Free Republic

WASHINGTON - Inspired by the sexual revolution of their times, humorist James Thurber and stylist E.B. White wrote a short romp titled, "Is Sex Necessary?" The answer in 1929, as now, is: Not necessarily; or, not in the ways one used to think, and not between the folks your folks told you about. I remember the story about a bride and groom on their wedding night. The bride complained to her man about the absence from their nuptial chamber of bluebirds and lilies. Her mother told her that bluebirds and lilies were where babies came from. The moral of the...

<p>LONDON - Not so long ago, when the world seemed a safer place, Britons such as Julia and Paul Chattenton would hop on a plane to the United States with little concern beyond how awful the meal would be and whether the flight would be delayed.</p>

On December 13, when U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein, President George W. Bush not only celebrated with his national security team, but also pulled out his pen and signed into law a bill that grants the FBI sweeping new powers. A White House spokesperson explained the curious timing of the signing - on a Saturday - as "the President signs bills seven days a week." But the last time Bush signed a bill into law on a Saturday happened more than a year ago - on a spending bill that the President needed to sign, to prevent shuttng down the...

Al-Qaeda sources announced that they are responsible for the recent power blackout in America. One more lie to add to a thousand tall tales spun by hidden terrorists. In fact, the recent power blackout actually demonstrated that the electric computer network operated correctly. The blackout began when a critical main line went down, leaving the rest of the network to carry the electrical load. The network noted that the load was too much to carry and began to shut itself down. The so-called "domino" effect began as each segment of the grid detected an overload and shut down, including 10...

WASHINGTON - Hints that society was in for big changes came slowly, but inexorably, for rowers. Rowing - otherwise known as crew - is the signature sport of the Victorian era. According to the Code, a rower was obedient, self-sacrificing and subordinated his very self to the team. Crew was full of rules about abstinence and conditioning. I didn't see it coming, any more than the churches saw it coming. I didn't get it in 1960, even after being fired as coach by a crew because I warned my team that its carelessness about steering would drive its fragile shell...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Army is telling troops to take precautions as it tries to figure out the cause of pneumonia cases, including two deaths, among forces in the Afghan and Iraqi campaigns. Officials are investigating the cause of some 100 cases of the illness counted since March, focusing on 15 cases so serious the patients had to be put on ventilators and flown to Europe, defense officials said at a Pentagon press conference Tuesday. ``We're deeply concerned about the deaths,'' David N. Tornberg, a deputy assistant secretary for health policy, said of the two fatal cases. ``We'd like a...

Each year, it is estimated that over one-half million students graduate from American high schools with only rudimentary academic skills. This is seen as the failure of educators and educational institutions. Many are convinced that the schools could do a better job in teaching basic subjects: reading, writing, mathematics and science. A smaller, but still significant, number are convinced that more money should be spent in order to do this. To this end, H.R.1 or the "No Child Left Behind Act of 2001" is an attempt "to close the achievement gap" of America's children by improving schools, particularly the most...

ALBANY - The state Tax Department, concerned about threats of violence from members of the Seneca Nation of Indians, is poised to go after consumers who buy untaxed cigarettes from Internet and mail-order Native American retailers. The agency's head of enforcement told a state tobacco control panel Thursday that tax officials are working with federal and state agencies to get names of consumers who make those purchases. Peter Farrell, deputy commissioner at the Tax Department, said consumers could become targets if the agency can't get shipping companies and Native American retailers to comply with a state law enacted in 2000...

LANDSTUHL, Germany — Landstuhl Regional Medical Center is receiving more than twice the number of patients from Operation Iraqi Freedom that it did during the major combat phase of the war. An average of 48 patients a day were being treated last week, compared with 22 patients a day in March, said Col. David Rubenstein, who relinquished command of the hospital last week for a new post. Of those patients admitted, about 5 percent were combat-related injuries, “although that’s starting to grow a bit,” Rubenstein said last week, referring to continued attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq. During major combat,...

Showing the reckless courage you'd expect of a combat pilot, U.S. Maj. Harry Schmidt decided to forgo a humiliating slap on the wrist from air force brass and risk 64 years in prison to clear his name. He's already exposed a whole lot of bluff. The U.S. military, which initially made high-profile scapegoats of Schmidt and fellow pilot William Umbach, charging them with manslaughter in connection with a screw-up bombing in Afghanistan a year ago that killed four Canadians and forced President George W. Bush to squeeze off an apology to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, has caved in, suddenly reducing...

JATA, Afghanistan -- The village mullah and his superior are smeared with fresh opium sap. It is harvest time, and the holy men are laboring in their poppy field, breaking the laws of Islam and Afghanistan to ease their poverty. As the day wanes, they wait, fingers aching, for the ubiquitous young men who cross the countryside on shiny new motorbikes, buying up the deadly harvest reaped by local farmers.

WASHINGTON - Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq? Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat. For 23 years, from 1976 to 1998, I was a career foreign service officer and ambassador. In 1990, as chargé d'affaires in Baghdad, I was the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein. (I was also a forceful advocate for...

WASHINGTON - The state Republican party chief criticized Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton Thursday for traveling through Europe promoting her new book during the Independence Day holiday, insisting she should be listening to folks in Paris, N.Y., instead of Paris, France. "The listening tour is clearly over, and the self-promoting book tour is in high gear," complained GOP chairman Alexander Treadwell. "It's all about ambition and ego and I think the people of New York State are getting tired of her act." Treadwell charged the promotional events for "Living History," the best-selling memoir of her time in the White House, are...

A former Pentagon director on trial for extorting bribes from government contractors skirted normal procedures on behalf of a few favored companies and accepted gifts that included prostitutes, a co-worker testified Tuesday. Robert Lee Neal Jr., 50, of Bowie, Md., and his top assistant, Francis Delano Jones Jr., 41, of Fort Washington, Md., are facing trial on charges of conspiracy, extortion, money laundering, making false statements and obstruction of justice.

DELIBERATELY misrepresented intelligence at least 10 years old was used by the British government to claim that Iraq could deploy chemical weapons in just 45 minutes.'We are talking about information relating to the first Gulf war and afterwards,' a senior intelligence source said. 'We told the government when this information was handed over that it was old and they ignored that fact,' he added.The 45-minute claim relates to information about Iraqi missile systems, including Scuds. The source added: 'These were mobile missiles. A good Iraqi team would take about 20 minutes to get them active, an average team would take...

ABC and Barbara Walters ought to be investigated for false advertising. The promos that plugged that Hillary Clinton memoir-selling interview promised, again and again for two weeks, to deliver "the interview we've all been waiting for, and the book that tells all. Sunday, June 8. Nothing's off-limits." Since when have "we all" been waiting for this? "The book that tells all"? Hillary never tells all. "Nothing's off-limits"? ABC should be glad they didn't offer this interview by pay-per-view, because everyone would be entitled to a refund. Barbara Walters left almost everything of importance off-limits -- on purpose. In the first...

<p>The United Nations expects to pay more than $100 million to shut down Iraq's oil-for-food program, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Monday.</p> <p>The council voted last month to lift all economic sanctions against Iraq and to eliminate the program by Nov. 21.</p>

A covert Army Special Forces unit, operating in Iraq since before the war began in March, has played a dominant but ultimately unsuccessful role in the Bush administration's stymied hunt for weapons of mass destruction, according to military and intelligence sources in Baghdad and Washington. Task Force 20, whose existence and mission are classified, is drawn from the elite Army special mission units known popularly as Delta Force. It sent a stream of initially promising reports to a limited circle of planners and policymakers in Washington pointing to the possibility of weapons finds. The reports helped feed the optimism expressed...

M. Savage:...Camille Paglia was not really that nice to this book, where she said Gail Sheehy’s gushy new book, Hillary’s Choice, contains enough negatives to prove why Hillary has no business meddling in electoral politics. And then she goes on to confirm that Gail Sheehy confirms that indeed Hillary was the hardliner who refused to settle with Paula Jones. Sheehy claims it was Hillary who pushed the president into bombing Kosovo. And she also implies that, according to this new book Hillary’s Choice, it was Hillary Clinton who leaned on Janet Reno to order the disastrous assault at Waco. Therefore,...

Under Secretary of Commerce James E. Rogan, who as a Republican congressman from California was an impeachment manager who helped present the House case against Bill Clinton to the U.S. Senate, has issued a response to the part of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s biography, Living History, in which she says: "Because the vote to impeach in the House was considered similar to an indictment, Republican members of the House were sent to the Senate as managers or "prosecutors." They were supposed to present "evidence" of the impeachable offenses while Bill's lawyers would defend him. No live witnesses were introduced. Instead, the...