Free Republic

Washington, July 31 (Bloomberg) -- Two months after Democrats took control of the Senate, President George W. Bush met with Republican senators on Capitol Hill in an effort to unify them behind his energy, trade and health agenda. ``Now that we don't hold the gavel, we will have to work harder,'' said Senator Larry Craig of Idaho, chairman of the Republican caucus. Democrats took over the Senate on June 5 after Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords bolted from Bush's Republican Party to become an independent who votes with Democrats. Since then, Democrats under Majority Leader Tom Daschle have dealt Bush ...

BOSTON — In 1998, millionaire businessman Ron Unz spent about $750,000 to successfully push a ballot question to dismantle California's bilingual education program. Now Unz is bringing his campaign to Massachusetts, the state with the oldest bilingual education law. And he's meeting early opposition. Unz's proposal, which he hopes to put on the 2002 ballot, would require children who are not fluent in English be placed in intensive language classes to teach them English within a year. The proposal, which also declares English "the common public language of the United States of America and the commonwealth of Massachusetts," would give parents the ...

Washington, July 31 (Bloomberg) -- National political party committees raised more than $173 million in the first six months of this year, nearly double the roughly $90 million they raised during the same period in 1997, the start of the last non- presidential election cycle. Lawmakers also have been busy. House Republican Whip Tom DeLay's political action committee, for example, took in $718,000 and spent almost $910,000 -- about triple what it raised at this point in 1997 and more than four times what it paid out. ``You would expect it,'' Trevor Potter, the former chairman of the Federal ...

W A S H I N G T O N, July 31 — Less than a year after winning one of the most controversial political contests in American history, President Bush today signaled his support for principles of election reform advocated by two former commanders in chief, but stopped short of endorsing their specific recommendations. "Our American democracy is really an inspiration to the world. Yet, the work of improving it is never finished," the president said at a Rose Garden ceremony this morning. After formally receiving the report ( Part One,  Part Two) of the National Commission on Federal ...

WASHINGTON, July 31, 2001 CBS/AP (CBS) President Bush, who still faces stinging criticism over the way he won last year's election, gave a lukewarm embrace Tuesday to voting reforms recommended by former Presidents Carter and Ford, calling their proposals only guidelines. Mr. Bush, casting himself as an election reformer, accorded Mr. Carter a Rose Garden ceremony to unveil the report by the National Commission on Federal Election Reform, which he led with Mr. Ford. But Mr. Bush avoided taking a stand on specific proposals, including making election day a national holiday, restoring voting rights to felons and allowing voters ...

Tensions flare inside Arafat's organization By RICHARD SALE, Terrorism Correspondent NEW YORK, July 31 (UPI) -- Clashes between rival factions in the Palestinian Authority have fueled violence in the West Bank and Gaza, U.S. intelligence sources say. Recent inter-Palestinian fighting broke out in the town of Nablus and elsewhere, causing the death of two people, and 11 injuries. "It started for reasons not connected with politics but with crime," a U.S. source said. The clashes were between former Tunisian "exiles" -- members of the Palestinian Liberation Organization who had been in Tunis with Chairman Yasser Arafat, including members of ...

From http://www.defenselink.mil/dodgc/lrs/docs/test00-05-26Lieberman.htm Statement of Robert J. Lieberman Assistant Inspector General for Auditing Hearing On Export Licensing Processes for Dual-Use Commodities May 26, 2000 Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee: I appreciate the opportunity to discuss the Federal Government’s export licensing processes for militarily sensitive, dual-use commodities and technology. As you know, in response to a request from this Committee in August 1998, Inspector General teams from the Commerce, Defense, Energy, State, and Treasury Departments and the Central Intelligence Agency reviewed a series of issues related to export controls for both dual-use items and munitions. The results were contained in ...

FOXNews.com A State Agency With the Power to 'Kidnap With Impunity' Tuesday, July 31, 2001 By Wendy McElroy For Heidi and Neil Howard, giving birth to a terminally ill baby seemed punishment enough. But that was before the Massachusetts Department of Social Services stepped into their lives. The department came knocking at the door to their home in the form of a "home visitor" sent by the hospital when the Howards' first baby girl was born with terminal health problems. According to the Massachusetts News, the "home visitor" was a social worker who found the home in disorder. The kitchen ...

Washington, July 31 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush, who won the White House after five weeks of lawsuits and court rulings about ballot design and voter intentions, today endorsed a report urging state and federal governments to make it easier for people to vote and for their votes to be counted. The commission, led by former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, called for uniform national voting standards and federal funding to help states improve ballot-counting systems and equipment. The group also urges news organizations to wait until polls close in all 48 continental states before predicting the ...

In 2004, Americans may very well be voting on Veterans Day, taking a federal holiday to choose their next president. It would be a radical departure for many people who now stand in long lines before or after work - or who don't find the time to vote at all. The holiday idea is one of several bold recommendations made to President Bush yesterday by a bipartisan commission headed by former Presidents Ford and Carter. The report is the most ambitious attempt yet to fix a system that last fall took 36 days and a decision by the US ...

Still facing stinging criticism over the way he won last year's election, President Bush is making his first public moves to improve the nation's voting system, accepting a long-awaited report Tuesday from former Presidents Carter and Ford.Bush, hoping to cast himself as an election reformer, planned to embrace the broad principles of reform outlined in the report while avoiding taking a stand on specific recommendations. "The president sees this as a foundation for reform," said spokesman Scott McClellan.The study calls for restoring voting rights to felons and allowing voters challenged by poll workers to cast provisional ballots anyway. The ...

WASHINGTON — Local officials are sacrificing individual civil liberties to generate government revenues, some U.S. lawmakers charged on Tuesday. Led by House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, some in Congress are investigating the costs and benefits of the "photo image enforcement” mechanisms installed by many localities.  The devices are cameras that are installed at traffic intersections to take pictures of the license plates of automobiles that are speeding or running red lights.  Violations recorded by the devices usually result in ticket citations.  The cameras are in place at intersections in at least 45 cities in the country today. Critics of the ...

Seeing Red Over Traffic Light Cameras House Committee Holds Hearing On The Use Of Red Light Cameras Supporters Say The System Makes Intersections Safer Opponents Say Big Brother-Type Cameras Have Potential For Abuse WASHINGTON, July 31, 2001 AP / CBS (CBS) A House committee debated the merits of cameras designed to nab red light runners Tuesday, with arguments on the fatalities caused by offenders competing with charges that the cameras intrude on privacy. Republicans sharply criticized the use of cameras to catch motorists who run stop lights at the hearing while some Democrats said Congress should keep out of ...

Conflicting reports on possibility of patients' rights dealWASHINGTON (CNN) -- A patients' bill of rights may indeed be considered in the House of Representatives by the end of this week, but key operatives on both sides of the issue would present vastly different odds on the probability of that debate actually happening.The White House, for its part, seemed confident Tuesday that action on the bill was imminent."I think it is fair to say that the nation is on the threshold of having a patients' bill of rights that can be signed into law," said press secretary Ari Fleischer. "There ...

WASHINGTON, July 31, 2001 CBS (CBS) The Patients' Bill of Rights, which was pronounced dead last week, has suddenly come to life, reports CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent Bob Schieffer. The White House and key congressmen are scrambling to find a compromise version the president can sign, perhaps as soon as the end of the week. Visiting Capitol Hill early Tuesday afternoon for a previously scheduled meeting with Republicans, Mr. Bush said, "We're working on a patients' bill of rights that will benefit patients not necessarily trial lawyers." In fact, the compromise being worked on isn't that different from ...

When the polls close on November sixth, it may turn out that the two people with the greatest influence on the General Election were men who were virtually unknown in New Jersey political circles just a few months ago: LARRY BARTALS, the Princeton University professor who helped make the legislative redistricting process into a goldmine for New Jersey Democrats, and JOHN J. MYERS, the incoming Archbishop of Newark, whose conservatism could help swing crucial Catholic voters toward the Republican gubernatorial candidate. POPE JOHN PAUL II named Myers, the Bishop of Peoria, Illinois, as Newark’s new Archbishop, ending months of speculation ...

HotlineScoop.com | Tuesday, July 31, 2001 The Sacred Cows By Charlie Cook he Republican Party's relationship with the Hispanic community has not been a pretty sight in recent years. In recent presidential elections, the GOP's share of the Hispanic vote has ranged from a low of 21 percent (Robert Dole, 1996) to a high of 37 percent (Ronald Reagan, 1984). President Bush pulled 35 percent last year. As governor of California, Pete Wilson seemed to do everything in his power to alienate the considerable Hispanic population in the Golden State, leaving the state GOP with a cross to bear ...

THE owners of a South African fast-food outlet have apologised to former president Nelson Mandela, the country's ruling party and the public for using his likeness in its logo, a report said Monday. Independent e.tv television news said the owners of Nelson's Chicken and Gravy Land wrote to Mandela to request a meeting and said they had not intended any disrepect by using a cartoon-type drawing of his face to market their restaurant. This comes after Mandela's lawyer Ismail Ayob told the media criminal charges would be brought against the outlet. Ayob said using a former president's image without ...

NEW YORK (AP) - A judge on Tuesday tossed out a lawsuit challenging the policy of President George W. Bush's administration to withhold funding from groups that advocate abortion rights overseas. U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska ruled that the free speech violations claimed by the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy ''are not concrete and imminent but are conjectural.'' The suit by the New York City-based nonprofit had asked the court to issue an injunction against the funding ban and declare the policy unconstitutional. Civil lawyers with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan had filed a motion seeking dismissal ...

None. See note below.