Free Republic

Every class day over 60 million public and parochial school teachers and students in the U.S. recite the Pledge of Allegiance along with thousands of Americans at official meetings of the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Elks, Masons, American Legion, and others. During the televised bicentennial celebration of the U.S. Constitution for the school children on September 17, 1987, the children as a group did not recite any part of the Constitution. However, President Reagan did lead the nation's school children in reciting the Pledge. Yet probably not one of them knows the history or original meaning of the Pledge. In...

The dreams of George W. for the Mideast are gratifying, but has he done anything to advance them? Some weeks ago in this space, after the Passover massacre, we suggested that the Israelis reach into the compound, extract Arafat and his closest advisers, and shoot them. Guilty by Association with Terror. Mr. Bush is asking for something much more difficult, which is to replace Arafat as if he were merely this season's ambassador from Palestine, declared, after much deliberation, persona non grata. The leverage we have on internal political arrangements in Palestine is very slight. When President Mubarak of Egypt...

<p>The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a 1954 act of Congress inserting the phrase "under God" after the words "one nation" in the pledge. The court said the phrase violates the so-called Establishment Clause in the Constitution that requires a separation of church and state.</p>

California nightmare: County declares CSC in default Negotiators seek to stave off death of outsourcing projectBy William WelshStaff WriterComputer Sciences Corp. and San Diego County negotiators are desperately working to settle a contract dispute after county officials charged CSC with being in default on a groundbreaking information technology outsourcing project. The county withheld a $44 million payment due to CSC in January, saying the company has failed to provide the required outsourcing services, such as adequate bandwidth for users, network support, security planning and refresh of infrastructure, applications and servers. The county April 18 issued a formal “Notice of Default”...

<p>NEWARK, N.J. (AP) -- A national gay rights group filed a lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of seven same-sex couples who have been denied marriage licenses in New Jersey.</p> <p>The denials violate the state Constitution's equal protection clause by excluding the couples from benefits associated with legal marriage, including health insurance benefits and spousal inheritance rights, said lawyers for Lambda Legal, a national gay rights advocacy organization.</p>

In his speech on Monday, President Bush said, in part, that "Peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership, so that a Palestinian state can be born. I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty." In response to a reporter's question asking whether he was the leader Bush wanted replaced, Yasser Arafat said, "Definitely not." And why does this surprise anyone? Arafat has ruled over the Palestinian people for 35 years. He has defied and outlasted every American president...

Please stop deleting my post or at least tell me why My last post in regards to SF rule on the pledge of ...

High on God: Christians for Cannabis</font size> ABC News reports that a Christian woman who examined research on marijuana found "no evidence to back up the horrible things she had heard about the drug." A Bible study on the topic turned up nothing negative, so "she began to wonder why some religious leaders seemed to favor stiff penalties for marijuana users." She even decided to try smoking pot. According to ABC, the woman, who is 35 and a mother of five, then decided to launch a "Christians for Cannabis" Web site, and to begin a grass roots campaign aimed at...

FIRST-PERSON: I pledge allegiance . . . By John Yeats Jun 26, 2002 OKLAHOMA CITY (BP)--"I pledge allegiance to the Flag . . . of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Amazing how 31 words can be . . . crafted to speak volumes to people. Whether old or young, tall or short, light or dark complected, bushy headed or folliclely impaired, all who love our "God blessed" America conjure up special images as we say the Pledge of Allegiance. For some...

One of the most interesting and entertaining combatants in the forty-year war over gun rights is the Violence Policy Center of Washington, D. C. A recent VPC "study" on the topic of concealed handguns in the state of Texas reveals much about this unique organization. But first a little background on concealed carry laws.Thirty-four states now have laws that guarantee a concealed handgun permit to citizens who have passed a criminal background check and completed appropriate training. None of these laws has ever been repealed, because they have been universally successful. Each time another state considers a concealed carry law...

I have been reading and re-reading the text of President Bush's Middle East speech delivered earlier this week from the Rose Garden. It is an intriguing, ambiguous document. Like so many of his speeches, it is really two speeches in one. The first half, like the New Testament, is filled with love and hope and gentleness. But the tail of his speech is very Old Testament: It bristles and snarls and threatens hard judgments. The last paragraph peroration reads in full: "This moment is both an opportunity and a test for all parties in the Middle East: an opportunity to...

Sunday june 23 Oakland Tribune Columnist Ann Landers dies at 83 She advised millions in print since 1955 By New York Times: Margalit Fox Sunday, June 23, 2002 - Eppie Lederer, who as the syndicated columnist Ann Landers was widely considered responsible for bringing the advice column into the modern era, died Saturday at her home in Chicago. She was 83. Although those problems would progress from Saturday-night dating woes to late-20th-century ills like domestic violence and crack, Lederer was sometimes astonished to discover the everyday things that could inflame the passions of her readers. She once threw her column...

A radio interviewer asked IDF Spokesman Ron Kitrey on Sunday about the three children killed in Jenin by Israeli soldiers in a tank (who also killed a 60-year-old civilian). The interviewer chose his words carefully. So carefully, that he asked Kitrey about the "youths" who were killed. These "youths" were 6-year-old Soujoud Turkey, Ahmed Ghazawi, also 6 years old, and his 12-year-old brother Jamil. The two brothers had been riding their bicycles in their neighborhood. They, like many others, thought that the curfew had been lifted for several hours. Soujoud Turkey had gone out with her father to buy bread....

Some enchanted evenings are better than others. As music from the John Pizzarelli jazz trio filled the air at Manhattan's Regency Hotel in early June, Katie Couric and her TV exec beau, Tom Werner, sat down at about 8:15 p.m. at a small candlelit table and ordered a dessert to share. In a youthful jean jacket over a pink T-shirt, Couric "looked beautiful," says a guest in the lounge. For the next hour she and her date "just seemed to be in sync and very happy together." They were. Which is why, two years after Couric, 45, and Werner, 52,...

The following words were spoken by the late Red Skelton on his television program as he related the story of his teacher, Mr. Laswell, who felt his students had come to think of the Pledge of Allegiance as merely something to recite in class each day.  Now, more than ever, listen to the meaning of these words. "I've been listening to you boys and girls recite the Pledge of Allegiance all semester and it seems as though it is becoming monotonous to you. If I may, may I recite it and try to explain to you the meaning of...

Police Log 06-25-02: The shackled drunk shuffleby Kevin L. Hoover Wednesday, May 29 7:17 a.m. An I Street cooperative supermarket barely got underway for the day when employees had to deal with the first alleged ripoff attempt. 12:36 p.m. At least the 13th Street marketplace made it to the Noon hour before shopliftingness' first finale.2:47–4:01 p.m. Dirty deeds done in dirt cheap in Redwood Park.5:11 p.m. A boy-girl bout of fisticuffs outside an historic Plaza storehouse had an explanation about as easily understood as love. She said they'd been arguing when he made a motion that suggested a blow...

GAO Cites Rising Nuke Smuggling Risk Wed Jun 26, 1:31 PM ET By LIBBY QUAID, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - The nation's vulnerability to attacks using nuclear weapons or "dirty bombs" is worsened by its own poorly funded, ill-coordinated efforts to stop the smuggling of radioactive materials, the General Accounting Office ( news - web sites) said Wednesday. Citing 181 incidents in which nuclear materials were smuggled over the past decade, GAO said the six federal agencies involved do not work together and use different methods of detecting radiation at border crossings. Investigators said the United States has spent...

Deep differences between Republicans and Democrats, and the House and Senate, over spending priorities threaten to derail the appropriations process and force Congress to return for a lame-duck session after the November elections.The specter of a spending gridlock looms on Capitol Hill despite a broad bipartisan consensus on fighting the war against terrorism.In the absence of a joint budget resolution between the House and Senate, a growing chorus of lawmakers in the House and Senate are increasingly resigned to the prospect of significant delays. PATRICK G. RYAN   Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) “That means we’ll be here in November...

Six Palestinians arrested this week near Beit Shemesh were on their way to carry out a suicide attack at a warehouse where nuclear bombs and Jericho surface-to-surface missiles are stored, Army Radio reports today. The radio, quoting the British Foreign Report, says the attack was thwarted by the Shin Bet, which set off warnings and captured the suspects on Monday. Security officials were quoted as denying the report, the radio said. Foreign reports have alleged that Israel stores these weapons in a depot near Moshav Zecharya, not far from Beit Shemesh.

By Linda D. Kozaryn American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, June 26, 2002 -- Success in Afghanistan does not mean victory in the war against terrorism, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz said today. "Al Qaeda is not a snake that can be killed by lopping off its head," Wolfowitz told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "It is more analogous to a disease that has infected many parts of a healthy body. "There is no one single solution," he stressed. "You can't simply cut out one infected area and declare victory. But success in one area can lead...