Free Republic

Newly sworn citizens drawn to work for INS Ray Delgado, Chronicle Staff Writer Just minutes after raising her right hand and pledging allegiance to her new country, Luisa Calderon used her status as a new U.S. citizen to apply for a job at the agency that granted her dream. Calderon, a 30-year-old native of Nicaragua who lives in San Francisco's Excelsior District, wants to work for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and she picked up the necessary job applications on her way out of the ceremony this morning that made her a U.S. citizen. "I've always wanted to work for ...

SALT LAKE CITY, UT--The mother of a boy who scored the winning run in a baseball game was knocked unconscious by angry parents from the losing team, police said. After her 15-year-old son's run in the youth league game, two women allegedly poked Cindy Morrison with an umbrella, hit her with a baby stroller, and punched her in the face. Morrison was unconscious when police arrived, and was treated at a hospital for scratches, bruises, and puffiness around both eyes.

Traditional Values Coalition Opinion Editorial For publication on or after Wednesday, August 1, 2001   Hate Crime Law Creates ‘Animal Farm’ Justice System   Andrea Lafferty Executive Director, Traditional Values Coalition Washington, DC – Napoleon, the dictator pig in Orwell’s "Animal Farm" would surely squeal with approval of Ted Kennedy’s hate crime bill (S. 625)—just passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee by a 12-7 vote. Two Republicans (DeWine of Ohio and Specter of Pennsylvania) voted with the liberals on this dangerous, unjust legislation. Napoleon would be pleased with Kennedy’s bill because it will centralize more police power in ...

Hamas, Palestinian Authority Reactions Reacting to the deaths of six Hamas operatives, senior Hamas official Abed el-Aziz Rantisi announced that the terror organization was targeting a host of Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer. Palestinian television is broadcasting direct calls by Palestinian Arab leaders for attacks on Jews throughout Israel. In a statement made to a French news agency, Arafat-controlled Fatah threatened American and Jewish targets in Israel and abroad. Anti-Israel demonstrations took place in PLO-controlled Shechem and Hevron during the night. Arab residents threw stones at PA buildings ...

(CP) - Comedian Rick Mercer blew his cover with U.S. television viewers Tuesday night by appearing on ABC's Nightline to discuss his popular shtick called Talking to Americans. The program featured a montage of video clips showing Mercer as a roving Canadian reporter who gets unsuspecting Americans to congratulate Canada for finally legalizing insulin, for instance, or to agree that the seal slaughter in Saskatchewan should be stopped. The Talking to Americans segment is a regular feature on CBC's This Hour Has 22 Minutes and even spawned a two-hour special this year. Host Ted Koppel jokingly described Mercer as an ...

OHRID, Macedonia (AP) -- A Macedonian police officer died early Wednesday in a gun attack by ethnic Albanian rebels, while internationally mediated peace talks continued in an effort to end five months of conflict, state radio reported. On the outskirts of the tense and mostly ethnic Albanian-populated northwestern city of Tetovo, militants opened fire on a police checkpoint, killing an officer. It increased the death toll on the government side to 41 since clashes began in February, the radio said. In what appeared to be the worst blow to rebels' ranks so far, five senior officers of the ethnic Albanian ...

Race for Election 2004 Money Under Way By SHARON THEIMER, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - While no Democrat has announced a presidential run in 2004, several high-profile lawmakers are already hitting key primary states, new campaign finance reports show. The reports filed with the Federal Election Commission (news - web sites) reflected fund raising - and profile-raising - appearances around the country from January through June. The early trips help potential presidential contenders look credible as national candidates, said Sam Kernell, a political science professor at the University of California-San Diego. ``Each of them is trying to signal ...

A San Antonio woman, who worked for nationally known telephone psychic Miss Cleo, claims that she can prove the clairvoyant is a fraud. A woman, who asked not to be identified, told KSAT 12 News that Miss Cleo is just an actress. "They told me she was," the woman said. "She's just an actress. She doesn't even read cards. 16153 is her extension, if you call. You won't get through to her. You'll get another reader." The anonymous woman said that she quit working as a call-taker for the company Access Resource Services that represents Miss Cleo. She said that ...

Man in 20’s attacks, stabs to death five passerbys in Sashiki, Okinawa August 1, 7:15 p.m. (JST) A man in his 20’s armed with a knife attacked passerbys on a road and vacant lot in Sakura-Sho, Okinawa Prefecture. Five people were taken to the hospital with stab wounds in the stomach. Haruko Shiroaida (age 68) from the same town died soon thereafter. Another four people suffered stab wounds (and presumably remain unidentified pending notification of next of kin). The Nahahara police department reports that a man fitting the description of the attacker was detained about 8:15 p.m. in the ...

Welcome to BaseCamp In the world of mountaineering, BaseCamp is where a climb begins. It's where the big tents get set up; where the food and fuel are stored. It's the fallback point in case of bad weather - the place everyone agrees to gather. So it is at FreeRepublic. Thanks to JR, we immigrants from TOS have been blessed with this space to launch our individual summit bids on the Mt. Everest of the world's political websites. If you run into a storm on the Forum, fall back to BaseCamp ! Stock up on nourishment, advice, or asbestos ...

Few outside Russia pay attention to who's getting elected in the boonies. They'd better wake up. At the grass roots, Russia is going communist again. In two key regions of the Russian Federation, communist candidates were elected to the governorships Sunday. No fluke elections, they are of enormous importance, politically and geographically, for these reasons: • They tipped the scales. Only 10 years after the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 45 of the 89 regions of the Russian federation are now in the hands of Communist Party governors. • Within Russia, that is not considered startling. With ...

BEIJING, Aug 1 (AFP) - China insists it is exercising restraint in the dispute over the South China Sea and that it will keep an open mind in viewing proposals for a code of conduct, ASEAN chief Rodolfo Severino said after meeting officials here. "The Chinese assured me that they have been exercising self-restraint and that they have taken no action in the South China Sea since discussions on the code of conduct started," said Severino, who was on his first visit to China since becoming secretary general of the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). "There are now new ...

WASHINGTON - The chocolate industry and its allies are mounting an intense lobbying campaign to fight off legislation to require "slave free" labels for their products. The proposed legislation is a response to a Knight Ridder Newspapers investigation that found some boys as young as 11 are sold or tricked into slavery to harvest cocoa beans in Ivory Coast, a West African nation that supplies 43 percent of U.S. cocoa. The State Department estimates that as many as 15,000 child slaves work on Ivory Coast's cocoa, cotton and coffee farms. The House of Representatives passed the labeling initiative, 291-115, in ...

Psalm 139: 13 For You formed me in my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. 14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret.

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Australia moves into damage control mode after blast from Beijing     LatelineNews: 2001-8-1] SYDNEY - Australia has been forced to try to placate China after it reacted angrily to moves to build a new regional security alliance with the United States, officials admitted Wednesday. Within 24 hours of the idea being publicised by US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Monday, Canberra was in full diplomatic damage control mode trying to prevent a rerun of a row that almost fractured Sino-Australian relations four years ago. But it was too late to prevent state-run media in Beijing attacking Australia for ...

Mrs.LoneGOPinCT's mother is going into surgery tomorrow to have a cancerous tumor in her breast removed. The doctor thinks that they caught it very early on and that it probably hasn't spread. They will not know for sure until they get in and check. She will be injected with some tracer dye tomorrow morning to see if it has spread to her lymph nodes or not. She is only 54 (8/2 is her birthday) and discovered the lump by chance. In fact the doctor couldn't find anything on the first exam and nothing on the MRI appeared out of the ...

Before the Thirty Mile Fire turned deadly July 10, dispatchers delayed sending a helicopter to drop water on the flames because they were unsure whether they needed permission to draw water from a river containing threatened fish, the U.S. Forest Service said yesterday. Fourteen firefighters and two hikers were trapped late that afternoon by the fire along the Chewuch River in Okanogan County. Four of the firefighters died. One critically burned firefighter remains in the hospital. Yesterday, Rep. Scott McInnis, R-Colo., chairman of the House Resources' forest subcommittee, suggested that concerns about Endangered Species Act protections may have contributed to ...

UPI’s Capital Comment for July 31, 2001 WASHINGTON, July 31 (UPI) -- United Press International’s daily roundup of notable news and events shaping politics and public policy in Washington and the world. Mirror image? -- It is anyone’s guess as to which political philosophy dominates cyberspace. Given the tremendous success of Free Republic.com, the organization/Web site, it was only a matter of time before the left set up a parallel entity. Thanks to "Eye on the Right," left-wingers bitter over the Bush win who need a place to vent now have a place to go. Anyone who logs on to ...

Commentary February 1998 Was There a Big Bang? David Berlinski SCIENCE IS a congeries of great quests, and cosmology is the grandest of the great quests. Taking as its province the universe as a whole, cosmology addresses the old, the ineradicable questions about space and time, nature and destiny. It is not a subject for the tame or the timid. For the first half of the 20th century, cosmology remained a discipline apart, as a clutch of talented but otherworldly physicists peeped inconclusively at a universe they could barely see: Albert Einstein, of course; the Dutch mathematician Willem de ...