Free Republic

<p>Lawyers Jeffrey R. Anderson and Anthony J. Fontana Jr. have been described by many in their profession as "pioneers in a lucrative legal niche" — suing the U.S. Roman Catholic Church and other religious institutions over accusations of clergy sexual abuse.</p>

The Palestinian State Mistake President Bush's plan to recognize a Palestinian state won't stop terrorism against Israel. Fred Barnes, executive editor THE BLOODY TERRORIST ATTACKS on Israel this week, one killing 20 people, the other 7, should be a signal to President Bush. The State Department recently persuaded him that Palestinian conduct would improve and terrorism would cease if only Palestinians had real hope of statehood. And Bush agreed to give a speech supporting a provisional Palestinian state, one without final borders or other details worked out with Israel, but a state nonetheless. The one condition: Palestinians must first clean...

The sex-abuse scandal currently rocking the Catholic Church and shaming its bishops to their emergency meeting in Dallas last week has angered, embarrassed, and distressed many Catholics, but I'm not one of them. I'm glad. Not for the pain that the young victims and their families have had to endure daily. Not for the ruinous financial cost (to be borne by the faithful Mass-goers who keep dutifully dropping their fivers into the collection baskets) — of the countless well-deserved lawsuits against the prelates across the country who covered up the priestly malfeasance for decades. Not for the aid and comfort...

NEW YORK AND WASHINGTON - For months, Lynn Yturri has read the stories of corporate accounting errors, executive greed, and conflicts of interest. He's watched as the stock market has fallen, partly because investors are shellshocked by the unpleasant surprises. "It's just disgusting," says Mr. Yturri, a professional money manager for the One Group of mutual funds in Columbus, Ohio. "What we need is a cleaner and better-functioning system." It is a message that is finally resonating in Washington. On Monday, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed reforms ranging from a requirement that CEOs personally vouch for the veracity...

As Americans grapple with an alarming increase in weight gain and obesity, health advocates are suggesting that federal and local governments use some of the same tools to regulate the food industry that they employed against tobacco and liquor. By taxing soft drinks, controlling vending machines in schools, and restricting snack and other food advertising to children, they want to reverse a trend that now has 61 percent of adults overweight – with a healthcare cost to the nation of $117 billion a year. "The kinds of things we're recommending ... sound controversial because they're new," says Margo Wootan, director...

MIDAN, AFGHANISTAN - During the Taliban's six-year reign in Afghanistan, the hard-line Islamic regime was internationally famed – or reviled – for its radical style of justice. The Taliban laid down the most extreme form of sharia (Islamic law) seen in Afghanistan in more than 1,000 years. Crime plummeted as convicted thieves faced the amputation of a hand. Adulterers, both male and female, were stoned to death. And to convert from Islam was an offense punishable by death. With the Taliban's fall has come real progress on some issues of human rights, particularly in the nation's larger cities. But observers,...

<p>The EPA blamed the Army Corps of Engineers yesterday for a court document suggesting that sludge dumped into the Potomac River helps fish, and the Interior Department wants the discharges stopped.</p> <p>The document, reported yesterday by The Washington Times, was included in the Environmental Protection Agency's administrative record as part of an ongoing lawsuit to stop the sludge discharges along the river.</p>

WASHINGTON AND JERUSALEM - President Bush seemed poised early this week to put Palestinian statehood on the fast track. But by announcing a new policy of retaking Palestinian-controlled land in response to acts of terrorism, Israel appears to be changing the timetable – if not the outcome – of the Bush administration's efforts. Taken after this week's devastating suicide bombing in Jerusalem, the Israeli policy might be seen as a natural outgrowth of a strategy set forth by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon since he took office in March 2001. But the announcement also throws a wrench in US plans to...

<p>The Senate yesterday overwhelmingly approved legislation that grants President Bush's demand to kill the Army's $11 billion Crusader artillery system — with a few strings attached.</p> <p>The compromise amendment, which the White House belatedly backed, does not give the administration the clean kill it wanted.</p>

<p>A senior al Qaeda operations chief held by Moroccan authorities in connection with a conspiracy to bomb American and British warships is being questioned about other al Qaeda terrorism plans, U.S. law enforcement authorities said yesterday.</p> <p>Abu Zubair al-Haili, a Saudi Arabian arrested last week by Moroccan police, also is being asked about the identities and whereabouts of al Qaeda operatives, or cell members, authorities said.</p>

The apostle John revealed to us, "There was a war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan, which decieveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth and his angels were cast out with him" (Revelation12:7-9). Isaiah lamented, "How art thou fallen from heaven, oh Lucifer, son of the morning! how are thou cut down to the ground" (Isaiah 14:12). Joseph...

<p>Southwest Airlines insisted yesterday that it has long charged larger passengers for an extra seat, despite statements from airline officials a day earlier that it would begin doing so later this month.</p> <p>"The policy always has been that they have to purchase an additional seat," said Southwest spokeswoman Beth Harbin. "I've been here for eight years, and I've always known about it."</p>

<p>LONDON — Despite September 11 and the bombing of Afghanistan, the United States and Britain are surprisingly popular among young people in the Arab and Muslim world, according to a poll taken in nine Muslim and Arab countries.</p> <p>The survey of some 5,000 young people by the British Council, Britain's international organization for educational and cultural relations, showed that most of the young do not see the United States and Britain as "the house of Satan."</p>

<p>An abiding weakness of the conventional wisdom is that, once a supposed fact has become part of that wisdom, it becomes almost impossible to dislodge it.</p> <p>Contemporary journalism contributes to this problem by relying on technologies that help ensure an assertion, once it is repeated enough times, will never be checked against the actual evidence. Consider for example the claim that fat kills 300,000 Americans per year, and is thus the nation's second leading cause of premature death, trailing only cigarettes. A Lexis database search reveals that this "fact" has been repeated in more than one thousand news stories over the past three years alone. Yet the evidence for this claim is so slim as to be practically nonexistent.</p>

<p>An activist who is refusing to pay a $10,000 fine for violating U.S. sanctions on Iraq will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, a Treasury Department spokesman said yesterday.</p> <p>"The Treasury Department enforces the law of the land," said Rob Nichols, deputy assistant press secretary. "If someone doesn't pay a fine, we begin a collection process that can last up to six months."</p>

<p>A few weeks after September 11, I asked Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner James Ziglar a simple question: Had the INS checked the immigration status and criminal backgrounds of security screeners working on September 11 at Dulles, Newark and Logan International Airports — the three airports from which al Qaeda terrorists commandeered U.S. airliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon?</p>

<p>House Republicans yesterday renewed efforts to secure a ban on partial-birth abortion, introducing a revamped bill they say can be approved by Congress, signed into law this year and survive a constitutional challenge.</p> <p>"We believe it will move quickly," said the bill's sponsor, Rep. Steve Chabot, Ohio Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary Constitution subcommittee. "This legislation is long overdue."</p>

<p>Fortress Pigskin and Fortress Horsehide haven't fallen. Football and baseball are doing quite well in North America. However, the forts' moats aren't what they were, especially after the U.S. soccer victory over Mexico last Monday in World Cup competition. That's more than the biggest win in American soccer history. It marks the end of "sport isolationism."</p>

<p>The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are meeting behind closed doors on June 19-20 to determine policy about the U.S. stockpile of smallpox vaccine-this after having four open forums to solicit public opinion and input. First of all, four hastily put together and not well-advertised (hence, poorly attended) forums in New York, San Francisco, San Antonio, and St. Louis hardly constitutes a wellspring of public input. But the CDC apparently prefers it that way.</p>

<p>Spend an hour with Teamsters President James P. Hoffa and you get a crash course in his brand of bipartisan union politics and, with it, a peek into how the White House is driving a wedge into organized labor.</p> <p>The first thing Mr. Hoffa wanted me to know when I walked into his office on Capitol Hill (that his father once occupied) was that his union is no longer the wholly owned monopoly of the Democratic Party. His message to Democrats: "Don't take us for granted."</p>