Free Republic

Briefing books become required GOP reading By Donald Lambro THE WASHINGTON TIMES Rep. J.C. Watts Jr. of Oklahoma sent his fellow House Republican lawmakers home for the Fourth of July weekend with several thick briefing books on the GOP's agenda and a one-word assignment: Communicate. The former star quarterback at Oklahoma State is locker-room blunt about the marching orders he gave the party's 223 House members before they departed for the weeklong holiday recess: "Get your butt home and tell your story." The new chairman of the House Republican Conference, elected to sharpen the GOP's marketing and message skills in ...

Yeltsin Going on Summer Vacation MOSCOW (AP) - President Boris Yeltsin plans to go on vacation next Monday, probably at one of his favorite resorts in a lake region in northern Russia. Hey, just like Madeleine Albright.

THE MIDDLE EAST POLITICAL FORUM

Bush Adviser Sees Limits On U.S. Foreign Forays By Alan Elsner, Political Correspondent PALO ALTO (Reuters) - The United States should not intervene militarily in foreign humanitarian disasters, no matter how terrible, unless it has a clear strategic interest at stake, says a chief foreign policy adviser to Republican presidential front-runner George W. Bush. Condoleezza Rice told Reuters in an interview she would urge Bush to get away from the Clinton administration's policy, which she said was based on trying to establish ``international humanitarian norms,'' and return to one based on a cold analysis of U.S. interests. The Texas governor ...

One Day At A Time Overcoming addictions can be maddeningly difficult. Ask any cigarette smoker or recovering alcoholic. The reason may be something like this: we are governed by conflicting desires, so, for example, a smoker may desperately want to quit, knowing that the health consequences (not to mention the social opprobrium) of the habit are potentially nasty. Sometimes that desire to stop may take precedence over the craving for a nicotine hit, sometimes it may not. A problem drinker summons the willpower to lay off the booze for a while, then the contrary desire, the one to get high, ...

`I'm not the editor,'' I was explaining to the questioner in the audience, ''so ...'' ''But if you were the editor,'' he persisted, ''what would you do?'' If I were the editor ... Well. If by some wholly unforeseeable concatenation of circumstances I became the editor of a newspaper - not necessarily this paper, you understand - the first thing I would do is make corrections much more conspicuous. Fixing errors should be a matter of pride, not embarrassment, for people in the news business. They deal in a perishable commodity and have to turn it around on very ...

1524 GMT, 990706. Russia/Syria – Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said July 6 that Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Syrian President Hafez al-Assad have agreed to oppose "diktats" from foreign powers. He said, "The presidents of the two countries firmly support the creation of a multi-polar world order and underscored that they will not allow diktats from one or several powers." During talks between the leaders in Moscow, Russia also voiced its support for the resumption of Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations "from the point where they left off" in February 1996.

bin Laden May Be Receiving Donations By SALAH NASRAWI Associated Press Writer CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Osama bin Laden, alleged mastermind of last year's U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa, has received millions of dollars from Saudi and Gulf businessmen to help reinvigorate his campaign against the United States, sources said today. The donations, mostly alms paid by devoted Muslims, came after Washington offered a $5 million reward in January for bin Laden's capture, according to the sources. The sources, speaking to The Associated Press in Cairo on condition on anonymity, said bin Laden may have received more than $50 million ...

Lyrics Copyright 1999, Doug from Upland. Not for commercial use without permission of the author. There is a witch…a gosh awful witch She loves her Cubs but now she will switch She loves the Yankees…she's told us so But first there's somewhere to go So she is asking where her Yankees play hockey She's never been…in their stadium She is confused though when they describe the house Ruth built New Yorkers, wake up…Rodham is scum So she decides to hail a cab When she gets in, she's starting to blab He can't speak English, lucky for him His name ...

I happened to catch a few minutes of Chris Matthews' show yesterday (might have been a re-run). He had Jesse Mr. Ventura and... Mr. The Body seemed to imply that he might very well run for U.S. President after he's done with his current gov'nor term. With my ideological glasses off, the more I hear him, the more I like what I hear. Here are some of the more interesting remarks I heard yesterday: - Bush and Gore are quite similar in what they talk about, question is: are they going to deliver anything if elected? According to Mr. Ventura, ...

s the evidence mounts of grotesque atrocities committed by Serbs against civilians in Kosovo, so does the burden on those of us who opposed the NATO air war to reconsider our position. Actually to contemplate the barbarity of such widespread rape of women and girls, close-range murder of innocents from infants to the aged, the savage destruction of everything human beings instinctively treasure - it must force a humbling reserve on every witness, whether we opposed NATO or supported it. In light of what many hundreds, or probably thousands, of Serb assaulters have done, we must acknowledge first that ...

BEIJING (AP) — China has replaced its military intelligence chief in a shift that may be related to the official's alleged $300,000 contribution to President Clinton's re-election campaign, a Western source said today. Gen. Ji Shengde's transfer to the Academy of Military Science is believed to have taken place last month, the source said on condition of anonymity. His replacement as head of military intelligence is unknown The source described it as a sideways move for Ji, and said Ji may have come under criticism over both the election fund allegations and U.S. accusations that China stole U.S. nuclear weapons ...

The rocky relations between Nato and Russia have, for the moment at least, found level ground again. The two sides have resolved their dispute over peacekeeping deployments in Kosovo and Russian reinforcements can resume flights to Pristina. But the truce is an uneasy one, in a climate of the worst distrust and enmity between the two former arch-rivals since the Cold War. Russia has infuriated Nato in recent days: Nato had accused Moscow of seeking to expand its area of influence into the Italian-patrolled sector of Kosovo. And last week, Russian strategic bombers flew into Nato's air defences near ...

U.S. Gold Market Plunges On U.K.'s Sale By Derek J. Caney NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. gold prices plummeted Tuesday after the U.K. treasury unloaded the first of 415 metric tons it plans to sell on the market in an effort to balance its portfolio. The Bank of England announced overnight it sold the first 25 metric tons of a total of 125 metric tons to be auctioned by March 2000. The selling price was $261.20 an ounce, with the bid oversubscribed more than fivefold. The 25 metric tons amounted to slightly more than 800,000 troy ounces. The gold sales ...

NRA-ILA FAX ALERT 11250 Waples Mill Road * Fairfax, VA 22030 Phone: (800) 392-8683 * Fax: (703) 267-3918 * www.nraila.orgVol. 6, No. 25 7/2/99 LATEST SCHUMER ASSAULT DERAILED U.S. Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) recently tipped his anti-gun hand by filing an amendment to the Treasury Department appropriations bill that sought to lay the groundwork for a national firearm registration program. Schumer's "Targeted Gun Dealer Enforcement Act" sought to allow the Department of the Treasury to "receive and centralize" any records submitted --such as firearms transactions records -- "in whatever manner" theSecretary of the Treasury chooses. It also would create numerous ...

FOR INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY (CNS) - A new report analyzing television coverage of the recently released Cox Committee report on Chinese espionage and the 1987 congressional report on the Iran-Contra scandal shows a large disparity in coverage of the two events by the three major broadcast TV networks. The report by the Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group Media Research Center showed that ABC, CBS and NBC aired a total of five stories the evening the Cox report was released. But 12 years ago, the networks air three times as many stories on the day of the Iran-Contra report, raising fresh ...

The New York Times To the Editor: The revelations by Gen. Marcelino García Barragán concerning the Mexican Government's direct involvement in the massacre of political demonstrators in Mexico City in 1968 (news article, June 29) and the confession by a police officer involved in a senseless and brutal beating of a young "long-haired" man in Long Beach, N.Y., in 1967 (news article, June 29) reveal once again the unfortunate staying power of false denials of government abuse and terrorism. These events occurred long ago and in very different places, but they should reinforce our skepticism of official denials of government ...

July 6, 1999 - Note from the Editor: We are late in publishing our weekly edition. Sorry. Friday, a week ago, as we were digging post holes for our front yard fence, we cut through our fresh water main line. So, we no longer had water in our house. Suddendly, we could sense what the inhabitants of Belgrade were experiencing. The difference being that we could get and pay for help....and have water again that night. But the repair did not hold that well and we've been digging ever since to replace the entire line. At least we have water... ...

Kazakhstan said Tuesday it was suspending rocket launches from its Baikonur cosmodrome following the crash of a Russian telecommunications satellite, which spewed debris over the central Karaganda region. ``We have informed the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs about our decision to stop launches from Baikonur till reasons for the crash are fully identified and accident damage evaluated,'' Kazakhstan's foreign ministry said in a statement. It did not say how long the ban would remain in effect. The head of the Russian factory which built the crashed Proton rocket, Igor Dodin, told Reuters in Moscow that he thought the issue ...

BRUNSWICK, Maine - Roger Sablone Jr. spent years cramming himself into his tiny Navy bunk, bumping his skull on bulkheads and working in the cramped engine room of a nuclear-powered submarine. After 10 years of service, the 6-foot-2, 240-pound sailor was told he was too big for his job. And when the Navy kicked him out for being overweight, it also took $9,200 of his re-enlistment bonus. Now Sablone, 31, of Homestead, Fla., is among 15 soldiers, sailors and airmen from Maine to Alaska suing to get their money back. The case, which was certified as a federal class-action lawsuit ...