Free Republic

Now, I realize there's a very good reason, but for the life of me I can't figure out what it is......Every story we read is a pack of lies or democrat propaganda.........I mean.....Who here cares a rat's about hillbilly and the wife?

Tour bus crashes on Hawaii Island, injuring 18 Japanese tourists and the driver The Associated Press 8/4/01 6:45 AM GLENWOOD, Hawaii (AP) -- A tour bus ran off a wet highway into a drainage ditch, injuring all 18 Japanese tourists aboard and the driver who were en route to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, police said. The 24-seat bus belonging to Jack's Tours had swerved to avoid a car Friday on Volcano Highway, Lt. James Kelly said. The victims suffered injuries ranging from bruises and cuts to serious head injuries, Kelly said. Four were hospitalized in critical condition. The driver and ...

Good Morning!! Free the Senate! No Senate, no justice, no peace. In Kantafordia, a Ventura county judge ordered a couple to support their 50-year-old son indefinitely. He suffers from depression and bi-polar disorder. The judge ordered support payments - to being immeditately - of $3,500 per month. The couple only makes $20,000/year. I did not locate any other news of import. No daily update today - I don't have the right word procesor loaded on the computer yet. For AMERICA - The Right Way, I remain yours in the Cause, the Chairman.

Senator signals troubled waters for firm Cruise-ship plan sinking, he says 08/04/01By Robert Travis Scott Money editor A $1.1 billion project begun a year ago to build two 1,900-passenger cruise ships to sail the Hawaiian islands already is running over budget and as much as 18 months behind schedule at a Pascagoula, Miss., shipyard, U.S. Sen. John McCain has reported. In a July 11 letter to President Bush, the Republican senator said construction of the first ship at Northrop Grumman Ingalls Shipbuilding is in "serious trouble" and that taxpayers may end up footing the bill for the project to ...

GEORGE W. BUSH: UPHILL SKIER---thread2 by Norman Liebmann George W. Bush is an uphill skier - one of those intellectual snow bunnies who, when learning to ski, has to be told over and over again by the ski instructor, "The pants go on first - and then the skis." It has been said Bush is evocative of the unworldly and vacuous Chance, the Gardener, portrayed by Peter Sellers in the movie, "Being There." The analogy fails on one set of disparities. Chance was naïve and well intentioned. George Bush is trivial and dull. To relegate any matter to Bush's attention ...

GEORGE W. BUSH: UPHILL SKIER---thread2 by Norman Liebmann George W. Bush is an uphill skier - one of those intellectual snow bunnies who, when learning to ski, has to be told over and over again by the ski instructor, "The pants go on first - and then the skis." It has been said Bush is evocative of the unworldly and vacuous Chance, the Gardener, portrayed by Peter Sellers in the movie, "Being There." The analogy fails on one set of disparities. Chance was naïve and well intentioned. George Bush is trivial and dull. To relegate any matter to Bush's attention ...

DEQ is sued in fight over dredging of waterway Plaintiffs say that permit violates state, federal law 08/04/01By Paul Bartels St. Tammany bureau/The Times-Picayune Environmental groups have sued the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality in an effort to revoke the permit granted to dredge a small St. Tammany Parish waterway for the benefit of maritime commerce in southwest Mississippi. The Tulane University Environmental Law Clinic filed the lawsuit Wednesday in District Court in Baton Rouge on behalf of the Louisiana Audubon Council, Sierra Club-New Orleans Group and New Orleans musician Rudy Mills. A hearing date hasn't been set. The ...

Fact or faith? Clash over Bible fueled Dispute centers on architecture of ancient Israel 08/04/01By Ted Parks Religion News Service LOS ANGELES -- No little shepherd boy David. No wise King Solomon. And if no Solomon, no glorious ancient temple in Jerusalem. So says a group of scholars dubbed the "Minimalists" by their opponents. In what sounds at times like verbal salvos in an academic Armageddon, archaeologists and theologians are debating whether the Old Testament is primarily history or fiction. The controversy, which has spread to both academic and popular journals such as Science magazine, was a key theme ...

82% make a habit of praying, poll finds 08/04/01Religion News Service The vast majority of Americans -- 82 percent -- report that they pray regularly, while 24 percent say they shared their faith with a nonbeliever in the last year, a Barna Research Group study shows. The Ventura, Calif., marketing research company found that Bible reading was most likely among attenders of Pentecostal churches -- 75 percent -- and least likely among worshippers at Catholic churches -- 23 percent. Surveyors found that Mormons were most likely to have attended church in the previous week -- 71 percent -- and ...

Vitter backing probe into DBEs Abuse of business programs alleged 08/04/01By Jeffrey Meitrodt Staff writer/The Times-Picayune Two members of the U.S. House of Representatives, including the chairman of an influential appropriations subcommittee, have asked the U.S. Department of Transportation to investigate and audit programs for disadvantaged business enterprises at three public agencies in New Orleans. The request was made in a letter sent Wednesday to Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta by U.S. Reps. David Vitter, R-Metairie, and Harold Rogers, R-Somerset, Ky. In their letter, Vitter and Rogers said they believed an investigation by the department's inspector general is warranted by ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A host of Hollywood actors and directors have contributed to Sen. Paul Wellstone's reelection campaign, including Barbra Streisand and Norman Lear, according to Wellstone's most recent campaign report. Wellstone, D-Minn., also raised money from several labor political action committees and past and present senators, the report shows. Streisand and Lear each gave Wellstone $1,000, as did singer Bonnie Raitt, director Rob Reiner and Dreamworks SKG co-owner Jeffrey Katzenberg. Actor Peter Coyote contributed $750, and Tony Randall gave Wellstone $500. Wellstone raised nearly $1.7 million in the reporting period that ended June 30, his campaign report shows. ...

WASHINGTON: Authorities in Washington have scrapped a planned high-profile public ceremony to give American citizenship to US-based scholar Gao Zhan, but will not explain why. The ceremony, which was to have been held on the steps of the US Capitol Building at 1.30pm on Thursday, was cancelled suddenly the night before. The Washington-based American University, where Dr Gao is an adjunct professor, issued a statement by Dr Gao and her husband Xue Donghua, saying: ``Gao Zhan is disappointed with the delay but she is not worried. She understands the government agency process. Dr Gao has met all the US citizenship ...

BEIJING (Reuters) - There was no indication on Friday of when China would start to try an ethnic Chinese U.S. citizen following his arrest in May on charges of spying for Taiwan and a report this week that he had been formally indicted. China's Foreign Ministry confirmed in a statement that academic Wu Jianmin was arrested on May 26 for ``taking money from Taiwan spy organs and entering the Chinese mainland to gather intelligence'' but court officials and prosecutors declined to comment on the case. A spokesman for the U.S. consulate in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou told Reuters ...

THE "DEPENDENTS" are restless. The wage-earning offspring in our household recently received word that they were not eligible to receive the ballyhooed federal income tax rebate being issued this summer. They won't get the rebate because their parents claimed them as dependents on our 2000 federal tax form. This was not welcome news. Opening up the Internal Revenue Service epistle bearing the bad tidings was like opening up a beautifully wrapped package and finding nothing inside. There were howls of protest. Expressions of rage were hurled at President Bush, who was mentioned in the letter; at the IRS, which ...

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - A recent explosion in a Caracas church has heightened alarm over a series of bomb threats in this South American capital, where terrorism is an unfamiliar problem. Last week's bomb injured a 25-year-old woman and destroyed a confessional in a colonial church in downtown Caracas. On Friday, police deactivated a bomb in the Caracas home of former Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez. Police have discovered dozens of explosive devices in subway stations, schools, restaurants and street corners in the capital in recent months. The incidents are adding a new sense of insecurity in a city ...

Former President Bill Clinton is said to be aiming for an advance between $12 million to $15 million for the memoir of his White House years, according to a source close to the Clinton camp. That would be a record for a nonfiction book advance. Sources close to Clinton expect the much-delayed meeting with publishers to get under way "in the next month or so." Once that happens, the conclusion of the auction process is expected to come quickly - perhaps in the weeks after the publishing industry gets back into full force after Labor Day. Simon & Schuster, Random ...

San Francisco -- Seven descendants of the dog that killed Diane Whipple are being offered for sale by a Southern California woman who is asking $1,200 each. The seven puppies are described as grandchildren of Bane, the male Presa Canario who was put to death for the Jan. 26 attack on the 33-year-old lacrosse coach outside her San Francisco apartment. The three males and four female pups are a mix of an English mastiff and a Canary Island cattle dog and were advertised in Saturday's Los Angeles Times: "Dog-O-War Presa Canario pups! Bane's daughter bred to the imported son of ...

This memo is to announce the development of a new software system which will be Year 2000 compliant known as: "Millennia Year Application Software System" (MYASS). Next Monday there will be a meeting in which I will show MYASS to everyone. We will hold demonstrations throughout the month so that all employees will have an opportunity to get a good look at MYASS. We have not addressed networking aspects yet, so currently only one person at a time can use MYASS. This restriction will be removed after MYASS expands. Some employees have begun using the program already. This morning I ...

Appearing forlorn and disheveled, Rep. Gary Condit flew home from Washington to California yesterday to face the music from his family and constituents over his conduct in the Chandra Levy case. The embattled conservative California Democrat will use the five-week congressional recess to repair the personal and political damage created by his reported affair with the still-missing Levy. Condit must decide sometime in mid-October whether he'll run again for Congress. Condit's friends and supporters say his rehabilitation campaign faces an uphill struggle, while others say his career has been ruined. There are signs the 3-month-long Levy saga has taken ...

The dim haze from a distant epoch that astronomers have dubbed the cosmic dark ages, a time so ancient that stars and galaxies had not yet begun to shine, has been seen for the first time by earthly telescopes, members of a multinational team said on Friday. The discovery, if it withstands scrutiny by other scientists, who have been searching for the effect for decades, amounts to a sighting of the first dawn in the cosmos as starlight and other radiation began to pervade the heavens. "It's the birth of stars, really," said Dr. Richard Ellis, an astrophysicist at the ...