Free Republic

OKLAHOMA CITY, 3:37 p.m. CDT July 30, 2001 -- The state Department of Environmental Quality has issued a warning about swimming in polluted waters following the death of an 11-year-old boy who contracted a rare organism while swimming in Lake Konawa. Hosea Delara of Norman died June 26 at Children's Hospital of Oklahoma, where doctors determined he had contracted primary amoebic meningoencephalitis, a rare condition commonly referred to as PAM. Hosea apparently jumped into Lake Konawa feet first and water went up his nose, said Michael Dean, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Quality. "The organism can enter ...

Bush Endorses Election Reform, Avoids SpecificsWASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush broadly endorsed on Tuesday an election reform report by two former presidents on how to avoid a repeat of problems in last year's presidential vote but did not address its specific ideas, which included making Election Day a federal holiday. The report by a panel chaired by former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter called for giving federal funds to states to upgrade their voting equipment, setting uniform statewide standards to count ballots and asking broadcasters not to project winners until polls close in all 48 contiguous states. The commission's ...

Monday, 30 July, 2001, 07:51 GMT 08:51 UK Porton Down probe launched The government is launching an independent medical investigation into the health of 20,000 volunteers involved in biological and chemical weapons trials at its Porton Down defence establishment. Many volunteers exposed to nerve gas and other chemical and biological agents at the laboratories on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire say the tests left them with long-term ill health. There is compelling evidence that some were given highly dangerous doses. And some say they were tricked into participating in the tests by being told they would be researching the common cold. ...

He's got that mouth agape in wonderment, and the joshing elbow, and the Ohhhhh-my-goodness, can you believe he said THAT?! look. Then he lays down the strut and the wig-waggle of the head, the jutting lower lip and, always, the bred-in-the-bone feel for a crowd. He's back and Harlem's got him. Bill Clinton, former president of the United States and a white "black" man -- in author Toni Morrison's memorable insistence -- came to the Harlem State Office Building today for a welcome-to-the-neighborhood party. Eyes puffy, white hair teased by the breeze, Clinton wears a black suit and a ...

Minister Takes Back Claim Condit Had Affair With His Daughter Hardware Store Worker Says 'It Was Her' Meanwhile, Cops Now Say Condit Won't Face A Polygraph AP Condit gestures toward a reporter Monday. (CBS) The FBI has concluded there is no truth to a minister's claim that his daughter had an affair with embattle Rep. Gary Condit, D-Calif., when she was 18. Otis "O.C." Thomas, a Pentecostal minister in Condit's hometown of Ceres, Calif., told the story to the FBI in May, then recanted it two weeks ago. "We've concluded that the allegations made by O.C. Thomas are unfounded," ...

IT ONLY TAKES THE RIGHT LEADER BY DAVID H. HACKWORTH In 1950, the U.S. military was kind of like Gary Cooper in "High Noon": surrounded by bad guys, outgunned and not at all up for a shootout. The Soviet Union was making ugly noises all along the Iron Curtain; Yugoslavia's Tito was threatening to take Trieste; Red China scarfed up Tibet. Then North Korea slashed south with a powerful army, smashing everything that stood in its way. Our armed forces were at less than quarter strength of what they'd been just four years before, when we took out Hitler and ...

As Audiences Discover Frugality, Pop Culture Starts Feeling a Chill By STEPHEN KINZER The New York TimesMore people are staying home and out of the theaters, and fewer are buying books, say experts, citing the mushy economy and high prices. CHICAGO, July 30 Business is good at the Cactus Bar in downtown Chicago, but only because it's bad elsewhere."People come in for a couple of drinks with their friends because they don't want to shell out for the big movies and concerts," said Naresh Nair, manager of the Cactus. "Dropping $50 for a night at the movies or $200 for ...

Republican leaders said the U.S. House will vote tomorrow to allow oil drilling in an Alaskan wildlife refuge, handing President George W. Bush a victory on his energy plan. ``For the first time in a very long time, we'll be able to crack the back of the radical environmentalists,'' said Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the third-ranking House Republican leader, whose duties include counting votes. Backing from International Brotherhood of Teamsters and other unions who support the Arctic drilling plan as a way to create jobs has turned the tide, DeLay said. The Republican-controlled House has bucked Bush on a ...

Moderate Republicans like Rep. Christopher Shays have proven to be an unexpected stone in Bush's shoe. But do they have the stomach to stand up to the GOP's bully boys? To some members of the House Republican caucus, it was a jarring sight. Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., looked like he was crying. It was July 12, in the midst of chaos over the campaign finance reform bill offered by Shays and Rep. Marty Meehan, D-Mass. Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, took to the floor to denounce the Shays-Meehan team for complaining about parliamentary hurdles the Republican leadership had set up ...

Distressing situation: Some lawyers need sensitivity training IT’S BAD ENOUGH Cynthia Golden’s car was stolen almost two weeks ago. It’s worse that although it has been recovered in good shape, she can’t have it back yet. That’s because the alleged thief’s defense attorney has yet to sign over the release of evidence – Golden’s 1996 red BMW. Golden has had to get herself – sans automobile – back and forth between her home in Manchester and Conway, where her car is. But no matter how much she pleads her case, Golden says, the Carroll County attorney cannot give her the ...

Beloved of God, Who Fear God and Love and Worship Him, You are very unique and strong in God's Kingdom. Be encouraged in your faithful, quiet walk with our Creator God and Savior, Jesus Christ. It's not our strength or abilities, but God's anointing on you because you want to know Him better and more fully every day. In short, you are in possession of "a heart for God." You do not have to be discouraged by supposedly good Christians around you who woefully fail their ministry mission. I know how disappointing it is when pastors or church ministry ...

Concerned Women for America: To: National Desk Contact: Rebecca L. Riggs of Concerned Women for America, 202-488-7000 WASHINGTON, July 31 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following was released today by Concerned Women for America: Led by Sen. James Jeffords (I-Vermont), a group of left-wing senators re-introduced the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA (S. 1276), a bill designed to give homosexual pressure groups enormous power in the workplace. "This bill is a lawyer's dream. It opens a Pandora's Box of vague legal questions, paving the way for a new set of 'rights' that directly threaten the rights of conscience," Knight said. "Under ...

Finally, a number of courts around the country are starting to set limits on the municipal use of eminent domain to favor one private property owner over another. Eminent domain, of course, is supposed to be used to seize private property (subject to payment of full compensation) only in the case of a true "public use" -- for roads and firehouses, things like that. Las Vegas has its own examples of abuse of this authority, as when private property downtown was seized and turned over to new private owners -- the Fremont Street Experience -- under the now-debunked theory that ...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Former President Clinton and Grammy-winning record producer Kenneth ''Babyface'' Edmonds are teaming up to fight AIDS in Africa, and Edmonds hopes to get Clinton to play his saxophone for the effort. Clinton recruited Edmonds to join him on the advisory board of the International AIDS Trust, an organization headed by Sandra Thurman, a former AIDS czar in his administration. ''This is something I hope will become an American cause,'' said Clinton. Edmonds, who praised Clinton as ''the coolest president that probably ever existed,'' will go on a fact-finding mission to Africa to visit some of ...

OMSK, Jul 31, 2001 -- (Agence France Presse) North Korea's reclusive leader Kim Jong-Il, traveling by train for an historic summit in Moscow, was expected Tuesday in the Siberian city of Omsk where he will attend a concert thrown in his honor and tour a tank factory. With all but a select handful of local journalists barred from his official itinerary, tight security was being prepared for the 59-year-old Stalinist dictator during his 24-hour stay in the city. After his arrival at 6:00 p.m. local time (1100 GMT) at Omsk railway station, where President Vladimir Putin's regional envoy Leonid Drachevsky ...

Under Environmental Pressure Companies Slowly Turning Green Reacting to last week’s conference on global warming in Bonn, officials from 186 countries are scrambling to enact tougher environmental laws leaving companies with little choice but to meet new carbon emissions limits or face penalties. (7/30/2001) Reacting to last week’s conference on global warming in Bonn, officials from 186 countries are scrambling to enact tougher environmental laws leaving companies with little choice but to meet new carbon emissions limits or face penalties. The deal reached in Bonn will allow the trading of greenhouse gas emissions whereby a company polluting below its limit ...

To: Libertarian bashers and your sympathizers To: Libertarian bashers and your sympathizers. My question to you is simple: You call yourselves "conservative" and say you believe in "limited" government and "freedom." Yet, you FIRMLY believe that YOU have some sort of right and even DUTY to LIMIT the FREEDOM of others who disagree with you. How do you reconcile the obvious disconnect here? How do you reconcile your desire for YOUR freedom with your mission of CONSTRICTING the equal freedom of others? How do you reconcile wanting YOURSELF to be treated as an adult with your refusal to treat ...

A quiet teenager spoke this week of the torment of knowing she has HIV/Aids after allegedly being raped by her father. Mathapelo, 15, wants to be a doctor one day. Will she live to realise her ambition? She looks up to the sky as if saying a prayer, and murmurs: "My father made us sick and he gave us Aids." People in rural North West province, where Mathapelo (not her real name) lives, shun people living with HIV/Aids. The burdened girl is worried about her mother, whom she hasn't seen for three months. Her mother now stays in an HIV/Aids ...

Deerfield man helps locate his buddies' remains When German artillery fire killed three of their friends on a winter day in 1944, Vernon Swanson and other GIs marked the makeshift graves with helmets, confident they would return for the bodies as soon as the shooting stopped. The soldiers didn't realize they had been swept up in the Battle of the Bulge, which would rage for six bloody weeks. They never made it back to the hastily dug gravesite. Swanson's friends were among the roughly 11,000 Americans killed in the fighting, some of World War II's deadliest. An additional 48,000 were ...

WASHINGTON - - The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) today announced the opening of an area office in San Juan, Puerto Rico - - the agency's first office outside the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. This move was necessitated by the steady increase of employment discrimination charges in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, regions which the new office will serve. These areas were heretofore served by the EEOC's New York District Office, whose discrimination caseload has swelled in recent years. Puerto Rico showed a population of 3.8 million in the 2000 census. The latest available ...