Free Republic

The Color Purple General Washington issues the order for the Purple Heart. By Jack Walsh, NRO contributor August 4-5, 2001   s the Revolutionary War entered its seventh year, the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, George Washington, searched for a way to reward and honor the soldiers who had fought so long and hard for the cause of American freedom. He had been doing so the way generals had for centuries, recognizing outstanding valor and merit by granting commissions or advances in rank. In 1782, the Continental Congress ordered him to stop. There were no funds in the cash-strapped ...

Immaterial Girl Madonna, true-blue has-been. By NR Editors, from the August 20, 2001, issue of National Review August 4-5, 2001   Madonna, at age 42 older, but no wiser, embarked on her first tour in eight years. Tickets in Philadelphia and New York went for hundreds of dollars a pop, and that part of the world that pays attention to such things gaped at the spectacle. It would be idle to pretend that Madonna has not had an impact on her time. What sort of an impact has it been? As she enters middle age, what are the lady's ...

VIDEO: Jack Tobin Released - NECN.com "That's the prize," Tobin said outside his Ridgefield home. "That's the best smile I've seen from him since last summer. It's beginning to be a relief. I can sleep." Still somewhat thin and pale, but apparently in good spirits, John Edward "Jack" Tobin Jr. walked out of a shabby prison in southern Russia Friday after serving half of his one-year sentence for marijuana possession. The 24-year-old Ridgefield man, jailed since February on drug charges he says were fabricated, was escorted by prison officials past reporters outside the Soviet-era prison in the southern Russian ...

The Senate yesterday passed a bill to rename Foley Square's historic federal courthouse after the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Introduced by Sens. Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, the bill sailed through by unanimous consent, clearing it for an expected signature by President Bush. The bill's passage sets up the possibility that Bush could invite Clinton to the White House for its signing. The measure got off to a rocky start in March, after Clinton surprised Schumer with her plan to put Marshall's name on the courthouse. Schumer had considered naming it for Constance Baker Motley, the first female ...

Human rights activists, union organizers and religious leaders joined forces in Hauppauge yesterday to rally against a community group's efforts to deport Mexican day laborers from Long Island.Tensions flared in front of Suffolk County's H. Lee Dennison Building when several leaders of the Sachem Quality of Life organization spoke out against the influx of undocumented Mexican workers in Farmingville.Sympathizers for the laborers chanted, "No more hate, no more hate," as the Sachem group's president, Margaret Biancoulli, told reporters that the Mexican men are causing home values to drop, and they should be forced to go back to Mexico.Louis Montalvo, a ...

GENEVA (August 3, 2001 11:43 a.m. EDT) - A 56-nation group seeking to enforce a global ban on germ warfare agreed Friday to suspend negotiations indefinitely because of the United States' pullout."Quite a number of delegations would be reluctant to engage in continued negotiations among themselves in the absence of a major negotiating partner, that is the United States of America," said Tibor Toth, chairman of the negotiating forum.The group had been trying to devise a protocol on enforcement of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, which has been signed by 143 countries, including the United States.The United States shocked the ...

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (August 3, 2001 6:41 p.m. EDT) - A black congressman is paying an artist to create a display of Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 "I have a dream speech" in the Alabama Supreme Court rotunda next to a new 5,280-pound monument dedicated to the Ten Commandments.State Rep. Alvin Holmes said he has hired an artist, and plans a public ceremony when the display is installed.The Montgomery Democrat said Chief Justice Roy Moore "didn't check with anybody" before having the Ten Commandments monument installed. The monument, which is 4 feet tall and holds two tablets with the Commandments, was ...

HAMILTON, N.J. (August 3, 2001 7:40 p.m. EDT) - Seven years ago, Maureen Kanka and her husband thought they would live in their house for the rest of their lives. As she looks toward the small park across the street, she's no longer sure.The home that once stood there is gone, replaced with flowers, benches and a goldfish pond fed by a small waterfall. The Kankas no longer have to look at the place where their 7-year-old daughter was beaten, raped and strangled by a convicted sex offender."It's very hard to live here," Kanka said. "Even though it's beautiful now, ...

Christian missions make for Mongolia Western churches seek converts, but some traditional Buddhists fear a loss of identity By Michael Kohn ASSOCIATED PRESS Friday, August 3, 2001, Contra Costa Times ------------------------------------------------------------ ULAN BATOR, Mongolia -- Shaun Rosemann and Drew Wallace call it their "portafont." The two young Mormon missionaries took along the plastic baptismal font, the size of a large bathtub, when they went to rural Mongolia looking for souls to save. The two are part of an influx of foreign missionaries engaged in a struggle to win believers in this traditionally Buddhist country of 2.4 million people. For ...

ATLANTA (August 3, 2001 11:33 p.m. EDT) - The United Parcel Service is investigating how a 5-foot alligator was shipped overnight to New York City.Workers who checked out a leaking box on a company truck Thursday found the alligator, its snout and feet bound with duct tape."He was not very happy," UPS spokesman Norman Black said Friday.New York animal control officials seized the 40-pound alligator, which was not injured.Atlanta-based UPS prohibits the shipment of live animals. Black declined to say where the animal originated or how the package was labeled."Somebody lied to us about the contents of the package," he ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush aimed to leave town with a clean bill of health, beginning his summer vacation Saturday with a six-hour detour to Bethesda Naval Hospital and his first presidential physical exam. The president expected nothing but high marks, spokesman Ari Fleischer said Friday, noting that the 55-year-old Bush is an avid runner who crowed this week that he couldn't wait to get out jogging in the nearly 100-degree heat at his dusty, central Texas ranch. ``The president feels in excellent physical health. As you know, he is an athlete,'' Fleischer told reporters. At his last medical ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Teamsters union threw its support behind the Bush administration energy plan with a commitment that the jobs created by new drilling in Alaska's arctic refuge would be on terms favorable to organized labor. Tucked away on page 487 of the 510-page energy bill passed by the House this week is a measure requiring oil and gas companies holding the government leases and their contractors to negotiate labor agreements with unions representing the kinds of workers sought for the projects. But one of President Bush's first actions after taking office was to kill the Clinton-era policy ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The switch in Senate control has improved the fortunes of several prominent Democrats' campaigns. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in donor checks arrived in party offices in the weeks following the Democratic takeover. 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 ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Commerce Department (news - web sites) came under fire on Friday for poorly secured computer networks that house data ranging from sensitive corporate data to employees' social security numbers.Deliberate efforts by government auditors to hack into the Commerce Department's systems were only detected four times out of more than a 1,000 attempts to gain entry, a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee was told.``I can't tell you how appalled I am that these systems could be compromised,'' said Louisiana Republican Rep. Billy Tauzin, chairman of the full committee.The Commerce Department bureaus surveyed include the Bureau of ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — One day after sealing a compromise he worked six years to get, Rep. Charlie Norwood offered no apologies for what he did but plenty for how he did it. The Georgia Republican said Friday that the brief moments between shaking hands with President Bush on a patients' rights deal and appearing before cameras to sing its praises are now a blur. The usually early riser slept until 11 a.m. Friday. He was exhausted from a late-night House vote that he heralded as a victory but longtime allies blasted as a cop-out. Even with a good night's ...

Now might be a good time to write your congressman, supporting President Bush's courageous rejection of the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocols. Congress is already under siege by legions of eco-wackos, hucksters, fast-buck artists and even Big Oil tycoons – all demanding that Congress force President Bush to accept the Kyoto Protocols. If the president is forced to accept Kyoto, we would be – among other bad things – effectively giving regulatory authority over our industrial, transportation and electric power sectors to the Executive Board of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The Executive Board intends to establish a ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Three-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong may have been the guest of honor at the White House on Friday, but it was his 22-month-old son, Luke, who stole the limelight.Luke, made famous by photographs taken when his father held him aloft after winning the 2000 Tour de France, applauded wildly with a crowd in the East Room of the White House as Armstrong joined President Bush (news - web sites) on stage.Listening to Bush praise 29-year-old Armstrong, who overcame testicular cancer to win the bicycle race three times in a row, Luke clapped and yelled out ...

A firm hired by Pa. to aid the district could end up running it. Critics disdain a for-profit. By Susan Snyder INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Parent and community groups vowed yesterday to fight any attempt to turn the Philadelphia School District over to one or more private, for-profit companies - a possibility that emerged this week under a deal between the city and state. The backlash follows Gov. Ridge's announcement Wednesday that the state has hired Edison Schools Inc. - the nation's largest private operator of public schools - to develop a plan to rescue the troubled district. State officials ...

The dispute over whether to release water from Klamath Lake for use on farms in the region, or to reserve it for the sake of several species of fish, is fertile ground for recalling several points of practical principle crucial to the prosperity of a free people. Above all, the stand-off should direct our attention to the question of what kind of decisions government is competent to make, and what kind of decisions a free people must make for themselves – and how they must make them. Fred Smith, President of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has written a brief ...

The Art Bell show has a guest on tonight, Ed Dane, who has been on many times. The former major is into something called "remote viewing." I still can't figure it out, but this is Art Bell, after all. Dane says that Chandra was not killed by a public official but was suffocated by someone she slept with and her body is in the Potomac. Take it for what it's worth. Dane just said that AIDS was a canine virus from 10,000 years ago. It may have gotten a booster shot from something else. It is the most intelligent virus ...