Free Republic

DELAND -- A year ago, when TaShawn Woulard lied on an application and during a polygraph test about smoking pot and selling crack cocaine, the police department thanked her for her interest in becoming a police officer and sent her on her way. Today, she's headed for the police academy, her tuition paid with a federal grant and her candidacy backed by the DeLand Police Department. DeLand Police Chief William Anderson said Woulard made some "mistakes" as a youth and when she was being hired, and said he doesn't think she intended to mislead. Anderson said Tuesday that after seeing...

Iran and Syria sponsor an ominous arms build-up on Israel's northern border. THE ISRAEL-LEBANON BORDER Yellow Hezbollah FLAGS fly over the rubble of the Tourmus agricultural station on the Israel-Lebanon border. Following Israel's May 2000 withdrawal from southern Lebanon, Hezbollah guerrillas dynamited the cattle pens and vaccination clinics where Lebanese farmers once brought their livestock for immunization. "It's a shame. Disease doesn't know the border, and everyone will suffer because of this," one local farmer said. Hezbollah does not care. Emboldened by the Israeli withdrawal and United Nations moral equivalency, Hezbollah is determined to further the conflict. Sadly, Israel's muddled...

JERUSALEM The latest mission impossible embraced by those who would resolve the Middle East conflict is the effort to "democratize" the Palestinian Authority, an organization that has thrived on repression, violence, and aggressive irredentism. Meanwhile, a far more promising route to peace--the path of economic cooperation and development--is being neglected or given mere lip service. It's as if the only form of economic life possible for Palestinians were the one that has prevailed in the last ten years--the provision of foreign billions to huge bureaucracies that squandered or stole much of it, while lawlessness and corruption suppressed private initiatives. There...

CHICAGO (AP) - One of two men convicted of killing the son of U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush was sentenced to 90 years in prison. Leo Foster, 34, and Darcell Prince, 25, were convicted by separate juries in March of murder, armed robbery and impersonation of a police officer in the 1999 slaying of Huey Rich. Prince is to be sentenced next week. Prosecutors said Foster and Prince wore bulletproof vests, carried fake badges and identified themselves as police when they shot Rich, 33, as he ran from them during a robbery. Rich died four days later. Defense attorneys said the...

America needs to stay the course. WINNING THE PEACE in Afghanistan is not optional. It is a national necessity. Early American military victories, the current low level of fighting, and the recent completion of the loya jirga, or council of elders, all have contributed to a false sense of progress evident both in official U.S. statements and in the media. There is also, however, a growing discomfort, an as yet unarticulated perception that all is not well on the Afghan front. The reality is that the situation is both worse and better than is often realized. Worse, because if current...

DURING THIS JULY FOURTH SEASON, the two hundred twenty-seventh year of American democracy now dawning, just how secure--under the temporary stewardship of President Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft--are the basic constitutional rights that democracy was founded to assert? One or another version of this question has been at the center of public debate almost from the moment the federal government took its first, halting steps in response to the attacks of last September11. And while we have never been especially impressed by the arguments of those who answer that the Bush administration's "war on terrorism" is a war on civil...

<p>Detroit Catholic Cardinal Adam Maida fired two priests Friday -- the first to be removed by the Archdiocese of Detroit under the church's new zero-tolerance policy against the sexual abuse of minors.</p> <p>Both priests -- the Rev. Robert Haener, 70, and the Rev. Michael Daly, 53 -- already had been working in restricted ministries for the Felician Sisters in Livonia, because of past charges of abusing children.</p>

<p>CASEVILLE -- Beachfront property owners like to care for their sandy yards just as inland dwellers maintain their lawns.</p> <p>Many shore-dwellers have had their work cut out for them as receding Great Lakes waters allow weeds and grasses to thrive on the emerging land.</p>

The crew of a 27-foot-long hot dog on wheels have been questioned by police after straying on to a restricted road near the Pentagon. The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile got lost while travelling through Washington on a year-long tour.It ended up on a road which has been closed to commercial traffic since September 11.The road is off limits to vehicles with six wheels or more because of fears someone could drive a truck bomb close to the Pentagon. The road is staffed round the clock by armed officers.Motorist Carrie Witt, who was passing when the hotdog was pulled over, said: "Here...

Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has warned that crisis with India will remain potentially explosive while both sides have large numbers of forces massed on their borders. Speaking in an exclusive BBC interview, General Musharraf said the two countries had come "very close" to war - although the threat had diminished because intentions had changed. But he said the capability for fighting remained. "The situation will remain explosive because if anything happens in Kashmir or inside India, which is a possibility by any independent group or terrorist organisation, the situation could become explosive again," he said. President Musharraf, who wore a...

Committee on Government Reform - “The Status of Research into Vaccine Safety and Autism” - Please read. Committee on Government Reform - “The Status of Research into Vaccine Safety and Autism” June 19, 2002 - 11:00 a.m. 2154 Rayburn House Office Building In April the Committee conducted a hearing reviewing the epidemic of autism and the Department of Health and Human Service’s (HHS) response. Ten years ago, autism was thought to affect 1 in 10,000 individuals in the United States. When the Committee began its oversight investigation in 1999, autism was thought to affect 1 in 500 children. Today, the...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) --   President Bush is taking on hundreds of White House staff members in a foot race that he hopes will give out-of-shape Americans a new reason to make exercise part of their daily lives.</p> <p>Bush put other participants in Saturday's "President's Fitness Challenge Run and Walk" on notice that he expected all of them to do their best.</p>

Bush continues Clinton agenda Posted: June 22, 2002 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2002 WorldNetDaily.com Referring to President G. W. Bush's new Department of Homeland Security, former President Bill Clinton told a gathering of Council on Foreign Relations members last week, "We have been building this for a long time." For once, Clinton told the truth. What he began constructing following the Oklahoma City bombing, Bush has succeeded in bringing to fruition. America is about to have its very own Gestapo. If Al Gore were president today, Republicans in Congress would no doubt rise in righteous indignation to quickly kill such...

We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail! [President Bush] Good morning!! Do not let the victims of the attacks on New York and Washington, nor the brave members of our Nation's military who have given their lives to protect our freedom, die in vain!! Charlie Daniels decided to drop out of a PBS July 4th special when the Government-sponsored network would not let him perform his September 11 tribute song. PBS officials said the song was not "upbeat" enough to be compatible with the other selections being performed. Martha Stewart's stock sale came under...

<p>A New Jersey pilot was being questioned last night by authorities who ordered him to land at Lincoln Park Airport in Morris County after receiving reports of a small plane flying erratically over reservoirs in upstate New York, police and aviation officials said.</p>

<p>SEVILLE, Spain (AP) -- A dramatic example of Europe's immigration woes greeted European Union leaders meeting to discuss how to deal with the influx of foreigners.</p> <p>Some 460 would-be immigrants who have been staging a sit-in at a university outside Seville since June 10 held a two-day hunger strike to press their demands for work and residency papers.</p>

The Orlando fundraiser, prominently attended by several major developers and state lobbyists, again proves the GOP's prowess at raising cash. By WES ALLISON, Times Staff Writer © St. Petersburg Times published June 22, 2002 ORLANDO -- St. Joe Co., which needs state money and permits to develop its vast Panhandle holdings, delivered $25,000. So did U.S. Sugar Corp., several major developers and the state's most influential citrus and vegetable company. Corporations and lobbyists that depend heavily on government decisions chipped in for the Florida Republican Party on Friday night, joining President Bush and Gov. Jeb Bush to raise more than...

The god of terror Posted: June 21, 2002 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2002 WorldNetDaily.com "It is so beautiful to kill and to be killed." So wrote the 22-year-old Palestinian male who blew himself up after boarding a packed Jerusalem bus earlier this week – killing 20 innocent Israelis and horribly injuring many others. The mass murderer's suicide note also expressed his joy at the anticipated horrors his shrapnel would inflict on unsuspecting civilians. Most Americans, since their hellish introduction to Islamic terrorism last September, have soulfully resonated with the sufferings of Israelis who are victimized weekly – and, now, almost...

Martha Stewart's stock sale story came under fresh suspicion yesterday when her broker was suspended by Merrill Lynch after it found evidence that contradicted her claims. The firm immediately turned over the evidence — information about Stewart's Dec. 27 sale of 3,900 shares of ImClone — to Manhattan federal prosecutors and securities regulators probing insider trading, a source familiar with the investigation said. Martha Stewart An internal investigation of broker Peter Bacanovic's ImClone trades found information within the past 48 hours that "raised factual issues regarding a client transaction," Merrill said in a statement released yesterday after the stock market...

Saturday 22nd June 2002 Dear Family and Friends, It is with great sadness that I write this letter to you today. On Monday morning 51% of Zimbabwe's commercial farmers will be confined to their homesteads and forbidden to continue operating. If they attempt to keep producing food these farmers face either 2 years in prison, a fine of Z$20,000 or both. 2,443 farmers have Section 8 letters of Compulsory Acquisition and from Monday have 45 days in which to pay off their workers, pack their belongings and get out of their houses. This is an obscene and sickening irony in...