Free Republic

December 9, 1999 Mayor Defends Homeless Efforts as a Carefully Coordinated Plan By ELISABETH BUMILL Three weeks ago, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani declared in one of his most aggressive pronouncements that the homeless had no right to sleep on the streets, and then let his police commissioner say they would be arrested if they refused to move on or seek shelter. By this week, the mayor had changed his tone, saying his policies were designed to help people help themselves, and describing his campaign to clear the homeless from sidewalks as "compassionate" and "loving." In the mayor's mind, his classic ...

I don't watch TV very often, but I just happened to tune in on ABC's 20/20 program tonight. Diane Sawyer teased the audience about this major league baseball players "deep, dark, secret." She opened the program with it, teased before the commercial, then spent a few minutes leading up to this "breaking story." I don't know about this audience, but I was dumbfounded to learn that his big secret was that he was "gay." and they wre giving so much attention to it. Here we have a president that is selling out his country, most likely responsible for giving the ...

December 9, 1999 State Court Halts Giuliani Plan to Make Homeless Families Work for Shelter By NINA BERNSTEIN NEW YORK -- A state court Wednesday temporarily halted the Giuliani administration's plan to make homeless families work for shelter, saying a measure that would put children in foster care if their parents failed to meet that and other welfare rules was frightening. "We all know that the implementation of this strikes terror in the hearts of people who have children," Justice Elliott Wilk of State Supreme Court in Manhattan said. He dismissed as "a fantasy" the city lawyers' description of administrative ...

December 9, 1999 It's California or Bust, it Seems in '00 Campaign By TODD S. PURDUM LOS ANGELES -- Call it the fire wall, the big state where Al Gore and George W. Bush must stop any serious challenge to their presumptive nominations for president. Call it the harbinger, the bellwether state where Republicans and Democrats will first face each other on a single ballot in a sign of their comparative appeal to the November electorate. Call it the riddle, the sprawling state in which new electoral rules and a speeded-up calendar make the usual dubious predictions doubly dangerous. But ...

December 9, 1999 Gore Concedes Sour Economy Might Require Tax Rise By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE NEW YORK -- After days of lacerating former Sen. Bill Bradley for acknowledging that he might have to raise taxes, Vice President Al Gore Wednesday admitted that if the economy took a turn for the worse, he would not rule out a tax increase either. "Under current economic circumstances, I have no intention of proposing any tax increase," the vice president said. But when pressed by a reporter as to whether he was flatly ruling out ever raising taxes, he said, "I am ruling them ...

If you are able and have any thing left after Christmas shopping for those you love, please put a little in FR's stocking. In November 68 Freepers donated $3485 to the Free Republic. $875 of which, was for the legal fund. This is the best we have done since last May when we were working on the Hero's Rally. I thank each and every one of you for your help in keeping the Free Republic up. DONATE to THE FREE REPUBLIC AND HELP KEEP OUR REPUBLIC FREE. To donate by mail send check to Free Republic LLC PO Box 9771 ...

December 9, 1999 Hillary Clinton Faults Policy of `Don't Ask' By ADAM NAGOURNEY Hillary Rodham Clinton told a group of gay contributors this week that the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, intended to make it easier for gay men and lesbians to serve in the military, had been a failure, her aides said Wednesday. Mrs. Clinton, a candidate for the United States Senate, said that if elected she would work to overturn the policy, one of the first put in place under President Clinton. Mrs. Clinton, speaking at a fund-raiser in SoHo on Tuesday night, said that gay men and ...

December 9, 1999 Russian Diplomat in Washington Held in Spy Case By DAVID JOHNSTON and JAMES RISEN WASHINGTON -- The federal authorities Wednesday night arrested a Russian diplomat believed to be an intelligence officer who had sought classified information from the State Department, government officials said. The officials would not identify the diplomatic officer, but they said that the case involved a substantial Russian espionage effort aimed at pilfering sensitive information about American activities abroad. The officials said that the arrest followed a counterintelligence investigation and that it would be announced on Thursday. The Russian diplomat, who was employed at ...

Explosion at Tenn. nuclear weapons plant Thursday, 9 December 1999 2:55 (GMT) OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Dec. 8 (UPI) - Ten workers were injured on Wednesday in a chemical explosion at a Department of Energy nuclear weapons plant in Tennessee. Officials said seven workers were treated at the Oak Ridge Y-12 nuclear weapons plant and three workers were hospitalized. Authorities believe the explosion occurred after a volatile sodium- potassium mixture used as a cooling agent in the casting of nuclear warheads spilled into the bottom of a furnace. Plant officials said the workers were exposed to limited amounts of radioactive contamination ...

The Bent-One does it again. Please see the above link. Also be sure to post your response to the poll on that page. With 11,000 votes, 89% say Clinton is trying to do an end-run around Congress.

GOD IS SO BEAUTIFUL I asked God to take away my pain. God said, No. It is not for me to take away, but for you to give up. I asked God to make my handicapped child whole. God said, No. Her spirit was whole, her body was only temporary. I asked God to grant me patience. God said, No. Patience is a by-product of tribulations; it isn't granted, it is earned. I asked God to give me happiness. God said, No. I give you blessings. Happiness is up to you. I asked God to spare me pain. God said, ...

BRAZILE … WILL NOT LET THE "WHITE BOYS" WIN. And that's not a description of "gender or race, it's an attitude. A white-boy attitude is 'I must exclude, denigrate and leave behind,' " Brazile says. "They don't see or think about it. It's a culture." It is the sense of utter entitlement. And that she will not have. That is how Washington Post reporter Robin Givhan quoted Donna Brazile, Al Gore's campaign manager, deep in a glowing Nov. 16 profile. Imagine the same statement—but with "white boys" changed to "black girls"—being made by George W. Bush's campaign manager. It would ...

Britain Pushes Resolution Aiding Iraqi Oil Industry By Colum Lynch Special to The Washington Post Thursday, December 9, 1999; Page A38 UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 8—After five months of thorny negotiations, Britain today circulated a draft resolution of the U.N. Security Council that would permit Iraq to rebuild its oil industry if it submits to renewed inspections by a U.N. weapons monitoring team. The United States backs the resolution and is pushing for a vote on it by the end of the week. "We are coming to closure," said Peter Burleigh, the deputy U.S. representative at the United Nations. "Some of ...

Russians Capture Rebel Stronghold In Chechen War By Daniel Williams Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, December 9, 1999; Page A33 MINERALNIYE VODY, Russia, Dec. 8—Russian troops seized a key rebel stronghold today in their drive to capture Grozny, the captial of Chechnya. The Russian military showed no signs of easing the offensive, despite a blast of international criticism over its ultimatum that residents flee Grozny or face intensified bombardment. Russian officials said their forces ousted separatist rebels from Urus-Martan, a center of Islamic militancy 12 miles southwest of Grozny. The town had been battered by heavy air and artillery bombardments ...

Clinton Talks Up Candidacies Of First Lady, Vice President President Reflects in Wide-Ranging News Conference By Charles Babington Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, December 9, 1999; Page A32 His wife is moving to New York, and his vice president doesn't have time for lunch anymore, but President Clinton expressed only affection for those two candidates yesterday, talking as if he'd heard no hint that they've tried to separate themselves from him a bit in recent weeks. In a 62-minute news conference, the president ranged from Chechnya to Syria to Cuba, testily defending his 1993 health care plan and admitting to ...

Microsoft Foes Team Up For Hatch Fund-Raiser By John Mintz Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, December 9, 1999; Page A26 Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) has for years been one of the Senate's most outspoken critics of the business tactics employed by Microsoft Corp. Now, a group of Microsoft's most bitter corporate enemies are holding a Silicon Valley fund-raiser for Hatch's presidential campaign. Hatch won many friends in the software industry when his Senate Judiciary Committee held a series of scathing hearings on Microsoft's tactics. Last month, after a federal judge ruled against the firm in the first round of ...

POLITICS: Sen. McCain Sees Cabinet Material in His Rivals By Dan Balz Thursday, December 9, 1999; Page A24 Arizona Sen. John McCain was in an effusive mood the morning after the Republican presidential candidate debate this week. He would be pleased, he told a New Hampshire audience, to have all his rivals in a McCain cabinet. So a reporter aboard the McCain bus asked the candidate what jobs he would give his rivals. The first was easy. Texas Gov. George W. Bush would be his vice president, McCain said; his only regret was the Utah Sen. Orrin G. Hatch got ...

Clinton Faces the Press - Announces Mideast Breakthrough; Mulls Cuba Impasse By David Phinney, National Correspondent ABCNEWS.com W A S H I N G T O N, Dec. 8 — To solve the international dispute over custody of a 6-year-old boy, the United States and Cuba should try to let off “political steam,” President Clinton told reporters today during his last full news conference of the year. The boy, Elian Gonzalez, was rescued off the Florida coast Nov. 25 and is now with relatives in Miami. His mother and stepfather died in the illegal attempt to flee to the United ...

HILLARY CLINTON IS TOO POLITE, at least in public, to use words like "thug" and "goon" to describe her political opponents. Like her husband, she leaves that sort of brass-knuckles politicking to campaign henchman James Carville, who last week tossed both four-letter epithets at the First Lady's likely opponent in next year's Senate race, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. "What else," Carville asked, "do you call somebody who jails the homeless at Thanksgiving?" The Clinton candidacy is underway, and its first target is Mayor Giuliani's new policy of forcing New York's homeless population into shelters or hospitals—or jails, if ...

....I haven't cleared this with Poisedwoman, but I hope she will approve. I have taken a post of hers that she made in response to some goofball who wrote of how wonderful it is in the workers' socialisto paradisio de Cuba (ok, stop laughing.) I have taken the liberty of editing for clarity (not THE Clarity...you know what i mean...for making it CLEARer, since it was ripped out of context in another thread.) Poisedwoman wrote of returning from an unofficial trip from Cuba, and proceeded to debunk (and otherwise nuke) the myths about Cuba put forth by some who have ...