Free Republic

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush said on Wednesday he called Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to express his support for a new blueprint to save the Northern Irish peace process. ``I believe the package is fair and that it charts the way forward in areas central to the Good Friday agreement,'' Bush said in a statement, emphasizing the elements in the package on disarmament. Bush, who said he and the United States remained willing to assist in any way necessary, urged the parties to take the next steps necessary to implement the 1998 peace ...

Sen. Hillary Clinton is embroiled in her first major clash with the Bush administration and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle acknowledge she likely holds a winning hand. The New York Democrat is leading the charge against Mary Sheila Gall, President Bush's choice to head the three-member Consumer Product Safety Commission. Although the former first lady doesn't sit on the Senate Commerce Committee that is weighing Gall's nomination, Democrats and Republicans alike agree that Clinton has convinced all 12 Democrats on the 23-member panel to vote no — enough to kill the appointment. Commerce is set to vote on ...

PROHOR PCINSKI, Yugoslavia, Aug 2 (AFP) - Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski on Thursday called for ethnic rebels fighting government forces to be pushed back before any peace accord is signed, saying that negotiating under the threat of guns was "humiliating". "We must win back captured territory and we cannot close our eyes to negotiate under the pressure of arms," Georgievski said in this southern Yugoslav village close to the Macedonian border. He was speaking during commemorations of Macedonia's National Day, which celebrates a Macedonian uprising against the Ottoman Empire in 1903.

Robert Mueller reports to a Senate Committee today to be examined for his nomination as the new FBI Director. His record has been hashed and rehashed in the media and most agree that unless some surprise is waiting in the wings, he will be confirmed. Two questions loom large. If confirmed what will Mueller do about the entrenched dysfunctional management system that is the cause of most of the FBI's recent missteps? Many in Washington think that Louis Freeh's resignation and the appointment of a new FBI Director will be enough to get the matter of serial FBI goofs ...

Free Republic has a rich history of activism -- we pull together when the going gets rough, and we're making headway! On behalf of Jim Robinson, who has so kindly consented to authorize this thread for the Breaking News category, I would like to invite you all to take five minutes from your very busy lives and make a phone call, send a fax or write an e-mail -- or do all three. Pertinent phone and fax numbers and e-mail addresses will be listed together at the bottom of this article post. You can call the White House. Ask for ...

R. Emmett Tyrrell August 2, 2001Politics versus morality WASHINGTON -- Mark it down as a Public Good that through much of the summer, Washington's talking heads have been jabbering about the embattled Rep. Gary Condit, for whom Bill Clinton has been such a perilous role model. Were it not for this sorry congressman's apparent obstructions of justice, our talking heads might be squalling about an even more delicate matter, stem-cell research. Not that the topic has been completely ignored by the chattering classes. Slowly, the columnists are picking the issue up, and it is increasingly mentioned on the cable talk ...

THE latest political spin is that we should shift our focus away from Congressman Gary Condit and concentrate on finding Chandra Levy. But what we really need to do -- and urgently -- is begin to shift our focus away from Chandra Levy and look much more closely and thoughtfully at Congressman Condit. Realistically, after all this time, there is very little chance of finding Chandra Levy alive. Even finding her body becomes less and less likely, after massive searches have failed to turn up anything. Whatever Gary Condit's past role in the life of Chandra Levy, he has a ...

REPEAL LAUNCHED! With more than 700 signing aboard for the perilous journey to recapture voting integrity, the good ship HVS REPEAL (HR 189) was launched last Saturday. With only a handful of builders and designers in attendance, the small gathering was soon joined by a crowd of hundreds of well wishers who cheered as it began its maiden voyage.The ship, armed with "Truth" Missiles and powered by grit and determination, began the voyage into hereto uncharted waters crewed by a small but confident group of individuals, all volunteers who were largely drawn from the website FreeRepublic.com. Spirits were high and ...

The intense spotlight focused on Rep. Gary Condit produced an unexpected criminal investigation after the law firm handling the California Democrat's campaign account fired an employee for allegedly embezzling approximately $35,000 from the campaigns of Condit and two other lawmakers over the past five years. In addition to Condit's campaign stash, the employee also allegedly skimmed funds from Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.), people familiar with the matter said. The identity of the third affected campaign could not be established. The alleged embezzlement scheme has embarrassed one of the Golden State's most prominent political law firms, Olson, Hagel, Waters & Fishburn. ...

OHRID - A police officer of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) died early yesterday in a gun attack by ethnic Albanian rebels, while peace talks continued under US and European Union auspices to end five months of conflict, state radio reported. On the outskirts 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. However, the overall death toll was not known in the absence of reliable word on casualties among the rebels. In what appeared to ...

AMERICANS are gifted grousers who in this vacation season are employing that gift against airlines. However, consider four facts about the complainers. They have the luxury of complaining about late arrivals -- 450,000 of them last year, 20 percent more than in 1999 -- and lost luggage because the biggest potential problem of any mode of transportation, safety, is so slight. Air travel is the safest mode of travel ever. Including walking in a medieval countryside or a modern metropolis. Today's complainers are the heart of the problem with the air travel system. Air travel has been democratized in the ...

I figured I'd address this here before it's made public next week. 'Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back' is being taken to task (wrongly, I believe) by GLAAD - the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (for those unfamiliar with the acronym). Below is the letter, verbatim, that I received from Scott Seomin, GLAAD's Entertainment Media Director. _________ Dear Kevin: Two colleagues of mine from GLAAD joined me last evening at a screening of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. We were overwhelmed by the potential negative impact for the film with what we would assume is a large share ...

'Builder's remedy' draws scrutiny 08/02/01 BY STEVE CHAMBERS STAR-LEDGER STAFF The first affordable housing case to wend its way to the state Supreme Court in 15 years is attracting the participation of key land-use organizations and poverty advocates in New Jersey. In legal papers filed this week, two of those groups asked the justices to consider an issue central to the Mount Laurel doctrine -- a density bonus given to builders willing to construct affordable housing. Other groups, notably New Jersey Future, The Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey and the Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions, also ...

Just a few pithy political observations that the WH and Congressional Repugnants could use help on, if they even care anymore about winning anything in 2002. Daschle has declared war on the American people: 1. Daschle wants legislation to give lawyers a bill of rights in order to raise your health insurance rates, because Tom Daschle doesn't want you to have private health insurance. 2. Tom Daschle, Ted Kennedy, and Hillary Clinton have a plan to bankrupt Social Security. Daschle has stuck his head in the sand and wants to make believe that more people will not be retiring in ...

WASHPresident George W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld Wednesday discussed closing military bases across the United States as part of a meeting on pending review of United States defense policy. "The United States continues to have an excess capacity of military facilities and there is some concern about that," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said as Bush and Rumsfeld met at the Pentagon in one of their regular sessions to discuss Rumsfeld's pending Defense Department review. Fleischer said that while the president "wants to increase spending for the military, as his budget has called for, that doesn't mean ...

BILL CLINTON is having a coming-out party this week. After months spent out of the spotlight, the former president can't stand it any longer. So he's threw himself a big shindig in Harlem to formally open his post-presidential offices, inviting former Cabinet members and staff, as well as other New York dignitaries. He wants attention, and received it. Not that he didn't get plenty of notice just after he left office, what with all the stories about presidential pardons for tax cheats and drug dealers. But this time, he wants to do it up right -- to become a ...

MOSCOW, Aug 2 (Reuters) - Russia's defence minister said on Thursday its peacekeepers would stay in Kosovo and Bosnia, but it had no plans to send troops to Macedonia. "There is no discussion of any withdrawal of Russian peacekeeping contingents from Kosovo or Bosnia," Interfax news agency quoted Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov as saying while on a visit to the city of Chita in Siberia. He said the number of troops Moscow had committed to the two NATO-led peacekeeping forces could, however, be reviewed. "There are no plans for participation in any peacekeeping force in Macedonia," he added.

Pro-life advocates plan Hagerstown rally More than 80 pro-life supporters are expected to be in downtown Hagerstown Aug. 7 as part of a tour promoting an anti-abortion message. continued The Defend Life and Pro-Life Maryland groups are sponsoring the Face the Truth Tour, which will start in Cumberland, Md., Aug. 7 and will end in Ocean City, Md., Aug. 11. The five-day tour, with stops in Maryland, Virginia and Delaware, is designed to impact the maximum number of people with planned visits during peak traffic times, said Jack Ames, director of Defend Life. The goal of the tour is to ...

You want to punch him in the nose, don't you? Of Course you do. Forgive me readers, for I have sinned. It’s been eons since my last confession, and in that time I've done something truly awful: I spent a night with Geraldo Rivera, and when it was over, I needed a shower. No, I did not have sexual relations with that man. I did, however, accidentally stumble across Rivera Live this week, and like a Democrat politician drawn to a young, Jewish intern, I couldn’t turn away. I want to make it perfectly clear that I DO NOT watch ...

President Bush reaches the summer break in his first White House year buoyed by high personal approval but facing broad public doubts about his overall agenda and key policies, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll supplemented by face-to-face interviews with voters in four battleground states. Bush has a 63 percent personal favorability rating in the poll and a 59 percent job approval score, the second-highest numbers recorded since he took office. But only half of those interviewed believe he is succeeding in his goal of bringing "needed change to Washington," and more people than not say his priorities ...