Free Republic

SEATTLE- When it comes to dealing with the Justice Department, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is calling on a higher power. BSNN has learned that Gates, seen here meeting the Dalai Lama on his recent trip to Seattle, has asked the spiritual icon to assist him in his defense from the Justice Department's Anti Trust lawsuit. The Dalai Lama told Gates that deeds, not words, were needed to cure his ills. ``Through such a meeting Bill gains new ideas and new visions,'' the 64-year-old Buddhist leader said.``But we get change not through prayer and meditation but through action. You need ...

(December 10) After years of an Arafat-can-do-no-wrong approach, born not of political blindness but the fear that criticism of the Palestinian tyrant would harm the peace process, The New York Times and The Boston Globe (same ownership) last week published editorials critical of Israel's peace partner. Having forgiven him for refusing to comply with agreements, failing to crack down on the terrorist organizations, sheltering and embracing Hamas leaders, glorifying "the engineer" Yihye Ayyash, calling for jihad against Israel, sanctioning the use of virulently antisemitic textbooks in Palestinian schools, heaping blood libels on Israel, ordering the murder of real-estate brokers who ...

Israel's Reactor To Be Shut Down JERUSALEM –– Israel nuclear reactor near the Negev Desert town of Dimona will be shut down on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day as a precaution against Y2K malfunctions. Israel says the Dimona facility is used for research, though it is widely believed that Israel stockpiles nuclear weapons there. Based on photographs taken at the site in 1986 by Israel's nuclear whistleblower, Mordechai Vanunu, experts said at the time that Israel had the world's sixth-largest nuclear arsenal. The prime minister's office said Monday that Israel's nuclear facilities were checked and found to ...

I wonder if anyone has given any thought to the idea that Bill Bradley is just a Straw Man for Cottonwood Al? The more I watch these two the clearer it becomes to me that Bradley is in the race merely to go through the motions of running for the Presidency. He never asks any questions of Al of any substance, such as, When did you invent the Internet? When did you discover the Love Canal Incident? How about the Body Guards furnished during your stay in Viet Nam? There was no reason for Mr. Bradley to resign from the ...

MEDIUM RARE by Jim Rarey December 12, 1999 EMINENT DOMAIN GONE AMOK The City of Detroit has entered into a “partnership” with powerful private gambling interests and is using the power of “eminent domain” to essentially confiscate prime real estate, on the city’s riverfront, owned by private parties, on which to build three casinos for three different gambling syndicates. The gambling syndicates will “reimburse” the city for the costs incurred in acquiring the properties. In return, the city will get a percentage of the gross gambling revenues (as will the State of Michigan). Michigan State law (as is true in ...

Amazing...It seems I just voted for the winner of tonight's debate hours before it has even happened.Is that how you get big numbers on Vote.com

While taking in the sights of Moscow, during my student days, in 1978, I ran into an elderly couple from New Jersey. "What a wonderful country!" the woman exclaimed. "There's no crime. You can walk the streets after dark without being afraid." No crime? The irony of her statement was not lost on me. I knew that the Soviets had murdered tens of millions of people (20 million, according to Stephane Courtois's Black Book of Communism; 60 million according to Alexander Solzhenitsyn). Surely this qualified as a "crime" of some sort. But I held my tongue politely. Arguing would have ...

MEDIUM RARE by Jim Rarey December 13, 1999 UNANSWERED QUESTIONS As the year 1999 winds down to a close (for some “non-purists” it is also the end of a millenium), there seem to be more unanswered questions than issues resolved. Following is a representative sample of questions to which conservatives would like answers. 1. If the federal government ran a surplus in fiscal 1999 (ended Sept. 30, 1999) as claimed, why did the national debt go up by more than $100 billion? 2. Since “unspent” revenue from Social Security taxes is “invested” in government bonds that must ultimately be redeemed, ...

I have no interest in the election of any particular presidential candidate at this time. But I am struck by the way my media colleagues always want to create the sense of imminent crisis. We now have the issue of whether George W. Bush is an intelligent man. That doesn't seem to me to have much to do with what makes a good President. If there ever had been anything like an SAT test for Presidents in the history of this nation, candidates probably would have reacted with even greater intensity than the ludicrous way the NAACP is reacting to ...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Joseph Heller, whose darkly comic first novel ''Catch-22'' defined the paradox of the no-win dilemma and added a phrase to the American lexicon, died of a heart attack at his East Hampton home. He was 76. Heller died Sunday night, according to his wife, Valerie. Published in 1961 to mixed reviews, ''Catch-22'' became a cult favorite before it was recognized as an American classic. It eventually sold more than 10 million copies in the United States alone. Heller based the novel on his own experience as an Air Force enlistee during World War II. He was ...

SPECIAL EDUCATION - A Failure on Many Fronts FIRST OF TWO PARTS Special Education a Failure on Many Fronts Thousands of California students are labeled "learning disabled"-- often with lasting consequences--because they were not taught to read. Those with major handicaps also are poorly served. By RICHARD LEE COLVIN and DUKE HELFAND, Times Staff Writers Special ed teacher Anna Rubin helps student at Polytechnic High in Long Beach. He spent 80 minutes writing a sentence. Tens of thousands of students in California's special education system have been placed there not because of a serious mental or emotional handicap, but ...

In this issue: We figure out a way to run the picture of a supermodel for a good reason, talk to Jude Wanniski and meditate on the differences between FDR and Ronald Reagan. The latest issue of Enter Stage Right has been posted at http://www.enterstageright.com. Want one place to see everything that's new with Enter Stage Right this week? You can find it at http://www.enterstageright.com/whatsnew.htm --This week's issue--> Person of the Century: FDR vs. RR: Roosevelt and Reagan represent two different ideals, says Joe Schembrie, which explains a decision by Time Magazine Free for all, the free market and the ...

DAVIS, Calif. -- School officials, saying the Boy Scouts violate district policy by excluding gays and atheists, have barred the organization from sending notes and solicitations home with students. David Murphy, the superintendent of the Davis Joint Unified School District, wrote to the organization that, starting this month, it can no longer use school bulletin boards, parent-teacher association newsletters and student folders to recruit students or communicate with them. Murphy said he was responding to parent complaints. Sacramento-area Boy Scout officials said it would complicate recruitment. "I really don't want to stir up a lot of anti-scouting feeling by ...

Asylum sought for shipwrecked boy E LIAN GONZALEZ, five years old, clung to an inner tube for two days in the Atlantic Ocean, adrift and alone, after the 17-foot open boat in which he had been escaping from Cuba capsized, drowning all but two of its 13 passengers (including his mother and her boyfriend). He had seen his mother go under the waves and disappear. His "stepfather" had wedged him into one of the two tubes towed behind the boat and then he, too, faded away. Elian saw the sun set and then darkness. He saw the sun rise ...

New evidence from radar data and analysis on the crash of TWA Flight 800 is "as convincing as a fingerprint in a murder case" that a missile, according to an independent investigator brought down the plane. Radar images only recently available and analyzed by Ret. Naval Cmdr. William Donaldson show what he describes as a plume of metal debris coming from the right side of TWA flight 800 at a very high rate of speed. "Only a missile body, with its hundreds of thousands of foot pounds of kinetic energy would have the inertia to perform this way on radar," ...

In five secret videos they recorded before the massacre, the killers reveal their hatreds--and their lust for fame The natural born killers waited until the parents were asleep upstairs before heading down to the basement to put on their show. The first videotape is almost unbearable to watch......... Too big to post. Click HERE for full text.

WASHINGTON -- Bill Clinton may be going Hollywood when he leaves office -- as head of the influential Motion Picture Association of America, according to a new report. This week's New Yorker says Clinton could replace current MPAA boss Jack Valenti, who at 78 is mulling retirement. (My caption for picture below: "Yeah, I got your paternity test right here, Whoopie!" CASTING CALL: President Clinton shares the limelight with Whoopi Goldberg -- one of the showbiz pals who would approve if he entered the movie industry.N.Y. Post: Michael Norcia A White House spokesman declined to comment on the report. ...

Mark Levin,president of Landmark Legal Foundation, will guest on WMAL radio in Washington, DC, tonight, from 8-12 p.m. Linda Tripp's Maryland wiretapping case, Barbara Olson's new book on Hillary Clintion and a host of other hot issues will the covered by Mark and his guests, including Sean Hannity, David Limbaugh and Barbara Olson. And, best of all, YOU CAN BE A PART OF THE SHOW!!!!! You can listen via Real Audio on the Internet at http://www.wmal.com, and call in and be on the show at 1-888-630-9625. Can you think of a better way to spend a Monday night? Be part ...

ALLEGED Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk filed papers to have the U.S. government pay the legal fees he incurred while trying to clear his name. In papers filed Dec. 9, he said he has been reduced to poverty by "22 years of fraudulent" litigation charging that he was the notorious guard "Ivan the Terrible," who operated a gas chamber at the at the Treblinka extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1942-1943.

Parents Report that Samuel Armas is Doing Well NASHVILLE, DEC 12 (ZENIT) - The fetus whose picture was seen all over the Internet is now a healthy baby boy. Samuel Armas touched the hearts of America when he reached out of his mother's womb to grip the finger of a surgeon while still a fetus of 21 weeks. In early November, Samuel underwent pre-natal surgery to correct a case of spina bifida, a condition that affects about 0.2% of infants. The surgery was innovative and dangerous: the doctors removed the uterus from his mother, drained the amniotic sac, operated on ...