Free Republic

Tulia Blues TULIA, TEXAS—Only a few years ago, Mattie White liked to sit on the front porch of her one-story house. In the park across the street, young people played basketball and hung out on the swings, their shouts echoing through the neighborhood. These days, though, Conner Park is quiet. Many of the people who once gathered there are now in prison. In Tulia, a dry town without a bar or nightclub, Conner Park was a favorite hangout for the town's black youth. Today, it has become a symbol of the community's devastation. For Mattie and many others, the ...

Lawyers notice phenomenon. July 31 — Toward the end of a high-profile drug trial in Miami, jurors suggested that one of their colleagues write a book about the case. “That got me thinking about it,” recalls juror Jerry Blanton. “I thought to myself, ‘Gee, you’re a writer. This would be a tale worth telling.’ ” DURING JURY DELIBERATIONS, the community-college English instructor pushed for convicting two prominent lawyers on charges of conspiring with the Cali drug cartel to import drugs and launder money. Mr. Blanton, several jurors recall, pressured the lone holdout to vote his way. “He was presenting the ...

Sat, Jul 28, 2001 Winston-Salem Journal Christians, others split on 2 issues, survey finds RELIGION NEWS SERVICE Christians and non-Christians remain divided in their opinions about abortion and homosexuality, a Barna Research Group survey shows. Researchers found that 23 percent of born-again Christians think that abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances while 69 percent of people of non-Christian faiths think that the procedure should be legal all or most of the time. Sixty-eight percent of atheists, 50 percent of people attending mainline Protestant churches, 33 percent of Catholics and 29 percent of people attending non-mainline Protestant churches ...

Something to Say Commentary rsmith@wbal.com It's a Nightmare Tuesday, July 31, 2001 (July 31, 2001) I was having a pleasant enough morning, having played a quick nine holes of golf in unseasonably cool weather, until I came home and resumed my daily scrutiny of the Internet, looking for news to stimulate this afternoon’s radio conversation. The mood was broken when I read a piece by UPI economics writer Martin Hutchinson, who thinks not only is the boom over, but that a major bust is looming dead ahead. Furthermore, he puts this grim analysis next to the massive media campaign ...

Vanevenhoven unsure about future at Marquette Ex-Kaukauna star surprised the school dropped wrestling By Ed Byrne Post-Crescent staff writer When the phone rang Friday night at the Vanevenhoven house in rural Kaukauna, it was not good news. Marquette University athletic director Bill Cords was calling Joe Vanevenhoven to tell him that the school was dropping its wrestling program because it needs to comply with gender-equity mandates. Vanevenhoven, a state-champion wrestler at Kaukauna High School in 2000, just finished his freshman year at Marquette, where he was on an athletic scholarship for wrestling. "It was a shock even to my coach," ...

The Democrats have been failing their civics tests in the most spectacular ways. First we have Tom Daschle — whose international experience can be etched on marble and dropped in your eye with no ill effects — bemoaning the fact that some European leaders are unhappy with W.'s decisions on the Kyoto Treaty, missile defense, and bacteriological weapons. Quite aside from the fact that the decisions were exceptionally good ones, anyone with any real knowledge of contemporary diplomacy knows full well that the Europeans rarely say in public what they actually want: European citizens cut a lot of slack for ...

What genius came up with the idea of granting amnesty to illegal immigrants from Mexico only? It turns out that this misguided notion is a loser for the Bush administration in every way imaginable. It is fraught with legal, social, cultural, political and economic flaws, despite what proponents say to the contrary. If the legal dimension of this blunder sounds eerily familiar, it should. Apparently it has escaped the minds of some of the folks in the Bush administration, though. Surely a portion of the Bush team can recall that the basis upon which the Supreme Court decided the ...

Tuesday, July 31, 2001Seniors celebrate Medicare foundingBy KEVIN LANDRIGAN, Telegraph Staff landrigank@telegraph-nh.com CONCORD – New Hampshire seniors celebrated the 36th anniversary of Medicare by calling on the Congress and President George W. Bush to keep campaign promises and make coverage for prescription drugs a reality.Members of the state chapter of AARP rallied outside the Statehouse and presented the state’s four members of Congress with birthday cakes, all of which had a missing piece.“There is a piece missing in Medicare and people are missing it more than ever. That missing piece is prescription coverage,” said AARP volunteer Vy Constant.Rep. John E. ...

He Wants.....

Doing without sex can do a number on your self-esteem unless it's your choice to be celibate, a new Georgia State University study says. Sociologists Denise Donnelly and Elisabeth Burgess queried 82 people who identified themselves as "involuntarily celibate." They concluded that people who desire sexual intimacy but for various reasons do without it can lapse into depression. Many of the self-described celibates were dissatisfied, frustrated or angry if they hadn't had sex in the past six months. Participants in the study filled out confidential questionnaires. Responses came from heterosexuals, bisexuals, homosexuals and transsexuals, single and with partners. Partnered respondents ...

On July 18, Senators Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) introduced into the Congress Federal legislation for extreme deregulation of the U.S. power grid. The bill would take the nation backwards, to the era of the 1920s, when very little electric power regulation existed, and the Wall Street-City of London financier oligarchy ran America's electric utility policy, and a good part of its economic policy, as its own fiefdom. This contributed to the speculative orgy that culminated in the Great Depression. The Gramm-Schumer bill calls for the dissolution of the Public Utility Holding Company Act (PUHCA), which was passed ...

On July 18, Senators Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) introduced into the Congress Federal legislation for extreme deregulation of the U.S. power grid. The bill would take the nation backwards, to the era of the 1920s, when very little electric power regulation existed, and the Wall Street-City of London financier oligarchy ran America's electric utility policy, and a good part of its economic policy, as its own fiefdom. This contributed to the speculative orgy that culminated in the Great Depression. The Gramm-Schumer bill calls for the dissolution of the Public Utility Holding Company Act (PUHCA), which was passed ...

W A S H I N G T O N, July 31 — Police and FBI agents today interviewed a hardware store clerk who claims to have seen missing intern Chandra Levy during the first week of May, after her last known sighting. More than three months after Levy vanished, a man who cuts keys at W.J. Candey's hardware in her Dupont Circle neighborhood has come forward and claimed to have seen her. John Woodfolk, 61, told a swarm of reporters outside his store that he remembered Levy having several sets of keys made during the first week of May. ...

I love it...keep him on every show everyday, and America will remember how much they hate him and the people that lied to keep him out of jail.Then they'll remember the women he attacked and raped, the private eyes and killing Kathlene's cat, and on and onKepp hillbilly on TV through the campaign season....we need GOP wins

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush ''stands proudly and tall'' behind his disputed nominee to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a spokesman said Tuesday, accusing Senate Democrats of making political flip-flops on the issue. The Senate Commerce Committee is scheduled to vote Thursday on Mary Sheila Gall's confirmation as chairwoman of the agency that oversees consumer product safety, and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle has said he will not bring her nomination to the Senate floor if the committee votes against her. Democrats, who hold a one-vote majority on the committee, charge that Gall has, as a member of ...

I can't remember what happened to the conservative 501(c)(3)s during Impeachment. Currently "educational" liberal organizations such as AARP, NOW, Rainbow/PUSH..., are using rescources to benefit various areas of the liberal agenda. I constantly hear responses which say the conservatives do the same, using both people and corporations to accomplish their needs, yet I thought they were the ones attempting to reform PAC money during the last administration. Are they using it like Hillary is to influence votes? Do Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, Richard Mellon Scaife Foundation, Manhattan Institute, Independent Women's Forum, American Spectator, National Right to Work Foundation, NRA, American ...

Tuesday July 31 7:28 AM ET Supercomputer May Unlock Secrets of Universe By Peter Griffiths LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will unveil a state-of-the-art supercomputer on Tuesday which scientists hope will unlock the secrets of the origins of the universe. The machine, the biggest supercomputer in British academia, cost $2 million and is one of the most powerful in Europe. It will tackle what is arguably the biggest question on earth: How was the universe created? The University of Durham in northeast England says its Cosmology Machine could store the contents of the British Library -- and still have spare memory. ...

He grew up a solid son of the segregated South with a reputed Ku Klux Klan member for a father figure, learned politics at the knee of one of Congress' most notorious segregationists, and, according to two eyewitnesses, regularly hurled racial epithets out of range of the cameras and microphones. But despite it all, yesterday Bill Clinton was welcomed home to Harlem as America's "First Black President." For two decades the Arkansas press and then the national media kept the lid on most of the inconvenient details of Bill Clinton's real record on race. And so most Americans, both white ...

MONCKS CORNER - Mental illness twisted Perstephanie Simmons' world into a menacing nightmare of delusion, a world where butchering her two small children made perfect sense. After hearing testimony that Simmons believed God had told her to kill the children because they were evil robots, Circuit Judge Markley Dennis Jr. found Simmons, 30, not guilty by reason of insanity Monday. She was charged with the November murders of her 10-year-old daughter, Ingrid Simmons, and 18-month-old son, Yusan "Justin" Muhammad in Cainhoy. Simmons' facial expression never changed Monday, not when a still-rattled deputy described the blood-bathed trailer where her children ...

Tuesday July 31 12:37 PM ET Britain, Ireland Set to Unveil N.Irish Peace Plan By Martin Cowley BELFAST, Northern Ireland (Reuters) - Britain and Ireland will unveil Wednesday an anxiously awaited formula for shoring up Northern Ireland's peace process which has been battered by rising political tension and a surge in violence. As Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid held emergency talks on a worsening security climate Tuesday, a British spokesman said the governments would issue proposals for rescuing the 1998 Good Friday peace accord at a news conference after presenting them to the province's feuding parties. The formula is ...