Free Republic

I try to be an optimistic fellow, but there is one area where the erosion of civil liberty has been so severe even I approach despair. That area is the Rule of Law. The Rule of Law The Rule of Law is a key institution of Western civilization. It encompasses ideas, dating back to ancient Greece and Rome, that laws ought to be negative (i.e., tell us what we should not do, rather than what we are allowed to do), general, unchanging, and enforced equally on all citizens. Implicit in the Rule of Law is an endorsement of individual liberty...

Poles have come out top of a test of Europe's general knowledge - streaking ahead of the Danes and Italians, despite not yet being members of the European Union. Britain and Portugal do worst - only getting around half of the 20 questions on the EU, European history, geography and culture correct.  Click here to take the testPeople from 19 European countries were questioned in the survey, carried out by Reader's Digest to gauge the level of common European knowledge. Top of the class Poland Denmark Italy Could do better Portugal UK Slovakia But some basics about the European Union...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Barry Bonds does not want to go on strike. However, Bonds says that if major league baseball players do walk off the field yet again this year -- the World Series was wiped out by a work stoppage in 1994 -- he expects the fans to come back. "If you have kids who might (grow up to) be major league baseball players, we're fighting for your kids, possibly," Bonds told The Washington Post before the Giants beat the Orioles on Friday night. "If I work for your newspaper and you're in the union fighting for your equality...

JUNE 24, 13:12 ET Bush, Mineta Say No Amtrak Shutdown By LAURENCE ARNOLD Associated Press Writer AP/STEPHEN. J. CARRERA [21K] WASHINGTON (AP) — With Amtrak on the brink of a nationwide shutdown, a senator said President Bush and Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta assured him Monday they will keep the nation's passenger railroad operating. Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., said Mineta ``gave me his word'' that the administration will find a way to resolve Amtrak's immediate financial crisis. Torricelli discussed Amtrak with Bush and Mineta on Monday during a visit by the president to New Jersey. AP/Mike Derer [23K] He...

Sad fact of life: The current administration and the "conservative" party which backs it, has an out of control penchant for multiplying your tax burden. All propaganda aside: compassionate conservatism is about socialism, not Americanism. From AIDS relief for Africans, to foreign loan "forgiveness" plans for dead beat nations, to multimillion dollar poppy reduction subsidy programs for Afghan farmers, to UN donations which end up in the hands of Palestinian terrorists, to welfare benefits for illegal immigrants, to school vouchers for poor kids - but not your kids, to prescriptions for seniors and health care for loonies, and to extensions...

Some aid groups have been placing water jugs in the Arizona desert to help those crossing illegally from Mexico. What's your opinion of this practice? (Poll appears down the page a ways.) Personally I think those clowns from Humane Borders ought to be in prison.

This is a total vanity. As I write this, I am watching "Jihad in America" by Steven Emerson, and originally broadcast on PBS I am more than a little amazed that this has not proven to be more mainstream. It in effect predicted something like what has transpired in the USA in the last year. If you have never viewed this even-handed, but very blunt, assessment of radical Islam, you need to. It will shock you. I find myself wondering why it is that liberals and libertarians continue to prostitute themselves on behalf of those who would kill us and...

Bush Administration to Help Amtrak, Torricelli Says Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., said Monday afternoon Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta has assured him the Bush administration will help resolve Amtrak's financial crisis and prevent a shutdown, the Associated Press reported. An Amtrak spokesman told Transport Topics the nation's passenger railroad derives more than $140 million a year from hauling mail and express freight. While there is some competition between Amtrak and trucks, there are also business partnerships between the railroad and most major less-than-truckload carriers. In case of a shutdown, that freight would probably move to the highways, along with rail passengers,...

BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic WriterMonday, June 24, 2002 ©2002 Associated Press URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/06/24/national1416EDT0646.DTL (06-24) 11:16 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush prepared Monday to go ahead with a blueprint for a Palestinian state and to send Secretary of State Colin Powell to try to sell the plan to Israel and the Arabs amid growing discord between the two sides. The timing for the long-anticipated announcement remained uncertain. Bush leaves Tuesday for a meeting in Canada with leaders of the world's other major industrialized democracies. Pressed by reporters on his way to Port Elizabeth, N.J., for a speech on homeland security,...

DAVE CARPENTER, AP Business WriterMonday, June 24, 2002 ©2002 Associated Press URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/06/24/national1426EDT0652.DTL (06-24) 11:26 PDT CHICAGO (AP) -- United asked the government for $1.8 billion in federal loan assistance Monday, making it the biggest airline yet to seek help under a program set up after Sept. 11 to prop up the ailing industry. The nation's No. 2 airline has lost about $1 billion since the terrorist attacks. It is the third major airline to seek federal loan guarantees under the program, behind America West and US Airways. United said it asked the Air Transportation Stabilization Board to guarantee $1.8...

Speech was set aside last week. Now to be given today.

Monday June 24 01:39 PM EDTPolice: Father Jailed For Sexually Abusing Son AgainA Florida man convicted twice of sexually abusing his son was behind bars Monday for again abusing his son and taking sexually explicit photographs while in the Houston area, authorities said. The 30-year-old father, who's not being named to protect the boy's identity, was charged with one count of aggravated sexual assault of a child and one count of sexual performance of a child. Texas City detectives told News2Houston that the sexual snapshot was taken at the Hampton Inn in Texas City, but then the father moved...

THE NEW CANON is emerging that Palestinians perpetrate suicide bombings and similar mass murders because they are so desperate, their plight so hopeless, their suffering so great.  It is what we hear nonstop from the Cherie Blairs, the Ted Turners, the Eurocrats, and the Israeli Left with its captive universities and media—the utopians who have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.The utopian view holds that the wave of Palestinian suicide bombings is a reflection of the fact that Israel has taken away all Palestinian hope.   Israel has brought these murders on itself by its policy of blocking and denying Palestinian aspirations...

The International Criminal Court does not enter into force until July 1, but Washington has already begun re-evaluating which U.N. peacekeeping missions are worth the risk that American troops could be held accountable to a supernational tribunal. The first to go is East Timor. The Pentagon has decided to withdraw nearly 80 Americans from the U.N. mission there, saying that it's not worth exposing three military observers and 75 civilian police officers to the possibility of prosecution by the world court. The United States tried to get a blanket exemption from foreign prosecution for all of the mission's troop-contributing nations...

Panhandling $250 to $300 a weekHe spent it all on crack, didn't quit until it became too much like work By MICHAEL HINKELMANhinkelm@phillynews.com IT'S NOT difficult to see why Reginald Tull was a successful panhandler. He's a well-spoken, thoughtful and gregarious 36-year-old - somebody you might want to pal around with. For five years he used those skills to con people into giving him money to support his crack cocaine habit. But about a month ago, Tull checked himself into the Gateway Service Center, ready to become a "productive member of society" again. Gateway provides a "clean and sober"...

New York (dpa) - Israel's reoccupation of six Palestinian towns in the West Bank is a violation of the Oslo peace process, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Monday. The Israeli military actions, including the recapture of Ramallah, the capital of the Palestinian Authority, ``significantly increase tensions in a volatile situation,'' Annan said. The Oslo process in the early 1990s brought together Palestinians and Israelis who agreed on a timetable for peace negotiations. But the Israeli government said the process was terminated with the continued violence between the two sides beginning in September 2000. Annan condemned the killing by Israeli forces...

Launch carried live on NASA TV in 6 minutes. See the link to the NASA TV feed on the source URL webpage (http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/launches/next_launch.html)

Wal-Mart repeals the MS tax Low-cost PCs ship with Lindows When Sam Walton started his own company, he thought the key to success was keeping prices low and customers loyal. That formula helped make Wal-Mart, the world's largest and most successful retailer, selling more apparel than department stores, more toys than toy stores and more music than record stores. Wal-Mart also sells PCs and it thinks the time is right to banish Windows from its lowest-priced units. Wal-Mart is selling eight of its "white box" Microtel models with Lindows, the fledgling Linux OS designed to replace Windows on the desktop....

WORCESTER (MA)-- When a Worcester public school fourth-grader was called a terrorist by one of his classmates, his teacher sent a note home explaining that the accuser did not understand the difference between her son's Palestinian ethnicity and the term terrorism. “I know we are talking about a child here, but using 'terrorist' synonymously with 'Palestinian' really troubles me,” said Imrana A. Soofi, a refugee resettlement director with Catholic Charities. One of several area residents who attended a rally for civil liberties and the rights of immigrants in Boston yesterday, Ms. Soofi said she believes the government's anti-terrorism campaign is...

Some say priest gets just treatment; others claim racism and say priest had been marked for years. CHICAGO - On Sunday, Cardinal Francis George of the Chicago Archdiocese announced that eight Chicago area priests would be withdrawn from their ministry duties. One name on the list is that of 54-year-old John Calicott of Holy Angels church in Chicago.In 1976, Calicott was accused by two 15-year-old boys of engaging in sexual misconduct. Cardinal Joseph Bernardin reinstated him in 1995, a year and a half after the allegations came to light, and, after he had admitted to the improper conduct, and had...