Free Republic

Russians in US to avert New Year nuclear war By James Langton in New York A RUSSIAN delegation will arrive at one of America's top secret military bases this week in an attempt to ensure that the Millennium does not herald nuclear Armageddon. The Pentagon has made the unprecedented decision of allowing Russian military experts to observe its intercontinental ballistic missile monitoring centre buried deep in the Rocky Mountains on New Year's Eve. America fears that Russia's antiquated computers could fall victim to the Millennium bug and either falsely register an attack by missiles from the United States and its ...

ORLANDO (Reuters) - President Clinton said Saturday his ''don't ask, don't tell'' policy toward homosexuals in the U.S. military has not worked the way it was intended, and he did not oppose his wife's comments on the subject. In a radio interview with CBS news, Clinton said he understood first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's comments last week that the policy did not work. ``I'm quite sympathetic with what she said,'' Clinton said. ''I think one thing that's maybe not clearly understood is the reason that I went for 'don't ask, don't tell' is that it was all I could do, ...

December 11, 1999 The government wimps deserve By ALLAN FOTHERINGHAM -- Sun Media As the days dwindle down to a precious few in this century, one's mind drifts to the contemplation of the difference between Canadian and American politics. On the one hand, south of the border, there is excitement, turmoil, wild debates, interesting characters, new faces, the media exhausted at trying to cover the whole circus. North of the border? No real debate challenging the reigning emperor, no credible new faces on the horizon, nobody who is exciting the voters or the media. Speaking of a precious few, we ...

Thursday December 9 9:28 PM ET Report: Feds Set Up Drug Suspects TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - Florida troopers concealed that they were tipped off to suspected drug smugglers by undercover FBI agents who had supplied the very drugs the suspects were charged with possessing, an officer testified. The FBI also rigged suspects' cars so agents could immobilize the vehicles by remote - giving the troopers an excuse to question the drivers, Trooper Douglas Strickland testified Tuesday. In light of the testimony, defense lawyers in at least three counties say they might ask a court to reopen cases involving drug ...

NATO’s Latest Problem: Montenegro 9 December 1999 SUMMARY In the most significant incident since Montenegro began to assert its independence, a Yugoslav military unit on Dec. 8 seized the airport at Podgorica, the capital. The army controlled the airport for 12 hours and then left, allowing normal operations to resume. But the tit-for-tat exchanges between Montenegro and Belgrade threaten to draw NATO into the confrontation, unless the alliance launches a diplomatic effort to avoid another Balkan war. ANALYSIS In response to increasing provocations by the government of Montenegro, a Yugoslav military unit on Dec. 8 briefly took control of the ...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Facing flaws in their evidence, FBI officials began to doubt more than a year ago that Los Alamos laboratory scientist Wen Ho Lee had given China one of America's most prized nuclear secrets as originally feared, according to government officials and documents. The agents wrote a memo alerting FBI Director Louis Freeh to their suspicions, officials told The Associated Press. But the pursuit of Lee continued for months - along with a barrage of news leaks implying he was a Chinese spy. Agents eventually built a lesser case against Lee alleging he removed a wide array of ...

2330 GMT, 991209 – Iranian Deal May Entice Caspian Oil Away From Turkish Pipeline Iran’s Oil Ministry will provide its Central Asian oil swap partners, Turkmenistan and Kazakstan, with a 30 percent cut in oil swap rates, the Iran Daily reported on Dec. 9. The swap plan is an effective economic and political policy tool for Iran, which allows Iran to effectively undermine U.S. sanctions. The plan makes Iran a more attractive outlet for Central Asian oil than the proposed Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, which will lead U.S. corporations to clamor to be allowed to invest in Iranian infrastructure. Iran’s Oil Minister, ...

The Volunteers of America-Corporate Office is going to confer its Great Wall Award on Mr. Zhang LiYong, the president of COSCO Americas, Inc. Due to the great contribution that COSCO has made to the Sino-U.S. trade and economy, the Volunteers of America-Corporate Office is going to confer its Great Wall Award on Mr. Zhang LiYong, the president of COSCO Americas, Inc. The Award-giving ceremony will be held between April and June in Los Angeles. COSCO COSCO Update Volunteers of America Public Policy Volunteers of America is a national, nonprofit, spiritually based organization providing local human service programs and opportunities ...

The first British babies to be registered with two fathers but no mother have made legal history. Twins Aspen and Saffron Drewitt-Barlow were born in California last Sunday. Gay partners Barrie Drewitt, 32, and Tony Barlow, 35, told the Mail on Sunday that it was the culmination of a four-year dream. And a US Supreme Court judge decreed that the two self-made millionaires will be registered as parent one and parent two on the children's birth certificates. The mother's name will not be mentioned on the document, said the paper. The twins will return to their home in Danbury, Essex, ...

William Jefferson Clinton, President of the USA •Intern fellated; major lies; now cut off his penis!  ---Lazamataz, Presidential Anagrams   "Poetic" justice, indeed...but I suspect maw, granny and hillary castrated the impotent degenerate eons ago...which reminds me of the following: clinton castration (Shakespearean- style)   ED ZEHR: Think that thy bard hath now MacJeff forsaken? In that would'st thou be verily mistaken. Mayhap thou hast impatiently forgot That facts comprise the essence of the plot.     MIA T: Methinks thy bard hath schemes forsaken. Mayhap thou art verily mistaken. Plots comprise the essence of the facts. Forsake the ...

Former Beauty Queen Files Bankruptcy - (STATEWIDE) -- Former Miss Arkansas and Miss America Elizabeth Ward Gracen of Russellville, has filed for bankruptcy. She says she has debts incurred by a former boyfriend who now resides in a jail in France. The 38-year-old former beauty queen and actress has listed assets of just under 50-thousand dollars and debts of more than 194-thousand. Among those debts listed by Gracen are federal and state income taxes amounting to more than 17-thousand dollars. Gracen also gained notoriety last year when she alleged that she and President Clinton had had a sexual affair ...

In case you want to vomit, you can hear Jim Lehrer on CSpan 2 criticizing America for trying to destroy an otherwise wonderful president about lying about sex. Nothing follows.

28 DAYS AND COUNTING Devvy Kidd December 3, 1999 We are now 28 days to the big bang. Since I posted the first piece on Y2K over a year ago, millions of words have been written about this problem. There is all kinds of speculation that Bill Clinton will declare martial law or a "presidential emergency" on January 1, 2000. No one knows for sure what's going to happen and it's grating on everyone's nerves. I have always said that we should be prudent and prepare for a rough time but don't go overboard. We are simply going to have ...

VICTOR, Mont. -- Teachers and students in this small town in western Montana are used to scraping by or doing without. Textbooks are in short supply. And space is so tight that classes are held on the stage at one end of the cafeteria. So when local 4-H leaders offered to sponsor an antismoking program, it was a welcome idea. The after-school sessions would teach kids important lessons about the dangers of tobacco. Best of all, it wouldn't cost anything. Philip Morris Cos., the country's largest cigarette maker, would pick up the $10,000 tab. Without the grant, Victor wouldn't ...

The Russian army has announced it is suspending its intensive bombardment of the Chechen capital, Grozny, until midnight on Sunday. The announcement, reported by the Russian Interfax news agency, follows a series of moves by Moscow that appear to be aimed at encouraging civilians to leave the city. No Russian official appears to have actually said that an earlier deadline for all civilians to leave Grozny by Saturday has been extended, but senior political and military officials have said that there will be no immediate all-out assault on the city. The Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin is quoted by ...

This is my very first original post.....so please be kind! Today was my first official protest with the Florida FreeRepublic Chapter. I was the last to arrive, and the first to leave, but even now, six hours later, I am so hyped with adrenaline, I couldn't sleep if I had to. My husband and I didn't make the final decision to go to Orlando until 9:30 AM.(that's another story in itself)...I started worrying that I would be too late to join in, as I knew the Florida Freepers were to arrive at 9:00AM and the POTUS was due to speak ...

"I'm not particularly optimistic about society . . . We're in an age where everything has just gone too far. For instance, Clinton and Monica Lewinsky -- that was a real eye-opener . . . There are other ways of doing that kind of thing rather than some squatty little trollop showing her panties and suddenly she's in the Oval Office . . . It was in exercise in bad taste of monumental . . . proportions, and it tells me that it's an ugly world . . . I'm truly . . . frightened of America is terms of ...

------------------------------------------------------ I'm reposting this from another thread. It's mine. It concerns Party Loyalty. If so, therein lies the difference and the danger. As the Founding Fathers were aging, they warned us of the inherant danger in "party loyalties" wherein the interests of powerful men and foreign potentates were taking precedence over the interests of Liberty. Let me tell you of my concern for the Republican Party. Last spring, on C-Span Washington Journal, a Sunday, Jim Nicholson(Chairman of the Republican Party) was fielding questions from the usual dull callers. A caller asked him about his concerns over the 57 Democratic Socialist ...

Mars Lander Tops Bad Year for NASA By Marcia Dunn AP Aerospace Writer Thursday, Dec. 9, 1999; 1:32 a.m. EST CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. –– A grounded space shuttle fleet. An international space station on hold. A crippled Hubble Space Telescope. Two failed Mars probes. One launch delay after another. For NASA, this has been the worst year since the Challenger disaster in 1986. The space agency has a chance to redeem itself with the shuttle Discovery's mission to save the Hubble, which is out of service until astronauts arrive with replacement parts. But Saturday's launch is off while NASA ...

The California Supreme Court received a case Wednesday that could determine control of Congress for the first decade of the new millennium. Despite those high stakes, however, Republican leaders here are strangely ambivalent about the outcome--an attitude revealing much about today's political class. The court must determine by Monday whether the state's voters in next year's March 7 primary will have a chance to vote on taking California's decennial congressional redistricting away from the Democratic legislature and governor and handing it to a judicial-appointed independent commission. But to sweeten that bland morsel, the ballot proposition also would reduce the ...