Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO — Thousands of rainbows appeared under the blue sky yesterday as an estimated half-million people lined the streets to celebrate diversity and progress during the city's 32nd annual gay-pride parade. The people were just as colorful as the flags they waved — gay, straight, young and old. Some wore leather or feathers or held balloons, while others sported little more than a smile. The Dykes on Bikes, a rumbling motorcade of several hundred women on motorcycles, kicked off the event, followed by their quieter, male counterparts pedaling bicycles as part of the Mikes on Bikes. But mixed in...

Last night I attended Calvary Chapel in Fountain Valley, home of Pastor Chuck Smith, founder of the original Calvary Chapel. He told us that Michael Newdow's daughter is a born again Christian and attends a Calvary Christian school. Mr. Newdow was the atheist who brought the Pledge of Allegiance ban lawsuit to court claiming his daughter's rights were violated because of a reference to God in the pledge. Chuck Smith was told of this through a sister Calvary Chapel and got a hold of his contacts in the media. The daughter will now appear on the Today show later this...

Much ado has been bantered about concerning the safety and peace this 4th of July. FBI warnings, flight bans around national monuments, and even mayors --Bloomberg and Daley-- advising people on how to spend the day have bombarded our TV sets. I don't believe I've ever quite wondered ahead of time like I have this year: Will this day hold tragedy close again to the heart of America? If we believe the warnings and the news reports, Al Queda is and has been more active in the last five days than in the last five months. Many Americans have decided...

Texas Mom Gets 25 For Poisoning Attempt Saturday an Austin jury deliberated for five hours before handing Sailaja Hathaway a 25 year prison sentence for attempting to poison her two young boys. Hathaway was convicted Wednesday of the crime. Friday her attorneys tried to persuade the jury into handing a light sentence, they tried to persuade jurors that Hathaway was psychotic when she made her two boys drink insecticide on Valentine's Day, 2001. A psychological expert for Hathaway argued Hathaway's divorce was more than she could bear and that deep depression and psychosis led her to the attempted murder of...

Record makers could win the right to carry out hack attacks on music sharing services if a US proposal becomes law. Californian congressman Howard Berman has drawn up a bill that would legalise the disruption of peer-to-peer networks by companies who are trying to stop people pirating copyrighted materials. If his idea becomes law, record companies will be able to carry out a variety of attacks on the sharing services to make them unusable or so irritating to use that people abandon them. Existing legislation makes it an offence for anyone to carry out many of the attacks mooted in...

DARE lacks oversightProgram's cost soars past $1 billion with little accounting Sunday, June 30, 2002 Jonathan Riskind Dispatch Washington Bureau Chief Even as concern has grown about the effectiveness of America's most popular anti-drug program, few questions are being asked about how much Drug Abuse Resistance Education is costing taxpayers. Or who is accountable for the spending. Neither the government officials who hand out the money nor DARE executives themselves can put a definitive price tag on it, but estimates from several independent experts range from $1 billion to more than $2 billion annually. And despite questions about whether DARE...

An e-mail this afternoon from J.C.'s American Renewal Pac: WASHINGTON – House Republican Conference Chairman J.C. Watts, Jr. (R-Okla.) made the following statement this morning at a news conference in Norman, Oklahoma: "Almost eight years ago the residents of the fourth district of Oklahoma gave me one of the greatest honors of my life by electing me as their representative to the Congress of the United States. They did so at a challenging moment in our national life. Like me, the voters of my district believed that our taxes too high, our deficit was out of control, our welfare system...

TEHRAN -- Iran is committed to upholding laws guaranteeing human rights with due regard to Islamic precepts, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid-Reza Assefi said here on Monday. Addressing a gathering of domestic and foreign reporters, he said that Islam teaches its followers to observe each other's rights. "The Islamic Republic of Iran has expressed its concerns to UN officials over the violation of human rights worldwide, particularly those of Muslim minorities all across European countries," Assefi informed. Terming the recent visit of a delegation from the UAE's official news agency WAM to Tehran as "successful," he said that the Iranian president...

Gregory Glenn Biggs Last modified: 01:59 PM CDT on Monday, July 01, 2002FW man jailed in windshield death case 07/01/2002 By KIMBERLY DURNAN / Dallas Web Staff A Fort Worth man has been charged with tampering with physical evidence in connection with the October death of a homeless man who was struck by a car and left to die embedded in the windshield, police said. Clete Denel Jackson, 27, was indicted on June 21 for the third-degree felony punishable by two to 10 years in prison and a fine up to $10,000. He is being held on more than...

The corporate world is now embroiled in two controversies. There's the fraud at Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen, and elsewhere; and there's the payment of absurd sums to CEOs. Both developments threaten the free-market system--you're kidding yourself if you don't think that big firms deliberately duping investors, or CEOs awarding themselves hundreds of millions of dollars that should have gone to stockholders, does anything other than erode the reputation of market economics. Both practices also trample important principles of conservative economics, as we'll see in a moment. But the two controversies really aren't separate--they are one and the same. The motive...

More From The Huntsville Times News GOP's Engel to challenge Rep. Cramer in November 6/05/02 From Staff Reports Bud Cramer's Republican opponent for Congress in November will be aerospace engineer Stephen Engel of Athens. In a quiet race between two political unknowns, Engel got about 56 percent of the vote Tuesday to defeat Michael Williams, a graduate student at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Cramer, a Huntsville Democrat, has held the 5th District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1990. After strong early challenges, he has lately drawn only token opposition; this will be the first time...

Hannity just said on his opening remarks on his program that the Bush girls were in trouble again. Anyone have any info?

Sean Mentions FReepers on his radio show today!

Rodrigo Duterte, the mayor of Davao City, is sitting in his favorite bar, After Dark, a glass of brandy in front of him, a .38 pistol tucked in his waistband. He's wearing jeans and a short-sleeved shirt loudly adorned with wine bottles and bunches of red and green grapes—the same outfit he wore to work. While other guests take turns singing along with the piano player, Duterte tells a strange and disturbing story. In 1993, Davao's San Pedro Cathedral was hit with three grenades during an evening Mass. Six parishioners were killed. The attackers were Muslim militants, the sort easily...

ZAGREB, Croatia - Croatia's president said Monday that he has accepted an invitation from Moammar Gadhafi to visit Libya sometime in the near future. Stipe Mesic said the invitation was extended during a brief meeting Sunday with Gadhafi's son, Seif el-Islam, was was in Croatia on a private visit. A date for the visit has not been set yet, Mesic told Croatia's state-run radio. Mesic said that "good relations" with Libya — the first non-European nation to recognize Croatia as an independent state in early 1992 — should lead to greater economic cooperation. Mesic refused to comment on the U.S....

After SCOTUS and vouchers: The LEFT now rushes to embrace the RIGHT's "Back to Basics" movement for education by summer - a former Dem, now an independent and a FL certified teacher I had to chuckle to myself as I read the editorial, below, written by an unknown liberal and posted on one of the many Dem sites. The author is screaming out against the SCOTUS's recent voucher decision because, according to this angry liberal: Schools should ONLY teach the basics. Sound familiar? Oh, and by the way, according to this author, "the basics" does NOT include religion. People on...

U.S. smart bombs destroy Iraqi command and control site SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COMMonday, July 1, 2002 U.S. strikes have taken out one of the most significant Iraqi military assets attacked by allied planes in the past year. U.S. officials said allied warplanes damaged an Iraqi command and control facility on Friday. They said the facility provided information on U.S. and British fighter-jets in southern Iraq, Middle East Newsline reported. "This facility was struck because it helped direct anti-aircraft artillery attacks today against coalition aircraft authorized by the U.N. Security Council to enforce the no-fly zone in southern Iraq," a...

<p>ATLANTA — Georgia's Hope Scholarship Program, which mandates that any student maintaining a "B" average or better gets money to attend a state university, is considered by many to be a real success.</p> <p>More kids, both black and white, are college-bound, and other states are working to copy the 10-year-old program.</p>

Posted Friday, June 28, 2002 Salon CEO Michael O'Donnell's statement re press reports on the Webzine's finances. After filing our annual 10K report on Wednesday, which includes language from our auditors about our prospects as a "going concern," our friends in the press have taken their knives out again, predicting Salon's demise. Similar language appeared in our previous annual report a year ago; but we're still here. A Reuters reporter (who has made so many mistakes covering Salon over the years we've lost count) actually made up a quote from us, saying "the company said the end could be near."...

Al Qaida, Hizbullah join forces SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COMMonday, July 1, 2002 The United States says the Sunni Al Qaida and Iran-backed Hizbullah have forged links that include strategic planning, training and safe haven for militants fleeing from Afghanistan. U.S. officials said hundreds of Al Qaida militants have arrived in Syria and Lebanon and are being resettled in the Bekaa Valley. Initial contacts between the two organizations were established in March and April, Middle East Newsline reported. "We're concerned about the linkages between these groups," U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said. "We have been for a long time."...