Free Republic

Politics: Arizona Republican senator, a celebrated former POW, aims for tactical victories in a few key states. MYRTLE BEACH, S.C.--By the time Sen. John McCain arrived at the Crab House here the other night, the 30 military veterans waiting for him were getting a bit restless--and hungry. They already had seen a 10-minute video of McCain's career and listened to a medley of patriotic tunes. But America's most celebrated former POW, who spent 5½ years in a Hanoi prison cell, deftly worked the crowd. And by the time dinner was over, they were his. "South Carolina loves its soldiers," ...

LINK Firefight sparked with US troops as Serb four houses torched VITINA, Yugoslavia, June 28 (AFP) - US troops fought an intense firefight with two suspected ethnic Albanian guerrillas after they spotted four Serb homes set on fire, troops said Monday.The firefight late Sunday lasted around one minute but involved hundreds of rounds of automatic weapons fire, grenades and heavy machine gun fire, US troops said early Monday after returning from a patrol.At one point four helicopters -- Apaches and Blackhawks -- hovered at the scene outside the town of Vitina in southern Kosovo.The event followed a wave of arson ...

Free to Be Disorderly By William Raspberry Monday, June 28, 1999; Page A21 The House's approval of a constitutional amendment that would allow Congress to protect the American flag against burning or other desecration proves that the House majority: (a) Opposes the free-speech guarantees of the First Amendment. (b) Is made up of conservative (and inconsistent) demagogues who will do whatever it takes to play to the ignorant prejudices of the masses. (c) Cares deeply about America and worries that patriotism is on the wane. (d) Is incapable of understanding the distinction between a symbol and the thing itself. A ...

History, as they say, is written by the victors. The difference it makes shows up in the terms we use. The losers are "terrorists," "savages," "guerrillas" or plain old "murderers." The winners are "freedom-fighters," "refugees" or "survivors." It often matters little to the winners that they engaged in similar kinds of behaviour as the losers, whether historically or in the most recent conflict. That matters a great deal to the losers, however, which is often why violence becomes cyclical. As soon as the balance of power shifts, the language of victimhood shifts. Yesterday's aggressors become today's aggrieved. History is ...

s AMES, Iowa (June 27, 1999 8:57 p.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - Publisher Steve Forbes cited a leaked memo obtained last week in accusing Texas George W. Bush of relying on money from special-interest groups to win the Iowa Republican straw poll Aug. 14. The memo revealed that Bush is seeking to line up 50 prominent interest groups to commit to delivering backers to the straw poll, drew Forbes' ire as he courted party activists at a barbecue Saturday. Forbes said Saturday that Bush's effort coupled with a big Washington fund-raiser last week give lie to any claim that Bush is ...

President Jiang Zemin has urged the armed forces to improve through science and technology and loyalty to the Communist Party, Xinhua reported yesterday. He told delegates at the 14th Meeting of the People's Liberation Army's Institutes of Higher Learning the armed forces should develop a large contingent of skilled technological personnel "who are loyal to the Communist Party and the people", the news agency said. The President said the institutes must make sure their students were "politically qualified". Information would be the greatest factor in fighting ability on the battlefields of the future involving high calibre personnel, he said. ...

KACANIK, Yugoslavia -- Long convoys of fresh NATO armoured units from France, Britain and the United States thundered through this decrepit, war-scarred mining town this weekend on the long, numbing journey north from ports in Greece through Macedonia to the killing fields of Kosovo. Troops of the western alliance have been in Kosovo for more than two weeks now. But sadly for NATO, which urgently requires reinforcements, the race to get more troops and more armour here won't end for several months to come. NATO did a brilliant job of bringing quickly into Kosovo what forces it had available ...

There is always some satisfaction to be derived from seeing liberal commentators who are trying to pass their views off as news get their comeuppance. Katie Couric of NBC was again spinning the news, by saying that a black lawyer defending a white man had been treated shamefully by his client. But in a following interview, when she tried to put those words in his mouth, the lawyer spit them out. He corrected her by saying the man had treated him with extreme courtesy. The lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union succeeded in getting the man off with ...

WASHINGTON - President Bill Clinton is angered and hurt by Vice President Al Gore's conspicuous efforts to distance himself from Mr. Clinton's behavior in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, according to presidential aides and advisers. They say the vice president's words have created a friction that never before existed between the two men. Click here ...

Stanley Kubrick toned down a red-hot orgy sequence in his new Tom Cruise-Nicole Kidman sex thriller to avoid an adults-only rating in America, it was reported today. The censorship-hating movie director used special digital effects to hide the private parts of actors and actresses in the climactic sex scene of "Eyes Wide Shut," which opens July 16, Time magazine reports. The bid to gain a bigger audience was a switch for Kubrick, who refused to censor or make alternate versions of many of his other movies. Producer Jan Harlan said the late filmmaker made adjustments to the U.S. version of ...

U.S. suspects stolen data key to China missile By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES China is making final preparations to test fire a new mobile intercontinental ballistic missile that the CIA believes will incorporate stolen U.S. missile and warhead secrets, The Washington Times has learned. Preparations for the launch of the road-mobile DF-31 -- which could take place as early as next week -- were spotted by U.S. spy satellites at Wuzhai in central China and reported in classified U.S. intelligence reports earlier this month, said U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the reports. "They are getting ready for a ...

To avoid a disastrous showing such as the one he had in 1988, Al Gore must right his newly launched campaign ship. He appears to be confused about the job he is seeking, unable to decide whether it is for school board, city council or police commissioner. He promised to improve education, reduce crime and improve community planning. But the president is supposed to conduct foreign policy for the United States, provide a strong defense, propose a budget to Congress and perform various other duties, unrelated to local issues such as school and crime. With George W. Bush occupying ...

Updated: Saturday, May 22, 1999 at 23:30:58 (GMT+8) Don't Go Postal Over E-Mail Tax Hoax by: Robert MacMillan and Martin Stone from Newsbytes WASHINGTON, DC, U.S.A., 21 MAY, 1999 (NB) - Before letting your Doberman pinscher off the leash next time the mailman comes by, or firing off an angry salvo at Postmaster General William Henderson, keep in mind that the latest Internet rumor circulating about the US Postal Service applying an e-mail tax is a hoax. US e-mail account holders now are receiving a rumor in their inboxes that first surfaced in Canada last month. As Newsbytes reported, the ...

WASHINGTON - Veteran pollsters Gordon Black and Humphrey Taylor are bringing political polling into the Computer Age. But critics say their cyber-polling isn't representative of the population . Black and Taylor plan to use the Internet instead of the telephone to conduct polls on the 2000 elections. They say that with larger samples and instantaneous communication and tabulation, results can be faster, cheaper and more accurate. "We think we can outperform telephone polls in terms of scope, accuracy and the amount of information," Black says. Plans announced Wednesday by the two top executives of Harris Black International call for ...

The Independent Counsel Act will expire on Wednesday, and unfortunately most members of Congress would just as soon see the law fade into history. But that response unwisely assumes that Kenneth Starr's protracted investigation of President Clinton ought to be the measure by which the law is judged. Without an independent counsel law, power to investigate the President and other high officials would revert back to the Attorney General, who cannot credibly oversee inquiries into the highest levels of the administration of which he or she is a part. Instead of rejecting the independent counsel mechanism, Congress should seek to ...

Once again presidential candidates are traipsing through Iowa to gather support for next February's crucial first-in-the-nation caucus. Once again all too many of these candidates are genuflecting to the powerful ethanol lobby. But this year there are some brave dissenters, who believe that a president is supposed to represent the national interest rather than a collection of parochial special interests. The ethanol subsidy is one such interest. Passed in 1980 to solve the "energy crisis" but now apparently possessed of eternal life, the 54-cent-a-gallon tax credit for the corn-based alcohol fuel additive represents the worst sort of corporate welfare. Indeed, ...

As part of a new and aggressive effort to track down parents who owe child support, the federal government has created a vast computerized data-monitoring system that includes all individuals with new jobs and the names, addresses, Social Security numbers and wages of nearly every working adult in the United States. Government agencies have long gathered personal information for specific reasons, such as collecting taxes. But never before have federal officials had the legal authority and technological ability to locate so many Americans found to be delinquent parents -- or such potential to keep tabs on Americans accused of nothing. ...

You're flying at 38,000 feet on your way to Hawaii on a 777 Jumbo Jet having the time of our life when all of the sudden, you see a bright flash of light outside the plane, then you feel the jet engines back off and go silent. You just remembered that your tickets are the non-refundable kind, and you realize that your whole trip is about to be ruined. If the pilot is great and he slides your plane across the waves of the Pacfic without breaking it up into a million pieces, you may live to find out what ...

Chinese President Jiang Zemin urged the military to develop a core body of highly skilled soldiers and boost technical training, the official China Daily said on Monday. It said Jiang called on the People's Liberation Army to give top priority to training soldiers for high-tech warfare and developing high technology, essential to competing with other countries' fast-paced military developments. Jiang said the military should train a core body of highly skilled techinical soldiers and concentrate on improving its education system, the newspaper said. It said the president called on the army to play a larger role in defence-related scientific ...

The New York Stock Exchange chairman delivered an unusual sales pitch to the leftist guerrilla commander: Make peace and expect economic benefits from global investors. "We are very aggressive in trying to pursue international markets and opportunities," NYSE Chairman Richard Grasso said in an interview Saturday night at his Bogota hotel. Grasso met earlier in the day with Raul Reyes, head of the international commission of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, to discuss the promise of capitalism. The trip was arranged by the government of Colombian President Andres Pastrana, who has been vigorously seeking international support for a ...