Free Republic

<p>A short time ago, it looked like a sad end for 69-year-old Louis Rukeyser. Learning that Maryland Public Television was planning to replace him as host of "Wall $treet Week" -- his own creation, and shown nationwide on public-TV stations -- he used the program to blast his bosses, who sacked him in March.</p>

LAST WEEKEND MARKED the 30th anniversary of Title IX and, hopefully, the end of me screaming at the TV. As a policy geek and pundit, I’m used to yelling at C-SPAN or CNN the way some people yell at the Super Bowl. I’ve been known to exclaim things like, “That’s not how Social Security works, ya moron!” on more than a few occasions. But watching my wife debate a coterie of feminists and professional liberals has been especially exasperating. The Missus, Jessica Gavora, is the author of “Tilting the Playing Field,” a controversial book on Title IX, the 1972 civil...

<p>So much for all those leaks about President Bush endorsing a new, interim Palestinian state. The long-awaited speech Mr. Bush actually delivered yesterday was far more daring, and potentially a major leap forward in U.S. Middle East diplomacy.</p> <p>The fear among many, including us, was that after several vicious weeks of suicide bombings, Mr. Bush would seem to be rewarding Palestinian terror. Some in the State Department were pushing a speech that would have done precisely that.</p>

The following email is being circulated to our members by various disgruntled former FReepers: Subject: The Future of Our Free Republic Dear Fellow Free Republic Member, Many of us at Free Republic are distressed by the extraordinary level of censorship that has been so obviously going on. It is very obvious that individual posts, entire threads, and the entire work of members who have been highly regarded are disappearing into a Memory Hole. Scores of us have organized an e-mail network that is independent of the communication controls presently, and sadly, being used at our Free Republic. We have carefully...

The town Starbucks forgot Like John Mellencamp, who famously sang about it, I grew up in a small town. Unlike him, if I can arrange it, I will die smack in the heart of a teeming city, preferably in a stark but well-appointed loft in an architecturally respectable low-rise development, surrounded by my child substitutes, vile cats who will pretend to be washing themselves and not counting the minutes until they can feast upon my fashionably wasted carcass. This realization came to me over the course of the last weeks, as I have been temporarily living in St. Thomas, Ont.,...

HAVANA -- The National Assembly president attacked President Bush's vision for Cuba on Monday as millions of workers across the island got two days off to watch a televised special session called to enshrine socialism as "untouchable." Ricardo Alarcon referred to Bush supporters in Miami's Cuban exile community and declared that the American president wanted the communist island to return to the brutality and corruption of pre-revolutionary Cuba. "Does Mr. Bush really think that he will return to sink us in this hell of injustice?" Alarcon asked. "Does he imagine for a moment that we are going to turn over...

(CNSNews.com) - U.S. Rep. Earl Hilliard, Alabama's first black congressman since 1877 and a supporter of slave reparations, faces a primary challenge Tuesday from a Harvard-educated black lawyer, "whose primary source of financial support is coming from New York City's Jewish community," Hilliard said. Following those comments, even Rep. Charles Rangel, one of the most influential Democrats in the House and a member, along with Hilliard, of the Congressional Black Caucus, refused to sign a fundraising letter for Hilliard. "[Legislators] need to figure out what causes others pain," Rangel said in a statement released to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency....

Maputo - Mozambique's government has agreed to allow at least 13 white Zimbabwean commercial farmers to settle in the fertile central province of Manica, the agriculture ministry said on Monday. Each of the farmers will be given 1 000 hectares of land, in line with Mozambican law that only allows land to be leased for up to 50 years, the ministry of agriculture and rural development said in a statement. Mozambican law does not allow land to be sold. Two farmers were allotted land near the administrative post of Mavonde, 10 in Barue district, and one near the administrative post...

BUSH'S BIGGER BUREAUCRACY No Way to Win Even in war, a smaller government is better By Charles R. Kesler Charles R. Kesler teaches politics at Claremont McKenna College and is editor of the Claremont Review of Books. June 23, 2002 Not so long ago, American liberals seemed ready to throw in the towel. "The era of big government is over," conceded President Bill Clinton in his 1996 State of the Union speech. Now it's conservatives who seem ready to say uncle. Columnist George Will declares: "The conservatism that defined itself in reaction against the New Deal - minimal government conservatism...

Harare - A 45-day countdown for 3,000 white Zimbabwean farmers to abandon their land began on Tuesday, but many vowed to stay put rather than watch vital crops rot as the nation is short of food. "Some people actually have no choice. They will farm from tomorrow morning," Jenni Williams, spokesperson for the Commercial Farmer's Union (CFU), said late on Monday. She said the farmers would finalise on Tuesday morning papers seeking a court ruling to stop the order. The farmers were given until midnight on Monday to stop working the land and just over a month to leave entirely...

CNSNews.com) - The nation's largest feminist organization is targeting the nation's largest retailer in an effort to make the company more "women-friendly." National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy blasted retail giant Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. for "allegations of sex discrimination in pay, promotion and compensation," in naming the retailer a 'Merchant of Shame.' "Wal-Mart is number one on the Fortune 500 list. It's also the number one most sued retailer in the United States," said Gandy in a statement. "It doesn't take a genius to see the problem with this picture." Saying that women-friendly workplaces are "good for business," Gandy...

Capitol Hill (CNSNews.com) - Pro-abortion Democrats in the House may try to force another vote on requiring U.S. military medical facilities to perform abortions. The effort could come as early as Wednesday, when the House may begin consideration of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2003. Senate Democrats were able to pass an amendment by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) last week that would allow abortions to be performed at Department of Defense (DOD) medical installations both overseas and in the U.S. Planned Parenthood President Gloria Feldt praised the vote. "The Senate has taken a key step toward...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Jun 25, 2002 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- President Gen. Pervez Musharraf praised scientists Monday for building the country's nuclear weapons and bringing the country to parity with rival India, but said the nuclear program was designed only to deter attack. "Our nuclear and missile potential is defensive in nature and is a deterrence," Musharraf said. Pakistan "has no offensive designs against anybody." Musharraf's remarks, reported by state-run news agency Associated Press of Pakistan, came as tensions between nuclear-armed neighbors eased after they were on the brink of all-out war. "This achievement (nuclear weapons) is not by...

Aid, it has been said, is the transfer of wealth from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. This is not necessarily a reason not to give, as a proportion of most direct aid does benefit the starving child, the desperate mother, even if another proportion goes to buy a new car for the official responsible. But the provision of aid becomes yet more morally complex when it directly subsidises a tyrannical regime such as that of Resident Mugabe. First the ironies: Mugabe is primarily responsible for his people?s hunger as even his regional allies now...

My 68-year-old mother has to cope with tough choices in Robert Mugabe's present day Zimbabwe. Either she has to feed on yellow maize, which is grown in China for cattle feed purposes, or she must starve. Otherwise, she can wait for me to find a way of getting white maize to her from Johannesburg, about 750 miles away – no easy matter, as Zimbabwe customs officials are not allowing food imports without the hard-to-get government import licences. The work and effort needed to buy the yellow maize donated by President Mugabe's communist allies in China is no laughing matter. She...

As the midnight deadline for white farmers in Zimbabwe to surrender their land moved closer last night, the quandary facing Mike Clark, a cattle rancher, grew ever more acute. Even though Zimbabwe, and indeed the rest of southern Africa, faces a potentially devastating hunger crisis, nearly 3,000 white commercial farmers have been told that they must stop farming and forfeit their lands, some with crops that they were readying themselves to harvest. Mr Clark and 2,900 other white farmers are determined to defy President Robert Mugabe's latest decree and remain on their farms. Yet they know only too well the...

 LAWYER who will go nameless called our attention to a recent court case, having seen a summary of it in The New York Law Journal. He was, to put it mildly, flummoxed. A State Supreme Court jury in Manhattan had awarded $14.1 million to a woman who was hit by an E train. The accident occurred on May 3, 2000, in a subway tunnel just north of the 34th Street station on the Eighth Avenue line.The woman, who will also go nameless to spare her further pain, suffered terribly. The only part of her right hand left intact was the...

Martha Stewart took a $105 million hit yesterday as new questions about the ImClone scandal pushed her company's stock to an all-time low.Shares of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia plummeted more than 20% to close at $12.55, down $3.42 per share, in the heaviest trading since the company went public in October 1999.For Stewart, who owns 31 million Omnimedia shares, that works out to a loss of more than $105 million in a single daySince the insider trading scandal erupted three weeks ago, she has lost some $200 million — on paper, at least.Yesterday was the first time the market...

<p>WASHINGTON — More than eight months after the anthrax death of a photo editor in Florida touched off a national manhunt for the perpetrator, the FBI says it has no suspect and hopes the public will provide a missing clue.</p>

<p>June 25, 2002 -- FOR three decades, left-wing extremists have dominated American academics, spouting odd but seemingly harmless theories about "deconstruction," "post-modernism," "race, gender and class," while venting against the United States, its government and its allies.</p> <p>Only these ideas are not so harmless. The radical notions espoused in the classrooms and in campus demonstrations have recently had dangerous consequences. These are especially visible with regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict.</p>