Free Republic

The Museum of the Confederacy will move from its location near Virginia Commonwealth University in downtown Richmond, where it is shrouded by construction, new buildings and VCU's Medical College.     S. Waite Rawls III, the museum's executive director, said the museum will vacate its spot at 1201 E. Clay St. but that the White House of the Confederacy will remain where it is.     A new site for the museum has not been determined. An independent peer-review panel recommended the move, which Mr. Rawls said he hopes will be completed by 2011. ...     Officials had expected to receive a $700,000 grant from...

Laying it on thick Sometimes, I get the feeling that AFP is trying to get Greenpeace into this war: A Lebanese man walks on a public beach polluted with heavy fuel oil in Beirut, July 2006... could rival the Exxon Valdez disaster... if not urgently addressed, the United Nations has said. (AFP/File/Patrick Baz) A crab covered in oil struggles towards the sea polluted with oil in Beirut, July 2006. (AFP/File/Patrick Baz)(The redundancy must be there to more fully express the urgency in stopping the "violent polluters" from Israel, no doubt...) Of course, we all know what happened the LAST time...

WILLIAMSBURG—If one becomes a British knight by rendering extraordinary service to the crown, it's hard to imagine anyone more deserving of a knighthood than Capt. John Smith. Yet Smith, a soldier, explorer and diplomat of the first order, a man some consider largely responsible for the success of the first permanent English settlement in the New World, was never knighted. That's because the importance of Smith's accomplishments was not recognized until after his death. But a group of local residents doesn't think little things like death or 400 years should keep Britain from recognizing the man who opened the New...

Immigrant labor -- both legal and illegal -- has been an important force propelling U.S. economic growth for years. Growth in the native population has been in decline since the 1970s, so immigrant workers have filled in, providing half of the growth in the U.S. labor force since 1990. ...

WASHINGTON -- Virginia athletic director Craig Littlepage, the much-maligned NCAA Tournament selection committee chair, stood up to observe George Mason's on-court celebration Sunday afternoon and said, "Maybe we seeded them too low." He was kidding. But even if George Mason were a single-digit seed instead of a No. 11, that probably wouldn't matter for historical purposes. This was the greatest run ever to the Final Four. End of discussion. It's hard to gauge what this historic win has done for this university located just 20 miles from here, one that is named after one of the framers of the U.S....

CARY, N.C. - The joke around here is that this town's name is really an acronym for ''Containment Area for Relocated Yankees.'' As far as Vernon Yates is concerned, they haven't been contained well enough. Nearly surrounded by pricey subdivisions, the cinderblock Yates Grocery and Farm Supply sells neither anymore. As if things weren't bad enough, style maven Martha Stewart has chosen this Raleigh suburb to build a signature neighborhood of houses designed after her homes in Maine and New York. Holding court near a potbellied stove, the 69-year-old man in the suspenders and NASCAR shirt laments that his old...

Virginia Dismisses All Charges Against Tariq Khan By Amy Hamilton Broadside News Editor In open court Monday, Nov. 14, the Commonwealth of Virginia dropped all charges against George Mason University student Tariq Khan. Khan, a sociology major and military veteran, was arrested in the Johnson Center Sept. 29 for trespassing and disorderly conduct after standing next to a recruiter’s table wearing a sign that read, “Recruiters Lie, Don’t Be Deceived” and allegedly handing out literature inside the building. After an internal investigation, Mason recommended to the Commonwealth Attorney that the charges be dropped. Rebecca Glenberg, Khan’s legal counsel from the...

As a campus police officer put Tariq Khan in a chokehold, a lunchtime crowd at George Mason University began egging the officer on. Chants of "Kick his ass! Kick his ass!" were intermingled with cries of "Punch him!" "Kick him!" and "Take him down!" Two students--one had earlier ripped a sign off Khan's chest, the other had repeatedly called him a "pussy"--and a computer-lab staff member assisted the officer in "apprehending" Khan, as university spokesperson Dan Walsch put it, by piling on top of him and twisting his body until he cried out in pain. Khan, 27, a four-year Air...

The Johnson Center came to life on Thursday when a protestor refused to comply with requests to leave the premises and was arrested by university police. According to eyewitnesses in the J.C., sociology major Tariq Khan, wearing a variety of signs, was standing beside a kiosk housing representatives from the U.S. Marines. Among other things, the signs read, Israel Out of Palestine,? U.S. out of Iraq, U.S. out of North America and Recruiters Lie, Don't be Deceived. Senior communication major LaTasha Durrett said that "the recruiters were just kind of looking at him." Margo Scheinhaus, a graduate student studying communication,...

Blood, Oil, and Sand: The Hidden History of America’s War on Iraq by Cliff Pearson, Dallas Peace Center In the 1920s, American and European oil companies discovered and exploited the first oil fields in the Middle East. But World War II changed everything. Despite being victors, both France and England began to lose control of their former colonies. The Middle Eastern nations recognized their potential to become economic world players through their oil. Many of them—much to the chagrin of London, Paris, and Washington—attempted to nationalize their oil reserves, only to have the West retaliate. In 1953, Iran’s President...

MONTREAL - Metallica are taking legal action against independant Canadian rock band Unfaith over what they feel is unsanctioned usage of two chords the band has been using since 1982 : E and F. "People are going to get on our case again for this, but try to see it from our point of view just once," stated Metallica's Lars Ulrich. "We're not saying we own those two chords, individually - that would be ridiculous. We're just saying that in that specific order, people have grown to associate E, F with our music." Metallica filed a trademark infringement suit against...

The warhead of a long-range missile test-fired by North Korea was found in the U.S. state of Alaska, a report to South Korea's National Assembly revealed yesterday. ''According to a U.S. document, the last piece of a missile warhead fired by North Korea was found in Alaska, former Japanese foreign minister Taro Nakayama was quoted as saying in the report. ''Washington, as well as Tokyo, has so far underrated Pyongyang's missile capabilities. The report was the culmination of month long activities of the Assembly's overseas delegation to five countries over the North Korean nuclear crisis. The Assembly dispatched groups of...

Over the years, the concept of republicanism has been diluted by overt abuse of its name. I will seek to correct some of the misconceptions about this concept within this document. Please be sure to read the Disclaimers at the end of this document before sending me hate mail. What is "Little-R" republicanism? True republicanism (which I will refer to as Little-R republicanism) is the concept that decentralizes government power as much as possible, to the point of allowing local governments to have greater control over their citizens than central governments. It can also be called government by Local Rule....

ACADEMICIAN KOLESNIKOV: THE VIRUS OF ATYPICAL PNEUMONIA HAS BEEN CREATED ARTIFICIALLY IRKUTSK, April 10, 2003. /RIA Novosti correspondent Alexander Batalin/--The virus of atypical pneumonia has been created artificially, possibly as a bacteriological weapon, believes Sergei Kolesnikov, Academician of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. He expressed this opinion at a news conference in Irkutsk (Siberia) on Thursday. According to him, the virus of atypical pneumonia is a synthesis of two viruses (of measles and infectious parotiditis or mumps), the natural compound of which is impossible. This can be done only in a laboratory, the academician is convinced. He also said...

News broke last week that Beliefnet.com, an internet site that promoted every "religion" from Wicca to Islam to Christianity, went belly up in the stormy sea of nihilistic relativism. In words describing why the site dipped into bankruptcy, an autobiographical epitaph if you will, Belief com stated that they were the darling of the secular news media, who quoted them frequently in a world of user-friendly news. I can hardly imagine that beliefnet.com will be missed by anybody other that those adhering to the most marginal of, excuse me, beliefs. As of this morning their death experience was complete, the...

Oh no, the lawyers are in control. We should all be running for cover, I mean they´re really in control. Morals are out, procedure is in. Instead of standing on ethical grounds, our leaders retreat to the grey, lukewarm area of the courtroom. Swapping blows of the legal sort are as ingrained in our degenerating culture as the words "hot dog". Americans, from the lowest levels of society to the oval office regress to this, the most primal of threat language. Politically, our vote throwers on Capitol Hill know that, rhetorically, the threat of legal action speaks widely across the...

This is the season of giving and give we should: to the surviving family members of the horror of 9-11; to the needy; to the disabled; to all those unable to provide for themselves. But let's do it without the smugness that too often accompanies the giving. I say this because it's been my experience that the people who scream the loudest about helping the poor typically do the least. Worse than that, they are among the most self-righteous people God ever put on this earth. Take the late Mitch Snyder. In the 1980s, Snyder made himself an icon among ...

There has been much talk, but little proof, of Iraq's connection with Osama bin Laden since Sept. 1. With the frightening appearance of anthrax, however, it's useful to know now what Saddam Hussein can bring to the germ-war table. Having spent two decades as a senior official in Iraq's Atomic Energy Commission, I learned a great deal about Baghdad's bio-warfare capabilities. From 1987 until the Persian Gulf War, I directed the Iraqi nuclear weapons program, as well as serving as a directory general of the Department of Military Industry, which oversaw much of the work on biological and chemical weapons. ...

Israelis Get First Look at Team Barak 7.07 a.m. ET (1107 GMT) July 6, 1999 By Uri Dan (New York Post) JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ehud Barak unveiled his Cabinet picks Monday - and on the eve of taking office, promised to bring peace and prosperity to the country. Barak will present his Cabinet list to the Israeli Knesset Tuesday "We accepted the responsibility of leading the nation to security and peace," Barak told his Labor Party's central committee. "I know we have thousands of problems on the public agenda," he said. "[But] nothing is more important in my ...

Excerpts from Howard Phillips Issues and Strategy Bulletin of July 31, 1998 The corrupt relationship involving the selloff of U.S. assets in Panama to Communist China, with the approval of Panamanian President Ernesto Perez "Toro" Balladares is manifested in the fact that Balladares has now hired Clinton crony James Carville to help manage the campaign in support of a referendum which would allow Balladares to seek a second term. According to El Panama (7/1/98) in Panama City, "Reelection. ‘Yes’ reelection campaign directors have received a valuable imported reinforcement in the person of James Carville, the same person who led Bill ...