Free Republic

The Clinton administration still owes the public a full explanation of the errors that led to the May 7 bombing on China's embassy in Belgrade. It should tell all, and assign responsibility, sooner rather than later. Until it does, its credibility will suffer. China has its own internal political reasons for continuing to reject the administration's description of the bombing as "accidental." But in the absence of facts, it is hard to completely dismiss China's dismissal of the administration's account as "not logical." The continuing confusion about the sequence of events that led to the bombing evidently was not clarified ...

Columbia (SC) State July 1, 1999 Our Military Declines; Do We Even Care? An in-depth series of articles in The State this week about the woes of the all-volunteer military should concern every American. The articles, by staff writer Dave Moniz, spell out how our armed forces are hemorrhaging personnel and morale at a time when we need a strong military as much as ever. A gruesome statistic: U.S. Army recruiters, beset with impossible pressures of trying to get good new soldiers, are committing suicide at three times the rate this year that they did last year. One career Navy ...

If a U.S. administration formally attempted to establish an authoritarian police state, its efforts would almost certainly encounter bitter and even violent resistance; recent experience, however, has shown that remarkably authoritarian and unconstitutional methods can be established without provoking serious protest, provided they are introduced piecemeal and justified by the rhetoric of good intentions. In the last 15 years, notions of justice in America have repeatedly been subverted and distorted, usually through what might be called the politics of the ultimate evil: Yes, of course, we believe that individual rights and due process are essential to democracy, but what you ...

As the anointing of George W. Bush gathers steam, talk of conservative disaffection with the Republican Party is increasing, and the New York Times this week stirred the pot with an article about the possibility of a serious third party movement drawing conservatives out of the Republican Party. We need to pause and think about what these events mean for conservatives and for the grass roots majority of the Republican Party -- for people who are pro-life, constitutionalist, and want to see power and resources returned to individuals and families and businesses at the grass roots. What is at ...

Russia has been a major arms supplier to Belgrade in the past. MOSCOW — Moscow may try to get around a U.N. arms embargo and supply weapons to Yugoslavia, Russia’s ambassador to Belgrade said in an interview published Thursday. Yugoslavia’s air defenses were no match for NATO planes during the alliance’s 78-day bombing campaign, which damaged much of the country’s infrastructure. Russia, a Yugoslav ally which opposed the NATO airstrikes, has been a major arms supplier to Belgrade in the past. But Russian officials say Moscow hasn’t broken the U.N. arms embargo on Yugoslavia that was imposed more than a ...

Fired Producer Sues CNN ATLANTA (AP) -- A television producer fired by the Cable News Network after it retracted a story alleging U.S. forces used nerve gas on American defectors is suing CNN, seeking $106 million in damages. The suit filed Thursday by April Oliver in state court also names CNN's parent company, Time Warner Inc. The suit is similar to one Ms. Oliver filed in May in the District of Columbia. Her lawyer, Neeli Ben-David, said her employment agreement specified that any suit be filed in Atlanta, where CNN is based. The suit claims Ms. Oliver was wrongly dismissed ...

Excerpt from a Letter to the Editor of the Washington Times: If you had taking [sic] the time to study the "odd couples" bill, you would have discovered that under their legislation the American taxpayer could be required to foot the bill when a drug dealer contests a seizure.... Perhaps the most ridiculous part of this legislation is that when a drug dealer is caught red-handed with his drugs and that cash is seized, law enforcement authorities can be ordered by a judge to give the money back until the judge can decide if it can be seized. In other ...

Prosecutors: Hubbell arrears hard to figure NOEL E. OMANARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE In the plea agreement Webb Hubbell reached Wednesday, prosecutors said the amount of taxes Hubbell failed to pay "was difficult to ascertain with certainty and is to some degree subjective."    But no dispute exists over $436,586 of the $500,000 Hubbell owes because Hubbell declared the tax liability when he filed amended tax returns. He did not, however, pay the taxes.    Hubbell, a one-time confidant of President Clinton and a former law partner of first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, ended a five-year legal fight with independent counsel Kenneth ...

LEANING ON her AK47, Letebehane laughed mockingly at the question: As a trench war fighter, and as a woman, what did she feel when she shot at the advancing Ethiopians, so close that she could look into their eyes? "At another time, we might feel something for those ignorant people who are sent on to our landmines by their own commanders. But we must kill them for the sake of Eritrea," said the 19-year-old private. Letebehane Teclezeghi is one of about 40,000 women fighting for her country's survival. She has fought in this war, which is now the world's biggest, ...

The Clinton administration's appalling negligence in China's theft of U.S. nuclear secrets, though familiar by now, still defies rational explanation. And as more troubling details emerge, more troubling questions arise in this chilling saga of, at best, gross incompetence. The latest revelations: The New York Times reported last weekend that senior administration officials first learned of possible Chinese spying at the Energy Department's nuclear-weapons labs in Los Alamos, N.M., in July 1995, when then-Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary told then-White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta about it. That's eight months sooner than the White House previously dated the initial ...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. The Michigan Court of Appeals has abolished the tort of “wrongful birth.” In so doing, it has strengthened the right of the disabled to a presumption that their lives are as valuable as the lives of the nondisabled. A “tort” is a wrongful action. The court’s majority, Judges William Whitbeck and Michael Smolenski, essentially said the birth of a child, even a disabled one, cannot by itself be considered a wrongful action. This is an important statement of the value under Michigan law of all human life. The case arose, as ...

Two Kosovo Albanian refugee families living in the Calgary area say they are so desperate to return to their homeland, they will go on a hunger strike in one week if the Canadian government continues to refuse to let them go home. "I will camp out at the airport with my family and refuse to eat and drink until the government gets me home," said an anxious Mehmet Ruhani, 30, who along with nine other members of his family is living in a tidy Cochrane duplex under the sponsorship of St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church. Hysni Zuka and five ...

You saw a major sample of it in the O.J. Simpson murder case. It is against the law to murder. There were the blood, the DNA, the whole web of evidence that unfolded after O.J.'s slow flight by white Bronco. "Everyone" knew who did it. The trial played out almost interminably. But from the first, it seems there was no chance of getting a conviction. The jury in the criminal case just decided to ignore the law and the evidence and not convict. A different jury in the later civil case had a different view and nailed O.J., making ...

MISSIONARIES TO THE UNBORN Abortion Gallery *************

Clinton Gets No Boost From Kosovo By SONYA ROSS Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - When President Bush prevailed in Iraq, his popularity rating soared to 91 percent. By contrast, President Clinton got no such bounce in the polls from the Kosovo campaign, even though his goals were achieved without a single U.S. combat casualty. The American people paid much more attention to the Gulf War and seemed to give scant applause to the outcome of the Clinton-led campaign against Serbian forces clearing Kosovo of its ethnic Albanian population. Two weeks after he led the 78-day NATO bombing campaign in ...

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia -- With Kosovo's capital about to go up in flames, NATO commander Sir Mike Jackson ordered his troops into the streets last week. Lord Strathcona's Horse answered the call. Dismounting from their armoured cars, the regiment from Edmonton has spent most of the past few days and nights on three- and five-hour, four-man foot patrols in the volatile centre of Pristina. So as to not seem too hostile and to survive the searing heat, they make their rounds without bulletproof vests or helmets, but they do carry assault rifles. "Most of the crime here takes place in ...

Hillary Clinton political staff rents Manhattan office July 1, 1999 NEW YORK (AllPolitics, July 1) -- She may not have a residence in New York but Hillary Rodham Clinton now has an office in the Big Apple. The 6,000-square foot base of operations at 450 Seventh Avenue has been leased by the first lady's political staff, according to real estate agent Barbara Raskob. Size of the rent and length of the lease were not disclosed. Raskob said people shouldn't go to the offices just yet hoping to get a glimpse of the First Lady. "There's nothing there, except for ...

More gun confiscation in California? State may take some firearms without compensation By Stephan Archer 1999 WorldNetDaily.com While some California gun owners are turning in their illegal guns for cash, others may have to turn them in for nothing at all. In a situation related to California's current buy back program in which the state is offering $230 to gun owners in exchange for their SKS "Sporter" rifles, owners of certain semiautomatics other than the SKS "Sporter" may have to give up their firearms without compensation to avoid facing criminal prosecution. The same Roberti-Roos Assault Weapon Control Act of 1989 ...

The ABM Trap Print Edition Today's Editorials Sunday Outlook Front Page Articles On Our Site Talk Central Editorials & Opinion The ABM Trap By Charles Krauthammer Friday, July 2, 1999; Page A27 "Nothing ever gets settled in this town," George Shultz once said of Washington. "It's a seething debating society in which the debate never stops, in which people never give up, including me." Well, we may be seeing an exception to Shultz's Law. After 15 years, the Democrats have apparently given up their opposition to a "star wars" missile defense for the United States. A law committing the United ...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. "There must be 5360 Americans, out of 268,000 million, willing to take action in defense of liberty." Two hundred and twenty three years ago fifty-six men, out of a population in the thirteen American colonies of 2, 312,000 free persons and 462,000 slaves, met to consider signing a document which might have resulted in them all being hanged. The debate was heated. The time is not right, some said. John Dickinson spoke eloquently and persuasively of the need for restraint, warning of calamities which would follow if the purpose of the ...