Free Republic

<p>Ru Paster was shocked when Gonzaga University officials told him they couldn't issue the "moral character" certificate he needed to get a state teaching license. He was even more surprised when he found out why.</p> <p>Nearly a decade ago, Mr. Paster, then a senior at the private Jesuit college in Spokane, Wash., learned that school officials were withholding the certificate because of an unsubstantiated date-rape allegation against him that both he and the alleged victim denied. When the school disclosed that information to the state teacher certification agency and refused to remove it from his record, Mr. Paster sued, alleging that Gonzaga had violated a 1974 federal privacy law that gives students at schools receiving federal funds veto power over the release of such personal information. A state court agreed, awarding him nearly $2 million in damages.</p>

JOSEPH PERKINS Southern California's biggest landowner Joseph Perkins SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE June 21, 2002 Perkins can be reached via e-mail at joseph.perkins@uniontrib.com. How much is a half-million acres of prime Southern California land worth? Not so much, a federal judge decided last week, that it should not be retained as "critical habitat" for the coastal California gnatcatcher and the San Diego fairy shrimp. The Bush administration had asked Judge Steven V. Wilson to invalidate the designations, which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service put in place two years ago. It was not because the administration is hostile to gnatcatchers and...

Senior administration officials say they will urge President Bush to veto the 2003 defense authorization bill if, as expected, it supports phase in of full military retired pay to roughly 80,000 seriously disabled retirees who also draw tax-free VA disability compensation. The White House's Office of Management and Budget delivered the veto warning in a June 19 memo to Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Congressional plans to allow "concurrent receipt'' of both military retired pay and VA compensation for retirees with VA disability ratings of 60 percent or higher, said OMB, "is contrary...

In order that we might all raise the level of discourse and expand our language abilities, here is the daily post of “word for the day”. Rules: Everyone must leave a post using the “word of the day”; in a sentence. The sentence must, in some way, relate to the news of the day. The Review threads are linked for your edification. ;-) Practice makes perfect.....post on.... taction \tak-shun\, noun: 1. The act of touching; contact. 2. The act of touching; touch; contact; tangency Etymology: Latin taction-, tactio, from tangere. Date: circa 1623.

<p>Berkeley -- Berkeley, a place passionate about coffee and progressive politics, could become the only city in the nation to ban coffee not grown with strict protections for workers and the environment.</p> <p>The proposed ban -- contained in an initiative crafted by a lawyer one year out of law school -- has gathered enough valid signatures to qualify for the November ballot, City Clerk Sherry Kelly announced Thursday.</p>

PRISTINA -- The arc lights glowing in the night from the heavily-guarded perimeter of Camp Bondsteel, America's big military base in southern Kosovo, give the impression, at least, that the western commitment to keeping the peace in the southern Balkans is deep-rooted and enduring. But how real is that commitment and how much longer will such a military force, still 38,000-strong, be needed? Three years after NATO's troops marched into Kosovo, in the wake of an 11-week bombing campaign which forced the Yugoslav army to withdraw, the province is inching, at best, towards stability and security. But its political...

Don't forget that Mark "The Great One" Levin hosts a weekly radio show on WABC Radio, AM 770, in New York on Sunday, Noon to 2 p.m. Freepers can listen on the internet at http://www.wabcradio.com. Freepers are especially welcome to call in at 800-848-WABC. In fact, Mark is offering a Freepers-only incentive for calling in: Every Freeper who calls the show will get an extra-large, autographed hunk of free government cheese. (He used to make this offer to liberals, but very few of them had the fine motor skills needed to work the complicated telephone keypad to dial the number.)

In early June, a routine environmental inspection turned up traces of nerve gas at a military base in Uzbekistan that thousands of U.S. soldiers had passed through. Personnel were immediately evacuated, but it took days to positively identify the deadly traces. That's because today's chemical-weapons detection kits are quick to sense danger but do a poor job of sorting one warfare agent from another. To these kits, which are based on the reaction of natural enzymes to poisons, nerve gas can look just like a less harmful but chemically similar pesticide. With a grant from the military, biotech startup Semorex...

Six Days Of War: June 1967 And The Making Of The Modern Middle East. By Michael B. Oren. Illustrated. 445 pp. New York: Oxford University Press. $30By Gary J. Bass "Soon we'll be able to take the initiative and rid ourselves of Israel once and for all,'' the Egyptain field marshal Abdel Hakim Amer said in a phone call to the head of the P.L.O. on June 4, 1967. In two weeks of escalating crisis, Egypt had expelled the United Nations peacekeepers stationed in Egypt, moved troops in huge numbers into the Sinai and -- despite panicky Israeli and American...

Friday June 21, 2002; 9:12 a.m. EDT There are "rumbles" that ex-president Bill Clinton will join the legendary "Saturday Night Live" blues-singing duo "The Blues Brothers" onstage at a Connecticut casino "weekend extravaganza," reports Chicago Sun-Times gossip maven Michael Sneed. Fresh from being cleared of vote-trading charges in the Pardongate scandal, Clinton will "don a black hat, sunglasses and his saxophone" and perform along with Dan Ackroyd and Jim Belushi at the Mohican Sun gambling resort, Sneed predicted Friday. Belushi will be filling in for his late brother John, who created the dark-suited, sunglass-wearing Chicago bluesmen Jake and Elwood Blues...

Beyond Terror, By Ralph Peters, Published by Stackpole; 353 pages, $22.95 By Harry Levins, Post-Dispatch Senior Writer A few years back, Ralph Peters took off the Army uniform he'd worn for a career as an intelligence officer. He wanted the freedom to speak out. In "Beyond Terror," he speaks out, and then some. The dust cover's pictures hint at the tone of the text. The top picture shows the Pentagon aflame on Sept. 11. The bottom picture shows a very dead Taliban soldier, his dull eyes still open, his mouth agape. Action and reaction -- on the top, a primitive...

ZAMBOANGA (Philippines) - Senior Abu Sayyaf leader Abu Sabaya, responsible for the kidnapping of three Americans and numerous Filipinos, was killed in a clash with the Philippine military before dawn on Friday, military sources said. Sabaya was one of three members of the Abu Sayyaf Muslim kidnapping group who were slain by elite naval troops in a clash in the southern province of Zamboanga del Norte, said the military sources, who did not want to be identified. A military spokesman confirmed that three Abu Sayyaf members were killed but would not yet officially comment on whether Abu Sabaya was among...

One of the most popular kids channels on cable television is scheduled to broadcast a news special about children living in homes with parents who smoke cigarettes, cigars and pipes. The program 'Coming Out of the Haze,' which will feature a group of teenagers and other in-studio guests, will be aired on The Cartoon Network July 10. Producers for the program say guests will include Phillip Morris Chairman Geoffrey Bible, actor Peter Faulk and Margaret Binder, principal of Walter Raleigh Middle School in Charlotte, North Carolina. A videotape presentation featuring the late George Burns will also be included in the...

WASHINGTON- Where you stood on unions may have depended Thursday on where you stood on Capitol Hill. At a Senate hearing, a Louisiana mariner told sympathetic Democrats about the harassment and threats he said workers faced from boat companies when they tried to unionize. "It shouldn't be this hard to form a union," said Eric Vizier of Galliano, La. On the opposite side of the Capitol, a very different union tale was unfolding at another sympathetic hearing - this time in front of House Republicans. An Ohio school psychologist talked of being forced to join and subsidize a union that...

<p>As sure as the dry season brings fire to the West's hilltops and mountainsides, firefighters know that the natural blazes will attract another threat: arsonists.</p> <p>And with their appearance, investigators acknowledge a sad truism -- often those most successful at setting blazes are somehow linked to a fire service agency.</p>

Women serving in the military overseas should not be denied their constitutional right to safe and legal abortions, Sen. Patty Murray said yesterday in trying to reverse a policy of prohibiting privately funded abortions in military hospitals abroad. The Washington Democrat proposed lifting the ban in an amendment to a $393 billion defense spending bill the Senate is considering. Chances of including the measure in the defense bill that eventually goes to the president are not high. Last month, the Republican-controlled House rejected a similar amendment. The vote this year was 215-202, largely along party lines, against lifting the restriction....

Nothing much to add. I saw only the last fifteen minutes of the game.Germany went ahead on a header that'd have been nearly impossible for any keeper to ward off, and the US nearly came back and tied it--it was literally a matter of inches.At the end of the game the German keeper collapsed to the ground.This was a case of fighting one of THE premier teams in the world to a near standstill.We come away from this tournament with elevated stature in international soccer.Thank you, Team USA, you did your country proud!USA! USA! USA!

Police were called 11 times in months before shooting By Yolanda Jones yojones@gomemphis.com June 21, 2002 Police had been called 11 times in the past year and a half to the home at 3448 Rosamond before a 3-year-old girl was shot to death last week at the residence following a drug dispute. The calls to 3448 Rosamond involved a variety of complaints, from domestic disputes to suspicious people in or near the house. Police said most of the calls were 911 calls made by neighbors complaining about shots fired or suspicious people selling drugs in or near the cinder block...

SHOW LOW - One of the worst fires in the state's history grew to a monstrous size Thursday as thousands fled their homes through choking ash and firefighters stood helplessly as the inferno ripped through the Valley's high-country summer playland. By late Thursday, the fire roaring along the Mogollon Rim had virtually emptied six towns, forced 5,200 people from their homes, burned about 50 structures and had grown to 85,000 acres, an area slightly larger than Mesa. Flames slashed across Arizona 260 between Heber and Show Low. The blaze more than 100 miles northeast of Phoenix was a vicious freak...

<p>SACRAMENTO (AP) - The Senate on Thursday approved a new version of the "Son of Sam" law struck down by the state Supreme Court in February, sending it to the Assembly.</p> <p>The bill attempts to sidestep the high court's ruling that California's previous ban on felons' profiting from their criminal actions with books or movies is a violation of their free speech rights. Those profits would have gone to the victims instead, under the old 1983 law.</p>