Free Republic

Much has been written about the New York Times' pro-homosexual agenda. On any given day, about three-fourths of the people deciding what's on the front page of the venerable newspaper are homosexuals – thanks to publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who opened up the newsroom to gays and even offered their "partners" benefits, after succeeding his father at the Times' helm in 1992. That's not much of a shock, given the paper's leftist stance on issues. But did you know that liberal homosexuals for years have helped decide what goes on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, commonly cited...

<p>ARLINGTON, Virginia (AP) -- At least a couple of times a week, mechanic Ernie Pride tells customers at his independent repair shop he can't fix their cars because he doesn't know what's wrong with them. Go to the dealer, he advises.</p>

The U.S. State Department has instituted a new rule that effectively bars American hunters bound for Zimbabwe from taking firearms to the Marxist dictatorship, leaving travelers who have scheduled safaris there fuming. It is now the policy of the State Department to "deny all applications for licenses and other approvals to export or otherwise transfer defense articles ... to Zimbabwe." According to an American hunter heading for Zimbabwe in the fall, "The U.S. government is unhappy with the Zimbabwe dictatorship, especially President Robert Mugabe. Some pencil-pushing bureaucrats – possibly some of the same ones responsible for the U.S. 'indirectly' aiding...

<p>Local law enforcement officials say the number of hate crimes against area Muslims has declined steadily since peaking about a month after September 11.</p> <p>Hours after terrorists slammed hijacked airplanes into the Pentagon and World Trade Center, Alexandria was one of the first cities to report an anti-Muslim hate crime that police said was likely retaliation for the attacks.</p>

A federal appeals court has ruled that six of 10 Polaroid photographs taken of White House counsel Vince Foster's body as he lay dead from an apparent gunshot wound in Fort Marcy Park nearly a decade ago remain secret. The ruling, handed down June 4 by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, partially affirmed an earlier U.S. district court ruling Jan. 11, 2001. The lower court ordered five of the photos to be released to attorney Allan J. Favish, who filed a Freedom of Information Act request more than two years ago with the Office of Independent Counsel in...

A coalition of Jews And Christians has launched a campaign to convince American Jews that the pro-Israel stance and objectives evangelical Christians hold are a "blessing" to both the U.S. Jewish community and the nation of Israel, and need to be rewarded as such. Toward Tradition, a national educational movement of Jews and Christians that strives for a "moral public culture," plans this week to send a 52-page pamphlet to certain Jewish organizations in the hope of creating a more positive Jewish view toward Christians. The pamphlet entitled "Enemies or Allies? Why American Jews Should Learn to Stop Worrying and...

<p>Zimbabwe imposed its ban yesterday on production for nearly 3,000 white-owned farms as a leading aid expert said there was "precious little time" left to avoid a devastating regional famine.</p> <p>The white farmers, who work on the country's most productive acreage, have 45 days before they must surrender their holdings under a land-expropriation bill President Robert Mugabe signed last month.</p>

<p>Today's Democratic congressional runoff in Alabama is pitting black leaders against Jewish politicians in an unlikely location for airing out differences over the war in the Middle East.</p> <p>"This election is being watched all over the world," said the Rev. Walter Fauntroy, a longtime civil rights leader.</p>

<p>As John Walker Lindh's lawyers have complained that their client can't get a fair trial in Virginia, and perhaps anywhere in America, they raise the question as to what a fair trial is.</p> <p>Does a fair trial mean the court is supposed to protect a defendant from his own mistakes? That seems to be the belief held by the Lindh defense team.</p>

<p>With the elan of an airbrush artist, the U.S. Supreme Court ordained an end to executing the "mentally retarded" (left inexact) last week in Atkins vs. Virginia. The ruling marked a peak in judicial fiat. Reason was denied even a cameo appearance. The opinion clamors to supplement the Queen of Hearts in "Alice in Wonderland."</p>

<p>Palestinians reacting to President Bush's call for a new leadership yesterday were skeptical that any challengers to Yasser Arafat, the current leader, would come forward as a result of the U.S. demand.</p> <p>But although no clear candidate to replace Mr. Arafat has emerged — and he certainly has never named one — several figures have achieved enough prominence among the Palestinians in the past few years to be considered as alternatives.</p>

<p>Let me be the first to nominate President Bush as the leading candidate for the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.</p> <p>His strategic diplomacy, aided by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, without question averted a catastrophic war between India and Pakistan, a war that could have gone nuclear.</p>

<p>The twists and turns of the Bush administration's Middle East diplomacy are the product of the interaction of two basic truths: Everybody knows what the final status looks like, and nobody has the foggiest idea of how to get from here to there.</p>

The Bush administration, moving beyond the protection of nuclear materials, expects to spend $20 million this year to safeguard dangerous radiological materials in the former Soviet Union that could be used to make a "dirty bomb," U.S. officials said yesterday. Scores of radioactive power generators and more than a dozen poorly guarded storage areas for radiological material would be targeted for protection in a joint U.S.-Russian program. The effort comes in response to fears that terrorists could manufacture a radioactive dirty bomb. The International Atomic Energy Agency is scheduled to release a report in Vienna today that will warn of...

<p>Viewing the Nazi leaders on trial at Nuremberg, George Orwell wrote: "Somehow the punishment of these monsters ceases to seem attractive when it becomes possible; indeed, once under lock and key, they almost cease to be monsters."</p> <p>In a sense, William F. Buckley Jr.'s latest novel, "Nuremberg: The Reckoning," has de-monstered the major German war criminals who went on trial at Nuremberg between 1945 and 1946 without de-monstering their criminality. In Nuremberg, the ancient city where Adolf Hitler once held his lynch-mob rallies, there were in 1945 no Holocaust deniers. What had happened to 6 million European Jews was a fact. Looking at the 24 top Nazi leaders, some in military uniform, in the courtroom sitting in two rows, raised an unanswerable question: How could they have done what they did? Soldiers killing soldiers, well, yes, but soldiers killing babies in their mother's arms, how was it possible? And yet, we're seeing similar horrors again with the suicide bombers in beleaguered Israel.</p>

<p>Amid cascading stock markets and a lackluster recovery, the Federal Reserve's policymaking committee meets today and tomorrow to discuss the condition of the U.S. economy and to determine whether changes in short-term interest rates are in order. Once the Fed peruses the economy, it's highly unlikely that it will act on the interest-rate front. Nor should it.</p>

<p>RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian officials rejected the removal of leader Yasser Arafat as a condition for statehood, as proposed yesterday by President Bush in a speech scripting a path to Middle East peace.</p> <p>"Palestinian leaders don't come from parachutes from Washington or from anywhere else. Palestinian leaders are elected directly by the Palestinian people. President Yasser Arafat was directly elected in a free and fair election," Cabinet minister and chief negotiator Saeb Erekat told CNN.</p>

<p>There is a new crisis looming for the Bush administration this summer and it is not Iraq, although it does feature a harshly repressive regime trying to hide its weapons of mass destruction from international inspection. The crisis is brewing on the Korean Peninsula and involves the end game of a deal made eight years ago by the Clinton administration. In 1994, in return for a freeze on its nuclear facilities, the United States promised to build Pyongyang "proliferation-resistant" nuclear reactors and supply North Korea with 500,000 tons of fuel oil annually. The North Koreans promised to open their facilities to international inspection and get out of the nuclear-weapons business all together.</p>

<p>President Bush yesterday urged Palestinians to oust Yasser Arafat — a leader "compromised by terror" — and embark on democratic reform as signs of their commitment to work toward the creation of a state within three years.</p> <p>"Peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership so that a Palestinian state can be born," Mr. Bush said in a Rose Garden speech delayed a week by a string of terrorist attacks.</p>

<p>One of the realities of living in an information age is that television, the Internet, radio and other forms of public information are decisive in shaping pubic opinion.</p> <p>In the 1981-1982 fight in Europe over matching the Soviet Union's military build-up by fielding mobile missiles in several of those countries, success required a strong public- information campaign in order to sustain diplomatic initiatives.</p>