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NEW YORK (Reuters) - A reproductive rights group said on Wednesday it would appeal a judge's decision to dismiss its lawsuit challenging President Bush's policy of barring U.S. aid to groups that advocate abortion rights overseas. The Center for Reproductive Law and Policy (CRLP) sued Bush in June over what abortion rights activists call the ``global gag rule,'' arguing the policy censored people who advocate abortion rights but not those who are opposed to abortion. On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Preska in Manhattan threw out the suit, saying the New York-based nonprofit group's claims on free speech violations ...

Police were summoned to the Metroliner platform at New York's Penn Station last December after Sexgate cover girl Monica Lewinsky assaulted conservative Washington, D.C. attorney Victoria Toensing. The attack took place after Lewinsky spotted Toensing, who, along with her husband Joseph DiGenova, was a regular television commentator during the Clinton impeachment saga. Metroliner Porter Greg Doelger confirmed Tuesday that the former Clinton girlfriend slugged Toensing with her shopping bag after the two exchanged angry words. "I was putting (Toensing's) luggage on the train when all of a sudden she gets hit, and I didn't see the hit, but I heard ...

Backfence: Libraries are supposed to be bookish, not flashy James Lileks / Star Tribune Today the Minneapolis City Council begins to consider who'll build the new library. Consider this my input. Gentlepersons of the council, we must ask: What is our goal? 1. To build a good library. 2. To be bold, visionary, inventive and all the other words that we'll keep repeating when the thing is so far over budget that our bond rating plummets to quadruple Ds. 3. To make city councilpeople in other cities really, really jealous, and make them go pouting to their mayors: Minneapolis ...

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, four were plaintiffs in the case against the city of Wenatchee and Douglas County. In the only monetary award, jurors ordered the county to ...

Memo to Robert Mueller – Your Real Job at the FBI Phil BrennanWednesday, Aug. 1, 2001 Dear Mr. Director Designate: You've got a tough job ahead of you, once you get past all that preening and gasbaggery your senatorial inquisitors engage in during your confirmation hearings, but the worst of it won't be what the media and the honorable gasbags say they want you to do once you take over. They expect you to tinker with the machinery until you get it whirring along again. They want you to be the total executive who moves in, takes over and puts ...

Congressman: EPA Endorses Phased-in Clinton Administration Dredging Plan for Hudson River By Shannon McCaffrey Associated Press Writer Published: Aug 1, 2001 WASHINGTON (AP) - The Environmental Protection Agency has endorsed a Clinton administration proposal to dredge PCBs from the Hudson River but plans to implement the plan in stages, a spokesman for the agency said Wednesday. The $460 million plan, one of the largest dredging operations ever, is opposed by General Electric Co., which would have to pay for most of the cleanup. The company issued a statement saying the dredging would do more harm than good. GE discharged 1.3 ...

Relief Worker Arrested in Kosovo .c The Associated Press PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - A Dutch doctor, working in relief efforts in Kosovo, was arrested by U.N. police after she was found with a baby that was not hers, a police spokesman said Tuesday. Police suspected her of trying to take the baby out of the country, the spokesman said. He would not release either the woman's name or the name of the non-governmental agency for which she works. She was arrested Monday in Djakovica, about 40 miles west of Pristina after she was caught with the three-week-old baby. She ...

The opinion pages of more than 85 national newspapers have been fertile ground for syndicated columnist Charley Reese's decade-old war of words against Israel. Ironically, Reese was once a defender of Israel, faulting politicians and the mass media for precisely the same reporting transgressions he now commitssubstituting myths for fact and espousing baseless propaganda. A September 24, 1998 column entitled, "Israel: Technologically modern but politically medieval state," is characteristic of Reese's rhetoric, falsely claiming that Israel practices racial and ethnic discrimination. Reese's evidence for the charge? "A long conversation" he had with Azmi Bashara, an Israeli Arab Member of Knesset. ...

The computer records of last year's presidential vote count in Palm Beach County, Fla., have been wiped out, the Chicago Tribune said Wednesday. The newspaper said the files cannot be retrieved after they were dumped to make room for a March election for dozens of municipal offices. The files had showed how each ballot was punched in the presidential election, depriving scholars and journalists from analyzing the results of the presidential vote. "The data is especially important because Palm Beach was one of the key counties in the five-week recount process that ultimately sent President Bush to the White House," ...

It's been a busy year for the attitude police who seem to control American education these days. In March, conservative firebrand David Horowitz kindled blazes coast to coast by trying to buy ad space in college newspapers for a combative essay opposing reparations for slavery. Student papers that ran the ad faced vandalism, rowdy protests and demands for resignations. Several apologized for publishing the unpopular views. In May, a federal judge had to remind Woodbury High School officials that something called the First Amendment protects the expression of unapproved ideas. The school had banned a student from wearing a ...

Magazine editor Tina Brown has given the green light to a controversial new photo spread that will depict President Bush's daughters -- in jail, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned... Developing...

Hundreds of protesters staged a theatrical rally on Tuesday against President Bush's energy policies and a Republican bill pending in Congress that favors drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. With an inflatable oil derrick planted in front of the U.S. Capitol, leaders from environmental activist groups -- including the Sierra Club, Greenpeace and U.S Public Interest Research Group -- took turns denouncing Republicans for offering to provide the country more oil, coal and nuclear power instead of green-favored policies to cut back on fossil fuels. Speakers were flanked by dozens of mostly young protesters, some of whom wore antlers ...

Amidst the debate over embryonic stem cell research surprising and sad lines have been drawn. Staunch conservative and right to lifer Sen. Orin Hatch (R-Utah) for example has come out in support of killing human embryos for research for example. In thinking of this an analogy comes to mind.Suppose you were a commander of a unit in WWII who liberated a notorious death camp in central Europe. You find the furnaces, the mass graves, the barely living skeletons (and many more dead bodies)and the clear systematic horrors found and documented in such outposts of hell. After losing your lunch (and ...

Abolishing income tax is feasible By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Staff, 7/31/2001 TODAY, TAKING the first step toward what could be the most momentous ballot fight in Massachusetts history, a group of small-government activists led by two-time Libertarian Party candidate Carla Howell will file an initiative petition to abolish the state's personal income tax. If the attorney general approves the language and if the petitioners collect the necessary signatures, the measure will be on the state ballot in 2002. Fasten your seat belts. We may be in for a wild ride. If Massachusetts voters get a chance to abolish the income ...

Ronald Bailey originally proposed to demonstrate on the basis of science that human embryos are not human beings. In response to our critique, however, he has implicitly conceded the key scientific points establishing that human embryos are in fact nothing less than individual human beings in the earliest stages of their lives. Bailey now shifts ground to try to show by philosophical arguments that human individuals in the embryonic stage have no worth, dignity, or rights. But Bailey's philosophical arguments have no more cogency than do the putatively scientific ones by which he originally proposed to establish the moral ...

Firefighters struggling to contain a blaze in central Washington State that ultimately killed four of their own were hampered in their efforts by a federal policy to protect endangered fish, Fox News has learned. Firefighters were unable to douse the deadly fire in Okanogan National Forest in Winthrop, Wash., in July because of delays in granting permission for fire-fighting helicopters to use water from nearby streams and rivers protected by the Endangered Species Act, according to sources close to the fire. Firefighters Tom L. Craven, 30, Karen L. Fitzpatrick, 18, Devin A Weaver, 21, and Jessica L. Johnson, 19, ...

In the June number of The New Criterion, I mentioned some doubts expressed by Peter Oborne in the London Spectator about the great wallow of press coverage that accompanied the deaths of two prominent British journalists earlier this year. It seemed to me then that the self-absorption and self-importance of the American journalistic “community” outdid anything yet seen on the other side of the Atlantic, but I was as unprepared as anyone else for the extraordinary gush of sentiment that greeted the death of Katherine Graham—and especially the shameless sycophancy from the writers and editors of The Washington Post, a ...

More Energy Advisors May Have Conflicts (California of Course), Disclosure: Two officials of a Pasadena consulting firm bought large amounts of Edison International stock just before landing contract with the state. By JEFFREY L. RABIN and MIGUEL BUSTILLO and RICH CONNELL TIMES STAFF WRITERS, August 1 2001 Newly released documents show that two officials of a Pasadena-based energy consulting company bought large amounts of Edison International stock before they were hired by the Davis administration to help rescue the state's beleaguered utilities. Vikram Budhraja, president of the Electric Power Group, and Mark Skowronski, an employee of the firm, bought multiple ...

Former Army post may be littered with live munitions Associated Press TYLER, Texas (AP) - Government officials say they don't want to alarm, but conceded that undetonated munitions may be buried near Tyler on land that the Defense Department once operated as Camp Fannin, a World War II Army training base. Residences, businesses and the University of Texas Health Center at Tyler now occupy the more than 14,000 acres. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says 3,600 acres - more than 25 percent of the total acreage - was used for live-fire training. Among the munitions that might be ...

Gwen Patton remembers feeling helpless. At a vigil for Christian Paige, a transsexual woman murdered in Chicago, she recalls standing by, feeling very small, as she often did at such events. "I had always despaired at the vulnerability of the gay community, and felt unsafe and helpless, and not quite sure what I could do," Patton said. All of this changed for the Jeffersonville resident two months ago when she realized there was a way she could minimize her fears, and protect herself and help others feel the same way. All at once, under the advisement of longtime friend, Doug ...