Free Republic

MONTREAL - The Seattle World Trade Organization meeting was merely a whistle stop. Since September, the world's jet-setting social reformers and poverty advocates have had barely a moment to catch their breath: Manhattan, Manila, Seoul and now Montreal, with side trips to Chicago, Durban, The Hague and Beijing. After Christmas, there'll be Costa Rica, Bangkok and D.C. then back to New York City in May. It's enough to make even the most passionate crusader question his or her commitment (and make the rest of us wonder when these self-anointed saviours of the planet find time for the noble works ...

  Bush Presidential Campaign Diagnosis Chronic Silver-Spoon-Political-Complacency-Disorder (SSPCD) (Doctor's Note:  The year is 1999.  Forget about 1992)   Official Free Republic Poll:   Purpose:   Deliver your responsible suggestion(s) to the 2000 Bush Presidential Campaign to help make sure Dubya doesn't politically die from the same fatal disease that nailed his Daddy in 1992.     Diagnosis Example-1 : Fox and CNN GOP Debates. Bush lets Allan Keyes WIN bigtime by giving Keyes the "Constitution Quotation Monopoly". Suggestion:  Stop fund-raising and Focus-Groups long enough to memorize US Constitution over the Christmas Holidays. Comment:  Memorizing the US Constitution is better ...

What should be the official name for Bill & Hillary Clinton's New York abode ? There were lots of possibilities, according to the creative audience of The Jayne Carroll Show, a political talk radio program which airs daily in the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area. On Friday, September 10th, Carroll asked her audience to come up with an official name for the Clinton $1.7 million house in Chappaqua, New York. Carroll's call-in contest required the names to be in relative good taste, original, and should capture the essence of one or both of the Clintons'. The response was overwhelming! Some names ...

Conservative commentator Alan Keyes said Thursday one of the first things he would do as president would be to replace the federal income tax with a national sales tax. The Republican presidential candidate said he favors a national sales tax of about 23 percent that would also replace the payroll tax that pays for Social Security. Keyes, in an interview with Des Moines Register reporters and editors, said the income tax is "an illegitimate tax" and he would work to repeal the constitutional amendment that created it. He said a national sales tax could be structured so that some goods ...

Clinton Urges Investment in Arkansas Delta Region By Deborah Charles WEST MEMPHIS, Ark. (Reuters) - President Clinton Friday unveiled a series of initiatives aimed at developing the impoverished Arkansas Delta region, which he said missed out on the United States' economic expansion. In a day-long swing through the region along the Arkansas-Tennessee border, Clinton told several hundred people in this small town in his home state that he was determined to make sure they prospered along with the rest of the country. After giving a laundry list of economic achievements in the United States during his seven years in office, ...

Click for full size picture of Senate Candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton posed with long time cocaine smuggler and Clinton/Gore donor Jorge Cabreras in front of the White House Christmas Tree. Dear New York Voter The above photograph was taken during Christmas 1995 when Jorge Cabreras, who has a felony record dating back to the 1980s, was invited inside the White House after making a sizeable donation from money made by smuggling cocaine into the United States. According to the New York Times, April 4, 1997, Mr. Cabreras, a friend of Fidel Castro, was approached for his donation in the lobby ...

In recent weeks, we have seen the poll numbers for the media-declared "favored" candidates go into decline. Annointed GOP contender George W. Bush Jr. is not doing so well. Neither is Al Gore. Neither is Hillary Clinton. The media has been quick to associate the shifting polls with the televised debates. But there's a problem with that theory. Hillary Clinton hasn't debated anyone on TV, yet her poll numbers are also weak, despite coast to coast news coverage of a state campaign. I think it's time to recognize that it's not TV debate but the online debate which is ...

An Irish-American gay group yesterday criticized Hillary Rodham Clinton and demanded a sitdown with her to discuss her plans to march in the St. Patrick's Day Parade, which bans homosexual organizations. The Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization called the First Lady's declaration that she hopes to march "a gaffe" and a "political blunder." The First Lady made her declaration Thursday, in response to a question. It was not clear at the time whether she was fully aware of the long controversy over the parade, although an aide said later she was familiar with it. ILGO spokesman Anne Mcguire said Clinton ...

Marginal Improvement in the House by Paul M. Weyrich You recall the story of the kid who, wearing a baseball glove, came into his house and breathlessly told his father, "You know the big picture window in the living room?" His father sternly replied, "Yes". The little boy looked up at him and said, "Well, I didn't break that one. I broke the little one right next to it." Far be it for me to be a propagandist for the Republican Congress. And it may be that since we were expecting the sort of cave-in damage we experienced during the ...

     WASHINGTON--With the doomsday clock rapidly ticking down toward midnight on New Year's Eve, the nation's angriest government haters say that they are primed and ready for action.      John Trochmann, the gray-bearded leader of the Militia of Montana, foresees terrorist attacks around the country if computers fail and utilities go dark.      Ted Gunderson, former head of the FBI office in Los Angeles and now one of the country's leading far-right figures, predicts fire and chaos.      Are they all bluff and bluster?      While officials generally consider such firebrands to be more mouth than menace, the FBI and police departments from Washington to ...

Congress now requires ham radio hobbyists to provide a Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) "consistent with the requirements of the Debt Collection Improvement Act of 1996" in order to get a radio license. The TIN specified is a Social Security Number (SSN). Radio amateurs already have to pass a government examination to obtain a license. And, for decades, hams have been regulated as to permissible content, contacts, bandwidths, etc. Thus, the demand for a SSN has nothing to do with protecting the public. It is about the government's hunger for wealth. It is a hunger so great that individuals must ...

GOP PRESIDENTIAL wannabe Alan Keyes, who is black, contends that there is a media ``blackout -- which means you keep the black out'' of campaign coverage. Methinks that Keyes has a point. If Keyes were white, he probably would garner more media coverage. That coverage, however, would be overwhelmingly negative because Keyes espouses views to the right of Gary Bauer. Keyes believes the Federal Reserve Bank is the culprit behind America's farm woes. He believes, ``The moral case against the income tax will carry the day.'' He strongly opposes equating gay rights with civil rights for ethnic minorities and ...

-- C-SPAN will carry the awards banquet from 3:10 to 4:45pm ET. That's a start time of 2:10pm CT, 1:10pm MT and 12:10pm PT. Please keep in mind that C-SPAN's schedule is sometimes off by up to ten minutes, so if you plan to tape this start your VCR a few minutes early and have it run a few minutes longer. The C-SPAN tape of the MRC's Thursday night awards banquet at the Monarch Hotel in Washington, DC, lasts about 90 minutes and features: -- the video presentations of all 19 award nominees. And you can hear the audience's groans ...

Fightin phantoms: the toll mounts Russian hospitals bear witness to the price Moscow's army is paying in Chechnya Crisis in Chechnya: special report Dmitriy Zubritsky has been fighting an invisible enemy in Chechnya.For the past two months, the 20-year-old Russian sergeant has been engaged in combat with phantoms. But the enemy caught a glimpse of him last week and now he is lying with a shattered leg in a Russian military hospital. He says he cannot see any sense in a war that he is convinced will last for a long time. While walking across a factory yard one ...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- President Clinton said today he hopes his planned presidential library will be a place of healing for racial and ethnic divisions at home and abroad, as well as an economic power for his home state. ``I also want to make this library a great place of history,'' Clinton said, where children can gain ``a window on the new millennium'' through the times and accomplishments of the Clinton presidency as well as the life of Bill Clinton. ``This library can be an energizing force,'' Clinton said. He said it will attract scholars, tourists, journalists and ...

As Bush asks for more female and minority judge candidates, critics question his motivation and commitment. TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Jeb Bush issued a sharp criticism Thursday to the commissions that recommend candidates for judicial vacancies, saying that he is "deeply disappointed" with their failure to nominate enough women and minorities. His rebuke was contained in a letter he sent to 11 of the state's Judicial Nominating Commissions asking them to send him additional candidates. "I am not asking you to supplement your lists with only women or minorities," Bush said. "I am asking you to take a hard second ...

December 7, 1999 McCain gains slight lead over Bush in New Hampshire; By 2-1, GOP voters say McCain won debate; McCain ranks highest on most qualifications for President, Reuters/WHDH-TV Boston, poll reveals On the strength of a strong showing in last Thursday's Republican debate, Arizona Sen. John McCain has pulled into a slight lead over Texas Gov. George W. Bush in New Hampshire, a new Reuters/WHDH-TV Boston poll shows. The new poll of 453 likely Republican primary voters has McCain with 34.7%; Bush with 31.8%; publisher Steve Forbes 12.2%; former Ambassador Alan Keyes 5.4%; Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch 1% ...

The anti-affirmative-action group circulating a Florida petition for the 2000 election is now weighing alternatives -- including a possible postponement until 2002 -- if the state Supreme Court won't speed up the process. The court is scheduled to hear arguments on the ballot initiative in March, but that would be too late, according to petition backers, who fear that would not give them enough time to collect the 400,000 signatures needed to get the measure on next November's ballot. "There are an awful lot of 'what ifs?' You can't plan a reasonable campaign with so many imponderables," said Ward ...

"The Republican Presidential candidate George W. Bush plans to make affirmative action a campaign issue, his aides said this week, by supporting policies that would replace the use of race in college admissions with programs that admit the top students of every high school. At a breakfast here for journalists, Karl Rove, the Texas Governor's chief campaign strategist, said the argument over affirmative action "is a dead-end debate, and what we ought to be doing as a society is looking at ways to open up access to everyone, regardless of background." "He likes the idea of merit-based programs," Mr. ...

Happy Opposites Day Third-graders have long known of "Opposites Day," the fictional day once a year when everything means its opposite. But it took the deeper wisdom of adults to use this notion as a way of ending the bilious debate over affirmative action. Three big states--Florida, Texas, and California--have implemented a solution that has been heralded by conservatives and liberals, by Ward Connerly and the New York Times. The key to agreement over affirmative action, it turns out, is for everyone to say the opposite of what they mean. In California, Connerly led the successful referendum campaign against affirmative ...