Free Republic

ASHINGTON, Aug. 1 — The Senate approved a $60 billion transportation bill today that President Bush has threatened to veto because it would block his plan to allow Mexican trucks to have widespread access to American roads beginning next year. The White House has said that the restrictions in the Senate bill involving Mexican trucks violate the eight- year-old North American Free Trade Agreement and endanger Mr. Bush's goal of improved diplomatic and trade ties with Mexico. The otherwise uncontested spending bill, which would underwrite the Transportation Department and other transportation-related agencies in the next fiscal year, was approved ...

SCHOOL FOR SCANDALTeacher's Pets Secret documents show that the National Education Association has become the Democratic Party. BY WILLIAM MCGURN Thursday, August 2, 2001 12:01 a.m. EDT Those of us who have long dismissed the National Education Association as a tool of the Democratic Party have been badly mistaken. Apparently it's just the opposite. As documents now sealed under a judge's order indicate, it's the Democratic Party that is the tool of the NEA. That, at least, is the gist of a report from the Federal Election Commission, all the more tantalizing because the object of its investigation was ...

ASHINGTON, Aug. 1 — The Democratic leader of the Senate today declared himself "very uncomfortable" with human cloning even for research purposes as he struggled to turn the debate over science and politics back to embryonic stem cell research, which he and many other Democrats support. The Democratic leader, Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, spoke a day after the House overwhelmingly approved a broad ban on human cloning for reproduction and for medical research. The House acted as President Bush faced a quandary over whether to permit federal financing for studies on stem cells derived from human embryos. ...

ICTY Spokeswoman Criticizes Croatia's Catholic ChurchZAGREB, Jul 26, 2001 -- (Agence France Presse) A spokeswoman for the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague has condemned Croatian bishops for a recent declaration that accuses the court of unfairly criticizing Croatia's role in the 1991-95 Serb-Croat war. Almost a third of Croatia was occupied by Serbs after Zagreb declared independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1991 and many Croatians see their country as a victim of the conflict, not an aggressor. The declaration by the Croatian bishops' conference commission insulted "both the international law and international justice in general", spokeswoman Florence ...

ASHINGTON, Aug. 1 — The House Armed Services Committee today approved a measure that would prohibit the Navy from closing its firing range on the island of Vieques until it found a replacement that was as good or better, a move that Democrats said could keep the Puerto Rican training site open for many years. The Bush administration has called for closing the Vieques range by May 2003. But Navy officials have said it will be difficult to find a site as good as Vieques for amphibious-assault training involving land, sea and air forces. The officials have suggested that ...

ASHINGTON, Aug. 1 — Scientists at the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine knew they were treading on uncertain moral ground when they proposed mixing eggs and sperm to create human embryos for experiments. So, they say, they consulted three separate panels of ethics experts for advice. After deep discussion, institute officials say, the experts approved the work. But just who were those ethicists? The Jones Institute, a private fertility clinic in Norfolk, Va., whose embryo experiments have drawn widespread condemnation, declines to name them. "When people signed on to participate in the ethics review, that was not with the ...

How do civilizations fall? Islamic thinkers had an image for it. Consider a civilization based upon a court in a thriving city— Baghdad, for example. Arts and the intellect flourish. But over several generations, as the great Islamic philosopher of the fourteenth century Ibn Khaldun put it, the civilized become decadent with luxury. They lose their sharpness and think only of the good and the beautiful. And then some tribe of fierce Bedouin, smelling out weakness, come thundering in from the desert and storm the city. As barbarians, they do not understand the usages of civilization. They stable their horses ...

ASHINGTON, Thursday, Aug. 2 — In a major legislative victory for Republicans and the White House, the House voted Wednesday night to allow drilling in an Alaskan refuge as it passed a sweeping energy plan that would encourage energy production, promote conservation and modestly raise fuel efficiency standards. During a day and night of debate, Republican leaders managed to preserve major parts of President Bush's energy plan while defeating environmentalists on two crucial issues. In the most dramatic vote of the evening, the House voted to allow oil and gas drilling on a 2,000-acre swath of the Arctic National Wildlife ...

AN FRANCISCO, Aug. 1 — At 21 years old, Shanika Long is giving up on San Francisco, the city she was born and reared in and would rather still call home. Her mother tells her of a time when blacks owned certain parts of town, when the Fillmore District, for one, was a vibrant neighborhood with, she recalls, "a black-power- type mentality." But, like the Fillmore's nickname, Harlem West, those days are history. And Ms. Long, a clerk at the Labor Ready agency for temporary workers who has a 3-year-old daughter, says she wants to live where black people can ...

ALLON, Nev., Aug. 1 — Ben Colvin's family ranching roots in Nevada date back to before the Civil War. Jack Vogt started ranching in California just after World War II with a single cow and wound up with a large herd in south-central Nevada. But as a long-running dispute over the two men's refusal to pay grazing fees to the federal government comes to a bitter climax, with about 200 of their cattle impounded at a livestock auction yard here and an antifederal group protesting just outside, federal officials decline to describe either man as a rancher. "They are ...

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - State officials in California are looking at the possibility of getting ethanol from Brazil, fearful that prices for the product in the Midwest may be too high. "It seems like good business sense to look at all our supply options," said Pat Perez, manager of the fuels office of the California Energy Commission. "The more suppliers you have, the more competitive the market." The notion of importing ethanol from Brazil perplexes the Renewable Fuels Association, which represents the U.S. ethanol industry. "What they're doing is discouraging an industry in their own state, and it just ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans on a House of Representatives committee on Wednesday beat back Democratic efforts to cut spending on missile defense programs, giving President Bush (news - web sites) his first political victory on his top defense priority.On a party-line 31-28 vote, the House Armed Services Committee rejected a Democratic plan to cut nearly $1 billion from a proposed $8.1 billion in spending on missile defense.``This is a strategy for failure,'' Rep. Duncan Hunter (news - bio - voting record), a California Republican, said of the Democratic effort to redirect $985 million in national missile defense spending to purchases ...

DISGUSTING DOESN'T MAKE IT 'SPEECH'With even George Will and the Family Research Council predicting the child pornographer in Ohio will prevail on appeal, I am now officially The Only Person in America who says Ohio wins. (Other than, one hopes, the prosecutor.) Convicted child pornographer Brian Dalton was charged with pandering child pornography on the basis of his private writings in a personal journal in his home. He pled guilty, which normally precludes appeal and may prevent me from collecting on my bets. Point one: The states can do anything that isn't prohibited by the Constitution. (This elusive concept is ...

Drivers ignore hit-skip victim 08/01/01 Robert Schippling thought the half-dozen cars ahead of him on Harvard Ave. yesterday morning were swerving to avoid debris. But as he neared E. 93rd St., he was horrified by what he saw. "I looked up and I saw a body, a gentleman, lying in the road," said the retired Shaker Heights police officer and Newburgh Heights resident. "They were actually going to the westbound side to get around him." Schippling, 60, pulled his SUV onto the sidewalk, ran into the street and called 9-1-1 on his cell phone. He directed traffic as he shielded ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House voted late Wednesday to allow oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, rejecting claims that development would devastate ``a cathedral of nature'' in need of protection. The vote was a major victory for President Bush who in his presidential campaign and in a broad energy blueprint, called drilling in the refuge key to assuring the country's energy needs in years to come. Protection of the refuge, which was created 41 years ago by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, emerged as the most hotly debated issue in a package of energy ...

Major Propaganda War Against Israel Note from Bill: A major propaganda war continues against Israel. The world's press continues to write news stories condemning Israel's recent military action but very few write about the horrible crimes initiated by the Palestinians or the Middle East terror groups. The world's media remains very partial to the Muslims. A member of the Embassy of Israel in Washington has compiled the following news report. --- Dear Friend, Today’s newspapers have focused on Israel’s assassination of two senior Hamas members, but the American press has not reported that these terrorists perpetrated terrorist acts in the ...

The FBI has arrested a CNN executive producer on charges he used the Internet to try and entice an underage girl for sex. Agents claim that Alan Audet, a 44-year-old father living in Marietta, used a chat room to develop an online relationship with a person whom he believed to be a 13-year-old girl. The FBI says Audet was actually communicating with members of its Innocent Images Task Force (IITF). Agents say Audet attempted to entice the "girl" to meet him for the purpose of having sex. Agents took him into custody on Clairmont Road in Atlanta Tuesday. Audet is ...

During the 2000 presidential campaign, an official from the National Rifle Association famously boasted that, were George W. Bush to win, the NRA would be working out of the Oval Office. So far, that hasn't happened. But the group could hardly have hoped for a more sympathetic administration. Over the past two months, the administration has taken several steps to halt or amend gun control measures it regards as too restrictive, ineffective, or both: • Last week, the Department of Housing and Urban Development canceled a gun-buyback program that brought in weapons from small cities nationwide. • Earlier this ...

PHOENIX (AP) - Candidates for the highest state offices in Arizona and Massachusetts lined up for taxpayers' campaign cash Wednesday, the first day they could officially declare their intent to run races paid for entirely with public dollars. All eight gubernatorial candidates in Arizona and four out of seven in Massachusetts have said they intend to run elections funded entirely by taxpayers, according to Public Campaign, the Washington-based group helping promote state efforts. In Arizona, three candidates - one each for governor, attorney general and secretary of state - officially signed up Wednesday to forego private campaign funds. "This illustrates ...

Stem cell low, buy high I'VE nearly died waiting, but it can finally be said: The feminists were right about one thing. Some portion of pro-life men would be pro-choice if they were capable of getting pregnant. They are the ones who think life begins at conception unless Grandma has Alzheimer's and scientists allege that stem-cell research on human embryos might possibly yield a cure. It's either a life or it's not a life, and it's not much of an argument to say the embryo is going to die anyway. What kind of principle is that? Prisoners on death row ...