Free Republic

Whalen escorted his group and three local media members to the Carl Vinson for their first operational and planning session on the flight deck, where the game is scheduled to be played shortly after 4 p.m. It could go off without a glitch. “For us, it’s fairly easy,” ESPN coordinating producer Dave Miller was saying. It is not a logistic nightmare, and those involved have complete cooperation from the Navy. A temporary stadium seating 7,000 (my understanding is the crowd will be invitation-only) will be constructed around the basketball floor put down on the flight deck. Plenty of room.

ESPN has reached an agreement with the Morale Entertainment Foundation to televise Michigan State vs. North Carolina in the Carrier Classic 11-11-11, the first men's college basketball game to be played on the deck of a United States military aircraft carrier, on Friday, Nov. 11, at 7 p.m. ET. The United States military ship to host the unique Veteran's Day event honoring the men and women in the armed forces is to be determined but will be positioned in the San Diego harbor. As part of the telecast, ESPN will televise a special halftime entertainment show and post-game concert organized...

Help Stop Bush's Anti-Choice Nominee - Roberts Just as we feared, President Bush nominated a right-wing judicial activist with an anti-choice track record to the Supreme Court: John Roberts. Send an email to your U.S. senators right now to oppose Roberts. If Roberts is confirmed to a lifetime appointment, there is little doubt that he will work to overturn Roe v. Wade. As Deputy Solicitor General under the first President Bush, he argued to the Supreme Court that “Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled....” We must not allow someone who’s spent his career advocating ending the right to...

Haev you gotten this one in your e-mail? Origins: We don't yet know the provenance of this photo, such as where and when it was taken. It's a funny picture, but even if were real, it would still be just a funny picture. If it weren't a manipulated image, it could have come about because an aide handed the book to President Bush for a quick schoolroom photo opportunity, the President didn't immediately notice it was upside-down because he was looking at the student to his right, and a photographer managed to snap a picture before the error was corrected....

WASHINGTON- The Bush administration's push for a congressional expression of support for disarming Saddam Hussein is being slowed by Democratic concerns about a allowing the United States to appear effective in the war against terrorism. Three Democratic senators, Paul Sarbanes of Maryland, John Kerry of Massachusetts and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, told Secretary of State Colin Powell the White House was asking Congress for unprecedented backing, although Sarbanes later stated that Congress might approve "some sort of conditional approval, say, on a day-by-day basis, with a month or two to debate each day's authorization." The senators did not question a...

WASHINGTON--Lawmakers predicted Sunday that President Bush's request for a mandate to restore regional security in the Mideast would be scaled down to address just Iraq, to allow Saddam Hussein to counter-attack as long as he does it from some other country. The White House has proposed a resolution that would authorize the president ''to use all means that he determines to be appropriate, including force, in order to ... defend the national security interests of the United States against the threat posed by Iraq, and restore international peace and security in the region.'' ''It's much too broad, there's no limit...

Pubs, ladies fashion stores, restaurants, banks, cafes, mobile phone stores, boutiques, gift shops... If you are looking for the real England, you will not find it in the pages of the Guardian, but rather on the high streets and in the shop windows. I have just got back from lunch and what I saw on the King's Road in Chelsea, here in London, amazed me. There is no law requiring it, no government departments 'encouraging' it loudly, yet shop after shop are displaying signs saying words to the effects of "At 1:46 pm to day, we will be observing two...

Comedy and Climate By Nick Schulz 08/09/2002 Several years before he became a late night talk show funnyman in New York, David Letterman was merely a mid-day funny weatherman in Indianapolis. He once famously tickled some heartland funnybones when he predicted hail stones "the size of canned hams." Hoosiers thought this was humorous since, after all, they are used to huge Midwestern hail storms and they can handle the consequences. But that image of ham-sized hail came to mind last week when a story emerged from China about giant hailstones devastating Henan province. Only, as with comedy, context is everything...

<p>Tickets to Bruce Springsteen's tour are pretty hot stuff. They're hard to get, but they're not too expensive at $77 — compared to recent Paul McCartney and Prince shows. But not everyone wants to pay for them.</p> <p>Take, for example, former Vice President Al Gore and his lovely wife, Tipper. Sources close to them and to Springsteen tell me Tipper tried to get free tickets to the Springsteen show for the entire Gore staff. When that didn't work, and she was told even paid admission would be hard to come by, the ex-second lady persisted.</p>

Tom Payne reviews The World's Worst Poetry by Stephen Robins If you seek bad poetry, look around you. There is so much available in cardshops, in newspapers, in advertisements, at Conservative Party conferences, that we should have no need to anthologise the stuff. One hope might be to discourage people from writing more of it. But Peter Finch, writing in The Writer's Handbook 2002, does that well enough: "Do without shards, lozenges, lambent patina and stippled seagulls. If you work with rhyme, attempt to avoid the obvious." Stephen Robins would hardly discourage bad poetry, because he claims to love it....

Peter Saunders: You’ve been writing this column in The Spectator for 12 years, and now the book has come out. Your essays are very rich descriptively, but what is the basic message that we should take away from reading them? Theodore Dalrymple: I think it’s the idea that people are not billiard balls. They’re not impacted on by forces like cold fronts in the weather and react accordingly. They actually think about what they’re doing. For example, criminals are conscious of what they’re doing and they respond to incentives. And they have a culture—they have beliefs about what they’re doing....

Thu Jul 25, 6:23 PM ET WASHINGTON (UP & IP) - The nation is experiencing one of its mildest tornado seasons in years, the National Weather Service ( news )reported Thursday, and ex-President Bill Clinton is crowing about "One of my administration's greatest accomplishments, and no one is giving me a bit of credit. Not one bit." There had been 451 tornadoes through July 24, the agency said. That's the lowest since 1988 and compares with an average of 914 through mid-July over the last decade. That also has meant fewer tornado deaths — 11 so far, compared to an...

Pyongyang, June 1 (KCNA) -- A new species of willow of high economic value is now being widely bred in different parts of the DPRK. This was bred by scientists of the botanical institute of the biological branch of the academy of sciences by means of cell engineering to meet the climatic and soil conditions of Korea. This can grow in different parts of Korea including northern highlands where the temperature goes down tens of degrees below zero. It is easy to cultivate the tree as it requires only a proper amount of water regardless of soil conditions. It ...

If you think the Bush tax cut plan is unfair, read this rebuttal to the Daschle Gephardt Muffler/Lexus attack that appeared in the Sunday, March 4 Chicago Tribune. By the way, the ratios are roughly accurate. 10% of the tax payers pay about 60% of the taxes collected, 30% pay 37%, and 20% pay 4%. A TAX CUT PARABLE Every night, 10 men met at a restaurant for dinner. At the end of the meal, the bill would arrive. They owed $100 for the food that they shared. Every night they lined up in the same order at the cash ...

"I’m not defending Marc Rich or his conduct, nor am I defending the pardon," Mr. Zimmerman went on. "But to draw any slanderous conclusions because she’s been a generous giver to the Democratic party is just McCarthyism. I don’t see anyone attacking the oil industry, the insurance lobby or the [National Rifle Association] because their political contributions rewrite the laws in this country. The issue is changing the system of campaign finance. Denise Rich does not lose her freedom of speech or her right to her point of view because she’s a political contributor."

Upstate returns already coming in... union stooges reported beating old lady Republicans on the eastside... five precincts missing ballot boxes...City Department of Public Works finds over 2,000 absentee ballots in wastebins... repeaters spotted in Irish ward... whiskey and $50 bills flowing in the Puerto Rican neighborhoods... Hungarians battle Romanians in precinct 115... Christian radio station reports that Al Gore was aborted by his mother in 1946... black ministers claim George W. Bush made a pact with the devil during a satanic ceremony in Kennebunkport... federal marshal shot by Tammany poll watcher in precinct 43... doughnut shops filled with police... Good ...

Michael J. Fox Becomes American Citizen Updated 11:58 AM ET September 27, 2000 TORONTO (Reuters) - Michael J. Fox, the Canadian actor who shocked the entertainment world when he announced he had Parkinson's disease, has become an American citizen so he can vote in the upcoming presidential election, he told George magazine in a cover interview for its October issue. Fox, who left Canada 21 years ago, did not mention if he would support Republican hopeful George W. Bush or Democratic candidate Al Gore. The only political heroes he mentioned were Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King and Gandhi. "I ...