move by Russian troops into the beleaguered province has confounded things maddeningly. The biggest source of confusion: Who gave the order? By week's end, there was still no official answer. But senior U.S. officials say it was Boris Yeltsin. The day after the Russian paratroopers turned up in Pristina, the Russian president promoted the general in charge of the operation and gave every sign he was delighted by what had happened. "The action itself is entirely characteristic of ...

Pilots sent to fly Apache helicopters against Serb forces were undertrained and underequipped to fight the war they never fought in Kosovo, the Army itself acknowledged in an internal memo. "We are placing them and their unit at risk when we have to ramp up for a real world crisis" because of the shortcomings in aviation training, Army Brig. Gen. Dick Cody recently told Gen. Eric Shinseki, incoming Army chief of staff, in the internal memo. "We are not growing our young aviation leaders well enough in the first three years after flight school," Cody wrote, listing lessons learned from ...

Now, for the sticky part It's peace all right-but there's still plenty of potential for trouble BY RICHARD J. NEWMAN GNJILANE, KOSOVO–Fifteen minutes after ecstatic men, women, and children filled his humvee with flowers, Staff Sgt. Tim Hale fought off the euphoria of the marines' first day in Kosovo. "It's time to focus again," he said through a wad of Copenhagen tobacco. "We might have to kill someone." It soon looked that way. Just two days later, the marines assigned to the hastily established base camp in this gritty town in southern Kosovo were in the midst of bedlam. Throughout ...

Many burial sites have been found," the fresh faced young spokesman with a British accent for one of the military groups said at the press conference. "But, bear in mind, there has been a war going on here." And, so we have people like Christiane Amanpour announcing what has taken place as an ethnic Albanian returns to the remains of his home, finding, he says, that 26 of his cousins have been killed and the home destroyed. Amanpour says the house was "torched." Perhaps my 29 years as a building contractor is showing, but the house was clearly a stone ...

Backstage at the opening Sweating the details as Bush and Gore put their shows on the road BY ROGER SIMON Al Gore stands in the sheltering shadow of a giant maple in the square of his boyhood hometown, two thirds of the way through one of the best speeches of his life. He's belting it out, bringing it home, when he feels . . . a tickle. Which turns into a trickle, a trickle of sweat, which he cannot avoid wiping away from his upper lip. This happens during nearly every speech, inside or outside, air conditioned or not, and ...

An Oak Park gynecologist was set free Friday, a day after he was nabbed in a federal sting operation for allegedly using the Internet in an attempt to have sex with a person he believed was a 13-year-old girl. U.S. Magistrate Judge Nan R. Nolan agreed to release Mark Levine on a $200,000 bond that must be secured by Monday with the deed to the Oak Park house he and his wife bought last year. Levine, 39, cannot use a computer or see any patients, and he must undergo psychiatric treatment, Nolan ordered, refusing to keep Levine behind bars as ...

Democrat unapologetic over less-restrictive gun measure Ex-NRA member Dingell baffles party leaders WASHINGTON - In 1994, Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., faced the toughest vote in his long congressional career: whether to ban assault weapons. A proud board member of the National Rifle Association at the time, Mr. Dingell hated the measure. But President Clinton was urging him to support it, and his party leaders were demanding loyalty. So Mr. Dingell, an avid hunter who adorns his Capitol Hill office with the stuffed heads of wild boar and other game he has bagged, quit the NRA board and voted yes, infuriating ...