Free Republic

GREEN RIVER -- A young man from the Green River community diagnosed with an eye disease that results in blindness is participating in experimental research that has improved his vision. The experimental treatment conducted by an ophthalmologist in Connecticut could bring hope to thousands of people suffering from macular degeneration. Aaron Maybin, 23, was told in July by three area ophthalmologists that he had Stargardt's disease and would be completely blind in five to 10 years. Stargardt's disease is the most common form of juvenile macular degeneration. It is an inherited disease. Unaffected parents, who are carriers, have one gene...

Steve McNabb, owner of American Carolina Stamping, is shown by one of the machines in his company on 64 West . PENROSE -- Federal environmental penalties proposed for a metal stamping plant here four years after a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency raid could reach up to $1.5 billion, the plant's owner says. Steve McNabb, owner of American Carolina Stamping, said Wednesday a Sept. 4 EPA complaint and compliance order could mean he has to pay $1.5 billion in penalties for alleged hazardous waste violations dating back to 1994. EPA officials could not be reached for comment Thursday. But McNabb said...

Militant Palestinians warned Israel it would unleash a "volcano of anger" if it carried out its threat to remove their leader Yasser Arafat."Touching Yasser Arafat and his aides would see the unstoppable volcano of Palestinian anger erupt," warned the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Arafat's Fatah faction.Addressing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the Brigades added: "Your people will pay dearly because a wave of martyrs will blow up everyone living in Israel."The Israeli security cabinet approved in principle to "remove" what it called the "obstacle" of Arafat, at emergency talks in response to two suicide bombings this week...

Suppose terrorists sneak aboard your flight. Perhaps they have failed to smuggle (conventional, metallic) weapons on board. What they do have are their intentions, their training, and their willingness to die. The flight attendants solicit your attention, and explain what to do in the event of an emergency. They demonstrate the use of the oxygen masks and the flotation devices. There's a short film. Then you hear from one of the pilots. "Welcome aboard. This is Joe, your flight captain. We're cruising at such-and-such thousand feet, at such-and-such miles per hour. The skies are clear and we expect smooth sailing....

It's time for another report on the cattle calls, also known as "debates," among the Democratic candidates for president. North Carolina's Sen. John Edwards, who gets most of his contributions from fellow tort lawyers, recently saw his fund raising eclipsed by some of the other candidates. Because I'm always here to help, I have a suggestion to move him back to the top. He should purchase a second hand ambulance and slowly circle the courthouse in each town he visits. After a few minutes, when 10 to 20 tort lawyers are jogging along behind the ambulance, he can slam on...

The following passages are excerpted from the book, A Familiar Exposition of The Constitution Of The United States by Joseph Story, Justice of the Supreme Court 1811-1845; reprinted in 1986, by Regnery Gateway, Inc., Lake Bluff, IL 60044. The following is Justice Story's Forward to his own book: To the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, this work, designed to aid the cause of education, and to promote and encourage the study of the CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, by Her ingenuous youth, is respectfully dedicated. By one who gratefully acknowledges, that Her territory is the land of his birth,...

As young boys under the age of 10, they trekked almost 1,000 miles from Sudan to Ethiopia, back to Sudan and into a refugee camp in Kenya. They saw other boys fall victim to lions and crocodiles, drown in rivers, die from starvation and disease and killed by soldiers. Three of the "lost boys of Sudan" moved to Hendersonville from Atlanta a few weeks ago with their sponsor, Tricia Beall, owner of Studio B. Laat "Abraham" Deng, Martin Deng and Victor Deng are three of the about 17,000 boys who set out in 1989 on a four-year trek to escape...

Joshua "Jason" Paz was a funny, hard-working teenager. After he joined a gang, he was shot and killed during a robbery. His death at 16 represents a growing problem in the TriangleRamon Rodriguez, 8, paces after a memorial service for Joshua Paz, his brother, who was killed at this lot in Raleigh.Courtesy of the Paz Family Joshua "Jason" Paz was described by his friends as a funny and hard-working teenager. But it was clear to anyone who entered his small and organized bedroom in Raleigh's Northside neighborhood that he also was fascinated with gang culture. The 16-year-old had pasted gang...

It's not just because Prem Awaes has come to this country as a legal immigrant that Americans should welcome him. No. He has a message that does not make for easy listening, but it is one that Americans, particularly those who are anxious to cast Islam as a peaceful and tolerant religion, need to hear. Awaes has come to America thanks to the sponsorship of the Virginia Council of Churches and the Presbyterian Church of Fredericksburg. He had been trained as a missionary by the Salvation Army and had operated a Christian school for in Pakistan. Because Pakistan is a...

There is a long and tragic tradition that runs through American politics in which politicians spend themselves into a fiscal crisis during good economic times and then raise taxes to bail themselves out when a recession hits and revenues plummet. This is precisely what's going on today in Alabama and California.In both states between 1997 and 2000, state spending increased more than three times faster than the combined rate of inflation and population growth. Not only does government continuously get bigger and more intrusive, politicians on the left forever manipulate the tax system as a mechanism of income redistribution and...

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently joined U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, anti-Pledge-of-Allegiance Judge Stephen Reinhardt and other like-minded liberals and feminists to launch a new organization called the American Constitution Society.Its mission is to challenge The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, which promotes the nomination of judges who believe in the U.S. Constitution and in the U.S. system of federalism.The left doesn't believe the Constitution should be the bench mark of court decisions or that we should abide by the requirement that "all legislative powers" belong to...

Four people were shot and killed and two others were critically wounded late Wednesday in Denver's worst mass homicide in more than a decade. Authorities say one or more gunmen bound the victims, then shot most of them in the head in the basement of a northeast Denver duplex.The only person who escaped unharmed was 3-year-old Esmeralda Balbuena, the daughter of two of the victims. She met officers at the bottom of the stairs leading to the basement duplex when they arrived minutes after the shootings."Maybe she was not intended to be a target, or maybe they didn't know she...

A favorite spectator sport, of late, is watching the mainstream media and other Democrats wail about the Africa-uranium connection. The logic goes something like ... "there must have been no justification for the war, because the president exaggerated the nuclear threat." Of course, Mr. Bush didn't exaggerate the nuclear threat, but engaging in "logic" that starts with a false premise has never bothered Democrats in the past. Using the same logic, but with a true premise, we can say that if anti-war zealots had solid backing for their position, they wouldn't have to lie to promote it. In his Jan....

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX SUN JULY 13, 2003 17:09:28 ET XXXXX DISNEY/MIRAMAX SET TO RELEASE FILM DEPICTING AMERICA MILITARY AS DRUG DEALERS, CRIMINALS; TIMING SEEN FUELING IRAQ WAR CONTROVERSY "Here in the UK no one gets upset, but over there, where the President is fighting these military campaigns in the name of democracy, the first casualty seems to be freedom of speech, the cornerstone of any democracy."                                 - BUFFALO SOLDIERS Director Gregor Jordan The WALT DISNEY CO. is set for maximum controversy when it releases a "warts-and-all" portrait of U.S. Army life with the fuss-film BUFFALO...

The Supreme Court has passed another law, this one supplanting the law passed by the people of the state of Texas in its democratic process. But you say the Court doesn't pass laws. Well, as Justice Scalia in his angry dissent said, the Court is supposed to be a court, but it has become a super-legislature overriding the decisions of the people. What a travesty.By a 6-3 vote, the unelected nine based their decision to make sodomy constitutionally protected on the so-called "right to privacy."Justice Kennedy, who wrote for the majority, said that the issue was "two adults who, with...

Due to a prior engagement, Snow White sent her regrets. She was unable to attend the debate for Democrat presidential candidates in Des Moines recently. However, seven dwarfs were there. Two others, Sen. Kerry and Sen. Lieberman, did not attend. The debate was sponsored by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and moderated by its president, Gerald McEntee. AFSCME is a corrupt union - pardon the redundant redundancy -- not the most corrupt, but corrupt nonetheless. For example, more than two dozen officials in New York Local 37 have been indicted on charges of corruption. In 1997,...

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., left, ducks down as Pace University President David A. Caputo places the hood representing her honorary degree over her head during commencement ceremonies in Pleasantville, N.Y., Monday, May 19, 2003. Clinton received an honorary doctorate of humane letters and also spoke at the graduation ceremonies. (AP Photo/Pace University, Ray Stubblebine)

Doctors in Hong Kong say they have discovered traces of the potentially deadly SARS virus in the stool and urine of patients discharged from the hospital after they were thought to have recovered from the virus. This news comes after other doctors revealed evidence of permanent lung scars in patients who had been infected with SARS. One doctor at a prominent Hong Kong hospital tells the Associated Press it is not clear whether the scarring resulted from SARS itself or the drug treatment being given to most patients, which is a combination of an anti-viral drug and steroids. The doctor...

Guangzhou, China - Here, at the epicenter of the disease known as SARS, dinner can be bought live at a "wet market." Just outside the banking and commercial center of the capital of Guangdong Province stretches a wide, congested boulevard lined with machine shops, auto parts vendors and industrial parts outlets. Delivery trucks, lumbering buses and darting taxis vie for position.