Free Republic

Just about everyone gets a turn at discrimination-induced outrage in Ornery America. This week it's "people of size" -otherwise known as fat people -who take up too much space on airplanes. Beginning June 26, Southwest Airlines plans to start charging double for people whose girth consumes more than one seat. Fat people are furious; civil liberties lawyers are drooling; skinny people are skipping lunch. This is one of those cases where everybody's right and everybody's wrong all at the same time. Fat people are right that the airline's policy is discriminatory; civil liberties defenders are probably right that making...

Once again the push is on for the Senate to ratify CEDAW, the U.N.'s women's rights treaty that has been hanging around since 1979. CEDAW is the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. There's a good reason why the Senate has ignored it for a generation: It's an incredibly toxic document, the work of international bureaucrats determined to impose a worldwide makeover of family relations and "gender roles." CEDAW is a blueprint for foisting the West's radical feminism on every nation gullible enough to sign on. (Talk about cultural imperialism.) Some 167 nations have signed the treaty,...

<p>When President Bush nominated Robert Mueller to become FBI director last summer, the choice received glowing praise from Democrats and Republicans alike. But patience with Mr. Mueller must be wearing thin now that he has accepted an invitation to deliver a June 28 address to the American Muslim Council (AMC), a defender of terrorist organizations.</p>

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is investigating United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan over reports that his bodyguards carry illegal submachine guns to protect the number one diplomat. "Sources in the U.N. Security and Safety Service say that members of Annan's personal protective detail have been using the German-made MP5 submachine guns since 1998," reports the National Rifle Association's "America's 1st Freedom" Magazine. While U.N. officials say the extraordinarily lethal firearms have been cleared with U.S. law enforcement, a spokesman for the BATF's parent agency, the Treasury Department, told the Washington Times earlier this year that Annan's...

Al-Qa'ida tape raises America's fears of attack on 4 July By Rupert Cornwell in Washington 24 June 2002 America's terror jitters have jumped a notch with an apparently authentic warning that Osama bin Laden and most of his main al-Qa'ida lieutenants are alive and planning attacks on US targets. The White House gave no public reaction yesterday to the audiotape message from Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, Mr bin Laden's spokesman, which was obtained by the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television network – al-Qa'ida's main media conduit. But senior American politicians warned that whatever the fate of Mr bin Laden himself, the threat from...

ERUSALEM, Monday, June 24 — Israeli tanks and troops surrounded Yasir Arafat's battered compound at dawn this morning, extending the shutdown of nearly all of the Palestinian West Bank, as President Bush's advisers said he was tentatively planning to announce his new Mideast policy — including a path to creating a Palestinian state — this afternoon at the White House.As the sun rose, more than 100 Israeli armored vehicles were seen moving into Ramallah, the Palestinian intellectual, political and commercial capital, expanding an operation that has left more than 600,000 people confined to their homes in the cities of...

<p>SEVILLE, Spain — European Union leaders moved during the weekend to establish an EU border police force to patrol shores, ports and crossing points against illegal immigrants.</p> <p>The heads of government said the decisions were a steppingstone to the creation of a continentwide force, which would act in tandem with each nation's police to patrol European coasts.</p>

MATT DRUDGE **ON THE AIR** Monday and Tuesday! 5-9 AM *PT / 8 AM-Noon *ET CLICK HERE TO ** LISTEN LIVE ** or go to DRUDGE REPORT Matt will be sitting in for the popular LA Morning Host, Bill Handel. Listen to KFI AM 640 in the WEST or at link above for this Week-Day Treat!

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — José Padilla, accused of conspiring to explode a "dirty bomb" in the United States, worked at a suburban Taco Bell and discovered Islam in Fort Lauderdale. Two young Pakistani immigrants from nearby Hollywood reportedly hatched a plan to attack South Florida power plants and a National Guard Armory. And several of the Sept. 11 hijackers roamed the area's libraries, gyms and beachfront motels. They all made their home — at least temporarily — in South Florida's Broward County, leading some to wonder if the growing suburban and tourist area north of Miami has become a common...

<p>The al Qaeda terrorist group yesterday released a new audiotape that says it is planning more attacks "against American and Jewish targets" and that also says its leader, Osama bin Laden, is alive and well.</p> <p>"America must prepare itself and fasten its seat belt. We will arrive when they are not expecting us," Suleiman Abu Ghaith, a known spokesman for al Qaeda network and bin Laden, said in a long statement that aired on the Qatar-based satellite news channel Al-Jazeera.</p>

This is the tale of how a footloose, unfocused Algerian boy, son of a war hero, evolved into a terrorist. How he planned an attack against Americans on the eve of the new millennium. How he nearly got away with it. And how, since Sept. 11, he has been one of the U.S. government’s best resources in the war on terror. Algerian Ahmed Ressam was captured on Dec. 14, 1999, in Port Angeles, Wash., on his way to detonate a bomb at the Los Angeles International Airport.THE MAIN CHARACTERS Several people in this story are key to understanding the roots...

Would you agree or disagree with the proposition that "The United States would be better off if the '60s had never happened?" Before you are put off with the provocative formulation of the question, understand that it is the resolution the Buckley School of Public Speaking has adopted as the debate topic for this week's seminar attendees. We have been split up into two teams, affirmative and negative, and assigned the task of supporting and defending the proposition, respectively. Of course, Mr. Reid Buckley and his colleagues do not wish us to address whether we would literally prefer to...

Palestinians accused Israel of assassinating a top Hamas military leader and five other Palestinians Monday morning by attack helicopters that fired missiles at two vehicles in the southern Gaza Strip, media reports said. Ten people were wounded in the attack, including a number of children, doctors at a hospital in Rafiah, citing rescue workers, said. Israeli media reports, quoting Palestinians, said one of the targets of Monday's attack was Yasser Rizek, a Hamas military leader involved in several recent attempts to send suicide bombers to attack Israel. "A number of injured people are on the way to the hospital. We...

There may be hope for the Clinton Library here in Little Rock after all. It could turn out to be more than the usual presidential shrine if it follows the lead of a seminar just held at Fayetteville, Ark., home of the University of Arkansas. Despite its typically soporific academic title ("Vantage Points: Perspectives on the Clinton Presidency") the two-day meeting turned out to be a serious, if early, exploration of the weird decade we've just gone through. The seminar brought together an assemblage of experts on the Age of Clinton and, glory be, most of them didn't come...

<p>Stories of parents who kill their children always will be rare enough to hold the power to shock, but it is still uncertain what's behind a recent rash of such reports here in the greater Washington area.</p> <p>Some analysts say these crimes could be evidence that more parents are killing their offspring as a way to get revenge against a spouse who is threatening to leave and take the children.</p>

<p>Our country is under attack. Select groups of individuals have made it widely known that their ultimate purpose is to kill Americans by the thousands and destroy the freedoms fundamental to the American way of life. There is no sign that this hatred of Americans will end soon. The war we are waging on terrorism has been going on for nine months and will continue for years to come. We need to prepare for this future and work towards constructing new, long-term defenses against terrorism.</p>

<p>CONROE, Texas — While the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week that states should not execute retarded criminals, Texas was going ahead with another trial of Johnny Paul Penry centering on that very issue.</p> <p>Penry, 46, killed a 22-year-old woman almost 23 years ago and has been living on Texas' death row. His death penalty conviction was twice overturned by appellate courts.</p>

WASHINGTON--When the history of today's liberalism is written, the writers may marvel at that political persuasion's remarkable reversal of convictions regarding persuasion. Nothing more tellingly illuminates the contemporary liberal mind than the retreat from the defense of First Amendment guarantees of free speech. This year's enactment of yet more campaign finance regulations that expand government restrictions on the quantity of political speech is just the latest confirmation of what professor Martin Shapiro of the University of California School of Law at Berkeley noted in 1996. He wrote that ``almost the entire First Amendment literature produced by liberal academics in...

<p>Other decisions from the Supreme Court term that ends this week will have far greater effect than its 6-3 vote to ban the execution of retarded murderers, but few are likely to stir greater emotions on or off the bench.</p>

Homeland ThreatCaribou, freedom, and the knowledge of nothing.By Dov B. Fischer An important opinion poll published this past week corroborates the revealing lyrics of the most important country-music song of the past year. The implications are scary and underscore that we have nothing to fear but the knowledge of nothing itself. This national "knowledge of nothing" threatens our vital homeland-security interests, our energy independence, and the future of freedom. I fell in love with country music in 1993, during a trip from Los Angeles to Louisville. By Nevada, I was hooked on Garth Brooks. By Cheyenne, I was buying my...