Free Republic

On many a sunny morning, Latino men in flannel shirts line the sidewalks of Monument Boulevard in Concord waiting for day labor while local police occasionally cruise by. Sometimes, police stop and arrest men they catch connecting with a prospective employer in public, an act that violates city anti-solicitation ordinances. The police work usually ends there. Federal officials, however, have responded to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by asking police to change standard practice and operate more like the Immigration and Naturalization Service. For years, Concord police rarely called the INS even when it was learned that day laborers ...

This year, instead of selfishly making New Year's resolutions for myself, I have decided to offer assistance to other people who need help and have asked for it. Frankly, due to my year in and year out diligence in pursuit of personal excellence, I have just about run out of significant shortcomings. This is not to say that I am perfect; this is to say that I am close enough to skip a year in the interest of helping other people. As luck would have it, Bill Clinton has cried out for help. Recently, he assembled a group of ...

Many parents assume that the tests given to their children in public school are only for educational purposes. To the contrary, schools increasingly demand that students answer nosy questions unrelated to academics. That practice may soon end due to a federal appellate decision issued recently in C.N. v. Ridgewood Board of Education. The Court held against the Ridgewood (N.J.) school district's use of an intrusive questionnaire. The Ridgewood public schools asked their students highly offensive questions, most having no academic connection. Young pupils were confronted with a 156-question survey about sex, drugs, suicide and other personal matters. Question No. ...

It's like when the kids leave home ... it's like when the dog dies or your favorite restaurant shuts down. The way you feel amid such desolate circumstances is the way you feel when two political figures you helped to raise announce retirement after productive and distinguished careers. Helped to raise? Oh, all right. Helped to identify, celebrate and move forward in their godly vocations -- would that be OK? It was the privilege of the present writer, years ago, to mark down as political comers two men no one then knew much about -- Prof. W. Philip Gramm ...

DURHAM, N.C. (AP) -- A 31-year-old Durham man is facing murder charges after shooting a suspected burglar in his front yard. James Edward Hill Jr. called 911 early Monday to report the shooting, saying the man was trying to break into his home, Durham Police Lt. Ed Sarvis said. The 23-year-old victim, whose name was withheld, was found lying in Hill's front yard, Sarvis said. He was taken to Duke Hospital, where he died of gunshot wounds. Hill is being held at the Durham County Jail without bond, said his attorney, Kenneth S. Ward. He is scheduled to appear ...

One of the great benefits of a free press is that it affords everyone an opportunity to access the news about the events of our times, but one of its great drawbacks is that it permits groups with hidden agendas to mask their goals by manipulating public opinion and policy. With freedom comes the responsibility to be not merely informed, but to be able to discern truth from propaganda. It strikes at our security and our future when an entire nation is distracted daily by non-existent "threats" to the environment or health or the animal population. It gets everybody -- ...

The Christmas season's here once more. But for thousands of our defenders, the holidays are resounding with tramping boots in foreign lands rather than yuletide caroling at home. Once again our warriors are deployed around the globe, fighting in dangerous places and continuing to defend other people's turf for reasons that don't always compute. Since I was a kid, the sound of American boots marching off to war has come to seem as inevitable to the young men of this nation -- and now, unfortunately, to the young women as well -- as spring rain. First there was World ...

PRINCETON, N.J.--Two hundred twenty-five Christmases ago, history was being made around here. And recently Lynne Cheney--no disrespect to Dick, but she is the really indispensable Cheney--came here to advocate teaching history more extensively and more wisely than we currently do. She spoke at the new James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, named after the Princetonian who was the most acute thinker among the Founders. Cheney stressed that events around Christmas 1776 demonstrate ``that this nation was not inevitable." General Washington, commanding ill-fed, ill-clad and barely trained forces against the world's mightiest power, had been in retreat, as ...

MIAMI (Reuters) - The world's largest funeral company was accused in a Florida lawsuit of digging up bodies and dumping them in the woods to make room for new burials, the plaintiffs' lawyers said on Thursday. Distraught families filed a class action lawsuit on Wednesday in a state circuit court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, accusing Menorah Gardens and Funeral Chapels and its parent company, Service Corporation International, of desecrating graves and destroying human remains. The lawsuit alleges that people were buried in the wrong graves at Menorah Gardens cemeteries in Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach without their relatives' ...

AUTHOR INFORMATION Section 1 of 8    Authored by Daniel J Dire, MD, FACEP, FAAEM, Associate Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham Coauthored by David A Long, MD, Staff Physician, Department of Emergency Medicine, Scott & White Hospital; Lance D Williams, MD, Staff Physician, Department of Emergency Medicine, Scott & White Hospital; Thomas W McGovern, MD, Dermatologist and Mohs Surgeon, Fort Wayne Dermatology, PC Daniel J Dire, MD, FACEP, FAAEM, is a member of the following medical societies: American Academy of Clinical Toxicology, American Academy of Emergency Medicine, American College of Emergency Physicians, American Medical Association, ...

Flatula, Absurdistan (CNSNews.com) - An abrupt walk-out by US and Israeli delegations today rocked the first annual United Nations Global Symposium Against Colonialism, Genocide, Zionism and Parking Tickets, prompting harsh criticism from the international diplomatic community and calls for increased American monetary aid and 'Baywatch' videos."It is indeed unfortunate that the representatives of the United States and the Zionist criminal entity have turned their backs on international cooperation," said conference chairman Falafel Al-Pita in a tersely worded response. "It is especially troubling after we had sold out tickets for the 'sink the Zionist pig' dunking booth."Al-Pita, the dapper Oxford-educated ...

The White House insisted yesterday that the captured American Taliban prisoner John Walker Lindh was a military prisoner who did not have the right to a lawyer, at least until formal charges were brought against him. Mr Walker is being held on the US troop ship Pelelieu in the Arabian Sea with four others: the Australian Taliban fighter David Hicks and three suspected al-Qa'ida figures. One of these is believed to be Abdul Aziz, a Saudi-born official of the Wafa humanitarian organisation whose assets the Bush administration has frozen because of alleged ties with terrorist groups. The three are ...

A bitter dispute between Europe and the United States over the multinational force for Afghanistan has delayed its deployment and forced Britain to provide 200 Royal Marines at less than a week's notice. The argument, which has led to cancelled meetings and angry transatlantic exchanges, threatens to overshadow the installation of the interim government of Hamid Karzai in Kabul on Saturday, and shows no sign of being resolved. The US is angry about a series of last-minute disagreements. The Germans are accused of holding up the deployment of the force by demanding details on rules of engagement for every ...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - A newspaper publisher's commencement speech was drowned out by hecklers when she mentioned threats to civil liberties posed by the federal government's investigation of the terrorist attacks. Janis Besler Heaphy, president and publisher of The Sacramento Bee, was delivering the midyear graduation address Saturday to about 17,000 people at California State University in Sacramento. When Heaphy raised questions about racial profiling, limits on civil rights and the establishment of military tribunals, the audience interrupted by clapping and stomping their feet for five minutes. University President Don Gerth tried to quiet the audience, but Heaphy stopped ...

WASHINGTON -- Republican circles are speculating that when Andrew Card leaves as White House chief of staff, his replacement may be Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans. Card has made clear he has no intention of serving out President Bush's full term. Texas oilman Evans is a Bush intimate who was his presidential campaign chairman. He is much closer than Card to the White House power sources: presidential advisers Karen Hughes and Karl Rove. A footnote: Old colleagues of former Rep. Norman Mineta, the Cabinet's only Democrat, say he is unhappy as secretary of transportation. He could be replaced by ...

Liberals, in an effort to recapture political momentum following the terrorist attacks, are portraying themselves as the exclusive guardians of the Constitution. While some of them may even be sincere, let's not share in their delusion. Their claim rests on two premises, which are the flipside of the same coin. One is that the Bush administration is assaulting civil liberties, and the other is that they (liberals) are championing them. Both are misleading – at best. First, our freedoms are not under wholesale assault by the administration, so there is no need for a liberal deliverance. Perhaps they figure if ...

South Africa's slide into anarchy continued in recent months. Some of the crimes and events were so horrific that they made global headlines. One such headline was the "baby rape" of a tiny infant in South Africa. Six men, aged between 24 and 66, are accused of raping and sodomizing the baby girl. The baby, who has been dubbed "Tshepang" ("Have Hope") to protect her identity, suffered injuries to her vagina and anus. Doctors say she is recovering slowly physically, but is likely to have long-term psychological trauma. Many black men in South Africa believe that if they rape ...

Evidence of FBI obstruction at OK City indicates agency conflicted for domestic terror investigations OKLAHOMA CITY -- The Final Report on the Bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building here may be the best tool currently at our disposal to begin the process of discovering what really happened September 11, 2001. Rep. Charles KeyThe Final Report The self-published report is the product of six years of privately-funded investigation by the Oklahoma Bombing Investigation Committee led by former Oklahoma State Representative Charles Key. The 550-page work exposes in minute detail, based upon the evidence, that the federal government began obstructing ...

DETROIT, Dec. 11 (UPI) -- FBI agents fanned out across southeastern Michigan Tuesday to find more than half the Arab and other Muslim men who were sent letters asking them to set up meetings with investigators gathering information about terrorism.    U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Collins sent letters to more than 500 individuals who entered the United States since January 2000 on temporary visas, part of the 5,000 Attorney General John Ashcroft ordered interviewed nationwide by Dec. 21. Collins said 104 of the letters were returned due to incorrect addresses.    To date, only 242 of those sent letters had contacted the ...