Free Republic

Postal Service Cuts HQ Jobs Will Eliminate 800 Positions, Close Two Regional Offices Part Of Government Corporation's Belt-Tightening Former Postmaster General Calls For Privatization WASHINGTON, Sept. 7, 2001 Virtual Stamp Club These stamps were needed two months ago, but won't be issued until the 20th because of budget cuts. (CBS) U.S. Postmaster General Jack Potter Friday announced a reorganization of the Postal Service's management that includes the elimination of 800 headquarters jobs. "This is the most sweeping restructuring that we've had since 1992. We've targeted it at reducing our overhead and our administrative costs," Potter told The Associated Press. ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two brothers, age 8 and 9, were charged on Friday in the stabbing death of a 4-year-old boy after they allegedly attacked him outside his New York City apartment and severed his jugular vein with a pen or key, police said. Emanuel Barima was fatally stabbed in the neck on Wednesday after he and his 5-year-old sister left their apartment to throw a dirty diaper down a trash chute in the hallway, police said. The little boy was to have started school on Thursday. Authorities questioned and charged the two brothers, who live in the same ...

                Ethical Limits on Stem Cell               Research               By PETER STEINFELS                   Nearly a century ago, in the preface to his play                   ``The Doctor's Dilemma,'' George Bernard               Shaw laid down a simple rule that no medical               researcher caught up in the current controversies               over embryonic stem cells or therapeutic cloning               would think to challenge.               Shaw, of course, put the matter in the usual               outrageous way he employed to provoke thought.               ``No man,'' he wrote, ``is allowed to put his mother               into the stove because he desires to know how ...

OKENA, ILL. -- An air of peace surrounds Jill Stanek, sitting here in the living room of her Victorian-style suburban home, her two cats, Fifi and Belle, roaming from the windowsills to the carpeted floor on a sunny day when the last breaths of summer stir leaves outside. Mrs. Stanek appears unshaken and unwavering in her faith, though it is still only days since she was fired from Christ Hospital and Medical Center in south suburban Oak Lawn. In her eight years as a nurse there, Mrs. Stanek, 45, a mother of three and a grandmother, was known to ...

EDITOR’S NOTE: In 1971, a fan group that based many of its philosophies on STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND wrote to Heinlein asking permission to use material from the book. Permission was not granted. Later, a member of that group wrote to Heinlein asking why he was unsympathetic to its aims. Here is his reply. JANUARY 20, 1972: ROBERT A. HEINLEIN TO A READER Facts: 1. The last time I was present at any organized SF fandom meeting was at Seattle in 1961 plus a very brief appearance at Chicago in 1962 to accept the Hugo for Stranger – brief ...

PORTLAND, Ore (Reuters) - Many farmers hit by a devastating drought in Oregon have agreed to sell land that could be used to store water for future irrigation, environmentalists said on Friday. The American Land Conservancy is backing the land buyout plan proposed earlier this summer to ease a long-term water shortage in southern Oregon around the so-called Klamath Basin. The group obtained signed options to purchase about 32,000 acres from farmers, more than 10 percent of the area in the Klamath Basin irrigation project, said Rich McIntyre, a representative for the organization in southern Oregon. Under the buy-out plan, ...

Concerned about what our young people are listening to in today’s music? Hold your breath, count to “Se7en”, and breathe a sigh of relief!Promoting Virtue instead of Vice. Se7en is Americas Dr Laura inspired answer to the “vice dominated” world of rap music. He recently made a guest appearance and performed on the Dr Laura TV show. The gesticulation, delivery, and rhythm are on par with today’s rap mega-stars but, upon closer inspection you’ll find a message that is vastly different from the rap that dominates America’s airwaves. Distinctly Christian, the only “f-word” in his music is faith. He focuses ...

<p>Washington, Sept. 7 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Senator Bill Frist said today he will introduce legislation to give the Bush administration authority to go ahead with the Medicare drug- discount card program that a federal judge blocked yesterday.</p> <p>President George W. Bush announced the discount card plan in July as a first step toward helping the 40 million Americans in the U.S. health insurance program for the elderly and disabled get cheaper prices on prescription drugs. It would allow Medicare patients to get discounts of 10 percent to 25 percent from participating drugstores.</p>

I just ran across this. Excuse the language, but it appears to truly be this guy's name. Wonder why the XFL didn't try to draft him...

Man bites dog is news. Now someone's suing the American Civil Liberties Union, possibly the nation's most-litigious liberal group, for – gasp! – invasion of privacy. The number of times the ACLU has dragged others into court for every conceivable abrogation of political correctness would be hard to assess. This time it's the ACLU that's on the other end of the litigation stick. It has to do with a suit filed in a county court in Nashville, Tenn., by a university sophomore who says the ACLU invaded his privacy by publishing his photograph depicting him as a convicted criminal in ...

President Bush is considering a Republican proposal that would trigger across-the-board budget cuts next year if spending starts eating into Social Security reserves, congressional and administration officials said Friday.Hoping to shield himself and his party from political damage during worsening economic times, Bush was meeting Friday with House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and stepping before cameras outside the Oval Office.&nbsp;White House officials said Bush wanted to express sympathy with workers stung by the economy. He was urging Congress to adopt his budget without exceeding spending goals.He did not plan to embrace the ...

WASHINGTON (AP) President Bush will put a special focus on reading next week, hoping to give his education package an extra nudge toward passage on Capitol Hill. The president began the campaign Friday night by attending a National Book Festival gala at the Library of Congress with first lady Laura Bush, the festival host who plans to testify before a Senate education panel on Tuesday. The festival is patterned on one Mrs. Bush, a librarian, sponsored in Texas when her husband was governor. At Friday night's event, she said she became a reading advocate because "I love to read, ...

W A S H I N G T O N, Sept. 7 — President Bush today defended his plan to revive the slumping economy in the face of a sharp rise in unemployment, urging Congress to pass his "pro-growth agenda." "Any American out of work is too many Americans out of work," Bush said in a news conference at the White House. "And that's why it's absolutely essential that we work together to put a growth plan in place to create jobs for hardworking Americans." The president's remarks came as his administration and Congress are embroiled in a political ...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7, 2001 CBS (CBS) Not two months after he unveiled it, the President's prescription drug card was shredded by a federal judge who ruled the White House overstepped its authority, reports CBS News Chief White House Correspondent John Roberts, leaving the administration's hopes riding on a physician-senator from Tennessee. An injunction filed Thursday by U.S. District Court Judge Paul Friedman would keep the program from starting for several months. The court said administration officials lacked the legal authority to begin the plan. Under the White House plan, which Mr. Bush announced with great fanfare in July, the ...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7, 2001 AP (AP) President Bush gave anxious Republican leaders an emergency Oval Office audience on Friday and then sought to reassure the nation about the rising unemployment rate. "We've got a plan to get our economy moving so Americans can find work," the president said. Privately he considered calling for across-the-board budget cuts next year if the economy worsens and spending starts eating into Social Security reserves. The president spoke from outside the Oval Office, where he and Vice President Dick Cheney had just finished meeting with House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Senate Minority Leader ...

<p>WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush administration says it is "disappointed" by a federal judge's decision to temporarily halt the president's plan to give drug discount cards to elderly Americans, arguing the move will delay efforts to provide "immediate and necessary relief to the millions of Americans who are forced to pay full price for their prescription drugs."</p>

Ridiculed and denounced for supporting admitted child killer Andrea Yates, the pro-abortion pressure group National Organization for Women is spinning and backtracking as fast as it can. At its annual convention this summer, NOW condemned Texas' treatment of the confessed drowner of her own five children - but did not criticize Yates herself - as "barbaric." On Aug. 23, Texas NOW leader Deborah Bell announced that her outfit, along with other left-wing groups, would raise money to defend Yates, the Washington Times reported today. But unable to take the heat, NOW is distancing itself from that chapter. National president Kim ...

Just how objective is "CBS Evening News" anchorman Dan Rather? He claims he does his level best to suppress personal opinions while reporting the news. But the folks at RatherBiased.com have put together a compelling compendium of Rather quotes that proves his pretense to objectivity is beyond ludicrous. Here's a sampling from Rather Biased.com's "Compare and Contrast" page: Rather on sexual harrassment allegations against Clarence Thomas: "It raises the potential, the potential for a strategy that says, 'Listen, Anita Hill has raised this. In order to save Clarence Thomas's nomination we're going to have to, in effect, tear her apart.' ...

Judge says Enron has to give up documents By Emily Bazar Bee Capitol Bureau (Published Sept. 7, 2001) Enron Corp. must turn over sensitive internal documents to state legislators, a Sacramento judge ruled Thursday, but only after the two sides agree to a court-approved confidentiality agreement. For months, a special Senate committee investigating electricity price manipulation has been issuing subpoenas and gathering documents from power generators and marketers. During the process, the committee has found three companies in contempt for resisting the subpoenas, including Enron, which fought back with a lawsuit asking the court to intervene on its behalf. ...

It will be very easy for you to say, "Well, I will do something, some day. When I can afford it, I am going to." But would you let an old "grad" tell you one thing now? Giving is a habit. Get into the habit now, because you will never be able to afford to give and contribute, thus to repay the obligation you owe to those people who made this college possible, if you wait until you think you can afford it. Start now regardless of how small, and in the days to come when you are confronted ...