Free Republic

<p>Two years ago, IT vendors and other proponents of the controversial H1-B visa program were generating about as much sound and fury as a raging storm on the high seas. Lobbying groups such as TechNet insisted the chronic IT skills shortage would sink the industry unless the annual numbers of H1-B visas—allowing foreign workers to take positions temporarily in the United States—were substantially increased. They won, and the number of H1-B visas available to employers annually was increased to 195,000, triple the number available before 1998.</p>

Fuel Truck Explodes Near Daycare FORT WORTH, Texas, 3:15 p.m. CDT June 26, 2002 - A tanker truck reportedly carrying 9,000 gallons of gasoline exploded and burned just south of DFW Airport this morning right near a daycare. According to police, the driver escaped the fiery wreck without injury. The ominous ball of flames and black smoke forced the evacuation of a nearby day-care center, but authorities said that the young children inside escaped injury as well. The explosion happened near the intersection of Highway 360 and Trinity Boulevard in Fort Worth, just south of DFW Airport. There was no...

<p>A Virginia attorney charged in the stabbing death of a Perdido Key man on the man's wedding day was indicted Tuesday on charges of first-degree murder.</p> <p>William Clyde Harbour, 52, an international law attorney for the Joint Forces Command at Norfolk (Va.) Naval Air Station, is scheduled to be arraigned at 9 a.m. Friday in the Escambia County Courthouse.</p>

'Take the city" is the slogan for the disparate protesters set to demonstrate in Ottawa against globalization, capitalism, multinational corporations and just about everything else during the G8 summit. Not "Gather in the city," or "Protest in the city," but "Take the city," a slogan carefully chosen to suggest action, including violent action. Some, but by no means all, of the protest's organizers have been making an alarming distinction among kinds of violence. Violence against people (police excepted, of course) is off limits, but violence against property is okay. That means windows can be smashed, public buildings trashed, police cars...

CA School District Forces 7th Graders to 'become Muslims' for Three Weeks -- Federal Lawsuit Filed Wed, Jun 26, 2002 (ANN ARBOR, MI) – According to a federal lawsuit filed in San Francisco on Monday, 7th grade Christian students across California were forced to pretend they were Muslims for three weeks, praying in the name of Allah the Compassionate the Merciful, chanting Praise to Allah, picking a Muslim name from a list to replace their own name and to stage their own Jihad via a dice game. The Thomas More Law Center, a national, public interest law firm based in...

<p>FERNANDEZ, Circuit Judge, concurring and dissenting: I concur in parts A, B and C of the majority opinion, but dissent as to part D.</p> <p>We are asked to hold that inclusion of the phrase “under God” in this nation’s Pledge of Allegiance violates the reli-gion clauses of the Constitution of the United States. We should do no such thing. We should, instead, recognize that those clauses were not designed to drive religious expression out of public thought; they were written to avoid discrimina-tion. We can run through the litany of tests and concepts which have floated to the surface from time to time. Were we to do so, the one that appeals most to me, the one I think to be cor-rect, is the concept that what the religion clauses of the First Amendment require is neutrality; that those clauses are, in effect, an early kind of equal protection provision and assure that government will neither discriminate for nor discriminate against a religion or religions.</p>

Let's kill the innocentDr A.H. Khayal The attack on the Trade Towers killed more than three thousand innocent Now Yorkers. America held Osama responsible for the carnage. By way of revenge, America ruthlessly bombarded Afghanistan.  The number of innocent Afghan men, women and children killed by the bombing shall never be known. The killing of the innocent New Yorkers was rightly denounced by President Bush as an act of barbaric terrorism. But the President did not tell what sort of an act the killing of innocent Afghans was.  Perhaps the President believes that if an innocent American is killed...

In 1954 the words "under God" were inserted in our Pledge of Allegiance, and on June 26, 2002, just 48 years later, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that the Pledge of Allegiance "is an unconstitutional endorsement of religion and cannot be recited in schools" according to an Associated Press report filed by AP writer David Kravets. On February 8, 2002, this writer authored an article entitled "Federal Judges are Anti-Christian" and the Ninth Circuit (the most liberal of all the federal circuit courts of appeal) has just moved to make that analysis even more accurate....

LONDON (Reuters) - Hormones in semen may help to ease female depression because women whose partners don't use condoms are less likely to feel down. Scientists at the State University of New York suspect the mood-altering hormones are absorbed through the vagina and make women feel good but they stressed that their results are not an excuse for unprotected sex. "I want to make it clear that we are not advocating that people abstain from using condoms," Gordon Gallup, who led the study, told New Scientist magazine on Wednesday. "Clearly an unwanted pregnancy or a sexually transmitted disease would more...

A clip: “Let me get this straight: The main market segment for a computerized CD-copier kiosk in the mall is going to be middle-aged women rather than teenagers? You mean the hundreds of millions of suburban middle-class 'computers scare me' middle-aged women with the buying power to own millions of Celine Dion or Andrea Bochelli CDs around the world are going to pay $5 to use the Little Ripper kiosks rather than the hundreds of millions of digital music-savvy teens hacking Linkin Park copy protected songs and posting them on the Internet? Come on, anyone with any common sense knows...

Hizbollah and the Israeli Army have been trading blows once more across the border fence. But instead of attacking each other with artillery shells and missiles, the two sides have resorted to paint guns and eggs. Israel’s Maariv daily reported Tuesday that Israeli soldiers based in the massive concrete compound on the summit of Sheikh Abbad Hill hurled eggs Monday at two Hizbollah fighters manning an observation post on the other side of the fence. The startled Hizbollah fighters refrained from retaliating but formally protested the incident to UNIFIL. The egg-throwing was preceded Saturday by four Lebanese hurling Ping Pong...

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals declares the US Constituion unconstitutional because it violated the basic Constitutional tenet of separation of church and state. Specifically, the Preamble, which most schoolchildren are required to memorize, contains the word "blessings." Blessing, of course, is the act or words of one that blesses. Bless is defined by Merriam-Websters Collegiate Dictionary as 1 : to hallow or consecrate by religious rite or word 2 : to hallow with the sign of the cross 3 : to invoke divine care for. The text of the Constitution, therefore, impermissibly takes a position with respect to the...

Blow to U.S. Dollar To Ripple from Asia to Europe 26 June 2002 Summary The already weak U.S. dollar took a direct hit June 26 after news of a multibillion-dollar accounting fraud at Worldcom emerged. An expanding crisis of confidence over the health of U.S. corporations will threaten fragile economies from Asia to Europe. Analysis The already weak U.S. dollar plunged in early trading June 26, nearly hitting parity with the euro and dropping to eight-month lows against the Japanese yen. The global stock markets followed, with steep declines in Asia, Europe and the United States. The latest fly in...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Ignoring Bush administration objections, the House Transportation Committee voted Wednesday to allow more than 1,000 pilots to carry guns for a two-year trial. Committee chairman Don Young, R-Alaska, said the bill could come up before the full House for a vote the week lawmakers return from their July 4 recess. The legislation approved by voice vote would allow up to 1,400 pilots - 2 percent of the work force - to volunteer to undergo training and obtain permission to carry guns on board planes they are piloting. After two years, the Transportation Security Administration would decide whether...

TCS Now that the United States is involved in a new and wide-ranging war on terrorism, the traditional opponents of any kind of American military action have come out in force. They denounce the war, and other aspects of American foreign policy. They argue that somehow, someway, America's actions around the world spurred the attacks of September 11th against us. And they attribute dark and malicious motives to just about each and every American action, especially the war on terrorism. Chief among the critics of American foreign policy is Noam Chomsky, a professor of linguistic studies at the Massachusetts...

<p>The executive in charge of overhauling the FBI's antiquated computer system has resigned.</p> <p>The FBI said Robert Chiaradio is leaving to take a job at financial consulting giant KPMG. He was elevated in December to one of the bureau's top four administrative positions.</p>

ASHFORD, Wash. (AP) - A rescue helicopter carrying three people crashed high on Mount Rainier but no one was hurt, and an injured Pennsylvania climber was later plucked from the mountain. The Bell Jet Ranger helicopter went down late Tuesday afternoon at the 8,800-foot level of the 14,411-foot peak. It was assisting in an effort to rescue Jesse Whitcomb, 19, who suffered a head injury earlier in the day, said Maria Gillett, a Mount Rainier National Park spokeswoman. Unfazed, the two rescuers on board the downed chopper climbed 400 feet from the crash site to help Whitcomb, of Carroll Valley,...

From Then The Avalon Project at Yale Law School Balfour Declaration 1917 November 2nd, 1917 Dear Lord Rothschild, I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet. "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of...

<p>The Pledge of Allegiance is an unconstitutional endorsement of religion and cannot be recited in schools, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday in a case from an Elk Grove school brought by a Sacramento atheist.</p> <p>The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco overturned a 1954 act of Congress inserting the phrase "under God" after the phrase "one nation" in the pledge.</p>

Sign the Petition to Bring Back the Pledge of Allegiance to America's public's schoolsBring Back the Pledge of Allegiance