Free Republic

  Police Search Handyman's Home in Utah KidnappingJuly 2 — By James Nelson SALT LAKE CITY (Reuters) - Utah investigators on Tuesday conducted a second search of the trailer home of a handyman who police have said tops the list of possible suspects in the kidnapping of 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart. FBI agents and detectives spent nearly five hours going through the home of Richard Albert Ricci, who did work at the Smart home last year and who has a long criminal record. "We want to make sure we didn't miss anything," said Sgt. Fred Louis, spokesman for the Salt Lake...

EU will work with Arafat if re-elected - Prodi European Commission President Romano Prodi said the EU would continue its dialogue with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat if he is re-elected in January, despite US calls for his replacement."It is up to the Palestinian people to choose their leader and not us," Prodi said in Copenhagen as Denmark took over the helm of the EU presidency."We have to accept the result of a free election whether we like it or not," he said.US President George Bush last week threatened to withhold new US aid from the Palestinians if they fail...

<! Created by Bryan J. Walsh. Please forward comments to: bjw1106@aol.com> Modern Papal Visions..."Papal Insignia" "...Peter went up to the housetop to pray, about the sixth hour. And he became hungry and desired something to eat; but while they were preparing it, he fell into a trance and saw the heavens opened..." Acts of the Apostles 10:9-11 The apparitions and visions that occassionally occur to the successors of Peter are difficult to definitively verify. For a variety of reasons, members of the Vatican's heirarchy do not like to broadcast the mystical experiences of the head of the Catholic Church. Despite...

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP)--Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Tuesday fired his West Bank security chief and Gaza police chief, officials said, major steps toward reforming his security services. West Bank Preventive Security Chief Jibril Rajoub told The Associated Press that he had been informed of Arafat's decision. However, Gaza police chief Ghazi Jibali insisted the reports were just "rumors." Rajoub is one of the most powerful figures in the West Bank but has had a falling-out with Arafat. During a previous incursion into the West Bank, Israeli forces destroyed Rajoub's headquarters, and he ordered the men inside to surrender, losing...

MILWAUKEE (AP) -- President Bush defended in a snappish tone Tuesday his own business experience with a corporation accused of fishy accounting. ``Everything I do is fully disclosed; it's been fully vetted,'' the president said as he paused to speak with reporters during a church appearance in Wisconsin. ``Any other questions?'' Bush was responding to a journalist who asked for his reaction to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who said in Tuesday's newspaper that Bush's recent campaign against corporate malfeasance draws on ``firsthand experience of the subject.'' Bush, in 1989, was on the board of directors and audit committee...

<p>MEXICO CITY (AP) -- The Mexican government is expecting to issue more than one million consular identification cards in the U.S. this year as part of an effort to help more than three million undocumented immigrants get increased access to public and private services.</p>

Already imprisoned for seizing three of their daughters at gunpoint from state child welfare workers, Ruth and Brian Christine pleaded guilty today to charges that they starved two of the girls. Josephine County Circuit Judge Gerald Neufeld sentenced them to 14 and 13 months but ordered them to serve the time concurrently with an earlier sentence. Brian Christine pleaded guilty to criminal mistreatment for withholding food from his eldest daughter, Bethany, and refusing to stop for police. He was sentenced to 14 months. Ruth Christine pleaded guilty to criminal mistreatment for withholding food from her daughter, Lydia, and got 13...

Jul 02, 2002 (Knight Ridder Newspapers - Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service via COMTEX) -- BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan - U.S. aircraft had been fired upon by anti-aircraft artillery several times in the days preceding a U.S. attack on a cluster of villages in central Afghanistan in which dozens of people were reported killed, defense officials said Tuesday. The officials also said that cannon fire from an AC-130 gunship, not an errant bomb from a B-52 bomber, may have struck what Afghan officials described as a wedding party in the village of Deh Rawood, about 175 miles southwest of Kabul. As...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Authorities in North Carolina have seized $1.4 million worth of narcotics and have convicted more than 80 Marines and sailors of using or distributing designer drugs, officials said Tuesday. It was one of the biggest drug investigations involving the military in recent years. Although narcotics cases in the military are not rare, they usually involve smaller numbers of people. A recent drug scandal at the Air Force Academy, for example, implicated 38 cadets. Officials said Tuesday that a two-year investigation, code-named Operation Xterminator, was conducted by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service office at Camp Lejeune, N.C., outside...

Foreclosures soar Weak economy could spur highest level in 11 years By John Rebchook, Rocky Mountain News July 2, 2002 Metro-area home foreclosures are headed for their highest level in 11 years, as the battered economy leads to a huge spike in homeowners defaulting on mortgages in the first half of the year. Foreclosures rose by 53.7 percent in the first six months of the year, compared with the same period in 2001, assuming that Denver and Jefferson counties continue the same pace of previous months. Those two counties have not tallied their foreclosures through June. Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield...

<p>SARASOTA, Fla. — The newest candidate challenging Secretary of State Katherine Harris in her bid for Congress is truly an underdog: a border collie mix.</p> <p>Percy the dog is running as a write-in candidate in the Republican primary, said his owner and campaign manager, Wayne Genthner.</p>

 Weekday Commentary from Jim Puplava Home A Shift to "Things" Seen in the CRB?  Musical Chairs by Jim Puplava6/28 Update FSO Resource PageClyde Harrison Raw Materials: Economics 101Jim RogersWhy Raw Materials?   Nyquist Column 7/01How to Bring Down a Superpower and put yourself in its place  Tuesday's Market Scoreboard  July 2, 2002  Dow Industrials 102.04 9007.75  Dow Utilities 6.2 262.9  Dow Transports 79.97 2619.88  S & P 500 20.57 948.08  Nasdaq 45.93 1357.87  US Dollar to Yen 119.88  US Dollar to Euro .9857  Gold 1.2 313.2  Silver 0.06 4.95  Oil 0.04 26.77  CRB Index 0.84 211.18  Natural Gas 0.05...

The procedure, says the doctor, is perfectly harmless. The patient complies. Later, however, she returns and says that it has, in fact, made her ill. Nonsense, says the doctor: you must have been ill in the first place. I wasn't, she says. Well, you're ill now, says the doctor; and, since my operation can't possibly make anyone ill, you must have been ill beforehand.Gillian Penny of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists recently made the gloriously sweeping statement that women who had abortions did not usually suffer psychological problems unless they were already disturbed.Her remarks came in response to...

These days, the tightly controlled Palestinian media are trying to suppress the fact that many ordinary Palestinians are heartened by the calls for democracy for Palestinians from around the world. In the West Bank and Gaza, people are whispering that there might be an end to the repression and corruption that have characterised the past five years under the Palestinian Authority.As if the Israeli occupation and daily hardship at the hands of Israeli soldiers were not enough, we Palestinians had to witness the ostentatious corruption of our elected or appointed officials and the denial of our basic rights of freedom....

'Coulterizing' the Left: A Review of ''Slander'' By Doug Patton GOPUSA News June 27, 2002 (GOPUSA News) -- They have called Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas ''Uncle Thomas'' and ''lawn jockey for the far right.'' They hope out loud that ''his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early, like many black men do, of heart disease.'' They called Newt Gingrich ''stupid.'' Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush are just said to be ''dumb.'' Linda Tripp, Paula Jones and Katherine Harris were pronounced ''ugly.'' And, of course, Christian conservatives are always dubbed ''right-wing extremists,'' ''ayatollahs'' or...

Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials GABEO NEWS The following resolution was authored by The Reverend Henry Ficklin , Macon City Council and Treasurer of the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials. It was unanimously adopted during the recent convention on June 22, 2002. WHEREAS: Senator Zell Miller has long enjoyed the overwhelming support of the Georgia African American vote in his races both for Lt. Governor and Governor of our state; and WHEREAS: Both his appointment and election as Senator from the state of Georgia also were unquestionably and heavily supported by the African American voters of our state;...

Few philosophers in history have been so unreadable and dry as Immanuel Kant. Yet few have had a more devastating impact on human thought. Kant's devoted servant, Lumppe, is said to have faithfully read each thing his master published, but when Kant published his most important work, “The Critique of Pure Reason,” Lumppe began but did not finish it because, he said, if he were to finish it, it would have to be in a mental hospital. Many students since then have echoed his sentiments. Yet this abstract professor, writing in abstract style about abstract questions, is, I believe, the...

Tel-Aviv attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner has sent letters to United States Attorney John Ashcroft, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and members of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations warning them of Palestinian leader Mohammed Dahlan's involvement in terror attacks. Dahlan, a rising star in the international media, is being promoted by many in the Bush administration to succeed Yassir Arafat as leader of the Palestinian Authority. The lawyer's missive accuses former Gaza security service boss Dahlan and his deputy Rashid Abu Shabak of having perpetrated the November 20, 2000, bombing of an Israeli school bus outside of Kfar Darom. In the...

2002 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner Jr., R-Wis., wants to know how the judges who heard the appeal on the University of Michigan's affirmative action policy were chosen. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the University of Michigan law school's admissions policy, saying race can be a determining factor in determining whether a candidate will be admitted. The court said the school had a compelling interest to create a diverse student body, reversing a lower court decision. The case now is headed for the U.S. Supreme Court. The committee confirmed...

I'm not sorry to see that Jew-bashing libel pulled, but I think everyone should take a look at the site it was posted from. Not only do they want to take over the American Southwest as a "Hispanic Homeland", but they are right up there with the middle eastern press in obsessively slandering Jews. I live smack dab in the center of the territory they claim. I wonder how long it will be before we see overt acts of terrorism aimed at obtaining 'land for peace'. If anyone thinks that letting Israel succumb is an option, just take a look...