Free Republic

BOSTON (AP) — A group of parents asked the federal court to throw out what's left of the city's public school desegregation plan, despite warnings that such a move could reverse the city's racial progress over the past 25 years. The lawsuit, filed Monday, claims four white students were unconstitutionally denied entrance to their schools of choice because of their race. It asks the court to throw out a School Department policy that considers race when assigning students to schools. The lawsuit was filed 25 years to the day after U.S. District Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. ruled that segregation ...

GWB, The Papers' Man By Byron York Columnist Paul Gigot recently quoted a Republican pol as saying George W. Bush is "ahead in the polls now mainly because he is ahead in the polls." That's correct -- but how did Bush get to be the presidential front-runner in the first place? Probably because he has been, at least so far, the big winner in the informal, ad hoc press poll that determines how each candidate is portrayed in the press. If you want to measure the standings of the contestants in the Republican race for president, you might just as ...

Jules Feiffer June 20, 1999 Spin Doctor (my title) Hillary runs for the Senate in New York. She's tied neck and neck with Rudi Guliani. The final week of the campaign, her strategists meet. They come up with a plan. They go to the president. "Sir, it's up to you to win this one for the first lady." "I'll do anything to make up for the pain I've caused her", the president says. So they fly him to New York. They drop him off at a singles bar on the Upper East Side. They tip off the tabloids. "President Caught ...

DOWNSIDE LEGACY AT TWO DEGREES OF PRESIDENT CLINTON INTRODUCTION AND TABLE OF CONTENTS Revised 6/17/99   Doug from Upland presents "Hello Dolly" (the FreeRepublic welcoming song) The "Downside Legacy at Two Degrees of President Clinton" is the cyber-notepad of Alamo-Girl, the unofficial, unappointed secretary of what is the most active conservative political forum on the world wide web, the Free Republic. Forum participants refer to the list by its initials, DSL. The DSL is limited to the downside (darkside) of William Jefferson Clinton and includes questionable people, circumstances and events surrounding Bill Clinton i.e., two degrees of separation from the ...

Buchanan pledges challenge to Bush `coronation' By Mike Glover, Associated Press DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) Pat Buchanan pledged an intense grass-roots campaign in Iowa this summer, saying a strong showing in an August straw poll will derail the ''coronation'' planned by Republican Party leaders. Opening a five-day trip to Iowa, Buchanan said Monday that the same Republican establishment jumping on the bandwagon of Texas Gov. George W. Bush has led the party to defeat in the last two elections. ''Now the establishment is telling us who we must nominate again, and they had a coronation set up with George Bush,'' ...

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 ...

Mitch Snyder killed himself nine years ago, but that has not stopped him from being one of the most influential people in Ontario politics. In the early 1980s, Americans began to notice a steady increase in the number of lost souls on the streets of their cities. By day they pushed shopping carts full of sad shabby personal possessions; at night they slept in cardboard boxes on the sidewalk or atop heating grates. As it happened, these forlorn people were becoming visible at exactly the same time the Reagan economic program was being put into effect. Snyder was among the ...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Two plainclothes police officers were indicted Monday on federal charges of lying to authorities investigating the torture of a Haitian immigrant in a police station bathroom. Rolando Aleman, 28, and Francisco Rosario, 34, were decorated members of the roving Street Crime Unit who were booking a gun suspect at the precinct at the time of the assault on Abner Louima on Aug. 9, 1997. During questioning, they ``repeatedly lied and misled the federal government about what they saw in the stationhouse that morning,'' said prosecutor Alan Vingrad. The indictments came two weeks after a jury ...

Something to Say Commentary Tuesday, June 22, 1999 The Shoe Slips Onto The Other Foot Newly-returned Albanian Kosovars are busily taking their revenge on their Serb neighbors, as a picture on the front of today’s New York Times so eloquently emphasizes. The photo is of a toppled statue of the 14th-century King Dusan of Serbia. It lies on the ground in Prizren, Kosovo, after being knocked over by local Albanians. The accompanying story by Steven Lee Myers told of the completion of the pullout by Serb troops a few hours ahead of the NATO deadline for their withdrawal. With ...

Georgia Says Russian Jets Violated Airspace TBILISI, Jun 22, 1999 -- (Reuters) A senior Georgian defense official said on Tuesday Russian military planes had violated Georgian air space, and vowed to repel any further intrusions. Deputy Defense Minister Grigol Katamadze said by telephone that four Russian MiG-29 fighter jets flew over Georgia on their way from Russia to Armenia on Saturday, despite Georgian authorities' refusal to grant them an air corridor. "I can tell you our air defense has enough force and equipment. We appeal to Russian military officials not to repeat such unprecedented acts," Katamadze said. Katamadze said Georgia ...

ALL: Here's another reason to have a years worth of food and water stored away. DO YOU REALLY THINK WE AMERICANS CAN REMAIN SAFE AT HOME AFTER OUR LEADERS BOMBED AND KILLED INNOCENT PEOPLE IN YUGOSLAVIA? IT'S TIME TO PROTECT YOUR FAMILY WITH AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY INSURANCE Story here U.S. could face new terror tactic: Agricultural warfare By Steve Goldstein INQUIRER WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON - With government money and attention focused on thwarting biological and chemical weapons targeted at humans, officials are now just barely awakening to an equally insidious and catastrophic threat: agroterror, or biowarfare targeting a nation's animals ...

Reducing crime is not the true aim of the gun-control crowd Published in The Orlando Sentinel on June 22, 1999. 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 ...

Michael Savage, a conservative talk radio host for KSFO, an ABC station in San Francisco, Calif., is threatening to sue Republican presidential front-runner Gov. George W. Bush of Texas for using the phrase "compassionate conservative" -- a term Savage says he invented -- without giving him proper credit. Five years ago, Savage came on the radio calling himself the "compassionate conservative." In 1995, Savage wrote a book entitled "Savage Nation: The Compassionate Conservative Speaks." Savage has also conducted four "compassionate conservative" conventions in the San Francisco Bay area since 1995. Now Savage claims that as Bush travels around the country ...

BEIJING--Disarmament should not become a tool for stronger nations to control weaker ones; still less should it be an instrument for a handful of countries to optimize their armaments in order to seek unilateral superiority. To reduce the armaments of others while keeping one's own intact, to reduce the obsolete while developing the state of the art, to sacrifice the security of others for one's own, and to require other countries to scrupulously abide by treaties while giving oneself freedom of action by placing domestic laws above international law--all these acts apply double standards. They make a mockery of international ...

'He's got more rights than my wife did' Slaying suspect's hearing upsets Lee 6/22/99 By Tom Bailey Jr. The Commercial Appeal SOMERVILLE, Tenn. - The husband of slaying victim Barbara Ann Lee on Monday marched into the District Attorney General's Office here demanding to know why no prosecutor showed up for a hearing in the case. Told by a receptionist that Dist. Atty. Gen. Elizabeth Rice was in Covington and unavailable, Robert C. Lee thundered, "The state did not represent my wife's interests or mine! I want her to call me right now!" Minutes earlier, in a closed and prosecutor-less ...

A few generations ago, before we started allowing students to graduate as blithering illiterate idiots, people rightfully didn't like Communism and knew well the dangers of socialism. Today school teachers are open and rabid socialists and Joe Six-pak down the street yawns when the word socialism is mentioned. Webster's Collegiate Dictionary says that socialism is: that state of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism. Today the US government is on the brink of communism, and no one dares to step up to the plate, say so and point to the facts. American's are aware that "something just ...

"I cannot be optimistic and I am generally concerned about the possibility of power shortages. Supermarket supplies may be disrupted....It's clear we can't solve the whole problem, so we have to allow some systems to die so mission-critical systems can work.... Pay attention to the things that are vulnerable in your life and make contingency plans.... Don't panic, but don't spend too much time sleeping, either." - Senator Robert Bennett, Chairman of the Senate's Special Committee on the Year 2000 Problem   "We're no longer at the point of asking whether or not there will be any power disruptions, ...

(UPI Spotlight) Clinton talks economic assistance SKOPJE, Macedonia, June 22 (UPI) - A U.S. official traveling with President Clinton in Macedonia says (Tuesday) the need for economic assistance for the region dominated dicussions between Clinton and Albanian President Rexhelp Meidani and Macedonia President Kiro Gligorov. Clinton met with the leaders before visiting a refugee camp. Copyright 1999 by United Press International

This is a vanity, but did anyone see the Don Imus show this morning? He had on as guests James Carville and his lovely wife Mary. Imus was talking about how he quit smoking and asked Carville and Mary if they ever smoked. Mary said yep. Carville studdered and said something to the effect of . . ."well. . .its not the biggest issue in my like. . .but ya. . sometimes I'll have a cigarette at night." I was floored! This is the same guy thats always trashing big tobacco and yet he admitted using the stuff? Next thing ...

Will Clinton and Yeltsin Succeed in Springing the A.B.M. Treaty Trap? (Washington, D.C.): News item: "For the first time, Russia has agreed to discuss changes in the [1972] Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty that may be necessitated by a national missile defense system -- were we to decide to deploy one." (Emphasis added.) National Security Advisor to the President Samuel Berger Washington Times, 20 June 1999 We have a bridge available for sale to anyone who believes that this statement is going to lead to the deployment of effective missile defenses by the United States anytime soon. In fact, if left ...