Free Republic

--PERSONALITY INTERRUPTED-- Court TV is reporting that Rene Elizondo, whose nine-year secret marriage to Janet Jackson ended in divorce in the year 2000, has filed court papers claiming he has a rare mental condition. Most everyone has heard of A.D.D., A.D.H.D and O.C.D. It seems Elizondo has come up with a new malady to add to the disorder list. It's called S.D.P.D., which stands for Self-Defeating Personality Disorder. Elizondo claims that during their marriage Janet could make him do whatever she wanted, because the ailment renders him capable of "...being manipulated, exploited and unduly influenced." Court papers for Elizondo ...

Just when we thought it was safe to go into the living room, they're at it again. One broadcast network has signaled that it's basically going to abandon family-oriented programming. And two cable networks want to push the pay-TV envelope even further than they have in the past. NBC's West Coast president, Scott Sassa, is pretty much telling television viewers who would like to see family-friendly programming that they'll have to go elsewhere. This is the same network, by the way, that ran to the front of the line to be the first to air hard liquor ads. Meanwhile ...

--BEST DÉJÀ VU TO COME DOWN THE PIKE -- Thanks to Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times, we now know a favorite phrase of Larry King. On March 19, 1990, in USA Today, Larry King claims, "Even though I appear as myself in 'Crazy People,' you'll have to take my objective view that it's one of the funniest movies to come down the pike in a long, long time." On April 26, 1993, in USA Today, Mr. King quips "Put aside that I make a cameo appearance in the film 'Dave.' Ivan Reitman's latest is one of the ...

"The Death of the West" is perhaps one of the most valuable and thought-provoking works to date from former presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan. According to Buchanan's thesis, two forces that are destined to bring about the demise of Western civilization by the midpoint of this century are hard at work. swThe first force is the demographic trend in Western industrialized nations. The second is the sorry state of their moral fabric. Buchanan correctly observes that this kind of combination is a formula for national and cultural suicide. In regard to the first force, Buchanan notes that women in ...

BRITISH doctors are about to start start clinical trials of a new genetically modified virus that destroys cancers without the unpleasant side-effects of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. The GM virus, which has been developed by cancer charities, hunts down a mutation found in 95 per cent of tumour cells but ignores healthy cells. Once inside, it hijacks the cell's machinery to replicate itself, destroys the cell and then spreads around the body. The virus, which has so far only been tested on animals, is thought to be far more effective than previous attempts at gene therapy. Doctors behind the pioneering ...

--FRANKEN'S WARPED IMAGINATION-- Does a TV show about a house in D.C., which tells the adventurous tales of roommate senators Schumer and Durbin and congressmen Delahunt and Miller, sound interesting to you? Apparently, it's extremely appealing to "Saturday Night Live" alumnus Al Franken. He's been working on a television sitcom titled "Little House on the Hill." Franken, author of a book that slammed radio personality Rush Limbaugh, dreams of filling our homes with seemingly hilarious programming about four middle-aged Democrat roomies who share a passion for expanding government and raising taxes. Look out, "Friends." --BIG-SCREEN JACKASS-- After several young ...

LONG-LOST relatives of the human race have been traced for the first time. They live at the bottom of puddles. A family of humble microbes has been found to carry a special signalling gene that was previously known only in the animal kingdom. The discovery suggests that the single-celled creatures represent a vital staging post in evolution and that all animal life on Earth descended from something very like them. The survivor from our ancient ancestors is the collar flagellate or choanoflagellate — a microscopic organism that uses a sperm-like tail to swim through shallow water, grazing on bacteria ...

The ABM Treaty is now defunct. And the sounds you hear are the wails of supra-nationalists. Yes, the same folks who mourned the Kyoto Treaty and fretted over the lack of support for U.N. summits are now going daft over the demise of the ABM Treaty. An interesting cadre of commentators has leapt forth to try and explain the reasons why they oppose withdrawal from the treaty. U.N. Sectretary-General Kofi Annan weighed in earlier with a statement that described U.S. missile defense as a threat to the ABM Treaty, and he admonished the Bush administration not to lose "the ...

MEDICAL science alone cannot explain near-death experiences, according to Dutch researchers who have been unable to find any cause for the phenomenon. The researchers questioned 344 people who were successfully resuscitated after a heart attack but who had been clinically dead. They identified 62 patients who had a near-death experience, measured by their ability to recall any of 10 common elements. More than half experienced "positive emotions", half an "awareness of being dead", 32 per cent "meeting deceased persons", 31 per cent "moving through a tunnel" and 29 per cent "observation of a celestial landscape". Others experienced communication with ...

SNOW, ice and frost are deforming the shape of the Earth. Scientists have discovered that it is slowly stretching so that the North Pole is heading towards the centre of the world and the Equator is migrating northward. The Earth is experiencing seasonal "stretching" in response to increased winter loading of the ground and corresponding atmospheric and gravitational changes. As a result, compression and expansion in opposite hemispheres occurs. It does not change the Earth's overall shape, but stretches its surface and so affects site co-ordinates," said Prof Geoffrey Blewitt of the University of Nevada, Reno, who reports the ...

--CLUELESS ON VALUES-- Three months after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, prime-time television is pushing a one-sided agenda, according to the New York Daily News. Earlier this week, ABC's "NYPD Blue" had a storyline that dealt with an illegally detained Arab-American. Sunday's episode of the ABC drama "The Practice" revolved around a woman's efforts to find out why her husband, an Arab, was being detained by federal agents. On Wednesday, the plot of CBS's "The Guardian" focused on vandalism of a restaurant owned by an Arab-American. In CBS's "The Education of Max Bickford," ...

THE aftermath of the battle for Tora Bora was apocalyptic: a blasted scene of shredded clothes, bloodied shoes and scraps of abandoned food. Yesterday, as we walked past caves and defensive positions that al-Qaeda fighters had abandoned only hours before, Mujahidin fighters marched forward, their Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades hanging off their shoulders, calling out excitedly. “They’re gone,” said one. “The Arabs have run away.” On this battlefield the awesome power of the bomber to destroy men and morale was in no doubt. The 15,000lb daisy-cutter bomb leaves little in its path, creating a 600-yard radius of destruction. Everything ...

All Orange County, LA County, Inland Empire and other SoCal Freepers are invited to a FREEP this evening at 5 pm of the Anaheim City Council, 200 Anaheim Boulevard, Anaheim, California. The FREEP is to protest the brutal treatment at the hands of "rent-a-goons" last Saturday of peaceful protesters against the recently announced policy of the Anaheim PD to accept MEXICAN GOVERNMENT ID from suspects and detainees. The protestors, mainly of whom are elderly, were assaulted and many seriously injured by hooligans while Anaheim police officers looked on. Please, everyone who can, come to the Anaheim City Council tonight at ...

Approximately one year ago, the Federal Trade Commission issued a troubling report. The Commission had evidence that the film, music and computer game businesses were deliberately marketing to young children. This was being done despite instances in which products had adult ratings. Part of the FTC's evidence consisted of Hollywood's own internal documents. The Commission further found that movie houses were routinely allowing under-aged youngsters to view films that were rated for older children, and retailers were selling violent games and music CDs to kids. Another FTC study on the marketing habits of Hollywood has just come out. It ...

SAUDI Arabia is in deep trouble - but have Anglo-American policy-makers even noticed? For years, the West's approach to the country has been to pursue relatively small captive markets on behalf of defence contractors and energy conglomerates; as a result, we have ignored some very troubling realities. The truth is that Saudi Arabia's political and economic condition has been deteriorating at a frighteningly rapid pace. Twenty years ago, Saudi per capita gross domestic product equalled that of America, at almost £20,000. That figure climbed to £26,000 for the US in 2000, while for the Saudis it has declined to ...

SIX months ago, Jackie Ballard was a power-suited MP, a high-profile frontbencher and a television regular who urged women to assert their rights in a male-dominated society. She was even talked about as a potential leader of the Liberal Democrats. The voters thought otherwise. One general election later, Jackie Ballard has been catapulted out of Parliament and into a world that should be anathema to any self-respecting feminist. She has turned her back on Taunton, the Somerset constituency she lost in June, and moved to Teheran, the capital of an Islamic regime demonised by the West, where she is ...

--FALLING FROM 7th HEAVEN-- There are a few shows that families can tune in to these days to find traditional values. WB's show, "7th Heaven," is generally one of them. But now it looks as if the show is grabbing a page from MTV. Instead of focusing on patriotism or faith expression during this time of war, producers are choosing to follow the contemporary Hollywood rulebook. They've generated a hate-crime plotline for the show that involves a Muslim character. Entertainment Weekly reports that a "7th Heaven" episode features a Muslim girl who is victimized by her schoolmates. "Part of the ...

Recent tragic events that struck Israel stand as a bleak reminder to all Americans: Do not drift into a false sense of security. Our post-Sept. 11 faculties must remain sharply tuned. Still, we see that at a time when the multifaceted nature of the "new war" is reinforced, Democrats are initiating a multifaceted war of their own. They are betting on the idea that the American public will offset support for the president's policies against enemies abroad with criticism of the administration's domestic policies at home. This is the same tactic that was employed against the senior Bush. Tag ...

<p>LITTLE wonder the National Transportation Safety Board has bleated for help from NASA to help them out in the tragic crash of American Airlines Flight 587. The NTSB has shown in the past that it is run by a bunch of bumbling bureaucrats who couldn't find a needle in a thimble. Here they were with 265 dead, and God knows how many mourners, giving us this claptrap that the tail fell off mysteriously.</p>

Ever since 1793, when Hamilton and Madison engaged in their version of "Crossfire" about George Washington's extent of authority, the question of presidential war powers has vexed American leaders. Today, the powers of the president are once again being discussed by the mainstream press and broadcast media. Journalists, television anchormen and anchorwomen, and talking heads across the country have seen fit to resurrect a phrase, coined by Arthur Schlesinger but seldom mentioned since the last time a Republican occupied the White House: "The Imperial Presidency." It is noteworthy that the conventional press did not seem to consider presidential power ...