Free Republic

ASHINGTON, July 31 — Short of votes to push through President Bush's top trade priority, Republican leaders of the House said today that they would delay until fall the effort to give the president broad authority to negotiate new trade agreements. The decision was a setback for the president, but it was not unexpected. While Republicans had held out the hope that they could act this week, no bill has yet been written in committee on the contentious issue that sharply divides the Congress. And Republican leaders have devoted most of their attention and muscle to the president's energy ...

BEIJING, Aug 1 Asia Pulse - Japan's Hitachi Digital Media Group has recently announced the establishment of a new projection TV company in Fujian Province, east China, to cater to the rising demand in China. The new company, named Hitachi (Fujian) Digital Media Co., Ltd, is scheduled for operation in August. Total investment will reach 4 billion Japanese yen, of which, Hitachi Group will have a 51 per cent stake. The other two investors, Fujian Province Electronics Information Group and Japan's Toei Kaisha, Ltd., have committed to 47 per cent and 2 per cent respectively. Just days ago, the Hitachi ...

Name Bull Street Library after Thomas By Tom Barton Savannah Morning News Earlier this summer, I took my two children to the Bull Street Library to stock up on books that were on their summer reading lists for school. So, it seemed, did a jillion other parents. That meant the next trip was to a local bookstore, where they found what they needed. I don't mind spending money on books. It's a better investment than new golf balls, which eventually wind up at the bottom of ponds or deep in the woods. Still, I had to wonder: If library officials ...

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) - Jurors said the city of Wenatchee and county authorities were negligent in their investigation of a child sex-abuse case, and ordered Douglas County to pay $3 million to two plaintiffs. Allegations that Pentecostal Rev. Robert "Roby" Roberson ran a child-sex ring out of his church were discredited after many accusers recanted their stories. All 18 people sent to prison have been released on appeal or through post-conviction plea agreements. Of the 43 people arrested in 1994-1995, six were plaintiffs in the case against the city of Wenatchee and Douglas County. In the only monetary award, jurors ...

MIDI - HAS ANYBODY SEEN MY GAL 502, blocks your view…and not one pushup can he do Can anybody find Nadler’s neck? Loves late night cakes and pies and shakes At bedtime they never cause belly aches Can anybody find Nadler’s neck? The guy runs out of breath to answer the phone It’s quite a hoot Let’s place our bets…would girls go wild To see him in his birthday suit A supersize he’ll wolf right down Some day he’ll eat a rural town Can anybody find Nadler’s neck? (musical interlude – 6 lines) He is out of breath…there’s that ...

ROME, Jul 31, 2001 (Itar-Tass) -- Israeli and Palestinian experts have worked out a document on Tuesday on principles of bilateral settlement of the Middle East crisis. The experts met in conference behind closed doors on the outskirts of Pisa without notifying the press. The conference was held on the initiative of the Italian Centre for Peace in the Middle East, Arab Scientific Society, the Fund of Tel-Aviv Economic cooperation and under the auspices of the Italian Foreign Ministry. The document was drawn on the eve of a visit to Rome by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat who begins consultations ...

ASHINGTON — At a recent party held by the Costa Rican ambassador, a group of Reagan administration veterans chuckled over the fierce opposition their names have stirred since President Bush selected them for senior positions responsible for Latin America and human rights. The officials, who worked together in the State Department during the bitter policy fights over Central America in the 1980's, included Elliott Abrams, a former assistant secretary; Otto J. Reich, the former director of the office of public diplomacy; and Roger Noriega, who was an aide in the Latin affairs bureau. During the Reagan era the three ...

ASHINGTON, July 31 — Risking a presidential veto, the Senate today rejected a Republican proposal to limit emergency farm aid to $5.5 billion, pushing ahead with a Democratic measure worth $2 billion more. The White House warned last week that the Democratic bill was unacceptable and that senior advisers would recommend that President Bush veto it. The administration urged that the Senate instead approve the Republican bill, which was passed by the House last month. But Democrats, led by Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, argued that the larger amount was necessary to finance programs for smaller farmers who are ...

ith President Bush continuing to oppose international or domestic restrictions on gases linked to global warming, among the losers are energy companies that favor government action and have already spent millions on voluntary efforts to cut emissions. Given little credence by the White House despite large expenditures on lobbying and longstanding ties to administration officials, these companies are shifting their focus to Congress, where several bills that would impose emissions restrictions are being debated or prepared. But in that effort, the companies face formidable opposition from other energy concerns and trade groups that are fighting against any limits. "There's ...

ASHINGTON, July 31 — Without explicitly acknowledging that anything went awry in Florida's presidential election last year, President Bush today accepted and endorsed some of the general principles in a blue-ribbon panel's report on overhauling the nation's election system. "I accept their report and recommend the key principles drawn from the report as guidelines for meaningful reform," Mr. Bush said at a Rose Garden ceremony in his most extensive public comments to date on the need to upgrade the system that elevated him to president. His spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said later that Mr. Bush embraced the report "warmly and ...

"M.L. King Murder A Government Plot," Says Former CIA Participant. "I was part of it." "Raoul" Identified as FBI Agent by Pat Shannan - shannapat@worldnet.att.net New evidence has surfaced in the 1968 Martin Luther King murder case. It is supplied by an "insider" who claims to have been part of a "hit team" that had come out of the "Missouri Mafia" headquartered in the town of Caruthersville, a small town in the bootheel section of that state. In a yet-to-be-published book, former County Deputy Jim Green reveals his assigned role in the conspiracy, the name of the actual trigger ...

ASHINGTON, July 31 — After an impassioned debate that pitted the promise of cures for disease against the horror of making babies that are genetic replicas of adults, the House of Representatives voted by a wide margin today to ban cloning, not only for reproduction but also for medical research. The 265-to-162 vote came after lawmakers rejected an alternative measure that would have prohibited making babies by cloning while leaving open the door for "therapeutic cloning" experiments in which scientists would create embryos that could be used to treat disease. Therapeutic cloning is legal in Britain. The bill the ...

Rev. Peterson and I have called for a general boycott of CBS Media. The reason for the boycott is simply CBS has a lack of respect for reporting the news and has engaged in partisan reporting of the news. Dan Rather in a recent interview on The Don Imus Show made a remark that some of us in the black community have found offensive. CBS has ignored repeated demands that Rather explain himself and retract that statement. Rev Peterson and I are calling upon all groups to boycott CBS because CBS has a long track record of offending women blacks ...

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer yesterday moved to allay fears of a new US-led Asian security alliance, saying it would not be worthwhile if China felt threatened. Such an alliance, composed of Japan and South Korea as well as Australia and the United States, was discussed during talks in Canberra on Monday between Australian ministers and top US officials including Secretary of State Colin Powell. Mr Powell, who attended the talks along with Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, said after the meeting that the US backed the plan. "Since we have such common interests it might be wise to find ways ...

August 1, 2001 Welfare Reform Worked By June O'Neill. Ms. O'Neill, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, is a professor of economics at Baruch College, City University of New York. Five years ago today Congress put its final seal on welfare reform. Critics feared the worst. Defenders of the status quo were alarmed that lawmakers had not only imposed a work requirement on recipients, but restricted welfare benefits to five years. "We know how welfare reform will turn out," warned an article in the New Republic after President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. ...

TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Michelle MalkinQUICK LINKS: HOME | NEWS | OPINION | RIGHTPAGES | CHAT | WHAT'S NEWtownhall.comMichelle Malkin (back to story)August 1, 2001MTV: No thanks for the memories "Gross." That was the reaction my high school friends and I had to one of the very first music videos we ever watched on MTV. It was the 1984 debut of Madonna's "Like a Virgin." We gasped in disbelief as she writhed on the ground and panted shamelessly about being "touched for the very first time." Madonna repeated her solo porn act during an MTV concert in which she sang ...

TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Paul GreenbergQUICK LINKS: HOME | NEWS | OPINION | RIGHTPAGES | CHAT | WHAT'S NEWtownhall.comPaul Greenberg (back to story)August 1, 2001Eudora Welty: a dissentI am sitting here thinking of Eudora Welty and wondering what is wrong with me. The whole world seems to have declared a day of mourning for a great author, there is a front-page obit in The New York Times, and all the right people are quoted as saying all the right things. And yet I don't believe I ever found any of her fiction particularly great. I must have read quite a ...

HE HAGUE, July 31 — A former Bosnian Serb police chief who was arrested after being kidnapped by bounty hunters and turned over to NATO troops was handed one of the lightest sentences yet by the United Nations war crimes tribunal today, in part because he had pleaded guilty to most charges and pledged to cooperate with the court. Stevan Todorovic, 44, the former police chief for the town of Bosanski Samac, was found guilty of persecution of non-Serbs and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Early in his trial, he pleaded guilty to a range of war crimes ...

TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Jack KempQUICK LINKS: HOME | NEWS | OPINION | RIGHTPAGES | CHAT | WHAT'S NEWtownhall.comJack Kemp (back to story)August 1, 2001The principles of Leon Sullivan Africa is beset by problems: AIDS, malaria, unemployment, undereducation and poverty. Liberal democracy is only in its infancy in but a few nations. But a problem is an opportunity for resolution, and no one knew this better than the Rev. Leon Sullivan, a great human rights activists who passed away last April. Known as the "Lion of Zion" by his 6,000 parishioners at the Zion Baptist Church in Philadelphia and those ...

August 1, 2001 A Conference of Victims By Lionel Shriver, an editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal Europe When Mary Robinson and Amnesty International caution that a liberal agenda has gone too far, you know it's gone off the deep end. Yet both the United Nations high commissioner for human rights and the London-based human-rights group warned last week that the U.N. conference opposing racism slated for Aug. 31 to Sept. 7 in Durban, South Africa, could be derailed by extremists. Now into a third and unscheduled two-week session necessitated by unresolved bickering, planning meetings in Geneva ...