Free Republic

Reorganizing Space Command and U.S. Strategy 2 July 2002 Summary The Bush administration announced June 26 the merging of U.S. Space Command into U.S. Strategic Command, which controls the American nuclear strike force. The shift is part of a major reorganization of the structure of U.S. joint forces. This decision has important implications for the future of Amercan warfighting, melding space with the nuclear warfighting culture, and could well delay the emergence of a battle doctrine for space. Analysis On June 26 the Bush administration announced that U.S. Space Command would be merged into U.S. Strategic Command, or STRATCOM. Normally,...

LOOK AT THE HOUSE THAT WORLDCOMBUILT! – AND FLORIDA LAW PROTECTS.Neal Boortz  http://boortz.com/nealznuz.htmJuly 2, 2002   Nice house, isn't it?  It's currently under construction in Boca Raton, Florida.  All you WorldCom employees who have lost your jobs -- All you WorldCom investors who have lost your shirts.  Do you want to know who's house this is?  It belongs to Scott Sullivan!  Yup, the same Scott Sullivan who was the Chief Financial Officer of WorldCom.  The same Scott Sullivan who was fired when the financial irregularities were discovered.  This house is in Florida.  This means that Scott Sullivan will probably be...

By GARY D. ROBERTSON ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- Another panel of three federal judges refused Tuesday to order that legislative districts approved last fall by the General Assembly be used in this year's elections. The judges denied the request by attorneys for legislative leaders and a black woman who claim maps drawn by Superior Court Judge Knox Jenkins in May harm minority voting rights and are unconstitutional. A panel of judges in Washington rejected a similar motion last week. The ruling means politicians and elections officials will wait -- probably until next week -- before learning...

New flier tries to open emergency door to spit BEIJING - A Chinese man who was flying for the first time gave the flight crew a scare when he attempted to open the emergency exit because he wanted to spit. Barely a minute after the China Southern Airlines plane took off from the southern city of Shenzhen on Wednesday, its emergency exit warning light began to flash. Flight crew who rushed to investigate saw a man trying to open the emergency door. In fact, he had already opened the cover plate of the escape slide and was about to push...

Maker Of Oxycontin Says It Will Take Steps To Track Abuse Of The Drug The makers of the widely abused prescription painkiller Oxycontin are undertaking a new effort to track the abuse and diversion of prescription pain medication. Currently, there is no universally accepted system to analyze the prevalence of prescription drug abuse - but as Susan Chisholm reports, some say the real key will be what the manufacturer does with the findings. Click on the URL for audio link. http://www.mainepublicradio.org/mainethings/RECENT/thursday/news1.html

AN al-Qaeda terrorist cell has been discovered in Australia. Former New South Wales police commissioner Peter Ryan yesterday revealed its existence and said it was likely there were others. He told the Herald Sun two Australian-based members of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network were identified after an Algerian man was stopped on the US-Canadian border in an explosives-filled car. Mr Ryan said he had to presume the two political refugees were not the only al-Qaeda members in Australia. "We would be very, very foolish to think that there wasn't any here, or any more such people here," he said. The...

   One-armed major-leaguer Pete Gray dies at 87 June 30, 2002 NANTICOKE, Pa. (AP) -- Pete Gray, who became a major league ballplayer despite losing his right arm in a childhood accident, died Sunday. He was 87. ADVERTISEMENT Gray was born with the name Peter Wyshner, but took the name Gray when he entered organized baseball. He played one season in the majors, hitting .218 in 77 games with the St. Louis Browns in 1945. At the time Gray played, disabled athletes were often regarded as sideshow oddities. Frequently, there were taunts and insults. ``If they insulted me, I...

<p>SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina - During the past decade, hundreds of Islamic charities set up shop in war-ravaged Bosnia to rebuild homes, renovate schools, and feed, clothe, and shelter orphans and impoverished widows.</p> <p>But for some of them, law enforcement officials say, the generosity disguised a nefarious agenda: to help Al Qaeda prepare for a holy war against the United States and its allies.</p>

Heigh ho, from Arizona, land of first-hand smoke and fire. From the eye of the storm, I offer, in stylishly Martha Stewart fashion, the good thing of an insider's view. The national media were not prepared for Arizona's idiosyncrasies. Our wildfires have presented phonetics problems. For all you national reporters, it's Rodeo (ROW-dee-o) Fire. The Row-DAY-o Fire is in Beverly Hills. It's said "Eager," not "eee- GAR," despite the "Eagar" spelling. Several national correspondents gagged while trying to eek out "Chediski Fire." While no one here knows how to say this one either, one thing is clear: ignore Polish-American tendencies...

Almost seven in 10 Americans say they approve of the job Laura Bush is doing, suggesting her popularity has grown in the last year, says a new poll. The poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press indicates that only 8 percent have a negative impression of her. Approval for Laura Bush has grown from 58 percent in July 2001 to 69 percent last month. The poll of 1,212 adults was taken June 19-23 and has an error margin of 3.5 percentage points. Among the poll's other findings: _When people were asked what one word best...

State starts process of reporting new HIV cases Sentinel staff and wire report SAN FRANCISCO — California joined most of the nation’s other states Monday in reporting new cases of HIV infection, an effort officials hope will help identify which demographic groups are suffering most from the virus. California’s system will differ from the 33 states that track HIV by reporting patients’ names. Instead, the system is similar to coding methods used in Maryland, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Vermont and Puerto Rico. California’s system, authorized by the Legislature in 2000, requires doctors and labs to report the last four digits of...

<p>NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Hoping to end a budget impasse that forced half the state's 42,000 workers to stay home, Gov. Don Sundquist on Tuesday proposed a compromise that would include a constitutional convention.</p> <p>"If there was ever a time for compromise, it's now ... We should work around the clock if we have to," the governor said in a news conference.</p>

YOUNGSTOWN - A Masury woman who claims her son was denied the right to write about Jesus is suing the Brookfield School District for $1.5 million. Peggy E. Koehler also is asking for the school district to declare that Jesus was a person about whom her son, Phillip M. Vaccaro, 14, could write an essay. The suit was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Youngstown by attorney Mark Steven Colucci. According to the suit, Vaccaro was given an assignment to write an essay about someone who positively changed or influenced his life. Vaccaro wrote about Jesus, and a teacher...

Pet cemetery, R.I.P. By DAN WHITE Sentinel staff writer SCOTTS VALLEY — The front gate of Pine Knoll pet cemetery has a small white sign saying: "Tread gently, passerby. Disturb not their gentle sleep." But the Santa Cruz chapter of the SPCA, which owns the cemetery, plans to start digging up graves in two weeks, uprooting home-made tombstones, hand-carved Scottie dogs and crosses. Goodbye "gentle sleep." The SPCA says it has no choice but to close the sloping, 1.5-acre Sims Road cemetery off Highway 17, sell the land to a single-family home developer, then use the cash to pay...

Shocked and angry: the prophet whose warnings over Wall Street were ignoredBy Rupert CornwellInterview: Professor JK Galbraith - EconomistThis surely is the hour of John Kenneth Galbraith, grand old man of American economics. But those who travel to the leafy suburbs of Boston in the expectation of a giant and gloating "I told you so" will come away disappointed. Amid the debris of Enron and WorldCom, the lifelong critic of unbridled corporate power exhibits none of the satisfaction of a prophet whose warnings have come to pass. "Those of us who've concerned themselves with this matter cannot take satisfaction for...

<p>A "report" just released by the California chapter of NOW on the alleged abuse of women in family courts is fluff without substance.</p> <p>Nevertheless, a submissive media is eating up the report and rushing to sound tired alarm bells.</p> <p>"Family Court Report 2002" has the ostentatious trappings of respectable research: 134 pages; four authors, including the President of CANOW; and a self-declared "three years" of research.</p>

<p>July 2, 2002 -- AS George W. Bush became president, I turned to America's best Republican political consultant, Charlie Black, for a line on our new leader. "Always remember," Black told me, "that he's his mother's son." Mother's son or father's boy? The conflict between Bush's maternal and paternal DNA seems almost to define the zigs and zags of his presidency - and the political ups and downs which they trigger.</p>

Years ago when I first learned about politics from my father, I was taught that the Republican Party stood for fiscal sanity and the Democratic Party stood for tax and spend politics. Funny how some things change, but others just stay the same. Of course, the Democrats still stand for tax and spend politics. They continue to try to demagogue all the issues and pit one group of Americans against another. Republicans are supposed to speak out against that type of shenanigans, but instead they sadly imitate those politics. Republicans are now for Big Government, just a little bit less...

Soros warns of dollar plungeGeorge Soros: 'market fundamentalism' a danger George Soros, the billionaire financier, has warned that the US dollar could lose one-third of its value over the next few years. On the currency markets, meanwhile, allegations of yet another accounting scandal - this time at office equipment firm Xerox - made investors dump the US dollar and push it within a quarter of a cent of parity with the euro. Mr Soros also warned stock markets could fall "much lower" if consumer confidence and growth faltered in the United States. The financier made his fortune running a hedge...

Reuters Business ReportEDS to Cut Work Force by 2,000NEW YORK (Reuters) - EDS, the world's No. 2 computer services company, said on Tuesday it would cut 2,000 jobs and reassured investors the reductions were not connected to its business with troubled telecommunications company WorldCom Group.(NasdaqNM:WCOME - News). "This action has absolutely nothing to do with our relation with WorldCom," Chief Executive Dick Brown said during a conference call with analysts. "EDS is a solid company with a straightforward business model. We watch our money and we stick by our clients." The 2,000 cuts represent 1.4 percent of the workforce of...