Free Republic

Report: FALN Lobbyist Was Terrorist By SHANNON McCAFFREY Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- The activist who successfully lobbied the White House for the release of 14 jailed Puerto Rican separatists was a leader in the terrorist organization FALN, a congressional report obtained on Saturday alleges. The report said that Luis Nieves Falcon corresponded with several top Clinton administration officials on the clemency and was a member and leader of the militant Puerto Rican independence group. The report, prepared by Rep. Daniel Burton's Committee on Government Reform, included letters documenting Falcon's correspondence and at least one meeting with the Clinton ...

Tyson Won't Face Ferret Charges LAS VEGAS (AP) — The great Mike Tyson ferret caper is history. Tyson won't have ferret neglect charges on his record, after authorities said they could not prove who the ferrets at his Las Vegas estate belonged to. ``We cannot prove who the caretaker was,'' said Donna Rosenberg of the Clark County District Attorney's office. ``We believe that the ferrets were neglected, but Mike Tyson was not at home — nor present during the incident. He left them in the care of other people, and it's really unclear who was really responsible.'' One of ...

U.S. News 12/20/99 A curious conspiracy: Raising more questions about the King killing By Chitra Ragavan It was a conspiracy. That verdict, uttered by a Memphis jury after less than three hours of deliberation last week, closed a painful chapter for the family of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. But by declaring that King's 1968 assassination on the balcony of the Lorraine motel in Memphis was too complex to be the work of a lone gunman, the jury reopened one of the nation's deepest wounds of the civil rights era. The jury rendered its verdict in a ...

Icy Hillary leaves Bill home alone AS HE enters his last year in office, President Bill Clinton is struggling to banish stories of a terminal rift with Hillary, his wife, who has all but left the White House to pursue a political career of her own. Marital discord is rumoured to have reached a frosty new peak as Hillary campaigns for a Senate seat from New York, apparently uncertain of her husband's commitment to playing the supportive role of senator's spouse. Since Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, a scandal that almost cost him his job, a brittle tension is said ...

U.S. News 12/20/99 No shelter from the homeless problem Vagrants find themselves in the political stew By Warren Cohen Pictured against the backdrop of America's economic boom, last week's headlines were a sobering reminder of the continuing struggle to wipe out chronic homelessness. In Worcester, Mass., a grieving city buried six firefighters killed in a blaze allegedly started by a homeless couple. In New York City, jousting continued over strict new homeless policies, proposed after reports that a drifter attacked a pedestrian with a brick last month. And in Washington, an exhaustive new federal report provided fresh clues as to ...

The D.C. Chapter of Free Republic carried on with its 15th month of regular Saturday anti-Clinton protests at the White House today in the face of a cold stiff wind which thinned out the usual number of tourists for a sunny day, but did not diminish the resolve of the FReepers.Ironman was first to arrive--at 10:20 a.m--when the temperature was 42 degrees and the wind was a steady 15 mph.Over the course of the next 90 minutes, he was joined at the Northeast Gate where the public White House tour exits by Kerm, Angelwood, NoDemocratsin2000, Doctor Raoul, Exit 148 and ...

Japan Isles Used to Hide A-Weapons: Journal Says Cache Stayed Until '60s By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, December 12, 1999; Page A06 In the 1950s, the United States secretly maintained nuclear weapons on two Japanese islands occupied by American military forces as a result of agreements ending World War II, according to an article in Monday's Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. More than 500 miles away from the Japanese mainland, the islands of Chichi Jima and Iwo Jima were used to store American nuclear bombs and missiles for U.S. submarines and bombers in the event of a ...

The Donation Game Watching Jesse Jackson's Money Roll in, and Wondering Nov. 30, 1999 By Bill O'Reilly The buses rolled into Decatur, Ill., carrying people who believed what the Rev. Jesse Jackson was putting out: that six black high school students who brawled at a football game were punished too harshly by the Decatur School Board. At the same time Jackson was demonstrating against the transfer of the students to a disciplinary alternative school, a group of journalists at the Fox News Channel were trying to find out just how Jackson finances his operations and pays for things like ...

WEEKEND EDITION, December 11-12, 1999 Beatty Bows Out By Corie Brown Say what? He didn't mean it all along? That's the word Warren Beatty wants to get out, telling friends and acquaintances he never intended to run for president. So why the drawn-out tease? He wanted to get liberalism back onto the national agenda, he's saying, but didn't realize until too late that media interest in him as a Hollywood figure would supplant serious consideration of his issues. Other Hollywood figures suspect a different subtext, as actors like to say. They say Beatty wants to pre-empt any conclusion that nobody ...

Clintons Agree On Gay Policy: President Clinton Says Military Plan Isn't Working Saturday, December 11,1999 (CBS) President Clinton agrees with his wife: the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays isn't working as he'd hoped. In a radio interview with CBS News Correspondents Mark Knoller and Peter Maer, Mr. Clinton said it's time to take another look at the controversial topic. Knoller: Let me ask you one specific, if I may, on the question of gays in the military. As you no doubt know, the first lady this past week was critical of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. ...

12/9/99 -- 12:56 AM Case's effect may be `huge' By SARAH HUNTLEY of The Tampa Tribune TAMPA - A trooper's revelation that he and others have filed misleading drug arrest reports could have ``huge'' ramifications. A trooper's admission that Florida Highway Patrol teams have filed misleading and incomplete arrest reports has outraged lawyers and led at least one to push for an investigation in Washington. Lawyers in three counties said on Wednesday they plan to re-examine the files of clients serving long federal prison terms and may ask the court to allow them to reopen the otherwise stagnant cases. ...

12/9/99 -- 12:56 AM Case's effect may be `huge' By SARAH HUNTLEY of The Tampa Tribune TAMPA - <I%3

Clinton pressured to settle struggle for boy's custody KAREN BRANCH and MARK SILVA kbranch@herald.com In a two-minute meeting on the tarmac at Miami International Airport tonight, Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas will urge President Clinton to bring 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez's father from Cuba to determine the boy's custody. Just before that, at an exclusive Coral Gables fund-raiser, Cuban American National Foundation Chairman Jorge Mas Santos plans to press into the president's hand a written plea from Elian's Miami family that Clinton meet with the boy. Despite Clinton's stated intent to stay out of the international custody battle, he will face intense ...

BSE epidemic may have been caused by bug in soil Jonathan Leake, Science Editor BSE could turn out to be one of science's greatest mistakes. New research just published by a government-funded scientist suggests that the epidemic has been caused by a bacterium and not by the mysterious particles known as prions. The work, by Alan Ebringer, professor of immunology at King's College in London, suggests that BSE was actually caused by a runaway immune response to a common soil bacterium called Acinetobacter calcoaceticus. It was published last week by the American Society of Microbiology in its journal, Infection and ...

Elian's lawyers seek asylum: Move muddies father's rights By JAY WEAVER jweaver@herald.com The legal team for Elian Gonzalez on Friday sought political asylum for the boy on grounds that he has a ''well-founded fear of persecution'' if he is returned from Miami to communist Cuba. His attorneys said the asylum request, made in Dallas, Texas, puts on hold any possible release of the boy to his father in Cuba until his asylum hearing is completed, a process that could take at least two months. But other legal experts and a Miami immigration official disputed that claim -- in what has ...

A Little Boy Spurs Big Emotions Miami's Exiles Torn Between Hatred of Castro, Love of Family By Sue Anne Pressley Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, December 12, 1999; Page A03 MIAMI, Dec. 11—In her gift shop on Calle Ocho, the main thoroughfare of Little Havana, Caridad Alvarez recently has presided over many an argument about the future of 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez--the small Cuban refugee at the center of an international custody case with no easy answers. It is clear where Alvarez stands. "There is hunger in Cuba. There is not enough medicine. What about his education?" said Alvarez, who fled ...

China Prefers the Sand to the Moles Expert Says Beijing Culls Secrets Grain by Grain, Gains Less From Spies By Vernon Loeb and Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, December 12, 1999; Page A02 Late last week, the FBI arrested Wen Ho Lee, a Chinese American scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, on charges of mishandling nuclear secrets. But the FBI's probe of alleged nuclear espionage is far from over. Lee, who was once at the center of the investigation, is one of many possible suspects. Although the felony charges against him could carry a life sentence, federal prosecutors ...

U.S. News 12/20/99 TRIGGER HAPPY? The U.S. targets gun makers Chitra Ragavan Gun makers beware. The Clinton administration has you in its sights, next. Only months ago, the Justice Department announced a massive federal lawsuit against tobacco companies to recover the costs of treating tobacco-related illnesses. Now, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will sue gun companies on behalf of nearly 3.3 million public-housing residents. With gun reforms stymied on Capitol Hill, the suit is an ultimatum intended to force the industry to the negotiating table with 29 cities and counties that already have filed suits or are ...

U.S. News 12/20/99 The President Goes To The Mideast On His Quest For A Legacy AT DAMASCUS GATE: Brokering peace in the Middle East Kevin Whitelaw with David Makovsky in Damascus and Warren P. Strobel President Clinton's quest for a legacy keeps bringing him back to the Middle East. Soon after he took office, Clinton presided over the historic handshake between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and late Israeli President Yitzhak Rabin at the White House. But for most of his second term, the setbacks on the road to peace in the Middle East have outnumbered the achievements. So Clinton advisers ...

The 21st century belongs to US.com It was Henry Luce, erstwhile editor of Time magazine, who coined the notion of the American century. He did so in the wake of the second world war, when for the first time America exerted an irresistible and increasingly direct influence across the planet. Whether rebuilding Japan and Germany, constructing an alliance that would last another 50 years across the Atlantic or simply outproducing every other war-shattered economy put together, America was widely seen as at the peak of its power. It couldn't last, the sceptics predicted. As Japan and Germany rebuilt, as the ...