Free Republic

The new owner of Vista Ridge Mall has lots of ideas to make the shopping center attractive to families and even for people who don't care about shopping. Odessa businessman John Bushman wants to turn the mall into a community space where people can find some "peace and love" in the Ten Commandments, hear some local musicians perform live and take in a giant wave of a 30-foot-by-60-foot American flag outside. All of Bushman's other businesses — hotels in Texas, Colorado and New Mexico, other shopping centers and a Chickn4U restaurant in Odessa — display the Ten Commandments engraved on...

A third-party presidential candidate is trying to make inroads with voters, but Texas residents monkeying around with pollsters may prefer a dead gorilla instead... “They call it gorilla glue because harambe was metaphorically the glue that held this nation together,”

The CNN blog just ran a lengthy interview with Tricia Erickson, who makes a variety of arguments that no believing Mormon should ever be elected President. (Link here; note that in her interview she cites language from the endowment ceremony). Erickson’s arguments...repeats the old evangelical anti-Mormon reasoning that Mormons are all basically automatons, and suggests that any Mormon politician would have a secret church-promoting agenda. It’s an argument straight out of The Manchurian Candidate (and reminiscent of the anti-Catholic arguments raised against JFK)...But what are the implications of the article’s prominent publication today — what does it say about the...

Tom Sepa would rather not be called homeless. "That word is loaded," he said. "I prefer 'urban outdoorsman.' " It is true that Sepa has a lot of things that aren't generally associated with the stereotypical San Francisco homeless person - like a full-time job. A telemarketer, Sepa hits the phones at 7 a.m., working out of Zephyr Cafe in the Richmond District. He uses his laptop and a cell phone headset to make over 100 cold calls each morning. Currently, he's trying to get companies to take a meeting with a software firm he's representing. He gets paid via...

HELENA - A Billings Republican said he is getting closer to announcing plans to run for the U.S. Senate seat held by U.S. Sen. Max Baucus. Kirk Bushman, who works at an engineering firm and has not previously run for office, set up a campaign committee earlier this month and filed an initial fundraising report that shows he has raised about $11,000, much of it from family. He also has a Web site announcing "Kirk Bushman for U.S. Senate." But Bushman said he is not yet positive he will run. He wants to talk to more Republicans and go to...

Thursday, 15 August, 2002, 16:10 GMT 17:10 UKBotswana Bushman fights for survival President Mogae has said Bushmen are 'stone age creatures' John Simpson BBC World Affairs Editor In Botswana the Bushmen, or San, face destruction as a separate ethnic group. The only concession most San made to the 21st century was wearing clothes President Festus Mogae once described them as 'Stone Age creatures' for whom there was no place in the modern world, and the Bostwana Government is chasing them off their traditional hunting-lands. Diamonds, the curse of modern Africa, have been discovered there. But when I travelled to the...