Free Republic

p>Has the US lost its way? By Paul Kennedy 'By what right,' an angry environmentalist demanded at a recent conference I attended, 'do Americans place such a heavy footprint upon God's Earth?' Ouch. That was a tough one because, alas, it's largely true. We comprise slightly less than 5 per cent of the world's population; but we imbibe 27 per cent of the world's annual oil production, create and consume nearly 30 per cent of its Gross World Product and - get this - spend a full 40 per cent of all the world's defence expenditures. By my calculation, the ...

Islam for kids: Required course By David Kiefer Of The Examiner Staff In California, school subjects can be divided into the four Rs: Reading, 'Riting, 'Rithmetic -- and Religion. A textbook used in public schools, including in San Francisco's schools, is creating a divide over its method of presenting Islam to children. Is it education or indoctrination, many wonder. The question centers on a middle school curriculum, one mandated by the California Department of Education, that asks seventh-graders to build mosques, to pretend they are going on a pilgrimage to Mecca and to memorize Islam's Five Pillars of Faith. While ...

By JOE CALDERONE Daily News Investigations Editor Crime did pay for a pair who swindled the elderly out of their life savings. A disbarred lawyer and a nursing home official admitted bilking 16 nursing home patients out of more than $2.1 million. They picked out people who had no one to watch out for them and emptied their bank accounts. In one case, they stole war reparation checks that a 94-year-old Holocaust survivor got from Germany. In another, they gained control of a 70-year-old man's bank account, stole $300,000 from him and moved him out of his life-long home ...

An Arab with a copy of "The Crusades Through Arab Eyes" and a gun boarded an American Airlines plane on Christmas Day claiming to be a Secret Service agent on his way to the president. There was a problem with his paperwork, and the pilot and flight attendants were concerned. After an hour's negotiation – rudely ignoring the travel needs of the rest of the passengers – they decided to fly without the armed Arab, who caught another flight the next day. This much is conceded by all parties. Four months ago, 19 Arab men armed with less ostentatious weapons ...

Is Andrea Yates presumed innocent? On the morning of Wednesday, June 20, an emotionally troubled Andrea Pia Yates held each of her five children under water in the family bathtub until their bodies went limp. Then, after committing the unthinkable, Mrs. Yates called her husband, Russell, at work and told him what she had done. She then called police and, when they arrived, told them, "I killed my children." Ever since, all manner of folks have been trying to pry open the windows to the mind of Mrs. Yates, including women-libbers and advocates for the mentally ill. This week, prosecutors ...

The Bush administration believes Osama bin Laden is still alive, based on the activities of "close associates" tracked by U.S. intelligence assets, a senior U.S. official said yesterday. Top Stories • India says Pakistan aids ousted extremists • Berry lawyer to work for free • Convincing role in 'Kandahar' • Scientists planted hairs from lynx in 3rd forest • Clintons' canine companion killed in car accident • Radar cameras catch 160,000 motorists The official also said there is a growing belief within the administration that bin Laden was injured in late November, possibly by U.S. air strikes against al Qaeda ...

A cute nickname somehow doesn't fit a man who ripped off his employees, stockholders and all Californians, but here you have it. President Bush's nickname for his good buddy and energy adviser Kenneth L. Lay of Enron is "Kenny Boy." Never has a president been so lucky to be at war. At any other time, the Enron scandal would make Whitewater look like a tempest in a trailer park.

Whales' Deaths Linked to Navy's Sonar Tests By Rick Weiss Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, December 31, 2001; Page A08 The mysterious mass stranding of 16 whales in the Bahamas in March 2000 was caused by U.S. Navy tests...

U.S. rules let al Qaeda flee By Rowan Scarborough THE WASHINGTON TIMES U.S. special-operations troops in the Tora Bora area of Afghanistan have been forced to let some al Qaeda fighters escape to Pakistan because of strict rules of engagement. A senior military official said the covert warriors must seek approval from U.S. Central Command before firing on people they identify as al Qaeda fighters trying to flee Afghanistan. The Americans are free to fire if they feel threatened or when raiding enemy compounds. In communicating on secure radios through the chain of command, the commandos must "tell how many ...

In wrecked al-Qaeda base, manual for holy war By Vivienne Walt, USA TODAY DURAI, Afghanistan — "How to attack America." Handwritten in Arabic and underlined on page 19 of a photocopied training manual, that heading opens a chapter chillingly titled: "How to start a war." Lying among the bomb rubble of al-Qaeda's main offices in this village 5 miles west of central Kandahar, weapons manuals, arms catalogues and scientific text books paint a picture of an organization that after establishing a firm foothold in the Taliban's spiritual home became consumed with waging a holy war against America. At the two-story ...

At his brother's wedding, the photographer put Marcus Rene Van with the men in the family and his sister screamed, "That's my sister." Technically -- and biologically -- she's right. But two years ago, the 25-year-old spoken word artist with a tiny goatee swapped genders and went from she to he. Van is one of a rising number of young women who are opting to live their lives as men -- a trend on the rise in San Francisco's lesbian community. Business is booming for doctors specializing in chest surgery, clinics that provide hormone treatment and psychologists who offer ...

Anti-Taliban soldier's sad life Fighting is all he has known Anna Badkhen ToraBora, Afghanistan Najibullah is an unhappy man. For 15 days and 15 nights, he clutched his Kalashnikov assault rifle -- the same gun he's had since he turned 12 --as he sat, shivering and without sleep in an unheated barn in the snow-capped White Mountains ready to mount an offensive against al Qaeda guerrillas. But after nine weeks of siege and ferocious U.S. bombing, Najibullah's troops on Sunday jubilantly entered the caves that had been al Qaeda's last stronghold. The victory caused little joy for the 27-year-old anti-Taliban ...

THE AMERICAN PRISONER Defending, and Recasting, an Unloved Client By WILLIAM GLABERSON When the lawyer for John Walker Lindh, the American captured with the Taliban, talks about his client, he sidesteps the hyperventilated debate that has led people to call Mr. Walker a Benedict Arnold and a rat. The lawyer, James J. Brosnahan, says that in time there will be a different view of the young man who climbed out of a sooty prison basement in Mazar-i-Sharif into plenty of legal trouble. "We know a lot about John," Mr. Brosnahan, one of San Francisco's best known defense lawyers, said in ...

Back into the inferno Eight years after its inept and bloody debacle in Somalia, the US seems set on revenge, says Richard Dowden The Guardian The American marines were not very polite when they came to Somalia in December 1992. I still don't know what they were on or why they thought it necessary to capture a British journalist who, like hundreds of others, had been invited by their general the night before to witness their glorious arrival. They had already made complete idiots of themselves a couple of hours earlier by storming up the beach at Mogadishu airport as ...

Buster's Christmas Present At the East Bay (San Francisco) Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, they have three words of advice if you are thinking of giving a pet for a holiday gift: Don't do it. It makes perfect sense. A new pet should have a chance to see if it bonds with its new owner before moving to a new home. The holidays are no time to introduce a new member of the family, and at Christmas we are prone to giving impulse gifts the recipients don't really want or need. So that's the message. No pets ...

Bruce Fein Hannah Arendt's spine-chilling observation about Adolph Eichmann's impenitent labors in the Holocaust machine in "Eichmann in Jerusalem"should inform our treatment of Osama bin Laden: "It was as though in those last minutes [Eichmann] was summing up the lessons that this long course in human wickedness had taught us — the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil." Bin Laden and his vile lieutenants have done, however, what was unthinkable after the Holocaust. They have bettered Eichmann's instruction in malevolence. To them, unremitting genocidal warfare against U.S. citizens and non-subscribers of their pathologically twisted religious beliefs is keenly ...

AURORA, Colorado. (AP) -- Cpl. Chris Chandler, injured by a land mine in Afghanistan, didn't say much when he called home to let his loved ones know he was OK. He didn't want to interrupt them. "Chris didn't get very many words out," said his 18-year-old sister, Stephanie. "We were busy telling him we're proud of him and we love him." Chandler, 21, of Aurora, was sweeping for mines at Kandahar's airport when one went off, taking his foot. Rumsfeld warns NATO of new threats "All he told us was he's fine and, 'Please don't worry about me,"' Stephanie said. ...

New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani weighed in Sunday on the fate of an American captured with Taliban fighters, and he came down heavy. Prosecutors, he said, should consider pursuing the death penalty against John Walker Lindh. Lindh, 20, a native of the San Francisco, California, area, was discovered after he survived a prisoner uprising at Mazar-e Sharif last month. He and several hundred non-Afghan Taliban troops had surrendered to Northern Alliance forces days before they staged a deadly and unsuccessful prisoner revolt at a compound in northern Afghanistan. "I don't know all the facts of the case, but I ...

p>CHICAGO (AP) — Scientists who worry about the spread of nasty germs from animals to people have found the opposite can also happen: Cats and dogs catch bad things from their owners. Canadian researchers documented 16 cases of dangerous, hard-to-treat staph infections in horses, cats and dogs. They believe that all of them probably began with owners or veterinarians infecting the animals. The germ is methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus — called MRSA for short — a microbe that until recently was seen only in hospitals, where it often spreads to elderly or especially ill people who have open wounds or tubes. ...