Free Republic

Campaign 2000: Bush rolls into capital with record war chest By Dennis Love Bee Capitol Bureau (Published July 1, 1999) When you are your party's presumptive nominee for president and you've just announced your campaign has raised a record-obliterating $36.25 million in only six months, you can get away with an inside joke or two. And so Texas Gov. George W. Bush, mugging for the cameras Wednesday in frying-pan heat at a downtown Sacramento park, lined up at quarterback at a kids' football camp and started barking signals. "Twenty-two!" he called out. "Seventy-seven!" And then, with a wry smile: ...

Bush Seeks to Curry Favor in Silicon Valley .By RICHARD L. BERKE PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Encroaching on political turf that Vice President Al Gore has cultivated for years, Gov. George W. Bush ventured into Silicon Valley Thursday to fatten his already flush campaign treasury and to unveil proposals favored by the technology industry. The Texas Governor departed from his standard text to make an aggressive pitch to the computer titans in the room, a group with growing influence that both political camps are wooing. He chided President Clinton and Gore for, among other things, not allowing American companies to ...

VOLUME 1 JULY 1, 1999 ISSUE 12 "IF IT CAN HAPPEN TO FORTIER, IT CAN HAPPEN TO NICHOLS" The decision by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reduce the sentence of Michael Fortier is yet another savage attack on the victims of the attack on the Murrah Federal Building. When the Department of Justice exercised poor judgment in allowing Fortier an extremely comfortable deal in exchange for his testimony against Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, it betrayed the trust of the American people and the memories of those who died in the attack he helped to engineer. The ...

Foes' Fund-Raising Up, Gore Bolsters His Team By MELINDA HENNEBERGER and JOHN M. BRODER WASHINGTON -- Vice President Al Gore hired several new advisers Thursday, a day after learning that both his Republican and Democratic competitors in the Presidential race had raised surprising amounts of cash this quarter. While a Gore spokesman said the new hires had nothing to do with the fund-raising figures, one person close to the campaign described Gore aides as "catatonic" over the news that Gov. George W. Bush, Republican of Texas, had taken in $36 million so far and that Gore's Democratic challenger, former Senator ...

Sheer political ignorance, old wives tales and UFO landings pass today as fact among the uneducated, inexperienced and gullible. That can be easily seen by looking at a few examples, along with the facts that are easily verifiable by anyone with a modicum of effort in regards to political matters. Example #1: "The NWO or the GOP or the INSIDERS or all of them together have already crowned G. W. Bush as the next President of the US - it’s all a plot against any other candidate because G.W. is a charter member of the CFR and will do the ...

The show is just starting. Larry on now!!!! Go Larry go!

Backing New York on Medicare, First Lady Lobbies White House By ADAM NAGOURNEY In the first public indication of a policy difference between Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband, the First Lady Thursday joined New York labor and political leaders at a White House meeting to argue against proposed Medicare cuts that could hurt New York hospitals. Mrs. Clinton, taking a break from preparations for her likely campaign for Senator from New York, met in the White House with the New York leaders and the President's chief of staff and a senior White House health care adviser. Mrs. Clinton ...

California Bill Would Limit Handgun Buyers to 1 a Month By BARRY MEIER The California Legislature Thursday approved a measure to limit handgun purchases to one a month, making it the largest state to pass a measure that gun-control advocates say would reduce the flow of guns to criminals. Gun-control proponents and some law-enforcement officials have long argued that sharply limiting the number of revolvers and pistols that can be bought at one time is a major step in helping close off the illegal gun market. The authorities say intermediaries for gun traffickers often buy several firearms at once from ...

The 2000 presidential race has barely begun, and already God-talk is falling from the lips of the contenders. The conversion of George W. Bush from party boy to born-again Christian has become a standard paragraph in countless profiles of the man anointed to be the savior of the GOP. Elizabeth Dole has a basic stump speech on the subject of her own rebirth that she trots out for appearances before religious groups. Al Gore, too, has cast himself as a man of faith, even appropriating a position from his Republican foes: government support for faith-based social work programs. When Bush ...

KLA Impostors Add to Kosovo Chaos By Merita Dhimgjoka Associated Press Writer Thursday, July 1, 1999; 1:06 p.m. EDT PRIZREN, Yugoslavia (AP) -- Muharrem Halluci didn't give it a second thought when someone in a Kosovo Liberation Army uniform impounded his car. The underequipped rebel army often ``borrowed'' vehicles in its fight against much better outfitted Yugoslav forces. But when Halluci, 54, went to the local KLA headquarters to get the car back after the war's end, rebel army officers told him they knew nothing about the vehicle -- or the man who had seized it. KLA officials say ...

Ventura vs. Perot Minnesota Gov. Stings Reform Leaders The Associated Press D A L L A S, July 1 —The Reform Party’s highest elected officeholder, Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, is pushing for new leadership to replace Dallas billionaire and group founder Ross Perot and threatening to pull his support back to his home state.      The party’s only elected chairman says he deplores the former wrestler’s “ultimatum.”      “Jesse has a loud voice and can influence a lot of people,” Russell Verney of Dallas, who now works as a paid political adviser to Perot, told The Dallas Morning News in ...

ANAHEIM — Pam Ellis noticed something awry in the Anaheim City School District's Stanford 9 test data. Her discovery spawned the latest controversy in California's trouble-plagued testing system. "There should have been 700 (limited-English students) in sixth grade, but they counted about 1,300," said Ellis, her district's director of testing. Ellis phoned the state Department of Education on Tuesday, about two hours before a similar call came from San Jose Unified, said Gerry Shelton, the administrator in charge of testing. After crunching numbers and exchanging phone calls with test publisher Harcourt Educational Measurement, Shelton concluded the glitch in Anaheim ...

Study Reveals Campus Gun Possession By ROBIN ESTRIN .c The Associated Press BOSTON (AP) - About 3.5 percent of college students have guns at school, a statistic that doubles among students with serious alcohol problems, Harvard researchers said in a study to be published Friday. With 14 million students in the nation's four-year and two-year colleges, that means there are as many as 450,000 students with guns, said Dr. Matthew Miller, a senior researcher at Harvard's Injury Research and Control Center. The report is based on a sample of some 15,000 students at 130 four-year colleges and did not account ...

As Estimates of Surplus Grow, G.O.P. Rethinks Ways to Use It By RICHARD W. STEVENSON WASHINGTON -- With the projected federal budget surplus having grown substantially since they first set their budget plans earlier this year, Republican leaders in Congress said on Thursday that they would rethink their tax and spending proposals but would not necessarily channel the entire windfall into a bigger tax cut. The party's leadership in both the House and the Senate said the new surplus projections made them more determined to pass a tax cut of historic proportions despite the opposition of President Clinton. But they ...

E-mailer Arrested for Banking Panic Thursday, July 1, 1999; 7:56 p.m. EDT BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- A man who fired off a series of e-mails asserting the financial instability of a bank -- triggering a run on the institution -- was arrested for creating financial panic, authorities said Wednesday. Jose Omar Olaya, 24, allegedly sent numerous messages from a Hotmail e-mail account on May 27 to private individuals and employees of Davivienda Bank urging all account holders to withdraw their funds in light of a pending government intervention. Olaya's e-mail campaign caused a flood of second- and third-hand e-mails, exponentially ...

BELGRADE, July 1 (Itar-Tass) - A launching party of the White Book, providing evidence of NATO's crimes committed during the first month of its aggression against Yugoslavia, was held at the Belgrade-based Institute of International Politics and Economics on Thursday. The book, compiled by the Yugoslav Foreign Ministry legal adviser Professor Rodoljub Etinski and Ambassador Djordje Logincic, contains numerous documents, photos and witnesses' reports proving that the NATO countries leaders and NATO command are responsible for human casualties and destructions in Yugoslavia during the air war from March 24 to April 24, 1999. According to Etinsky and Logincic, by bombing ...

Kerrey Set To Endorse Bradley Bid Gore Builds Staff, Works Capitol Hill By Ceci Connolly Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, July 2, 1999; Page A04 Vice President Gore beefed up his campaign staff and moved to shore up support on Capitol Hill yesterday as his Democratic rival prepared to collect a key Senate endorsement. Democratic sources said yesterday that former senator Bill Bradley (N.J.) will receive the backing of Sen. Bob Kerrey (Neb.) on Monday at a pancake breakfast in Nebraska. Although Kerrey's decision was not a surprise -- he has long had testy relations with the Clinton administration -- ...

Bush's Immense Coffers Bring Scrutiny, Scorn From Opponents By David Von Drehle Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, July 2, 1999; Page A06 Texas Gov. George W. Bush was attacked by Democrats and Republicans alike yesterday for his unprecedented success in piling up money. His record-setting campaign bank account -- more than $36 million raised in just four months -- is the envy of every opponent, but if they can't have his money, they hope his wallet might drag him down. "Bush in a large way is going to be defined by this one fact," an adviser to Vice President Gore's ...

GOP Rally Celebrates Prospects for Tax Cut 'Snarling Over the Division' of Surpluses Likely By Eric Pianin Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, July 2, 1999; Page A03 A huge surge in projected budget surpluses had Republicans' mouths watering yesterday on Capitol Hill, as they celebrated the prospects of a new round of tax-cutting with a Fourth of July-style rally--complete with a colorful fife and drum corps. House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) pronounced the nation on the cusp of a new era of economic security and challenged President Clinton to join with Republicans in passing major tax cuts and reforms ...

U.S. RESOLUTION CONDEMNS PAKISTAN WASHINGTON (AP) - Coming down firmly against Pakistan, a House committee approved a resolution Thursday demanding the immediate withdrawal of Islamic forces that have pushed into Indian territory in the disputed region of Kashmir. One supporter praised India for its ``amazing restraint'' in responding to the crisis, even as Indian fighter jets and artillery struck the Islamic guerrillas that India said include Pakistani troops. Opponents said the resolution was unbalanced, but they failed in efforts to insert a call for India to hold free elections in Kashmir. ``There is no doubt that Pakistan has acted ...