Free Republic

States and the Court Wednesday, July 7, 1999; Page A18 THE SUPREME COURT, in the most dramatic rulings of its just-completed term, struck a blow for the power of the states vis-a-vis the federal government. In and of itself, this would be a good thing. Despite the hysteria that has erupted in recent years when the high court approached the limits of Congress's power, the constitutional balance between Washington and the states could use some tinkering. But the blow the court struck raises real worries about the states being freer to violate long-presumed rights of individuals. It tends to deprive ...

Hillary Rodham Clinton today will launch a $20 million fund-raising campaign for her U.S. Senate bid that will rely mainly on New Yorkers but also tap into supporters nationwide through a direct-mail campaign. That's the strategy outlined by her campaign-finance quarterback, Syracuse native Terence R. McAuliffe, who ran President Clinton's 1996 fund-raising operation. "The majority of the money will come from New York," McAuliffe said. At the same time, he said, Hillary Clinton will benefit from a national direct-mail operation because "there will be literally hundreds of thousands of people who will write $5 and $10 checks." "Hillary has so ...

s the soul of the New York State Democratic Party so dead that, even with Chuck Schumer's triumphant win over Al D'Amato last year, it can't come up with one Democratic New Yorker to fill Daniel Patrick Moynihan's Senate seat? There are 18 New York Democrats in the House, 25 in the State Senate and more than 100 in the Assembly. There are Democratic mayors in cities throughout the state and a sprinkling of county executives and other elected municipal officials. (Al D'Amato was only a town supervisor when he won his Senate seat.) This vast army of elected Democrats ...

Israeli Calls for 'Peace of The Brave' Barak Takes Helm As Prime Minister By Howard Schneider Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, July 7, 1999; Page A01 JERUSALEM, July 6—Ehud Barak took office as Israel's 28th prime minister today and, citing a historic opportunity, called on Arab leaders to accept what he called an "outstretched hand" to make a "peace of the brave" that would end the long cycle of war in the Middle East. Sworn in with a cabinet picked to maximize the government's parliamentary majority and consolidate power in his hands, Barak, in his first speech as prime minister, ...

A Rush to DNA Sampling: Vital Police Tool? Affront to Liberty? Both? By Guy Gugliotta Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, July 7, 1999; Page A01 The letter from the Massachusetts Department of State Police arrived without warning or explanation, ordering Donald Landry to report to a National Guard armory and give a blood sample for DNA analysis. Landry is a convicted murderer with priors for car theft, breaking and entering, and armed robbery -- ostensibly the sort of person whose DNA the police would like to have on file: Somebody is killed, lab techs run tests on the saliva stain ...

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. The Thing About Handguns Wednesday, July 7, 1999; Page A18 THE SELF-proclaimed champions of the Second Amendment (as interpreted by them) say that if people didn't kill with handguns, they'd do it with something else -- and indeed they do, just about every day. People stab, stomp, beat, strangle and even run over one another with depressing frequency. But a knife, fist, rope or shod ...

Mrs. Clinton's Exploration Wednesday, July 7, 1999; Page A18 PEOPLE WHO run for public office trade on celebrity, relationships, wealth and other such attributes all the time. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who today formally opens an exploratory campaign to succeed retiring Daniel Patrick Moynihan as senator from New York, is hardly disqualified by virtue of being the president's wife. This, after all, is a year in which candidates named Bush and Dole are seeking the Republican presidential nomination, while a relatively junior congressman named Kennedy is head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, etc., etc. The three, and others you can ...

Bush Cash to Help House GOP RNC Will Direct More to Congress, Leaders Say By Jim VandeHei Texas Gov. George W. Bush's (R) record-smashing fundraising performance will increase contributions to House Republicans and help expedite the leadership's plans to coordinate a 2000 electoral strategy with the presidential frontrunner, several prominent leaders and party strategists said. Bush's six-month, $36 million money grab opened the door to thousands of potential new donors to House Republicans and positioned the Texas governor to help Congressional candidates much earlier than expected, officials said. His campaign account also solidified the belief among Washington insiders that Bush ...

The Civil War in Kosovo By: Dr. Stephen K. Stoan, Ph.D. History, Duke University Director of Library and Information Services, Drury College Springfield MO 65802 Albanian Majority in Kosovo - A recent development Kosovo was an integral part of Serbia when the area was conquered by the Turks in the fifteenth century. In Serbian history books it is often called Old Serbia. Albanians began arriving in the seventeenth century during the Turkish occupation. It has been recognized as an integral part of Serbia by the international community since 1912. When the Axis powers invaded and dismembered Yugoslavia in 1941, they ...

Russia, Syria Hint at Weapons Deal U.S. 'Very Concerned' About Possibility, Threatens to Cancel Some Russian Aid By Sharon LaFraniere Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, July 7, 1999; Page A16 MOSCOW, July 6—Syrian President Hafez Assad ended a two-day visit to Moscow today amid signs that Russia may sell his country the arms he wants to strengthen his hand in any Middle East peace talks. Without directly referring to Syria, Russian Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin said arms exports will help bolster Russia's defense as well as its global influence. "Russia has big potential to export weapons," he told the Russian ...

Senior Bosnian Serb Politician Arrested as War Crimes Suspect By Charles Trueheart Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, July 7, 1999; Page A15 PARIS, July 6—A senior Bosnian Serb politician who reportedly ran the machinery of "ethnic cleansing" against Bosnian Muslims and Croats in northwestern Bosnia in 1992 was arrested by British NATO troops this morning and flown to The Hague to stand trial on war crimes charges. Radoslav Brdjanin, who subsequently became a deputy prime minister of Bosnia's peacetime Serb Republic, was detained without incident in the Bosnian city of Banja Luka around 9:30 a.m., according to Maj. Gordon Welch, ...

Second Wave Of Russians Reaches Kosovo NATO Hopes Serbs Reassured; Anti-Milosevic Protests Go On By Karl Vick Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, July 7, 1999; Page A15 PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, July 6—Twenty-four days after the first contingent of Russian troops bolted into Kosovo ahead of NATO forces, the next group of Russian soldiers arrived in the Serbian province today to join allied peacekeepers here. Maj. Gen. Anatoly Volchkov, commander of the Russian forces at Pristina's Slatina airport, dismissed concerns that his troops might favor Kosovo's Serb minority, which has suffered reprisals from the province's ethnic Albanians who suffered expulsion and atrocities ...

The British method of gun control illustrating the price of security is freedom...THE HOME Office failed to make adequate checks to ensure that all the handguns outlawed after the Dunblane school massacre were handed in, according to a report published today. The Commons Public Accounts Committee criticises the Government for failing to make police forces maintain records during the handover to show whether all legally held handguns had been surrendered. More than 162,000 handguns and 700 tonnes of ammunition were given up between July 1997 and February 1998 in the biggest compulsory surrender of legally held firearms in Britain. But ...

NATO Sets Its Sights On Balkans Several Nations in Region May Be Added, Experts Say By William Drozdiak Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, July 7, 1999; Page A15 BRUSSELS—NATO's deepening involvement in the Balkans is having a profound effect on the alliance's future, diverting its attention and resources to southern Europe and increasing the chances that nations there will be among the next to join the pact, according to senior NATO diplomats and military experts. After training to defend against a Soviet-led invasion and other threats in northern and central Europe, the alliance is now dramatically shifting its military assets. ...

Lott and McConnell Also Have 'Hold' on Holbrooke Appointment to Election Panel at Stake By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, July 7, 1999; Page A04 The two previously unnamed senators blocking Richard C. Holbrooke's nomination as ambassador to the United Nations are Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), congressional and administration sources said yesterday. Lott and McConnell have put an "anonymous hold" on the Senate's confirmation of Holbrooke in an effort to pressure President Clinton to accept their candidate for a seat on the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the sources said. Clinton has ...

(Washington, D.C.): The full costs of President Clinton's latest diversion of the U.S. military into a distant and highly problematic peacekeeping operation have not yet been properly estimated, let alone paid for. It is a safe bet, however, that the tab for the Kosovo mission will turn out to be very high, costing the Pentagon billions of dollars that are desperately needed to restore its troops' present combat readiness and provide for that needed in the future. Given this backdrop, it is little wonder that the Clinton Administration hopes that it can quietly get the United States committed to another, ...

Archer Wants Tax Breaks for Long-Term Health Care By Amy Goldstein Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, July 7, 1999; Page A04 The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee yesterday called for the federal government to begin offering tax breaks to make long-term health care more affordable for elderly people with disabilities or lasting illnesses. The proposal by Rep. Bill Archer (R-Texas) eventually would allow people who buy long-term care insurance to deduct the entire expense of those premiums from their taxes. It also would give tax breaks to Americans who care for elderly relatives at home, and seeks ...

SAN FRANCISCO, July 6 /PRNewswire/ -- More than 25,000 residents of Los Angeles and 10,000 residents of San Francisco are making their voices heard, telling their elected officials: ``Hands off the Internet!'' The Hands Off The Internet Coalition (www.handsofftheinternet.org) sponsored this petition drive and collected the 35,000+ signatures in less than one week.The petition closes with signers stating, ``Government should not pick winners and losers in the competitive Internet environment. The history of the Internet is rooted in open competition, creativity and innovation -- not special interests, regulation and government protection.''Hands Off The Internet member Audrie Krause, the executive director ...

Desperation Despite a Presidential Visit Clinton Vows to Invest in Mississippi and Appalachia By Charles Babington Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, July 7, 1999; Page A02 CLARKSDALE, Miss., July 6—President Clinton is walking door to door among the nation's poor this week, offering sympathetic hugs and announcing millions of dollars in new government incentives to attract private investments in distressed communities. But when his mile-long motorcade pulls away from each stop in this four-day, six-state tour, those who had basked briefly in his presence are left with the realization that poverty is one of the nation's most intractable problems, outliving ...

The campaign is entering the second half of the year with a great deal of momentum. Gary finished third among the Republican candidates in funds raised to date. That puts him ahead of all the other conservatives, Quayle, Forbes, Buchanan, Smith and Keyes in financial support from around the country (see attached chart from USA Today). On fundraising, here are some additional points to keep in mind: · In addition to the $3.4 million raised, Gary has qualified for $2.2 million more in federal matching funds. · The campaign has received 60,000 donations with an average gift of $57. ...