Free Republic

CHICAGO (AP) - Benjamin Smith wanted a gun and he did what everyone is supposed to do: He got a gun owner ID card, filled out an application at an Illinois gun shop and returned three days later to pick up his weapons. He'd been rejected - a background check showed that an ex-girlfriend had taken out a protection order against him because of abuse - so he hit the streets and in just three days had two handguns from an illegal dealer. Three days after that, authorities say, the white supremacist started the rampage that killed two people ...

I'm still digesting the elk burgers I ate at the Fourth of July barbecue, so I'm more immobile than I'd like to be right now. That makes this as good a time as any to think something over: Namely, that despite yesterday's enthusiastic display of fireworks, waving flags, and charred meat, most Americans are the political equivalent of Christmas Christians when it comes to Independence Day. They make an annual showing and go through the motions, but they don't give a damn about the substance. At its heart, the Fourth of July is about freedom. It's fun to wave Old ...

Some beliefs to share on this holiday STEVE KRASKE THE KANSAS CITY STAR; METROPOLITAN; Pg. B2 July 4, 1999 Sunday METROPOLITAN EDITION This is what I believe on this most patriotic of weekends: I believe that recent accounts about a feud between President Clinton and Vice President Gore is one of the most trumped-up, bogus news stories of the year. I don't buy it. Neither should you. And I believe that Clinton's likely GOP rival in the race, Sen. Tim Hutchinson, could beat the former president. The motives here are readily transparent. Gore desperately must distance himself from the ...

For educational and discussion purposes only. July 7, 1999 The Amazing Vanishing Surplus By DAVID FRUM WASHINGTON -- The United States Government has a very 90's problem. Although it is taking in vastly more revenue than it ever imagined possible (almost $2 trillion a year!) it is having surprising difficulty buying all the things it thinks it needs. There's that new four-wheel-drive prescription drug program and the summertime excursion in Yugoslavia. The children ought to attend better schools, and the F-15's in the home-security system are sounding awfully wheezy. But after paying all the country's current expenses, there is ...

Justice Stevens defends court ruling that let Clinton case proceed Tony Mauro USA TODAY; NEWS; Pg. 4A July 6, 1999, Tuesday, FINAL EDITION A Supreme Court justice is strongly defending the 1997 ruling he wrote that triggered a chain of events that led to President Clinton's impeachment in December. "I don't think anyone on the court would change a word in the opinion if they had to do it over again," Justice John Paul Stevens said in a little-noticed speech six weeks ago. Justices rarely defend or explain their decisions publicly, especially ones as controversial as the one Stevens ...

SOMEWHERE IN EUROPE - The Winston Churchill Division, Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, Europe - is pleased to announce another victory over Albert Gore Jr. The latest production of the division, www.al2000.org is number 38 out of 440 Politics & Government sites. In the top 100, Al Gore's own site doesn't even figure. Hence, it is reasonable to assume that Al 2000 is getting more hits than Gore 2000. The site is being constantly updated. "It'll keep going until Gore goes back to Tennesee, only to face an angry mob with some tar and feathers.", a member of the Division stated. ...

The local association called the health Dept. on me for having lawnclippings other than my own next I cut off my road to all access with a bio med hazard sign pissed everyone (realators esp.)off. The Sherriff Dept. showed me how to post ano tresspass sign, Funny to me I cant have forein lawn clippings yet I can soot your butt off my land .

Retribution threat helps impeachment manager raise money By KATHERINE RIZZO, Associated Press Writer The Associated Press July 6, 1999, Tuesday, AM cycle Last winter, when emotions were running high over the impeachment of President Clinton, some White House aides took pokes at the Republicans running the proceedings, including Ohio Rep. Steve Chabot. Next election, they were quoted as saying, Clinton and the Democrats would target the Next election ... Clinton and the Democrats would target the impeachment "managers" for defeat. One newspaper quoted an anonymous aide calling it the president's "personal crusade".... once in print the words were as ...

Thomas Sowell A quagmire and a vision http://www.jewishworldreview.com THE HEADLINE ON THE FRONT PAGE of the San Francisco Chronicle told the whole ugly story: "Kosovo Albanians Pillage Serb Town." The subtitle said: "Mentally Ill Woman Allegedly Raped, Killed." Another aspect of our Balkan involvement was told by a headline on the front page of the New York Times: "Damage to Serb Military Less Than Expected." Despite the political spin coming out of Washington, this Balkan war is not about the good guys versus the bad guys, and our intervention has done less damage to Milosevic's military forces than to ...

Pat Robertson Owns Beijing Based ChiCom Propaganda Internet Company Strange, but true. "Dr. Pat Robertson is an investor", writes the moderator of the english language forum at Zhaodaola (www.zhaodaola.com), a Beijing based, largely chinese language, internet company that also hosts the US Embassy China web page. The zhaodaola moderator made the admission about Pat Robertson's stake in the company in response to a forum participant who wrote: zhaodaola.com is almost entirely funded by our American Religious friend Pat Robertson i.e. 700 Club, Family Channel, and other Christian media. Robertson has referred to his site as the "Yahoo of China". ...

Mona Charen Is Rev. Al Hillary's new pal? http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- IMAGINE THAT YOU ARE a lawyer working for the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., and you are planning a conference on police-community relations. Whom do you invite? The mayor of Washington, D.C.? Criminologists? Community leaders? Suppose someone suggested that you invite race hustler Rev. Al Sharpton -- the mountebank who came to national prominence on the strength of a vicious and highly inflammatory libel he helped Tawana Brawley broadcast to the world and who has continued to show up wherever the embers of racial distrust and enmity could be ...

Former San Diego federal prosecutor to get service award The Associated Press State and Regional July 6, 1999, Tuesday, BC cycle SAN DIEGO -- The same work that Charles La Bella believes cost him a recommendation from Attorney General Janet Reno to become U.S. Attorney for San Diego and Imperial counties is now winning him an award from the FBI. "Prosecutors and FBI agents from all over the country have been calling to congratulate me on the FBI award," he said. "She [Reno] hasn't called." On July 14, La Bella will receive the agency's annual award for distinguished service ...

HATE AND THE INTERNET Once again, America is confronted with an intelligent young person raised in affluence who has left a trail of dead bodies in his wake. Once again, the evildoer was consumed with ethnic hatred and obsessed with Nazi ideas promulgated on the Internet. Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, the 21-year-old who killed himself the night after his murderous hate-crime killing spree, began going bad seven years ago after studying the Holocaust in eighth grade. But there can be no doubt that his inchoate thoughts of destruction, like those of the Columbine HS killers, were given direction and purpose by ...

ME-FIRST LADY DELUDED BY SENSE OF GRANDEUR By ANDREA PEYSER THERE is a name for someone like Hillary. A name exists for a person who routinely cuts corners. Who has no problem appropriating the money or labor or talents of others to achieve personal gratification and glorification. There is a name for someone who exaggerates accomplishments. Who believes her innate superiority entitles her to obfuscate, evade and lie. There is something you could call one who is fundamentally incapable of carrying out any task to completion. A person who continually leaves those who count on her for guidance frustrated ...

THE HILLARY SLEAZE FACTOR Sleaze follows the Clintons as surely as summer follows spring, and the first real indication of its presence in the nascent Hillary Clinton campaign has surfaced in the improper conduct of White House Communications Director Ann Lewis. Lewis will be writing a "substantial amount" of Hillary Clinton's campaign Web site - even as she continues to be paid as an employee of the federal government. The dual role Lewis apparently intends to play as both West Wing staffer and Hillary campaign worker raises important legal questions about the use of the White House as a campaign ...

The United Nations today launched an investigation into Iraqi charges that a U.N. employee secretly sought to unleash a plague of locusts to destroy the country's already battered crops. Baghdad accused a mine removal specialist from New Zealand, Ian Broughton, of burying several boxes filled with locust eggs in April near the village of Khanaqeen, 110 miles northeast of Baghdad. In a letter to the U.N.'s humanitarian relief representative in Iraq, Hans von Sponeck, the Iraqi foreign ministry demanded that Broughton leave the country within three days. Sponeck is scheduled to meet with the foreign ministry Wednesday to discuss ...

CLINTON SLAPS SANCTIONS ON BIN LADEN'S AFGHAN ALLIES By NILES LATHEM President Clinton slapped Afghanistan's ruling Taleban militia with tough economic sanctions yesterday, accusing it of "harboring and sheltering," Osama bin Laden, the world's most dangerous terrorist. The president said he plans to block most of the Taleban's financial assets in this country as well as ban trade between the United States and Afghanistan. He said the move is in response to the Taleban's refusal to hand over the Saudi terrorist who has been indicted in federal court in Manhattan for organizing last summer's twin bombings of the U.S. embassies ...

July 4th: Unclear on the concept By Emily Gurnon OF THE EXAMINER STAFF For many Bay Area students, Independence Day means hot dogs, family picnics, fireworks — and not much else. Out of four dozen teens quizzed in an informal survey in San Francisco, Concord and Pacifica, most knew that the Fourth of July had something to do with America's independence, but less than half could name the country from which we won our freedom. "Japan or something. China. Somewhere out there on the other side of the world," said Hardy Hsu, 14, a seventh-grader at Roosevelt Middle School in ...

CAMPAIGNER HILLARY IS OFF AND 'LISTENING' By BRIAN BLOMQUIST and MARILYN RAUBER WASHINGTON - Hillary Clinton is finally on the run. The Senate wannabe - after filing formal papers yesterday saying she probably will run - heads upstate today to launch her historic campaign, with more than 200 reporters nipping at her heels. Her four-day "listening tour" through GOP-friendly territory kicks off at Pindars Corners, the Oneonta farm of the man she hopes to replace, retiring Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Later, she'll "listen" to students and teachers at the local SUNY campus, and rumors were buzzing that she - ...

SOMEBODY GET HIZZONER A MAP OF N.Y. STATE - QUICK! By ROBERT HARDT Jr. After boasting he had "very significant knowledge of the whole state," Mayor Giuliani made his second geographical blooper in a month yesterday - confusing upstate Monroe County with the town of Monroe. Telling reporters he has traveled and worked extensively across the state, Giuliani said he spent Monday vacationing in Monroe County with his son, Andrew. "I was up in Monroe County, and the heat was ameliorated by the tremendous and beautiful breeze that they have. When you get up in the mountains, you get a ...