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(Albany-AP) -- Republican Governor George Pataki says a ruling today declaring the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional is nothing more than ``junk justice.'' The governor said the ruling, which came from a federal appeals court in San Francisco, should be appealed immediately. The court called the pledge unconstitutional because it contains the phrase ``under God.''Both of his Democratic opponents in the governor's race -- Andrew Cuomo and H. Carl McCall -- criticized the decision.The ruling, if allowed to stand, means schoolchildren can no longer recite the pledge, at least in the nine Western states covered by the court.In the two-to-one decision,...

The NBA draft on TNT now....Houston Rocket's first pick was 7'5" Yao Ming. Commentators said that the athletes in China are owned by the state and that Yao could play here if he gives the Chinese government half of his salary.

Welcome to ChristiansForCannabis.Com ChristiansForCannabis believe that the laws that prohibit the possession, use and cultivation of marijuana/cannabis are immoral and unjust and the Christian support of these laws to be in violation of God's word. We base our position on: the inerrancy of the Bible; God's creatorship of the earth and all that is in it, including the seed bearing plant we call cannabis or marijuana; Jesus's commands to not judge anything before the appointed time and to love as he loved; and how love does no harm to its neighbor. Our mission is to educate the Christian community concerning...

Clinton, Mississippi, June 26 (Bloomberg) -- WorldCom Inc.'s disclosure that it concealed losses for more than a year may force the company to file for bankruptcy, surpassing Enron Corp.'s collapse as the largest in U.S. history, investors say. The No. 2 U.S. long-distance telephone company yesterday said it hid $3.9 billion in costs, giving fresh ammunition to a Securities and Exchange Commission accounting probe and spurring the Justice Department to consider a criminal inquiry. WorldCom borrowed $30 billion during a 1990s buying binge and is having trouble repaying debt as demand slumps. WorldCom will cut 17,000 jobs to conserve...

Let's go Freepers! The Rats at DU are trying to counter-Freep the petition created to support our Pledge of Allegiance! Go to http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?aside and support this petition!

An IDF bulldozer demolishing the entrance to the PA's Hebron headquarters Wednesday. (Photo: AP) Dozens of Palestinians holed up in the besieged Palestinian Authority administrative headquarters in the West Bank city of Hebron surrendered Tuesday and Wednesday to IDF troops. The men, who totalled around 120, were taken away for questioning. By Wednesday night, only the 20 who appear on Israel's wanted list for suspected links to terror remained in Israeli custody, including four senior activists. Some 40 Palestinians have been arrested so far in Hebron. Around 15 people are believed to still be inside the complex. Palestinian sources...

MOST commercial farmers in the country yesterday defied a government order to cease operations from midnight on Monday and confine themselves to their farmhouses until August, when they are required to leave the properties altogether.Amendments to the Land Acquisition Act gazetted on 10 May 2002, stipulate that once a farmer has received a Section 8 acquisition order, they have 45 days to halt operations and another 45 days to leave the farm. The farmers are expected to spend the next 45 days from 24 June confined on their farmhouses, as they prepare to leave the farms. The Commercial Farmers’ Union...

Commentary & Opinion National Catholic Register June 30-June 6, 2002by DAVID PEARSONIf I had a family member serving in the military right now, there’s only one thing I’d dread more than a knock on the door in the middle of the night: Word that my loved one had lost his life at the hands of his own comrades. “Friendly fire,” they call it. Such a congenial term for so bitter a pill — one that no mother, father, son, daughter, sister or brother should ever have to choke down. The way I see it, when one of our boys is...

***BREAKING NEWS*** Religion in Public Schools: “under God” Pledge Out; Prayer to Allah In? In the same week that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional, a federal lawsuit was filed in San Francisco Monday after 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...

 Weekday Commentary from Jim Puplava Home P-P-T To The Rescue!Nyquist Column 6/24The Coming Attack Changing Preferences The Velocity of Money & The Short Seller's Nightmare Part 2 Now Online Introduce our newFSO Resource Page6/25 Guest EditorialsClyde HarrisonRaw Materials: Economics 101Jim RogersWhy Raw Materials? James Sinclair & Harry SchultzWhen Does The Final Shoe Fall on the Complacent Hedger? Keith M. Barron, Ph.D.A Rising Tide Raises All Boats Ned W. Schmidt Stepping Forward to $1,254 Gold  Wednesday's Market Scoreboard  June 26, 2002  Dow Industrials 6.71 9120.11  Dow Utilities 2.28 268.83  Dow Transports 9.78 2637.7  S & P 500 2.61 973.53  Nasdaq...

A group of farmers have formed the Justice for Agriculture, which seeks to challenge the government legally on farm acquisitions. The leader of the group, David Connolly of Bulawayo said, “dialogue has not yielded results and farmers face eviction without conviction. The legal action we plan represents an alternative route to our case.” In a related development the former chairman of the Commercial Farmers’ Union’s Cereals Producers Association, Robert Macmanus was arrested on Sunday at his Rutope farm about 60 km along the Harare/Shamva road. When The Daily News visited the farm on Monday, both the farmer’s son Christopher, and...

A631 Has Passed the New Jersey Assembly ASSEMBLY, No. 631 STATE OF NEW JERSEY 210th LEGISLATURE PRE-FILED FOR INTRODUCTION IN THE 2002 SESSION Sponsored by: Assemblywoman NELLIE POU District 35 (Bergen and Passaic) SYNOPSIS Provides that convictions records for a violation of the domestic violence laws are not subject to expungement. CURRENT VERSION OF TEXT Introduced Pending Technical Review by Legislative Counsel. An Act concerning expungement of records and amending N.J.S.2C:52-2. Be It Enacted by the Senate and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey: 1. N.J.S.2C:52-2 is amended to read as follows: 2C:52-2. Indictable Offenses. a. In all...

<p>ARCADIA — A dead man’s request to be buried in his back yard has unearthed a mound of controversy in one neighborhood.</p> <p>Just before Rick Georges died in April, he asked to be buried next to his dead dog.</p> <p>Now, his wife, Beverly, is carrying through with the request.</p>

"And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away [with] all this artificial scaffolding..." ---Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 11 April, 1823; Adams-Jefferson Letters, ed. Lester J. Cappon II, 594 " Most people's sex lives...are coming into closer accord with their true desires. I've often thought one attack...

First-Class Stamp to Cost 37 Cents By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, Associated Press Writer June 26, 2002, 1:19 PM EDT WASHINGTON -- Mailing a letter will cost 3 cents more starting Sunday. The boost in the first-class rate to 37 cents was approved in February after months of hearings by the independent Postal Rate Commission. A variety of other rates, including post cards, parcel post and priority mail, go up at the same time. Postal Vice President Azeezaly Jaffer said the increases would cost the average person about 45 cents extra a month. Postmaster General John Potter has promised rates won't...

REMARKS BY THE PRESS SECRETARY ON COURT DECISION The Metropolitan Center Calgary, Canada 2:37 P.M. (Local) MR. FLEISCHER: You have a question about the court case? Q The President's reaction? MR. FLEISCHER: The President was informed at the G-8 Summit about the San Francisco court decision pertaining to the flag. The President's reaction was that this ruling is ridiculous. The Supreme Court, itself, begins each of its sessions with the phrase, "God save the United States and this honorable court." The Declaration of Independence refers to God or to the Creator four different times. Congress begins each session of the...

Vicar jailed for keeping loaded gun The gun was brought into England from the US A vicar has been jailed for four months after keeping a loaded gun hidden in a grandfather clock at his vicarage in Greater Manchester. On Tuesday Salford Magistrates' court heard how the Reverend Michael Daggett, 54, kept the gun for protection. Daggett, a US citizen, came to the UK in 1984, before becoming vicar at The Church of the Holy Rood, Swinton, in 1990. He pleaded guilty to possessing a prohibited firearm and possession of ammunition. The court heard how police visited the vicarage in...

Why do I feel the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have done the First Amendment and the Nation a favor? The decision taken by the 9th United States Circuit Court of Appeals will cause discussions of the First Amendment that heretofore have not been available to the public. I see this as a very positive event. The education of the masses to the purpose and history of the cherished First Amendment will be the final result of this decision. Even citizens who are not familiar with the First Amendment will be exposed to its meaning and all the topics...

DoD News Briefing Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld Wednesday, June 26, 2002 - 1 p.m. EDT (Also participating was General Richard Myers, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff) Rumsfeld: Good afternoon. First, let me say that we certainly mourn the passing this weekend of an old friend and a wonderful American and public servant devoted to the Department of Defense -- my friend of over 27 years, Doc Cooke. When I came back to the Pentagon after being gone for a quarter of a century, why, many things had changed, but one thing remained the same, and that was Doc...