Free Republic

GOP blanks out in Ansonia elections By Associated Press, 8/3/2001 16:18 ANSONIA, Conn. (AP) In Ansonia, Republicans fear to tread. For the first time in the memory of many longtime residents, the Republican Town Committee has failed to nominate a candidate for mayor or any of the 14 aldermanic posts. ''We need to have minority representation in the city,'' said Leo Roszkowski, vice chairman of the Republican Town Committee. ''There's good ideas in both parties, there's bad ideas in both parties, but you need them both to have effective government.'' Republicans failed to field candidates because the public did not ...

'80s anti-abortion leader returns to the public eye on stem-cell research WASHINGTON - The caustic words - the talk of a "culture of death" and "crimes against humanity" - were familiar. So was the face - the impassioned blue eyes, wire-rimmed glasses and thick, gold-flecked hair. But where anti-abortion figure Randall Terry once stirred tens of thousands, attracting huge activist crowds to demonstrations outside clinics, waving grisly photos of aborted fetuses and happily going to prison in the name of the unborn, yesterday he stood virtually alone. Protesting against embryonic stem-cell research, the militant founder of Operation Rescue marched in ...

     MR. FLEISCHER:  A very good afternoon.  I want to begin with a statement by the President on some action that was just taken in the United States Senate hours ago.      The following is from the President.      "The Senate today took wise and prompt action to help America's farmers.  This vote is a victory for our nation's farmers at a time when they need it most.  I praise the Senate for agreeing to the House bill and look forward to signing this helpful measure into law."      That's in reference to a vote the Senate cast to pass the House level of ...

(AP) - Bill Clinton lost some of his most prized possessions when the basement of his home flooded this summer. Several hundred books, including a 200-year-old copy of Thomas Jefferson's ''Notes on the State of Virginia'' and an autographed first edition of John F. Kennedy's ''Profiles in Courage,'' were waterlogged, said Naomi Hample, co-owner of Argosy Books. Restorers at the midtown Manhattan shop went through several cartons of Clinton's books and found most were beyond repair and would have to be replaced. ''We were able to restore some of them, but most were beyond any help at all,'' Hample said ...

"The idea is to get away from punishment towards treatment," said Carlos Borges, a government policy spokesman. "We consider a drug-dependent person to be sick, not a criminal."   The decision taken by MPs on Thursday reflects less a liberalising impulse - the social policy instincts of Portugal's ruling socialists are fairly conservative - than a pragmatic response to the mounting problem of drug use, especially among the young.   Under the new law, drug users no longer face prison terms, and measures will be adopted to monitor addicts and make them attend counselling.     Police will report drug ...

Friday August 3 4:29 PM ET Ben Affleck in Rehab Facility LOS ANGELES (AP) - ``Pearl Harbor'' star and Oscar winner Ben Affleck has entered a live-in rehabilitation facility for alcohol abuse. Affleck, who turns 29 on Aug. 15, voluntarily entered the Promises rehabilitation facility in Malibu on Tuesday. Promises is where Paula Poundstone (news - web sites) and Robert Downey Jr. (news - web sites) are undergoing treatment. ``Ben is a self-aware and smart man who has decided that a fuller life awaits him without alcohol. He has chosen to seek out professional assistance and is committed to ...

A group in North Carolina plans to protest the ''overwhelming number of illegal Hispanic workers invading the area.'' A California coalition urges people to lobby against giving legal status to undocumented immigrants. And on New York's Long Island, the topic at a conference this weekend is the ''illegal immigration disaster.'' Sparked by changing demographics, anti-immigration sentiment is on the rise throughout the country. Observers say much of the hard feeling is directed at Hispanics, whose numbers grew 58 percent to more than 35 million in the last decade, according to census figures. Anti-immigration advocates feel newcomers lower wages, increase ...

Potential turbine users find ill wind blowingENERGY: Inland residents who want to install windmills to save money find red tape and fees.BY LAURIE KOCH THROWERTHE PRESS-ENTERPRISE Harnessing the wind for electricity is no breeze. Stephen Anderson and Russ Richardson will testify to that. The neighbors want to erect wind turbines on their rural acreage in the hills just north of Moreno Valley, but they didn't figure on running into a wall of bureaucratic requirements and fees. "They kind of act like we're putting up a nuclear power plant, not just a windmill," Richardson said. The neighbors wanted to take ...

VIEQUES, Puerto Rico .S. Navy security personnel fired rubber bullets and tear gas at a crowd of protesters and journalists on Vieques last night, sparking debate over the military's latest use of force and its resumption of maneuvers on the outlying Puerto Rican island. The Navy said the projectiles were fired only after the protesters fired a flare toward the base, shined bright lights at the officers and tried to break into a fence along a restricted area. The latest exercises, which could last until Aug. 10, involve ship-to-shore shelling, air-to-ground bombing and beach assaults, making the maneuvers some of ...

Officials: Border closures, mass quarantines likely if America faced bioterrorism attack By Anne Gearan, Associated Press, 8/3/2001 15:38 CHICAGO (AP) In an America that guards its civil liberties, police can't just shut down cities, make mass arrests and quarantine thousands of people. Or can they? Current and former federal officials said Friday that if there is a terrorist attack with biological weapons, private rights would quickly be swamped by the need to protect the public. State borders could close, vaccines could be rationed or commandeered, the Army could even take over cities within weeks of a deadly attack, an American ...

It will be months, possibly years, before the public gets access to internal Clinton administration papers, but requests from scholars and the Bush administration are already pouring in. Clinton library boss David Alsobrook says that the Bush White House wants to see documents spelling out national-security and foreign policy. Many scholars, meantime, are interested in former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's lawsuit- plagued healthcare task force. Nobody's yet interested in any of the Clinton administration's successes. Alsobrook, who helped organize former President Bush's library, says the requests are coming in unusually early. The reason: Folks can go online to http://www.clinton.nara.gov ...

A federal appeals court upheld the suspension of a Loudoun County eighth-grader who took a knife from a suicidal friend. A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that Benjamin A. Ratner failed to prove his claim that school officials violated his right to due process. The ruling upheld a decision by U.S. District Judge Albert V. Bryan Jr. In his lawsuit against school officials, Ratner said a friend passed him a note saying she had hidden a knife in her school notebook and was contemplating suicide. He persuaded the girl to give him the ...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Democrats cashed in quickly on their new power, taking in hundreds of thousands of dollars from donors within days of taking over the chamber. In June, Tom Harkin of Iowa raised nearly half the money his campaign has collected this year as farm interests flooded him with donations during his first month as chairman of the Agriculture Committee, new Federal Election Commission reports show. Two senators with possible presidential aspirations experienced similar good fortune. John Edwards of North Carolina raised more in June than in the five previous months combined. Massachusetts' John Kerry collected $1.1 million ...

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Condit returns to California as Washington colleagues' support wanes By Ron Harris, Associated Press, 8/3/2001 15:57 SAN FRANCISCO (AP) Rep. Gary Condit returned Friday to face an uncertain future with his California constituents, leaving behind growing unrest among his Washington colleagues. Arriving at San Francisco's airport, Condit began his summer congressional recess the same way he has spent most of the past three months avoiding photographers and the reporters who wanted to question him about affairs and missing intern Chandra Levy. He said nothing as he rolled his duffel bag toward an exit. Passenger Diane Peacor, who sat in coach, ...

FOR AN ADMINISTRATION that likes to tout smaller government and market solutions to the nation's problems, President Bush's energy plan, adopted by the House early yesterday morning, is a stunning departure. Larded with costly subsidies and intrusive government powers that trammel property rights, the bill is an old-fashioned boondoggle that uses taxpayer dollars to degrade the environment. There is nothing elegant about the Energy Tax Policy Act of 2001. The bill runs to 510 pages. It includes $27.6 billion in subsidies to the oil, coal, nuclear, and auto industries, while only $5 billion is earmarked for renewable energy or conservation. ...

Commentary The GOP Has a Way to Win Back Women: Shift the Debate on Guns By SCOTT REED Scott Reed, campaign manager for Bob Dole's presidential campaign in 1996, is head of a Washington, D.C., consulting firm August 2 2001 In U.S. politics, some issues traditionally have generated substantial heat and very little light. Abortion is one; guns are another. These issues are the classic "losers," because a strong position on either side antagonizes nearly half of the electorate. Historically, politicians shun these issues because almost nothing an advocate can do or say will sway the other side.

European Scouts Demand Intervention on US Homosexual Issue By Patrick Goodenough CNSNews.com London Bureau Chief August 03, 2001 London (CNSNews.com) - A U.S. group campaigning for the Boy Scouts of America to change its policy of excluding homosexuals is participating in a Scout jamboree in Sweden this week.Their European hosts would like to see the movement's world body change its non-interventionist stance on the issue and insist that the BSA back down.Swedish Scouting Association spokesman Mats Pettersson said Friday that the Swedes felt there was no place in the Scouts for discrimination against homosexuals."On this particular issue, of course, ...