Free Republic

Parent fights district policy over 5-year-old's ear stud Copyright 2001 Houston Chronicle Diana Lincoln said her 5-year-old son, Colton, just wanted to emulate his father and stepfather when he asked to get his ear pierced last spring. But when he started kindergarten this week with a gold stud in his left ear, it caused no small furor. Alief school officials say the jewelry has to go, or Colton won't be allowed to remain in his class at Petrosky Elementary. "Our school board policy doesn't allow boys to wear earrings," said Petrosky Principal Bernadette Kaptain. "It's not permitted." Lincoln is livid ...

1. "Frankly, Scallop, I Don't Give a Clam." (Seen on Cape Cod) 2. "That's It! I'm Calling Grandma!" (Seen on an 8 year old) 3. "Wrinkled Was Not One of the Things I Wanted to Be When I Grew Up" 4. "Procrastinate Now." 5. "Rehab Is for Quitters." 6. "My Dog Can Lick Anyone." 7. "I Have a Degree in Liberal Arts - Do You Want Fries With That?" 8. "Party - My Crib - Two A.M." (On a baby-size shirt) 9. "Finally 21, and Legally Able to Do Everything I've Been Doing Since 15." 10. "ALL MEN ARE ...

Tuesday, 13 February, 2001, 00:27 GMT Sheen slates 'bad comic' Bush US actor Martin Sheen, who plays the US president in hit series The West Wing, has said he cannot bear politics and that George W Bush is a "moron". Speaking to the Radio Times, Sheen, 60, said he could not imagine why anyone would want to become president, adding he was bewildered by last year's drawn-out election. Mr Bush won the closest US election in more than a century last November, after a drawn-out legal battle in Florida. The actor, best known for his roles in Apocalypse Now ...

A specter is haunting America – the specter of neoracism. Don't be fooled by the president's roster of cabinet choices. Yes, he has appointed a diverse group of blacks, Latinos, Asian Americans, and women, along with six white male nominees who are not, by themselves, a majority. Does this prove that Boy George really is a broad-minded fellow? I don't think so. If Bush's cabinet selections tell us anything, it's that racial politics has gotten a lot more complicated lately. Civil rights advocates have been put on the defensive by a new breed of right-wing radicals who are adept at ...

Six years ago, on a rain-splattered night in Pittsburgh, Bill Clinton sat in the back of the presidential limousine and theorized on why his enemies hate him. It had been a hard year that would end even harder. Republicans were about to take control of both Houses of Congress. Days earlier, a woman named Paula Jones filed a lawsuit accusing him of sexual harassment - a suit filed after she had been sought out by conservative operatives and urged to act days before the statute of limitations expired. Earlier in the week, a man from Colorado, thinking he'd spotted Clinton ...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A prestigious ballet school has been charged with violating San Francisco's new city law against size discrimination for rejecting an eight-year-old would-be ballerina allegedly deemed too large to dance. In charges lodged with the city's Human Rights Commission, eight-year-old Fredrika Keefer and her mother Krissy Keefer charge the San Francisco Ballet School with dashing Fredrika's dreams because she did not fit criteria requiring applicants to have "a well, proportioned, slender body." "I wasn't skinny enough," the fourth-grader told reporters Thursday as news of the case broke. "Almost all the girls in S.F. Ballet are kind ...

Dear Mr. President, I recently saw a bumper sticker that said, "Thank me, I voted for Clinton-Gore." So, I sat down and reflected on that and I am sending my "Thank you" for what you have done, specifically: 1. Thank you for introducing us to Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, Dolly Kyle Browning, Kathleen Willey, and, of course, Juanita Broaddrick, who told NBC that you raped her. Are there any others that we should know about? 2. Thank you for teaching my 8-year-old about oral sex. I had really planned to wait until he was about 10 or so ...

NO - LET THE PEOPLE RULE I AM not a liberal or a conservative, a Democrat or a Republican. But I am a democrat. I believe deeply and abidingly in the absolute right of people to choose their leaders. This fundamental principle may be at stake if the final recounts put Vice President Al Gore ahead of George W. Bush in the popular vote but leave him still lagging in the electoral college. If Gore gets more votes than Bush, he ought to be the president. Period. The Electoral College is a pleasant anachronism which has survived by virtue ...

San Francisco -- A transient who thumbed a ride here from Santa Cruz was arraigned yesterday on a charge of aggravated mayhem, accused of biting the neck and sucking the blood of the man who picked him up. ``I need the cure . . . I need blood,'' Eric D. Knight told officers when they arrested him last week. Joshua Roise, 28, of Santa Cruz, picked up Knight, 39, just north of Santa Cruz on July 26, and drove him to a Cala Foods store here. Roise told police that Knight was calm during the 90-minute car ride, but ...

Copyright © 2000 Nando Media Copyright © 2000 Scripps Howard News Service (July 11, 2000 12:10 a.m. EDT - It was appropriate that the Libertarian Party held its national convention over the Independence Day weekend, selecting Harry Browne, once again, as its presidential candidate. No other ideologically based organization in our country understands and appreciates better the philosophy on which our nation was founded. I revere many libertarian ideals. I've been inspired by great thinkers, like Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard, who have brilliantly articulated libertarian principles. But I'm not a capital "L" Libertarian, and never ...

Copyright © 2000 Nando Media Copyright © 2000 Scripps Howard News Service (March 23, 2000 1:33 p.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - I have heard quite a bit of carping since last Thursday about preferential treatment for politicians. Thursday was the day the former president of Ohio's Senate - facing a charge of drunken driving - copped a plea to impaired alertness and failure to control. Stanley J. Aronoff walked away from Franklin County (Ohio) Municipal Court $135 lighter. The fine was $15 less than Aronoff paid when he faced a charge of DUI in 1982. Then, despite a blood-alcohol level ...

Read This or I'll Sue You By Jonathan Rauch National Journal, Feb. 6, 1999 "Granddad, our social studies teacher says that court suits used to be called 'lawsuits,' because in those days they were actually about law.'' Yes, but that was a long time ago. ``He said it used to be that judges and sometimes even lawyers discouraged you from suing people just because you hated them or wanted their money. We thought he was joking.'' Well, things changed. ``Like what?'' Once upon a time there was a President who believed that lawsuits were good for the country. Anyway, he ...

Vice-President Al Gore, aided and abetted by Jay Rockefeller,D-W.V., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, fought for and succeeded in amending the Telecommunications Act of 1996 such that a universal services fund was created to subsidize telecommunications services for schools, libraries and rural health-care providers. The subsidies that go into the fund are collected by way of a charge on residential and commercial telephone bills, an e-rate tax that has become popularly known as the "Gore tax." In a May 1997 order, the Federal Communications Commission ordered telephone companies to start making universal service "contributions" for the social good of wiring ...

Copyright © 1999 Nando Media Copyright © 1999 Scripps McClatchy Western Service SACRAMENTO, Calif. (December 8, 1999 12:09 p.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - One of the more distressing things about the current round of Republican presidential debates is the presence of three candidates who have no chance of being elected president. That's half the field, which reduces by 50 percent the opportunity for the serious contenders - Texas Gov. George W. Bush, Arizona Sen. John McCain and, to a lesser extent, magazine publisher Steve Forbes - to make their case to an America just beginning to tune in. That's not to ...