Free Republic

As the battle over a "Patients' Bill of Rights" continues to rage, we would do well to remind ourselves of what rights are — and what they are not. If we fail to reverse the current trend of creating rights that are not, we will lose the ones we truly possess. Most alarming about the proposed "Patients' Bill of Rights" — and others usurping the label — is the insinuation its legitimacy would be comparable to that of the original. Nothing could be further removed from the truth. The label "Bill of Rights" refers, as everyone knows, to the first ...

A 15 year old dear neighbor boy had a horrific accident while farming on the family farm.He was life flighted from the field and it is so far a miracle he has survived. He was trying to stop a run away tractor and was pinned under the tractor and wagon upon hitting a crab apple tree. He is in ICU, was taken off the ventilator did well but then put back on and was further sedated as scan showed contusions (bruising) on his brain. I am asking for prayers as it is so far a miracle that his mangled limp ...

My complaint about Free Republic To do what comes naturally, we need to begin with a frank acknowledgment of the basic humanness of each of us. And we must acknowledge that Free Republic can't control its desire to have everything it wants and to have it now. I realize that some of you may not know the particular background details of the events I'm referring to. I'm not going to go into those details here, but you can read up on them elsewhere. Although Free Republic wants to harvest what others have sown, if we fail to work together towards ...

The Queens auto dealer who, with his gay companion, hosts Mayor Rudolph Giuliani as their house guest calls the setup a "bed-and-breakfast” arrangement. Giuliani has his own entrance to the East 57th Street apartment, which is assembled from what had been two adjoining flats and occupies thousands of square feet of space, said people familiar with the setup. Last week in Giuliani's divorce case, acting State Supreme Court Justice Judith Gische said in a ruling that the mayor "admits that he no longer resides in the private portion of Gracie Mansion.” So the apartment owned by Howard Koeppel, a political ...

Bushed!A Gall-ing defeat on a nomination. Plus: With wins on patients' rights and energy, Bush hushes critics who have called him hapless on the Hill. There's still grumbling, but there is a deal on patients' rights, and the president has plenty to smile about. With time running out before the Thursday House vote on the Ganske-Dingell-Norwood bill, Bush emerged for a brief, triumphant press conference with Rep. Charles Norwood, R-Ga., at the White House to announce a compromise on the thorny issue of patient lawsuits. Bush agreed to allow patients to sue in state court, but under federal rules that, ...

Aging anchors at 5:30 p.m TOM BROKAW Age: 61Solo anchor since: September 1983 PETER JENNINGS Age: 63 Solo anchor since: August 1983 DAN RATHER Age: 69 Solo anchor since: March 1981 There is a story often told in TV circles--though never for attribution, and therefore it may be apocryphal--that one of the three major network anchors was entertaining a serious offer not long ago from another news organization and his bosses in the news division, eager to make their own mark on their network's signature newscast, were more than ready to let him go. All the suits within the executive ...

Bredesen, not Hilleary, winning the tax debate Commentary By Bill Hobbs It’s a weird state of affairs when the front-runner for the liberal party’s nomination for governor is perceived as being more against the income tax than the front-runner for the conservative party’s nomination. But that’s the way it is in Tennessee’s race for governor a little more than 15 months before election day. Despite his image as a numbers-crunching executive, Bredesen has figured out how to explain his opposition to a state income tax in plain language that doesn’t get bogged down in technicalities. More on that key point ...

SUMMARY: In the first national study of its kind, researchers found that gay and bisexual teens are more than twice as likely to be suicidal as their straight counterparts. Fifteen percent of kids with an attraction toward the same sex had considered or attempted suicide, compared to seven percent of the rest. In the first national study of its kind, researchers found that gay and bisexual teens are more than twice as likely to be suicidal as their straight counterparts. Fifteen percent of kids with an attraction toward the same sex had considered or attempted suicide, compared to seven percent ...

Mike Connelly Oregonian op-ed Thu Aug 2 12:02:12 2001 Submitted this morning, a response to an Oregonian article by Michael Milstein (728wds) I’d like to tell a story. This story is about a small agricultural valley in eastern Oregon that has had its supply of irrigation water cut off. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has set minimum lake levels on the main storage reservoir to protect endangered suckers. The fields have turned brown, the farmworkers have left, the families are going bankrupt, the communities are in turmoil, and the environmentalists are celebrating. You may have heard this story recently, ...

Government study estimates that 850,000 children are home-schooled By Greg Toppo, Associated Press, 8/2/2001 17:54 WASHINGTON (AP) About 850,000 of the nation's 50 million children are being taught at home rather than in schools, mostly by parents who are well-educated and live in cities, a new government study estimates. The report, released this week by the Education Department, calculates that 1.7 percent of American children were homeschooled in 1999, resulting in a total estimate higher than in the past. ''The number of parents taking direct responsibility for teaching their children through homeschooling is approaching a million, and we expect the ...

The Apartment, Billy Wilder's 1960 movie, has come to mind twice in a fortnight. Jack Lemmon's passing was a reminder of his unforgettable role as milquetoast corporate suit, C.C. Baxter, who loaned his apartment to his company's executives for their use, illicit affair-wise. His reward was a key to the executive washroom. Reminder #2 sprang from revelation of the tawdry affair between Gary Condit and the missing Chandra Levy. Mr. Condit owned up after 10 weeks, a brow beating by the National Enquirer, and emerging mistresses from the byways, skyways and Fox News. The Apartment's theme, as explained by ...

Can anyone confirm a report by ABCNews on the radio around 3:00pm Eastern that we now have 2 carriers and 100 aircraft in the Gulf ready to prevent Saddam from shooting at any more of our planes? I haven't been able to confirm the story on ABCNews.com or any other site, for that matter.

... a thought that haunts me continuously. Human psychology is such that we always tend to perceive our own times as normal. We are born and raised in a certain culture with certain spiritual and material realities all around us. Every generation experiences it as an imperfect world but it is still our world. Well, at some point in history, a generation is going to go through the final apocalypse, and yet to them it will appear to be a normal world. It may have problems. It may even have serious problems, but it will not be perceived by ...

Poll: Jersey residents don't care what others think about their stateTRENTON, N.J. (AP) New Jersey is the subject of a thousand jokes about mobsters, turnpike exits, trash dumps and big-haired shore girls. You gotta problem with that? Two-thirds of New Jersey people don't care what you think, according to a Fairleigh Dickinson University poll released Thursday. "I couldn't care less too. I ain't going nowhere," said Acting Governor Donald T. DiFrancesco when told about the poll results. Some 27 percent of New Jerseyans surveyed said the first thing that came to mind when they thought of their home state was ...

IBM investing $4 billion to sell grid capacity from 50 'computer farms' August 2, 2001 By JIM KRANEThe Associated Press NEW YORK -- IBM is betting that computing power will evolve into a simple utility - like electricity - with users buying what they need from a computing grid instead of owning large computers themselves. To capitalize, IBM is investing $4 billion to build 50 computer server farms around the world, said Irving Wladawsky-Berger, a vice president at IBM's Server Group. IBM likened the system to computing power-generation plants. "You'll get computing power and storage capacity - not from ...

Kostunica attempts to erode Djindjic's powerbase, in an escalation of the Belgrade power-struggle. By Zeljko Cvijanovic in Belgrade (BCR No.267, 1-Aug-01) Election-style fever is gripping Serbia - even though no election is scheduled. Within the ruling DOS coalition, tension is mounting between the two strongest parties, federal president Vojislav Kostunica's Democratic Party of Serbia, DSS, and the Democratic Party, DS, of Serbian premier Zoran Djindjic. Despite the apparent differences between the two parties - the DSS is nationalist and conservative, while the DS is reformist and pro-Western - the struggle concerns not policy, but the balance of power. Kostunica, whose ...

Superior Bank reopens Customers remain wary as troubled banking firm reopens with a new name July 30, 2001: 1:52 p.m. ET CHICAGO (AP) - Superior Bank, closed last week by federal regulators, reopened Monday with a new name and a lot of worried customers. "Definitely, I'm taking my money out," Stephanie Bogusch, a nurse from Downers Grove, Ill., said at the Downers Grove branch of what is now Superior Federal. The Office of Thrift Supervision closed Superior Bank on Friday after regulators found it had lost nearly all its $2.1 billion in assets and had engaged in poor lending practices, ...

Or: New Tobacco Product Causes Chicken Little Antis to Cry "Fowl" Every time something like this is reported, they fall all over themselves wringing their hands while admitting their goal is a smokefree world, and 55 million taxpayers/smokers be damned. "U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co., a subsidiary of Greenwich-based UST Inc., announced Wednesday the introduction of Revel, a small paper packet of tobacco and fresh mint flavor which smokers can place in their mouth. The flavor is released without chewing and the packet is later removed like a piece of gum." And then out trots the anti busybody with his panties ...

ANTON, Mich. - The pilgrims keep coming, both neighbors and curious outsiders. They all want to see the 5-foot statue of the Virgin Mary on Jamal Saba's front lawn. But the visitors aren't praying at the outdoor shrine. They're focused on a more earthly question: What happens when freedom of expression collides with the kind of restrictive covenants cropping up in many new, upscale housing developments? When Saba moved his family into a $500,000 dream house in April, it was a natural expression of the family's Catholicism to include a statue of Mary in the $10,000 landscaping design. He was ...