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Immigrant-rights advocates demanded Thursday that the nation's largest Spanish-language television network publicly apologize for an e-mail they say was distributed throughout the company asking employees not to participate or promote the planned nationwide "Day Without a Latino" event on May 1. Plans to boycott Univision Communications Inc. and its affiliates were set to go forth Monday if the demands for a retraction were not met. Univision did not return phone calls for comment. The e-mail was distributed at a Riverside meeting by Armando Navarro, a UCR professor and immigration activist, who said that an executive with Univision distributed the memorandum...

Rice doctrine advocates 'soft power' to defend US By Alec Russell in Washington (Filed: 17/03/2006) The long-awaited new United States national security strategy unveiled yesterday will almost certainly come to be known as the Condoleezza Rice doctrine. It is assertive yet nuanced, reflecting the shift in US foreign policy since she became secretary of state last year. Condoleezza Rice on board the Port Royal The 49-page document pays homage to its revolutionary September 2002 predecessor which unveiled to a wary world Washington's new- found belief in pre-emption and the abandonment of America's Cold War policy of deterrence. It has a...

Nassau County Lawmakers Weigh in on Living Wage Legislation (12/05/05) MINEOLA - Nassau County lawmakers are weighing in on whether the county can afford a new law that requires certain agencies and companies to pay their employees a living wage. The proposed legislation calls for agencies that contract with the county to pay their employees at least $9.50 an hour starting in 2007 and $12.50 an hour by 2010. An independent budget review says that would cost the county $1.5 million in the first year and up to $7 million when fully implemented. The state panel monitoring Nassau's finances is...

The last time the writer filled up with gas, it cost $2.05 per gallon. During a recent visit to Greece, gasoline costs were $4 per gallon and up, and low when compared to the rest of Europe. Assuming Greece and the rest of the world buy oil on the world market, everyone pays much the same price for crude. The difference at the pump is in overhead, transportation, refining, taxes, and profit. It is widely known that the U.S. has sufficient oil reserves to satisfy its needs for years, many years, even without the “strategic reserves.” But some of the...

Los Angeles County jailers will soon identify illegal immigrants in their custody with criminal convictions and hand them over to federal agents for deportation. The plan, expected to be in place in the coming weeks, has alarmed Bay Area immigration advocates worried about its effect on local policing. --snip-- ``It's really scary and has a lot of people worried,'' said Margaret Zaknoen, advocacy coordinator for the Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition, an umbrella organization of immigrant rights groups that's watching the Los Angeles case closely. ``Things like this chip away at the separation between law enforcement'' and the Bureau of...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Conservative groups are out to take back California with two petitions demanding “fair districts” and a part-time legislature. All they need are signatures—more than 600,000 of them, per petition. Nevertheless, leaders of the most recent movement say they will succeed where several previous petition drives failed. Leading the group is Ted Costa, who said the group has 100,000 signatures for their redistricting initiative. Costa and his group, People’s Advocate, submitted paperwork for their petitions in October. Costa, a veteran of the gubernatorial recall, started accepting signatures after the Nov. 2 election. The petitioning group had previously submitted paperwork for the...

Civil rights advocates angry over the death of a student hit by a pepper-spray pellet are circulating petitions seeking a temporary ban on the Boston Police Department's use of so-called "less-lethal" weapons for crowd control purposes. Police Commissioner Kathleen O'Toole last week appointed an independent commission to investigate the Oct. 21 death of Victoria Snelgrove and review weapons like the one believed to have caused the 21-year-old's death during a celebration of a Red Sox victory. But critics of such weapons who held a news conference Thursday said Boston police use of pepper-ball pellets, bean bag projectiles and rubber bullets...

SACRAMENTO – One year after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ran for office as a "green" Republican, more than two dozen of the state's top environmental advocates are gathering today to confront him with what they call his decidedly mixed record on the environment. In the governor's first face-to-face meeting with environmentalists since his election, 37 leaders of groups ranging from the Sierra Club to the League of Conservation Voters will sit down with Schwarzenegger today to lament environmental budget cuts, protest their exclusion from key policy decisions and request his support for bills to promote energy conservation and protect oak woodlands....

CHARLESTON-- A picture of a Mail Pouch sign on a barn has been a fixture at the West Virginia State Museum since it opened in 1976 but anti-smoking advocates say something is missing from the exhibit -- a sign warning of smokeless tobacco's health risks. Officials with two anti-smoking groups want the Division of Culture and History to post the warning when the museum, which is closed for renovation, reopens later this year. But that is not likely to happen. ''It's being treated as a cultural icon as far as we're concerned,'' said Nancy Herholdt, former commissioner of Culture and...

<p>Consuming a chunk of organic health food is a act of drug abuse in the eyes of the Drug Enforcement Administration — if it contains, as some snacks do, hemp as an ingredient. An appeals court in Alaska says residents can possess up to a quarter-pound of pot for their own use. In a Zogby poll conducted last month in New Hampshire, 84 percent of voters said they supported changing federal law to allow patients to use medicinal marijuana without fear of arrest. Marijuana continues its beeline for the mainstream after years of reefer madness. Federal officials are ready to do battle, with the next target being hemp as food. While it sounds simple enough — one side of mostly pro-marijuana advocates looking to climb another rung on the ladder toward pot tolerance — the fact that the hemp food case even has legs portrays the continued move toward societal legitimacy of the illegal weed. "There is a lot more tolerance for marijuana," said Bruce Mirken, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, which favors pot legalization and most other liberalization of marijuana laws. "And it appears that there are more people rallying around this issue." What people are not seeing, said Ed Childress, a DEA spokesman in Washington, "is the marijuana-legalization lobby at work behind the scenes, with better resources." Two years ago, DEA head Asa Hutchinson said that foods using seeds from the hemp plant violated federal law. He ordered a crackdown on the foods, but his dictate was stayed by a court order. Courtroom wrangling has drawn out the battle. For now, purveyors of the products are free to sell. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will begin hearing arguments in the case next week. "It was really a matter of hemp not existing as something that can be consumed," said Richard Meyer, a DEA spokesman in San Francisco. If the DEA gets its way, insisting that hemp-as-food violates federal law, Lynn Gordon says, she stands to lose $800,000. Miss Gordon's Minneapolis-based French Meadow Bakery produces, among other things, bread with hemp seeds as a primary ingredient. She distances herself from the pro-pot lobby. "I don't advocate marijuana use, I don't smoke marijuana," Miss Gordon said. But her multigrain Healthy Hemp bread uses hemp seeds that she purchases legally from Canada, where hemp plants are grown for industrial use and consumption. "This is not to get people high, it is something that tastes good." Hemp-food advocates say sterilized hemp seed and oil are exempt from the Controlled Substances Act under the statutory definition of marijuana, just as poppy seeds are exempted under the statutory definition of the opium poppy. The growing support for marijuana in all forms is at odds with a federal government that has gone to great lengths to fight it. Increasing leniency, such as that in Alaska, eventually could doom the federal efforts. "I do not believe in drugs," said Erwin A. Sholts, chairman of the North American Industrial Hemp Council, which advocates the use of hemp for both food and industrial use. "But if the DEA doesn't wake up and smell the flowers, there may be something passed in Congress that they can't live with."</p>

Bill Moyers combines fireside chat style with penchant for in-depth news. At a time when TV news programs feature war in real time and talk shows morph into shouting matches, there is one program going against the grain - with lengthy interviews, philosophical insights, and tireless coverage of domestic issues. "Now With Bill Moyers," which airs Friday nights, debuted in January last year in answer to what PBS felt was a need for responsive, post-9/11 news programming. Mr. Moyers, who aired a series of special reports after the Sept. 11 attacks, delayed a planned retirement in order to host the...

Web Site Advocates Killing President Bush By Jeremy Reynalds (bio) Other Articles by Jeremy Reynalds Back to News / Home PageSometimes people are much bolder on line than they ever would be in person. I hope that's the case for Rich Blacker of Conroe, TX who is the apparent author of an article on his web site that advocates killing President George W. Bush. I suspect that Blacker would argue that the piece is written tongue-in-cheek, but there's nothing funny or even remotely satirical about this harshly worded piece which is liberally sprinkled with profanity. Blacker needs to know...

12 June-An upcoming gathering of dozens of celebrities who lend their names as advocates of the United Nations will be an important step in their efforts to promote the world body's work, a senior UN official said today. "The purpose of the meeting is to deepen their understanding of the UN and its many roles, to strengthen their connection to the whole UN system, and to reinforce their roles as advocates and spokesman who inform, who inspire and raise awareness and raise funds, who travel to the frontlines and help us carry our message to a larger public," Gillian M....