Free Republic

<p>I HAVE a foolproof battle plan for invading Iraq: Let's issue helmets, rifles and one-way airline tickets to all those experts who were much too important to serve in uniform themselves but who insist that Saddam can be toppled on the cheap. From the Halls of Yale and Princeton, to the Shores of Trash TV, rally all those pundits who know more about fighting wars than the generals, captains and sergeants. And give those bad boys a chance to show us what they can do.</p>

Coleman-Wellstone race still tight in Minnesota BY BILL SALISBURY Saint Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press Democratic incumbent Paul Wellstone and Republican challenger Norm Coleman are still running neck and neck in their race for the U.S. Senate, the latest Pioneer Press poll shows.If the election were held today, 44 percent of the respondents said they would vote for Wellstone, while 41 percent preferred Coleman in the poll of 625 registered Minnesota voters conducted Tuesday through Thursday.Two percent favored Green Party candidate Ed McGaa and 13 percent were undecided. Wellstone's 3-percentage-point lead over Coleman is within the poll's 4-percentage-point margin of error.Shirley...

PASSAU, Germany, JULY 1, 2002 (Zenit.org).- A ceremony in which an excommunicated Argentine priest presumed to ordain seven women was denounced by the Austrian Catholic bishops' conference as a farce. Romulo Braschi, who was excommunicated in the 1960s, claimed he had the power to ordain the women because he himself had been ordained bishop by two other excommunicated clergymen. The women, of German, Austrian and U.S. nationality, went through the ceremony led by Braschi, founder of the so-called Charismatic Apostolic Catholic Church of Jesus King. The Austrian episcopal conference in a statement said that "a simulated ordination like this one...

Still Waiting for Amtrak Probe by Michael Powers To say that 2002 has been a tough year for U.S. stockholders would be an understatement. Yet another accounting scandal rocked Wall Street when WorldCom disclosed that it concealed $3.8 billion in expenses from investors, leading the telecom giant to restate its earnings for 2001 and the first quarter of 2002. President Bush and members of Congress are demanding a Justice Department probe into WorldCom’s books, similar to the one conducted on Enron earlier in the year. Coincidentally, another scandal emerged about the same time--with little fanfare and even less outrage. Amtrak,...

WASHINGTON--Rep. Ron Paul doesn't mind if his colleagues in the House of Representatives call him "Dr. No." The Texas Republican says his habitual votes against bigger government, including one he cast this week in opposition to a "morphed" child pornography bill, will preserve the vibrancy of America's technology industry. "The danger is that if they're allowed to get in the business of regulating the Internet, who knows what will happen next?" Paul said in an interview. A 66-year-old medical-doctor-turned-politico, Paul has voted nay on proposals to prohibit Internet gambling, ban Internet sales taxes and restrict online sales of alcohol. He...

<p>Retired New York City police officers are furious that Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta rejected a proposal to use 1,000 retired officers to provide airport security in New York in favor of helping hundreds of non-U.S. citizen security screeners keep their jobs in San Francisco.</p>

CNSNews.com) - Princeton University Professor Peter Singer, dubbed the 'godfather' of animal rights, says Christianity is a "problem" for the animal rights movement. Singer, author of the book "Animal Liberation" and a professor of bioethics at Princeton University's Center for Human Values, criticized American Christianity for its fundamentalist strain that takes the Bible too "literally" and promotes "speciesism." He defined speciesism as the belief that being a member of a certain species "makes you superior to any other being that is not a member of that species." In an address to the national Animal Rights 2002 conference in McLean, Va.,...

Tuesday July 2, 10:00 PM NATO troops ransack home of fugitive Karadzic By Zeljko Debelnogic NATO troops ransack home of fugitive Karadzic - NATO troops broke into and ransacked the family home of fugitive Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic on July 2. Karadzic has been on the run since NATO airpower ended the 1992-95 Bosnian war. REUTERS/Danilo Krstanovic PALE, Bosnia (Reuters) - NATO troops ransacked the empty home of war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic on Tuesday in what appeared to be a token raid to prove their mission was not compromised by a U.S. veto of the U.N....

LONDON (Reuters) - Anti-euro campaigners in Britain have co-opted Adolf Hitler into their latest advertising campaign. Actor Rik Mayall, dressed as the Nazi dictator and mimicking his famous salute, declares: "Ein Volk! Ein Reich! Ein Euro," in a cinema spot due to be launched this month. Answering questions at the campaign launch on Tuesday, campaigners denied that the Hitler sketch could offend. "Anyone who doesn't laugh, I think, should get a life," said another of the advert's stars, Labour Member of Parliament Kate Hoey. "This is going to reach people who, quite frankly, politicians aren't getting through to," she...

America's cities and towns will soon fill with parades, fireworks, and barbecues. They will be celebrating the Fourth of July, the 226th birthday of America. But one hopes that--on this first post-September 11 Independence Day--the speeches will contain fewer bromides and more attention to exactly what is being celebrated. The Fourth of July is Independence Day, but America's leaders and intellectuals have been trying to move us further and further away from the meaning of Independence Day, away from the philosophy that created this country.What we hear from politicians, intellectuals, and the media is that independence is passé, that we've...

July 1 — Cities across the country have been quietly staging a revolt against the USA Patriot Act, saying it gives law enforcement too much power and threatens civil rights. Over the last three months, the Massachusetts cities of Cambridge, Northampton and Amherst and the township of Leverett, as well as the town of Carrboro, N.C., all passed resolutions that call the USA Patriot Act a threat to the civil rights of the residents of their communities. Congress passed the act in October to give federal investigators sweeping new powers to probe terrorism in the aftermath of the Sept. 11...

AILMENTS SURFACE IN POLICE EXPOSED TO METH CHEMICALS In the small Oklahoma town of Cromwell, Hank Neal was living the good life. At age 32, he was a husband, father of four and a well-known Seminole County deputy sheriff. When he wasn't chasing the bad guys, Neal attended every baseball game in town. Now, on his bad days, Neal uses a walker to get to the bathroom. Gout, a joint disease, has invaded both of his arms and legs, causing him to hunch over and draw inward. His days are scheduled around doctors' appointments and workers' compensation hearings. His nights...

W A S H I N G T O N, July 2 — Despite post-Sept. 11 security improvements, the White House and other landmarks remain vulnerable to a suicide pilot carrying a private planeload of explosives, experts say. Three recent incidents showed how easily private planes can enter restricted zones: Over the weekend, Air Force jets scrambled twice to intercept two private planes that inadvertently entered the restricted air space around Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland where President Bush was staying. Less than two weeks earlier, an errant private pilot flew into the restricted area around the Washington...

Controversial Holocaust swindler to be subject of TV news segment By Tom Tugend LOS ANGELES, July 1 (JTA) — Lucian Ludwig Kozminski was — or maybe is — a man convicted of swindling some 3,000 of his fellow Holocaust survivors. He did time in federal prison, and died, according to his death certificate, on Jan. 19, 1993 in Los Angeles County. Ordinarily, this would be the end of the sordid tale of a man who preyed on his own people. Instead, it is only the beginning of a mystery, full of intrigue and skullduggery, which “Dateline NBC” will telecast on...

AIDS will kill nearly 70 million people over the next 20 years unless rich nations step up their efforts to curb the disease, the United Nations warned Tuesday in a report showing the epidemic is still in its early stages. The UNAIDS report released Tuesday also warned that unsafe sex in Europe and North America was leading to higher rates of infection, with Eastern Europe suffering from the highest increase in new infections. "Collectively, we have grossly, grossly underestimated how bad this was going to be," said Dr. Peter Piot, head of UNAIDS, the U.N. agency that coordinates the global...

Wednesday July 3, 12:41 AM NATO troops storm Karadzic house in Bosnia Masked NATO troops backed by helicopters stormed the house of the UN war crimes tribunal's most wanted suspect Radovan Karadzic before dawn but did not find the Bosnian Serb wartime leader. The troops from the NATO-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR) in Bosnia seized documents and a small number of firearms during the raid on the Karadzic home in his wartime stronghold of Pale, near Sarajevo. SFOR said the raid was not aimed aimed at detaining Karadzic, who has been indicted by the UN tribunal for war crimes, but at...

July 2— THE HAGUE (Reuters) - European police swooped on a suspected Internet child pornography ring with raids in seven countries on Tuesday, the European Union's police agency Europol said. Police seized suspects, computers, CDs and videos in raids in Belgium, Britain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden.British police said "Operation Twins" targeted suspected members of the world's most technically-sophisticated Internet child porn network yet detected. They used complex technology to try to avoid detection.The gang's alleged activities included the production and distribution of child pornography and abuse of children. Abuse was filmed and broadcast in "real time" over...

HYDERABAD, Pakistan (July 1, 2002 5:44 p.m. EDT) - Lawyers for the chief defendant in the kidnap-slaying of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl predicted Monday that their client will be acquitted. The defense optimism came after testimony that appeared to support their contention that Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh was illegally detained and, on that basis, the charges against him should be dismissed. "You will see he will be acquitted in this case," said Abdul Waheed Katpar, a lawyer for Saeed. The evidence could also boost the case of the three men on trial accused of being Saeed's accomplices. However,...

Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a key player in the 2000 presidential election recount battle, faces a dogged opponent in her campaign for Congress - a border collie-German shepherd mix, to be precise. Charter boat captain Wayne Genthner of Sarasota, Florida, said on Monday he planned to enter the name of his dog Percy as a write-in candidate for the Republican primary ahead of the November election. "We hope by running a canine against a nationally known political person we can draw attention to voter disenfranchisement and disconnect," said Genthner. "We hope that by running a canine against a...

THE PRESIDENT: And so today, at the urging of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, I invoke a little-known executive privilege which allows me, when presented with a petition signed by 50,000 red-blooded Americans, to permanently revoke the citizenship of this detestable movie star fairy... SIGN THE PETITION