Free Republic

The argument over gun-control measures is an argument over how many restrictions will be placed on the rights of honest citizens. The argument has nothing to do with the National Rifle Association. The neo-totalitarians in America are nothing if not unoriginal. They follow a fixed pattern. They create a straw man, demonize the straw man, then frame the argument as a contest between good and the evil demon. In the case of gun control, the NRA is the designated demon. In the case of the illegal bombing of Yugoslavia, the designated demon was Slobodan Milosevic. The NRA is one ...

U.S. reservations about setting up a world criminal court have been amply confirmed by the action of a group of independent lawyers who last week called upon the war crimes tribunal in The Hague to investigate atrocities committed in Yugoslavia by NATO. This kind of political perversity is precisely what then U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Bill Richardson warned against when he outlined the American argument for limiting the powers of a global criminal court. Speaking at the world criminal court treaty conference in Rome a year ago, Mr. Richardson emphasized the need to protect U.S. soldiers serving abroad ...

The question that should be asked is who would be the main beneficiary of the lawsuit attacking Florida's new parental-notification law. The law requires that abortionists give a parent or guardian 48 hours notice before terminating the pregnancy of an underage girl - except in a medical emergency or if a judge grants a waiver. Lawyers for Planned Parenthood and its allies argue that the law is unconstitutional. Besides, they say, parents could become enraged and abusive if they were to find out that their little girls have been promiscuous. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1981 that parental ...

Bush Says He Backs Defeated House Gun Bill GREENVILLE, S.C., June 21—Texas Gov. George W. Bush today said he would have voted for a gun control bill defeated by the House last week and defended his decision to sign legislation barring cities in his state from suing gunmakers for the costs of violence on their streets. Bush said the 24-hour check on weapons sales at gun shows contained in the House bill "would have made it harder for convicted criminals to get a gun." Most Democrats argued that the House proposal would have actually weakened current law by shortening ...

THE D.C. POLICE affidavit said 52-year-old DeWitt Stith admitted assaulting and raping a 12-year-old boy last January. Charged with two counts of first-degree child sexual abuse, Mr. Stith was held without bond pending trial on grounds that he posed a threat to the community. A mental health panel decided, however, that Mr. Stith was incompetent to stand trial. Two weeks ago, the prosecution announced in court that the charges would be dropped and the accused could go free, even bypassing confinement in a secure psychiatric institution. The 12-year-old's mother can't understand how that could happen. She need look no ...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - Gov. Jeb Bush said Monday that his wife ``feels horrible'' about failing to declare $19,000 worth of clothing and jewelry she bought in Paris, but did it so he wouldn't find out how much she spent. ``It is a lot of money. But look, that's between her and me,'' said Bush, adding that his wife was embarrassed. Columba Bush paid $4,100 in duty and fines to the Customs Service for failing to declare the merchandise upon her arrival in Atlanta last week. The governor, who did not accompany his wife on the trip, was asked about ...

Thanks to a president whose personal behavior has eliminated him as a leader on moral issues and because of the actions of their senior member in the House of Representatives, Democrats are going to have real difficulty turning gun control, or the lack of it, into a major issue for 2000. Because of the combination of President Clinton's lack of influence and persuasion in these social matters, Michigan Rep. John Dingell's role in sabotaging his party's initiative on guns and a large number of Democratic votes against the final bill, Democrats' hopes of turning the defeat into a victory ...

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – Presidential contender Senator Bob Smith today reaffirmed his pledge to appoint only pro-life justices to the Supreme Court, Appellate Court and District Courts. "I want to thank George W. Bush for finally clarifying his position on abortion, the moral outrage of this generation," Smith, the first presidential candidate to offer this pledge, said today. "Like Mr. Bush, I will use the Constitution as a litmus test for judges. However, I believe Roe v. Wade is unconstitutional and the only way to overturn this case is for a President to appoint judges who strictly interpret the Constitution ...

Trouble brewing in Eta Carinae NASA/GSFC NEWS RELEASE Posted: June 11, 1999 Eta Carinae, a massive star famous for violent outbursts, has doubled in brightness since early 1998 and now shines more brilliantly than it has in over a century. Astronomers observing the star with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) onboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope report that a recently discovered inner, cone-shaped nebula has brightened considerably as a consequence. If the brightening continues, Eta Carinae may have begun a massive eruption like the one in the 1840's that created its stunning dumbbell shaped nebula. A 1996 Hubble Space Telescope ...

It may seem unbelievable to the "older generation" that many young people today have little knowledge of and appreciation for our nation's history and principles. But the New Jersey Assembly doesn't want that condition to prevail. So it passed and sent to the state Senate a proposal for school children to recite daily these words from the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these ...

WASHINGTON - Women are resorting to personal bankruptcy more frequently than men and married couples, according to new data released by a Harvard law professor who specializes in bankruptcy. As Congress debates legislation to make it harder for people to erase debts in bankruptcy, the new study being written by Elizabeth Warren, a widely quoted expert, will likely become fresh ammunition for opponents of the proposed restrictions. But another bankruptcy expert voiced skepticism yesterday about the study, saying it doesn't appear to conclusively demonstrate a link between gender and bankruptcy. ''There's not much there,'' said Sam Gerdano, executive director of ...

Sixteen months ago, President Clinton, finally responding to lax security at the nation's nuclear weapons labs, ordered scientists and engineers working there to undergo polygraph tests. The directive also called for tighter security checks of foreign visitors coming to the labs. According to Warren Rudman, who heads up the president's own Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, Clinton's directives were ignored because lab employees had a debate, and decided the security measures were a waste of their time. It is almost impossible to believe that federal workers could be that arrogant, but they are. And not just in the DOE weapons ...

Hiring of bond attorney highway panel's 1st step to $575 million repair job NOEL E. OMANARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE The state Highway Commission will waste little time in putting together the pieces needed to issue up to $575 million in bonds as part of an effort to repair or rebuild two-thirds of the state's interstate system.    The commission has scheduled a special meeting for Wednesday afternoon to discuss the first piece, the hiring of a bond counsel.    The meeting comes a little more than a week after voters, by a 4-to-1 margin, approved a Gov. Mike Huckabee-backed proposal for ...

Robert Skidelsky - From a 'Prospect' lecture by the Conservative peer and Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick One of the oldest divides in politics is between the moralists and the prudentialists. Moralists have a passion to make the crooked path of humanity straight; prudentialists to make the best of an inherently imperfect world. I know that prudence is itself a moral virtue, and moralists are also capable of discarding the sandals of the preacher for the clogs of the politician. But the basic divide goes back at least to biblical times. The New Testament calls the ...

NEGROVCE, Yugoslavia -- A day after the last Serbian soldiers quit Kosovo, NATO's peacekeeping force in the disputed Yugoslav province has suffered its first deaths. An even crueller irony was that what killed two British combat engineers and two Kosovar Albanians yesterday was not a Serbian mine or boobytrap, but unexploded cluster bombs dropped by NATO warplanes during the alliance's successful, casualty-free 11-week air war against indicted war criminal Slobodan Milosevic's regime. Two explosives experts from 69 Engineering Squadron of the 36 Gurkhas Engineering Regiment were killed instantly in a gully near a school, otherwise tight-lipped British soldiers at ...

WASHINGTON -- One group crusading to cut some of the money out of politics summed up its frustrations in a full-page ad in the Washington Post the other day. The ad featured an enlarged photo of House Speaker Dennis Hastert, with miniature images of House Republican Whip Tom Delay, R-Texas, and Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif., perched on his shoulders. "Dennis Hastert will only DeLay and Doolittle," declared the nonprofit group Public Campaign, suggesting that the speaker has been influenced by his two GOP colleagues to stall action on even modest campaign finance reforms. Although House Republicans hold a slimmer, ...

A TEXAS teenager who went fishing came back with an unexpected catch, an 11-inch (27-cm) piranha, a local newspaper reported Friday.Qunton Croker reeled in the sharp-toothed carnivore, which is native to South America, in Stillhouse Hollow lake, a large central Texas reservoir near the town of Killeen."I've lived here all my life and never seen one of these," the 25-year-old told the Killeen Daily Herald. "It was different catching one , I didn't relly know what to expect."Officials said the fish was most likely released into the wild after getting too big for some owner's aquarium."Are these dangerous for bathers ...

Publisher Steve Forbes has challenged candidate Gov. George W. Bush of Texas to a series of presidential debates. Forbes has the right idea. Real campaign reform would begin with real debate about real issues. ''(T)he American people would be well-served if we hold a series of debates between July and the end of this year,'' Forbes wrote. Forbes wants to hold five debates and include all the Republican candidates. But don't expect George W. Bush to accept any time soon. Among campaign handlers, issues are the enemy. They force candidates to take stands that can anger voters. Debates can't ...

Chicago Tribune, June 22, 1999 Plan to wire all schools to Internet falls behind Critics say program proposed by Gore ignored difficulties Vice President Al Gore and President Clinton watch Luke Rockwell and Julie Allen operate a computer at a California high school. The administration has fallen considerably short on its 1996 pledge to have every classroom wired to the Internet by 2000. (Associated Press) By Frank James Washington Bureau June 22, 1999 WASHINGTON -- With just over six months to go, the Clinton administration is not even close to meeting its highly touted goal of connecting every classroom in ...

Perhaps when the Russians or Chinese were stealing secrets, they accidentally left one of their play books in full view of a DNC member. Their politics have all the markings of the communist takeover my mother used to warn me about. 1) First and foremost, control the blue collar union vote. Strength in numbers. 2) Control education. Win over the school teachers and college professors with new ideas and dire predictions of what happens when the human "animal" is free to roam without their help. 3) Control the media. Make absolutely sure every form of communication is under your control. ...