Free Republic

June 21, 2002 Bush Proposes Doubling U.S. Support for Education in AfricaBy ELISABETH BUMILLER ASHINGTON, June 20 — President Bush tonight proposed doubling the amount of money his administration spends on education in Africa, to $200 million over the next five years. Mr. Bush also said he intended to visit Africa next year, which would be his first trip to the continent. The president made his announcement five days before he is scheduled to attend a summit meeting of industrialized nations, in Canada, where development in Africa is to be a central part of the agenda. The Bush administration has...

June 21, 2002 Ridge Questioned Sharply About Plans for Security DepartmentBy DAVID FIRESTONE ASHINGTON, June 20 — Tom Ridge, the White House domestic security director, was sharply questioned today by members of Congress who were skeptical about a core function of the proposed Department of Homeland Security: its ability to receive accurate intelligence about terrorist threats. Several lawmakers said the Bush administration's plan for sharing intelligence could lead to the same turf battles and rivalries that kept the existing agencies from predicting the Sept. 11 attacks. The plan, released on Tuesday, requires the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central...

If you were in Dallas last week, you got a front-row seat to the Gravest Show on Earth. The circus could be summed up like this: "Pulling the Frock over the Public's Eyes." Priests who gathered for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops performed magic as they tackled the growing church sex-abuse scandal. The bishops pulled out smoke. They whipped out mirrors. They came up with a plan that bans from active ministry any priest who abuses a child, or has done so in the past. The plan -- approved 239-13 -- calls for priests to be removed from public...

When the Lord was creating Vietnam veterans, He was into His 6th day of overtime when an angel appeared. "You're certainly doing a lot of fiddling around on this one." And God said, "Have you seen the specs on this order? A Nam vet has to be able to run 5 miles through the bush with a full pack on, endure with barely any sleep for days, enter tunnels his higher ups wouldn't consider doing, and keep his weapons clean and operable. He has to be able to sit in his hole all night during an attack, hold his buddies...

June 21, 2002 Terror Inquiry Shines Light on Senator Seeking StageBy CARL HULSE ASHINGTON, June 20 — Senator Bob Graham is perhaps best known nationally for a succession of missed opportunities. Three times Mr. Graham, a Florida Democrat, was vetted for the vice presidency and passed over by presidential candidates. He has compiled a legislative record heavy on Florida issues and the sort of policy changes talked about in Congressional Quarterly, not on "Meet the Press." When he drew considerable publicity two years ago, the accounts were hardly flattering. They were about his habitual scribbling in a pocket notebook about...

June 21, 2002 The New Suicide Bombers: Larger and More Varied PoolBy JAMES BENNET ERUSALEM, June 20 — Her face adorns no martyr's poster, but Arien Ahmed, a 20-year-old Palestinian student of business administration, has one of the many profiles of the new suicide bomber. She did not go through months, or even weeks, of indoctrination before setting out last month on a suicide bombing mission. She had no connection to the militantly Islamic groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad that once orchestrated most such attacks. She received little more preparation than a demonstration of how to push a button....

June 21, 2002 Why Not Be Bold? Bush Has ReasonsBy TODD S. PURDUM ASHINGTON, June 20 — On the foreign policy issues it regards as central — from Afghanistan to Iraq, from the steel tariffs it imposed to the international treaties it abandoned — the Bush administration has not shrunk from acting or taking strong stands, decisively and often alone. But on the Middle East, the administration avoided involvement for as long as it could and then waded in only tentatively. Even now, as Mr. Bush prepares an announcement of a new push for peace, officials have taken pains to...

June 21, 2002 Palestinians Kill 5 Israeli Settlers in Raid on a HomeBy JOHN KIFNER ERUSALEM, Friday, June 21 — Palestinian gunmen killed at least five Israeli settlers in a raid Thursday night, a mother and three children among them, even as Israeli soldiers spread throughout the West Bank, enforcing a new policy to take back Palestinian land in reprisal for suicide bombings. Two Palestinians carried out the attack in Itamar, a hilltop settlement southeast of Nablus, the same settlement where three yeshiva students were killed less than a month ago. According to early reports, the two held a family...

June 21, 2002 Palestinians Kill 5 Israeli Settlers in Raid on a HomeBy JOHN KIFNER ERUSALEM, Friday, June 21 — Palestinian gunmen killed at least five Israeli settlers in a raid Thursday night, a mother and three children among them, even as Israeli soldiers spread throughout the West Bank, enforcing a new policy to take back Palestinian land in reprisal for suicide bombings. Two Palestinians carried out the attack in Itamar, a hilltop settlement southeast of Nablus, the same settlement where three yeshiva students were killed less than a month ago. According to early reports, the two held a family...

If it was I am totally shocked that he would behave that way?

Reynosa Cops Fired Forty Reynosa Police officers are out of their job today after the Reynosa Mayor ordered a surprise drug test. We're told the results showed many officers were using cocaine and marijuana. There are 200 police officers in Reynosa; one hundred and sixty have been tested so far. Officers who had the day off will be tested when they return to work. Reynosa Mayor is hoping the drug test will help clean up the department to better serve the citizens of Reynosa as well as their neighbors to the North.

Hugh Sprunt and I will be guests on Jerry Pearce's "The Radio Detective Show" on Sunday, June 23, 2002 from 2-4 p.m. (PT), talking about Vince Foster. The station is KMJ 580 AM out of Fresno, CA. The web site for the station is http://www.kmj580.com/index.html, but you cannot listen over the Internet. The station is 50,000 watts and can be heard throughout Central California and in the Northern part of California and maybe farther. The call in numbers for the Jerry Pearce show is 559-490-5858 or 1-800-776-5858. Regards, Allan J. Favishhttp://www.allanfavish.com

Important Statement From Religious Leaders Friday on News Radio 1200 WOAI Joining Chris & Charlie on News Radio 1200 WOAI at 5pm will be Rabbi Barry Block from Temple Beth-El, San Antonio Muslim leader Imam Omar Shakir, and Buckner Fanning's successor at Trinity Baptist Church, Pastor Charles Johnson. They will be making a joint rebuttal to the Southern Baptist Convention leader who called Muhammad a "demon-possessed pedophile" earlier this week. It will be a rare moment when leaders of Christianity, Judaism and Islam come together to issue this joint declaration. Also joining the discussion will be Middle Eastern Analyst...

The Supreme Court ruling yesterday that executing mentally retarded people is unconstitutional offered the states almost no guidance on who must be considered retarded and who gets to decide. The decision will therefore spur vigorous legal activity on two fronts. In the courts, defendants accused or convicted of capital crimes will argue that they are mentally retarded. In the 20 states that currently allow the execution of retarded people, the legislatures will have to draft statutes establishing procedures to determine who is retarded. Justice Antonin Scalia, in his dissent, noted that the mere possibility that the court would rule as...

WASHINGTON, June 20 — The Constitution bars the execution of mentally retarded offenders, the Supreme Court declared today in a landmark death penalty ruling based on the majority's view that a "national consensus" now rejected such executions as excessive and inappropriate. Of the 38 states that have a death penalty, 18 now prohibit executing the retarded, up from 2 when the court last considered the question in 1989. This "dramatic shift in the state legislative landscape," especially when anticrime legislation is extremely popular, "provides powerful evidence that today our society views mentally retarded offenders as categorically less culpable than the...

Hispanic Dropout Rate Four Times That Of Whites Report Blames Government For Lack Of Funding POSTED: 11:15 a.m. EDT June 20, 2002 WASHINGTON -- A new report says the Hispanic school-age population is booming, but spending on programs for those students has lagged and they are four times as likely as non-Hispanic, white students to drop out. The report faults the Bush administration for failing to provide more funding to teacher training, bilingual education programs and immigrant education. White House spokesman Taylor Gross defended the administration's record, saying it has provided significant overall increases in its last two education...

From: glenn@americanpatrol.com Date: Fri, Jun 21, 2002, 4:24am (EDT+4) Subject: TROOPS PETITIONSIGN TROOPS ON THE BORDER PETITION (Some did not get the last alert on this) TOM TANCREDO JUST ON KABC RADIO IN LOS ANGELES! (8 pm Pacific) He has more than 10,000 signatures on his petition to demand Bush puts troops on the border. He says he needs one million!I SIGNED, HAVE YOU? LOG ON AND SIGN UP NOWhttp://www.house.gov/tancredo/Immigration/immig_petition.htm And pass the word along. Glenn Spencer

NEWS | FISHWRAPPER 06.19.02 AJC motto: Better really late than neverDaily claims credit for Business Chronicle and CL stories BY JOHN SUGG Pity the sadsack Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Its news-savvy-anemic editors must wrestle with near-terminal dysphoria as, with no other recourse, they are forced to rip off articles from the much smaller publications in town. Shame, oh terrible shame. Those victimized by the AJC's journalistic rapine include scribes here at CL, and, yes, I will get tediously self-serving in praising our own work. But that's a few paragraphs away. First, I'll laud a worthy business newspaper and scourge one of the...

At first I liked Jesse Ventura mainly because I hated Hubert H. Humphrey III. Fresh from his battle with the big, bad tobacco companies as Minnesota's attorney general, Humphrey ran for governor, no doubt confident that voters would reward his courage in daring to challenge the least popular industry in America. How wonderful it was to see this self-righteous statist not only defeated but also utterly humiliated, losing to a former professional wrestler with a fondness for feather boas, a bit-part actor and talk radio host whose candidacy was treated as a joke. It was a joke, and it was...

And now, a few words in memory of 34 1/2-year-old Rolling Stone magazine. Don't get me wrong. Jann Wenner's brainchild hasn't folded, but it is going to be revamped with an eye toward attracting short attention-span-afflicted readers. That's bad news. You may wish to charge Rolling Stone with being no more than a countercultural rag, a pied piper leading teens into drug-taking and radical-left politics. You may wish to joke that its readers have always had short attention spans. You may have a partial point in each regard. Nonetheless, there's good reason to lament RS's coming dumbing-down: It apparently will...