Free Republic

Voters can try Duval County's new voting system by stopping at any of the 23 Publix Supermarkets in Duval County on Aug. 3. Supervisor of Elections John Stafford said poll workers would demonstrate the new optical-scan system from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday. Stafford announced the demonstration plan Friday morning at the new Publix on Riverside Avenue. Stafford said his office's efforts to inform the public about the new voting system already had reached about 30,000 people, but that this effort will reach many more. Jesse Benton, vice president of the Jacksonville division of Publix, estimated an average of...

Jacksonville University professor and Afghanistan native Bashir Sayar returned to his homeland recently to see his former university in shambles and his home occupied by police. "I was shocked," said Sayar, one of eight people worldwide chosen by the United Nations to assess the downfall of Afghanistan's education system and recommend rebuilding strategies. "It was very shocking to walk into the university where I was teaching and see the laboratories that cost $500,000 to $750,000 have absolutely nothing," Sayar said. "Zero value ... bare to the floor." Sayar, JU's director of engineering, taught at the Kabul Polytechnic Institute in the...

"We learned in our class that if you believe in peace, you can stay alive," said the eleven-year-old boy. "We learned that you should always find a peaceful way to solve your problems because you should never be violent." Ironically, the boy lives a stone's throw from the Pentagon, where more than a hundred people, peacefully going about their business, were murdered by terrorists. I wish peace-loving people could always "stay alive," but they don't. So why do teachers persist in telling kids otherwise? In his new book, Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism, my friend,...

<p>WASHINGTON — Civil Rights Commission Chairwoman Mary Frances Berry might have won the first round in a legal battle involving her refusal to seat a Bush appointee on her panel, but at least one congressman isn't letting her off so easily.</p>

Why was New York City in free fall a decade ago and believed to be ungovernable? "Because of ideas," Mayor Rudy Giuliani said in his farewell address. The city got itself tangled in "political philosophies and political creeds and ideologies." Very few politicians would point to stupid ideas as the cause of urban disintegration, but Giuliani was right to do so. Consider where the city was a decade ago. Social breakdown had reached the point where tourists stayed away in droves. More than half of the adults living here, according to a New York Times poll, had plans to leave ...

Who Is the American Taliban? Veteran political reporter Howard Fineman of Newsweek reports in the magazine's current issue that Democrats are planning a major attack on America's cultural mainstream. In a high-risk political strategy, Mr. Fineman reports, the Dems plan to smear the "religious right" as intolerant and bigoted, an "American Taliban." They want to characterize the Republican Party and President Bush as outside the mainstream because they embrace pro-family and pro-life values. The Democratic battle plan goes like this: As America fights the forces of religious extremism abroad, it is more important than ever to honor ideals of tolerance ...