Free Republic

1) All but FNC led Monday with the surplus announced by Clinton which Dan Rather credited to the "zooming, booming U.S. economy." Only FNC noted that the Starr/Hubbell plea deal could be bad news for Hillary Clinton since Hubbell admitted "covering up" for her. 2) ABC promoted a UN report: "As increasingly restrictive gun laws are enacted in major industrial countries, gun-makers around the globe are flocking to the biggest and least regulated gun market in the world -- the United States." 3) "China is making final preparations to test fire a new mobile intercontinental ballistic missile that the ...

When the story of the 106th Congress is written, its most glorious hour might just be Tuesday, when the kids from Randy Wright's civics classes take a bus to Washington and lobby the House and Senate to print the Constitution on the back of the one-dollar bill. Mr. Wright has taught citizenship to the eighth graders at Liberty Middle School in Ashland, Va., for eight years, and every year he spends three months on the Constitution, requiring, among other things, that his students memorize the Preamble, and abridged versions of the seven Articles and 27 Amendments. Last year, he ...

WASHINGTON -- A Chattanooga man testified here Monday that Franklin Haney's administrative assistant told him in late 1995 to keep secret that the local real estate developer was the true source of money the witness would contribute to the 1996 Clinton/Gore re-election effort. Donald Condra also said under oath that the same Haney employee, Gloria Thurman, informed him in mid-1998 just how to characterize the $1,000 contribution in the context of a pending U.S. Justice Department probe into the campaign activities of Mr. Haney, a friend of Vice President Al Gore and a major national Democratic Party donor. "She said, ...

Here they are folks, those who have been "honored" after appearing on Sunday's news shows PROFESSIONALS' MONTHLY Be sure to check out the "THINKING MAN" cartoon at the bottom of the page and the other updates. Following is an excerpt from the updated "An Outsider's View" titled "...And Victory for All". The entire article is posted at PROFESSIONALS' MONTHLY: So, this was the war to define future wars. How to "win" has been demonstrated by none other than an impeached, draft-dodging, flower-power hippie and leaders of an alliance that are either a collection of his clones or weaker, NATO enriched ...

NATO's Balkan bombing campaign was victorious, more or less, but there may be as much relief in the West as in Belgrade that it is ending. Given that NATO was imposing, but not taking, casualties, why that reaction? There was broad public outrage in the West against ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and equally broad support for this humanitarian intervention. Why then the sense that not only the Serbs, but we as well, have had a lucky escape? Steven Rosenfeld, writing in the Washington Post, offered this extraordinary analysis: "It turned out that the principal shortage . . . was of ...

Hundreds of officers searched for a killer who escaped from what is supposed to be Texas' tightest prison and ran naked into a swampy area full of mosquitos, snakes, and poison ivy. Clifford Jones, 33, whose convictions include a murder in Dallas and attempted murder for shooting at a Dallas police officer, fled the high-security section of the prison system's Estelle Unit, about 12 miles north of Huntsville. Jones scaled a 25-foot-high chain-link fence to the roof of the yard, then fell to another fence that covers a walkway and jumped eight feet to the ground. Jones kept running toward ...

'Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won." So wrote the Duke of Wellington in his dispatch from Waterloo in June 1815. As the war over Kosovo approaches its denouement, the United States and its allies may perhaps be forgiven for wishing to ignore the Iron Duke's dour observation. That the Clinton administration, and the Gore campaign, tormented for weeks by the great sucking sound of a Balkan quagmire, will breathe a sigh of relief is understandable. Americans of all political persuasions rightly rejoice that the conflict ends with no U.S. combat fatalities and ...

Part 1 of a 3-part series The stories are making the rounds among Fort Jackson's battalion commanders and drill sergeants. There's the one about the recruit who showed up for basic training missing a trigger finger. There are tales of several trainees who arrived missing toes. And another whose X-ray showed a drainage tube running from his brain to his chest. Most of the stories are, to the Army's dismay, true. At Fort Jackson, a training base that is the portal of entry to 35,000 Army recruits each year, new soldiers have arrived recently with hepatitis C, severe psychological disorders ...

Official Washington and the sleepy "establishment" media are agog over President Clinton's "great victory" in the Balkans. Even the president's critics grant him a stupendous foreign policy success. "Victory," screams the editorial headline of the Weekly Standard, and the editorialist goes on to proclaim, "Slobodan Milosevic's capitulation to U.S. and NATO demands represents a triumph for . . . President Clinton, and for the small but stalwart group of Republicans . . . who supported the war from beginning to end." The National Review's senior editor Peter Rodman said on C-Span's Washington Journal that it would be "churlish" of Bill ...

The principles of the tribe changed little throughout the 19th century, although advancing technology caused some variations on the old themes. The formal duel of the first half of the 19th century was generally replaced by the gunfight following the introduction of the revolver. As a result, gunfights occurred with great frequency, especially in the mining camps of the Far West. No mining camp gunfighter was deadlier than John Daly. Born in New York City, he came to California as a teenager and began his gunfighting career in the camps of the Mother Lode during the 1850’s. In 1863, he ...

Third-Grader Suspended Over Fortune Cookie Message FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Monday, June 14, 1999 HUDSON, OH -- At a school board hearing tonight, the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio Foundation will defend a Hudson third-grader who was suspended from school after penning an allegedly threatening message in a fortune cookie for a school assignment. Nine-year-old Karl Bauman, who enjoys martial arts videos, submitted "you will die an honorable death" as his contribution to the class project. He was suspended for two days in connection with the incident, which took place on April 30th. On May 6th, Hudson Schools Director ...

Well, Hitlery, we read that you returned from Paris with 18 pairs of Bruno Magli shoes; spending $5,000 for this portion of your shopping spree. Apparently, you have come down with a severe case of Imelda Marcos Syndrome. This leads me to ask you some questions: * Is it true that you are planning to add a wing to the White House just to accomodate your shoes? With the legal fees that you and Der Arken Furher have accumulated, how did you pay for this extravagant purchase? Did you loot the treasury for it as would a medieval queen? Or, ...

Panel casts yes vote for future of online elections SAN MATEO -- The can-do spirit that drives technological progress, and a hint of revolutionary fervor hummed faintly in the background as a task force sat down on the edge of Silicon Valley to discuss another Internet revolution: the e-Vote. It seems clear that in much the same way the Internet securely handles high-stakes transactions for shopping and banking, the technology can be developed that would allow votes to be cast over the Internet in government elections. Members of the task force on electronic voting convened by Secretary of State Bill ...

Hey, Bill Clinton! Listen up! Don't get swept up in euphoria about your domestic agenda and Hillary's race for the Senate. Not just yet. There's still work to be done in Yugoslavia. Hasn't anybody told you that ethnic cleansing is still going on in Kosovo and you may need to play commander-in-chief a while longer? Surely, you've seen interviews on TV of Kosovar Serbs, complaining about having their homes raided and burned. They look just like the ethnic Albanians who were complaining about the same thing three months ago. Call one of the field commanders if you haven't heard ...

Tuesday June 26 4:00pm EDT Please join Town Hall for a Live Chat on Texas politics with David Guenthner, managing editor of The Lone Star Report.

Jewish World ReviewJune 29, 1999 Thomas Sowell "Urban sprawl" and liberal gall http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- THE LATEST SCARE PHRASE that is supposed to set off a political stampede is "urban sprawl." But, before we go thundering off in all directions, just what is this urban sprawl? How can you tell whether there is urban sprawl where you live? If someone says there is and someone else says there isn't, what can you look for to tell you who is right? Those who want to lead a government-sponsored crusade against urban sprawl have no time for such questions. Just as some restaurants ...

Chapter 1 page 13:"Although many communities had some notable bloodletting, killings were not everydayaffair and, in fact were quite rare. Where Matt Dillon of TVs gunsmoke shot outlaws weekly for two decades, that was pure entertainment and strayed far from the truth. During the bloodiest year un Dodge City (1878) only five men were slain in gunfights. At the time of the great trail drives(1876-1885), only 15 men are recorded as having been killed by gunfire.El Paso had enough violence to make Dodge City look like a Girl Scout encampment, and yet the statistics do not bear out that El ...

Few will lament the expiration Wednesday of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, which provided for the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate a president or other high government officials when wrongdoing was alleged.      The basic idea was sound; it removed investigations of top officials from the Justice Department, which is headed by a presidential political appointee. But the post-Watergate law was overly broad, covering as many as 200 federal offices. This pulled into its web government employees only peripherally connected to the officials in question.      Worst of all has been the five-year, $50-million, free-ranging term of Kenneth ...

As early as 1995, officials in the U.S. Commerce Department were warned of Chinese military and commercial espionage, according to a recently declassified secret report from the FBI. On June 1, 1999, the acting chief of the FBI's Litigation Unit, Scott A. Hodes, released sections of a still-secret report on Chinese espionage in written testimony submitted in a federal lawsuit by this reporter. "The document is 1 of 18 documents submitted to the Court by the Department of Commerce for an in camera inspection," wrote Hodes in his testimony for Federal Judge Robert Payne. "This document is described as ...

(CNS) - One year after the passage of Proposition 227, which dismantled bilingual education in California, early test scores of statewide exams in math, science, social studies and language arts are up - in some cases dramatically - among students who are not fluent in English. "Although a final verdict on Prop. 227 will not be available until all remaining district scores are released later this week, these initial results are quite astonishing," said English for the Children Chairman Ron Unz, who spearheaded the Prop. 227 referendum. With Proposition 227 being challenged in court, its implementation across the state has ...