Free Republic

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- 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 changes. Although House Republicans hold a slimmer, ...

Dennis Prager said there was a gay flag flying over city hall. That's all I know.

China Wants Kosovo Investigation .c The Associated Press BEIJING (AP) - In an apparent change of tone, China said Tuesday that ``a serious investigation'' is needed to prove whether ethnic cleansing occurred in Kosovo. China previously played down evidence of atrocities in the Serb province, instead blaming NATO's bombing campaign for creating a humanitarian crisis. Since entering Kosovo on June 12, international peacekeepers and reporters have found mass graves and other apparent signs of atrocities. Asked about the discoveries and whether they strengthened the case for war crimes charges against Yugoslav leaders, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said more research ...

Twenty-five years to the day a federal judge ordered Boston to desegregate its public schools - leading to one of the most tumultuous and ugly chapters in the city's history - a group of parents yesterday asked a federal court to abandon the last remnants of the plan. Saying four white students were unconstitutionally denied entrance to schools because of their race, the lawsuit asks the US District Court to throw out a decade-old policy that assigns students to schools based on choice and race. The plaintiffs want a race-neutral admissions policy in place by September. Around the country, ...

Mass Graves Found All Over Kosovo By ELLEN KNICKMEYER .c The Associated Press IZBICA, Yugoslavia (AP) - Turn down the wrong road in Kosovo looking for a mass grave of 35 ethnic Albanians, and the men there say, no, that's the next village - but we'll show where we buried seven of our fathers and uncles together. Ask someone for directions to a field holding the corpses of 142 people who were executed and he says, after that, if you want, I'll show you a grave holding six members of a single family. Mass graves are everywhere in Kosovo: more ...

The availability of strong encryption on the Net just got a lot wider, with the introduction of two new ways to encrypt private emails. Both Hushmail and ZipLip.com offer users strong--likely unbreakable--encryption without using specialized encryption software. Both are free to the user. Hushmail skirts U.S. laws on the export of very strong encryption by virtue of its British West Indies birthplace. The 1,024-bit system allows users who sign up to exchange mail in a highly secure environment. ZipLip.com uses a slightly different format which does not require that both parties belong to the system. Instead, encrypted mail is stored ...

RICHMOND, Va. — Republican presidential front-runner George W. Bush Tuesday derided Vice President Al Gore as a "Washington D.C. person,'' further heating a war of words between the two men who may square off for the White House in next year's election. Bush, the governor of Texas and son of former President George Bush, also spoke out against abortion in strong terms and expressed support for posting the Ten Commandments in public buildings. Bush made his comments to reporters after visiting a library in a poor, mostly black district of Richmond where his wife, Laura, read a book to a ...

- A funny thing happened in Washington last week. No, really, it was funny. In a town that usually takes itself drop-dead seriously, the Family Research Council's third annual Court Jester Awards provided a few hours of comic relief. Several hundred conservatives packed the ballroom of the National Press Club to laugh at the most ridiculous judicial decisions handed down this year. It could have been a somber event. The Court Jesters, after all, are awarded "to activist judges who violate the public trust by handing down decisions that advance their own political agendas rather than follow constitutional principles." But ...

  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Average oil exporting country could have transportation delays of 23 days due to Y2K Delays could cause problems for countries without strategic stockpiles. June 22, 1999 -- The top 10 oil exporting countries are behind in Y2K preparations and fixes, which could delay international crude oil shipments by up to 23 days according to International Monitoring, a London specialist consultancy. The top 10 exporting countries representing 71.1% of all exported crude oil were analyzed for Y2K failure scenarios and then placed on a damage estimate scale, called the Y2K Storm Rating scale with a ranking from ...

In Minnesota Concealed-Carry is the issue in 1999-2000 CCRN! volunteers are working to reduce crime in Minnesota Your help, phone calls, email, faxes and voice is VITAL. How can you help? Easy... Step #1: Get on the CCRN! email list...send a note to - 75053.1515@CompuServe.com Step #2: Visit these sites for the latest NEWS, COMMENTARY, and ACTION items - http://www.citilink.com/~lch/ccrn.html http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/ccrnofminnesota http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/thedefensivegunclub

Communist Party Ideological Conference New York City - October 9 - 11, 1999 It's time for a Communist Party Ideological Conference. A mighty battle of ideas confronts us at the beginning of the 21st Century. The mammoth challenge to defeat and replace a dying and rotting system of capitalism must be met. We have every confidence that it will be the "millennium of socialism." The Communist Party and the Young Communist League have an awesome responsibility ahead to lead the working class in this transformation. Come join us in debating and discussing the theory and ideas we'll need to ...

The fallout began almost before the smoke had cleared at bullet- and bomb-ravaged Columbine High School. Barely able to conceive of two suburban teens on a homicidal rampage, stunned parents across the country looked for someone to blame. Politicians, always looking for a chance to posture, found a few convenient scapegoats and led them to the slaughter. Republicans and Democrats alike abandoned traditional allies. Republicans in the Senate dumped the National Rifle Association in favor of new anti-gun legislation. Then President Clinton rocked the liberal Hollywood establishment by suggesting-ever so gingerly-that violent movies and television shows might need to be ...

Church and state long have been on opposite sides of a high wall. But 1996 welfare-reform legislation made it legal for them to partner in providing social services. ou might say welfare provider Bobby Polito gets things done because he's trilingual. He speaks the language of the streets, the language of the bureaucrats and the language of faith -- all punctuated with common sense. . . . . Polito operates an effective, faith-based, 80-bed facility for drug-addicted, homeless men on Avenue D in New York City. Annually 125 to 150 men straighten out their lives through the Avenue D Project. ...

There are 58 members of the Communist Socialist Party in the United States Congress. They are comprised of 57 Democrats and one independent, who have signed onto the agenda of the Democratic Socialists of America.There are seven ranking committee members in this group.The Democrats have put socialists in charge of thier members on the Ways and Means Committee, the Banking and Small Business Committees, The Science Committee, the Veterans Committee, the Resources Committee and the Judiciary Committee!There were five members of the Communist Socialist Party on the Senate committee holding the Inquiry of Impeachment for Bill Clinton.Keep in mind they ...

Yes: This archaic tax punishes most entrepreneurs, farmers and many family businesses. By Rep. Jennifer Dunn . . . . Leonard L. Harris, a first-generation owner of Chatham Food Center on Chicago's South Side -- and one of the fewer than 20 black-owned supermarket owners in the United States -- recently was in Washington, D.C., to meet with lawmakers in Congress. His rise to prominence as a businessman is emblematic of the values that drive success stories: hard work, common sense and a desire to make a better life for his children. The freedom to attain prosperity and accumulate wealth ...

Stop Sen. McConnell from Reigniting the War The facts about the Kosovo "Liberation" Army have been well-documented by Antiwar.com. The KLA is gang of murderous neo-Maoist thugs, who are killing, raping, and looting their way through "liberated" Kosovo in brazen defiance of NATO – or, some say, with NATO's full complicity. Now Senator McConnell (R-KY), Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, is pushing an amendment (S846) to the defense budget that would make this complicity official: if adopted, the McConnell amendment would provide $20 million to arm the KLA. Last week, the committee quietly passed the amendment ...

Bush was first interested in naming Clarence Thomas, an African American conservative on the D.C. federal appeals court. But Thornburgh and Gray argued that Thomas was not ready, hav- ing just joined the appeals court.  Another top candidate was David H. Souter, a 50-year-old fed- eral appeals court judge in New Hampshire and a bachelor. Early in the administration, Gray had spent a long lunch with Souter and had been impressed by his low-key intellect, humility and knowl- edge of the law. Sununu, an ex-governor of New Hampshire, as- sured Gray that Souter was okay on the administration's issues, including ...

The swinging British ’60s collided with the suburban American ’90s for one Atlanta-area mom. Tamatha Brannon was upset when her 11-year-old son picked up an Austin Powers doll, heard the word “horny” and then pestered Mom about what it meant. Ms. Brannon of East Point said she wasn’t ready to discuss sex with her son, Marvin Brannon, when he found the doll last week at a Morrow Toys “R” Us store. The underwear-clad dolls repeat lines from the Mike Myers comedy, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, including the one that peeved Ms. Brannon: “Do I make you horny, ...

The attempts on the part of the Clinton administration to legitimize and support yet another communist dictatorship has begun in earnest. Two reports on the "progress" in Vietnam trade negotiations. 21 June 1999 BARSHEFSKY CITES PROGRESS IN VIETNAM TRADE NEGOTIATIONS (Bilateral Trade Agreement Could Lead to NTR) (290) Washington -- U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky said June 18 that U.S.-Vietnam trade negotiations have made significant progress toward reaching a bilateral trade agreement but key market access issues remain to be resolved before "normal trade relations" (NTR) treatment can be extended to Vietnam. The text of the June 18 USTR press ...

1643 GMT, 990622  – President Clinton urged Kosovar refugees in Macedonian camps not to rush into Kosovo before their safety was assured. Clinton urged the refugees to wait "a couple more weeks" so that no one is injured by unexploded landmines, and he appealed for them to concentrate on rebuilding their country and not seeking revenge against ethnic Serbs. 1640 GMT, 990622  – Russian President Boris Yeltsin has formally asked the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, the Federation Council, to approve dispatching a Russian peacekeeping force to Kosovo. A Kremlin spokesman called the deployment an "important political action" and ...