Free Republic

Election with Hunter By Troy Hooper/Aspen Daily News Staff Writer WOODY CREEK — It was Bailey's Irish Cream and Royal Salute Scotch Whiskey at the Thompson household on Election Night. A bottle of Cristal intended for a John Kerry victory remained uncorked, chilling on ice in a backroom. A hungry smell of anticipation hung in the kitchen at Owl Farm, which morphed into a makeshift Democratic headquarters as Hunter S. Thompson hunkered down with a small group of friends and manned what seemed like a global switchboard as calls came pouring in from some of the biggest names in modern...

In 1993 Debbie Hartman was sure she was hearing things in her hospital room. She had just undergone a caesarean section, and the doctors were saying the baby was healthy but they weren't sure whether it was a boy or a girl. "I thought the drugs were making me hallucinate," she recalls. In fact, she was hearing just fine. But nothing about her child's biology — from the chromosomes to the reproductive tissue — conformed to the standard demarcations we have come to expect between the male and female sexes. In the language of developmental biologists, the baby was "intersexual."...

When I was a much younger man, I almost worshipped Shakespeare. He seemed to me almost literally “inspired,” the most eloquent man who ever lived. And he nearly filled the place in my life that Catholicism had briefly occupied after my teenage conversion. When I returned to the Catholic Church in my early thirties, I began to see him differently. As a professional writer myself, I still admired him immensely, realizing how impossible it was that I should ever emulate him. But I no longer regarded him as a god. I had another god — namely, God. I began to...

LONDON (Hollywood Reporter) - The scatological and obscenity filled "Jerry Springer -- The Opera" won four honors including best new musical at the 28th Laurence Olivier awards on Sunday. Based on Jerry Springer's notorious television talk show, the production has music by Richard Thomas and book and lyrics by Thomas and Stewart Lee. It also landed awards for David Bedella as best actor in a musical; for the chorus of the show as best supporting performance in a musical; and for Mike Walker, best sound. The "Springer" production was developed at the National Theater and is now running at the...

Atlanta, Feb. 21 — In December 2002, when Teresa Heinz Kerry's husband, Senator John Kerry, came home from his physical boasting about his low cholesterol, she stared at his screening results for prostate cancer and saw trouble where he had not. "He didn't know anything," she recalled. "He knew zero, zilch." But Ms. Heinz Kerry, a physician's daughter who peruses medical journals and toxicology articles and is intrigued by alternative medicine and Eastern philosophy, knew enough to have her husband's blood retested for C-reactive protein, a little-known indicator of potentially cancerous inflammation. Two days before Christmas, his doctor told Mr....

A Mississippi man was sentenced to 10 years in prison Friday for possessing a kilogram of cocaine. Frederick Wilkins, 24, was sentenced by a jury after five hours of deliberation. He was found guilty Thursday of aggravated possession of a controlled substance. Wilkins' half-brother, Berdell Willis, was found guilty of the same charge this week and was sentenced to 40 years in prison by a jury. Assistant Smith County District Attorney Brett Harrison said Willis, 31, rented a car and drove to Dallas, where he stayed a day before heading back to Greenville, Miss., with Wilkins as his passenger. On...

We want to protect them, so we pressure Abercrombie & Fitch to shelve its racy catalog with the photographs of nude and seminude young people frolicking alongside text discussing the practicalities of group masturbation, orgies and oral sex. We want to control them, so we impose zero tolerance regarding what they can wear, say and do at school and we pass increasingly harsh laws to punish them. We fear them, even when statistics tell us they aren't nearly as bad as what we see in the news. "We" are adults. "They" are teens. How we view them dictates how we...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush, celebrating the nation's first federally funded school voucher program set up in the District of Columbia, said Friday he hopes it will turn into "change across the country" in education.</p> <p>"At some point in time, in order to challenge mediocrity where we find mediocrity, parents have to be given other options," Bush said in a speech at Archbishop Carroll High School.</p>

Bush Advocates Abstinence-Only Education WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration is proposing to double spending on sexual abstinence programs that bar any discussion of birth control or condoms to prevent pregnancy or AIDS despite a lack of evidence that such programs work. A study by researchers at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on declining birth and pregnancy rates among teenagers concludes that prevention programs should emphasize abstinence and contraception. "Both are important," said Dr. John Santelli, the lead author of the study, which has not been published. In Minnesota, a study found that sexual activity doubled among...

'We wait for peace. We wait for war' Gary Younge in Port-au-Prince Wednesday February 11, 2004 The Guardian At the Liberty beauty salon in Port-au-Prince, two hairdressers sit in the hope that the electricity will soon return. "We wait for electricity. We wait for water. We wait for peace. We wait for war," says one. Worried that she has said too much, she refuses to give her name, fearing the prescience of her throwaway remark and the implications that could come with it. For Haiti was yesterday on the verge of civil war. In the last five days anti-government rebels...

Bush Backs Probe of Probes of WMD Probe (2004-02-01) -- President George Bush may back a probe into the six ongoing inquiries into U.S. intelligence agency investigations of Iraq's pre-war stocks of weapons of mass destruction based on United Nations inspections. "Accountability is everything in a democratic republic," said an unnamed senior White House official. "The CIA got much of its WMD intel from U.N. inspection teams that they couldn't trust. The House, the Senate, the CIA, the Army, the Iraq Survey Group and the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board are all conducting inquiries into why we haven't found the...

We Deserve More Than Electability Every year, there is a word or phrase that is repeated over and over until you can’t stand to hear it anymore. In 1999, it was ‘millennium’. In 2000, it was 'chad'. There are scads more: 'yellow cake', 'Shock and awe', the ever popular 'embedded'. And now, in 2004, we have 'electability'. It’s the word on everyone’s lips. When you hear John Kerry and Howard Dean and John Edwards and Wesley Clark on the campaign trail, the one point that they’re attempting to pound into people’s heads is their electability. They never explain what electability...

Mandatory Sentencing Reconsidered Mandatory sentencing and three strikes laws have always been controversial subjects. Legislators who favor these laws reason that they are successfully curbing judges who are considered to be too lenient on criminals, and that they serve to counter a rising wave of crime. Prosecutors appreciate such laws because the laws give them discretion concerning whether or not to pursue mandatory-minimum charges when indicting someone. The general public tends to approve of mandatory sentencing because it feels good to think that some offenses bring a certain punishment, regardless of the circumstances of the case. Why do we have...

<p>NEW YORK (AP) -- El Teddy's, a once-trendy Mexican restaurant that became a fixture in lower Manhattan and on late-night television, is down to its last Saturday night.</p> <p>The restaurant, known for its potent margaritas and giant replica of the Statue of Liberty crown on the roof, appeared in the opening credits of NBC's "Saturday Night Live" for nearly a decade. It will close Saturday after failing to recover from the 2001 terrorist attack on the nearby World Trade Center.</p>

French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin has called for "progressive" normalisation of EU ties with Libya. His call came after Libya agreed to pay a $170m settlement to families bereaved by a 1989 bombing of a French plane. The BBC's Peter Biles says the deal should be seen amid other recent overtures to the West by Tripoli. In the last six months, Libya has taken responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing and agreed payouts, and said it would cease banned weapons programmes. 'New relationship' Mr De Villepin met his Libyan counterpart, Abdel Rahman Shalgham, in Paris hours after the families of...

Judge Accused Of Saying Women Ask To Get 'Smacked Around' Village Justice Resigns After Alleged Comments ALBANY, N.Y. -- A village judge has resigned after he was accused of saying most women enjoy abuse and ask to get "smacked around" and that domestic violence cases are a waste of the court's time. Hunter Village Justice Robert Hamley, 50, resigned after he "acknowledged that he could not successfully defend the charges against him," the state's Commission on Judicial Conduct announced Tuesday. Hamley, who isn't a lawyer, resigned Nov. 17 from the $4,500-a-year, part-time job in this small Catskills village about 100...

The Price Of Bad Kids: Your Kid's Troubles Can Cost You A Bundle Know what your children are up to? Better find out. You're liable for virtually any kind of trouble -- vandalism, fights, pregnancy -- they can get into. By Christopher Solomon Raising the next generation is one of life’s great rewards, but a bad seed can quickly turn the usual headaches of parenthood into migraines. Nationwide, even good parents increasingly are being held responsible for tens of thousands of dollars in damages and other costs when a child breaks the law or otherwise misbehaves. Many states, for example,...

Urban myth turns into a reality on the streets of San Francisco - Homeless Poet Has Shrinking Fortune January 3, 2004 SAN FRANCISCO – One of San Francisco's enduring urban myths – the homeless man with the sizable trust fund – turned out to be more than just a figment of the collective imagination. Lou Dinarde, 68, is a deep-pockets drifter with a drinking problem who reads poetry at North Beach cafes over coffee when he's sober. However, he spends most of his time polishing off bottles of stronger stuff sprawled out on the sidewalk, with the knowledge he had...

Swedish MP leaves Israel after expulsion order Agence France-Presse Jerusalem, January 2 A Swedish MP who had been served with an expulsion order following his arrest during an anti-barrier protest in the West Bank has left Israel, a spokesman for the International Solidarity Movement said on Friday. The spokesman had said initially that Gustav Fridolin had stayed after deciding to use his right to appeal his expulsion with the Supreme Court. "He left but he was not officially expelled," the spokesman said. His departure, whether voluntary or forced, was confirmed by the interior ministry. The young Swedish lawmaker, who claimed...

US accused of exploiting Iran quake A leading Iranian cleric has accused the US of trying to exploit the Bam earthquake for political gain. Ayat Allah Ahmad Jannati, head of Iran's powerful supervisory body the Guardian Council, also applauded what he called a "slap in the face" given to Washington by the Islamic Republic. Speaking to worshippers at Friday prayers in Tehran, Jannati said Iran was grateful for the foreign aid pouring in to help victims of last week's quake that killed at least 30,000 people. The United States has sent scores of medics and tonnes of aid but, Jannati...