Free Republic

Fall housecleaning and winter preparation have begun, a time to discard old clothes, inspect the roof and remove the clutter that accumulates in almost everyone's house over the months and years. Time, too, to examine the dusty chambers of our minds for outdated artifacts, worn-out ideas and inherited words that clutter our common language. "Race" is one. It is a tainted term inherited from 18th- and 19th-century colonialism. The word has no objective meaning; it refers to myth, not to fact, and has distorted our public dialogues far too long. In earlier centuries, when applied to people, the word "race"...

Following is a letter sent a few weeks ago to a local newspaper reporter, at her request, to facilitate a potential article on the extent of fraud in the National School Lunch Program After our discussion a couple of days ago, I consolidated some of my notes from searching a few internet sites for relevant data on the National School Lunch Program (mostly using USDA and Census Bureau sites). Since you said you might discuss this matter with one of your colleagues who is adept at using Census data, I thought I'd send you the following info to share with...

MIAMI BEACH -- Greenpeace says a recent federal indictment against it is an unprecedented move that threatens the right of all activist organizations. Calling the indictment "the greatest threat the organization has faced in 33 years," Greenpeace Executive Director John Passacantando said a decision against the environmental group could freeze its actions. The July indictment charges Greenpeace with illegal boarding and conspiracy for organizing the boarding of a cargo ship just before it arrived in Miami's port in April 2002. The group believed the ship was carrying a load of contraband Amazon mahogany from Brazil. Two Greenpeace employees boarded the...

The US economy posted its strongest growth since the last quarter of 2001, allaying fears of a "double-dip" recession. Pushed higher by strong car sales, the US economy expanded at an annual rate of 3.1% in the three months of July, August and September. This was double the rate of the previous three months. But US Commerce Secretary Don Evans said that was "not good enough" and that the US recovery was still "uneven. And he implicitly called for a rate cut by the US central bank, arguing that low inflation created an opportunity for stimulative fiscal and monetary policies....

In some of my posts (maybe in many of my posts) here in recent days I have been rude to various other posters; most often though just when responding to posts that were insulting and rude to me. However, in reviewing various threads last night I realized that I might have at times been rude to someone who had not initiated that rudeness with me. To those individuals I hereby apologize. I do not wish to diminish my apology, but I would like to explain my actions. There are a very large number of posters here who (IMHO) are operating...

Even years after a person is diagnosed with anorexia nervosa, they have twice the risk of bone fractures as their peers without the eating disorder, new study findings from Denmark show. The findings suggest that damage caused to bones by eating disorders may be permanent, according to a report in the International Journal of Eating Disorders. However, it is possible that patients in the study were still struggling with the eating disorder, which may have kept bones from regaining strength, the report indicates. Previous studies have found that people with eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia can suffer from...

What Should Happen With Terri S. I have been asked, and I have seen various other people be asked, in numerous "save Terri" threads at this site in recent days, the following question (in various forms): Do you think it's OK to starve Terri to death? Do you think it's OK to starve and dehydrate Terri? Do you think it's OK to kill Terri? Do you think it's OK to murder Terri? Etc., etc. Apparently, such questions will be repeated over and over again for so long as this subject continues to be discussed at this site. Therefore, for future...

At the center of the court battle over the immobile body of Terri Schiavo, the 39-year-old Florida woman kept alive by a feeding tube, is a videotape made by her parents. It lasts only minutes but has been played so many times on television and the Internet that it all but defines her. On the tape, Schiavo, propped up in bed, is greeted and kissed by her mother. She is not in the deep, unresponsive sleep of a coma. Her eyes are open, and she blinks rapidly but fairly normally. She seems to follow her mother's movements, but her mother's...

Behind the story of the fight over whether Terri Schiavo should live is another story. This one is about how she came to exist in this terrible twilight, not fully dead but not really alive. Terri Schiavo apparently had an eating disorder. Even some of her family members have said they think so. Eleven years ago, when she was 26, Schiavo collapsed with the disease of the middle aged, the old, the overweight. The St. Petersburg woman had a heart attack when her body ran low on potassium, the chemical needed to make the muscles work. No muscle matters more...

An elderly Venice man claims he tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide after killing his ailing wife with car exhaust, police say. SARASOTA COUNTY -- An 88-year-old Venice man told deputies he killed his wife to put an end to her suffering, and tried to die with her in a car closed in the couple's garage. I "messed it up," Paul Armbruster told deputies. "We were supposed to go together." Detectives said Armbruster told them his wife had Alzheimer's disease, an ailment that causes degeneration of brain cells, and that he no longer could stand to see her suffer. He killed...

A battalion commander has taken responsibility for a contrived letter from soldiers in Iraq that appeared in newspapers across the country. The commander's admission dampens suspicion that the Pentagon was behind the mailings. But that suspicion is based on the fact that the Pentagon has declared itself willing to mislead the media and the public when disinformation suits its purpose. The letter campaign seemed to fit the Pentagon's modus operandi. Copies of an identical letter, extolling the achievements of the 2nd Battalion of the 503rd Airborne Infantry Regiment, were signed by different soldiers and sent to their hometown papers. The...

A courtroom with closed-circuit TV, microphones and American flags has existed for months at the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And yet, the 660 prisoners there have had no trials. They don't have lawyers, either. They aren't even charged with anything specific. Human rights organizations have justifiably complained that the U.S. government is holding the prisoners -- some for more than 18 months -- without filing charges and without offering access to counsel. The government says the detainees, most of them taken prisoner in Afghanistan, are suspected of having links with the fallen Taliban regime or the al-Qaida terrorist...

On the beach here you can sunbathe, surf some of the best waves in Southern California, and enjoy the picnic food of your choice. Tai-chi devotees do their morning exercises on the water's edge, and the weekend air is full of Frisbees and footballs. What you can't do, at least after a new city ordinance takes effect next month, is smoke. This upscale, health-conscious city (population 13,000) north of San Diego is on the verge of becoming the first in California - maybe the continental U.S. - to ban smoking on the beach. The reasons are many: the look, the...

On 9/24/03 I posted a Herald-Tribune article entitled "Local Schools Cut Off (some) Free Lunches" (here) and later that day sent a copy of the comments made here to the articles author. Following is a Herald-Tribune editorial on the same subject that was published 9/27/03 ("School Meal Ordeal") a follow-up article by the same reporter that was published 10/6/03 ("Schools Feed Lunch-Less Students"). In the comments section of this post I included a letter to the editor I sent yesterday to the Herald-Tribune because of a somewhat misleading quote of me made by the reporter in her 2nd article. School...

Parents' failure to file forms means 3,000-plus students don't eat. Local schools cut off free meals to more than 3,000 students Tuesday because their parents hadn't turned in the paperwork to qualify for the federal lunch program. The decision forced cafeteria workers in Manatee, Sarasota and Charlotte counties to turn hundreds of children away from the lunch lines. In some cases teachers paid out of their own pockets to keep students from going hungry. One parent was so upset about her son being refused breakfast she withdrew him from school. In Manatee County, among the hardest hit schools were those...

NAPLES - A homeless man received 12 years in prison for spitting on a Collier County sheriff's deputy during an arrest. David Michael Hird, 41, was convicted in June of battery on a law enforcement officer. Hird was arrested on a trespassing charge Feb. 18 and put into a patrol car by Cpl. Paul Boliek. Prosecutors said when Hird was in the back of the patrol car, he coughed up phlegm on the deputy. When Boliek asked what he was doing, Hird replied: "I'm trying to make you sick, man." During Hird's hearing Thursday, Judge Frank Baker said he was...

Before my son became a Marine, I never thought much about who was defending me. Now when I read of the war on terrorism or the coming conflict in Iraq, it cuts to my heart. When I see a picture of a member of our military who has been killed, I read his or her name very carefully. Sometimes I cry. In 1999, when the barrel- chested Marine recruiter showed up in dress blues and bedazzled my son John, I did not stand in the way. John was headstrong, and he seemed to understand these stern, clean men with straight...

For nearly a century, American motorists have helped pay for the roads they drive every time they fill their gas tanks. Federal, state and local gas taxes are considered an equitable means of covering the cost of building and expanding roads. If you don't drive, you don't pay. If you drive just a little, you pay just a little. If you drive a lot, you contribute more toward the nation's paving bill. Yet a growing interest in electric cars, vehicles that run on alternative fuels such as hydrogen, and mass transit options such as monorails and trains raises a question ...

How have we been duped regarding "welfare reform"? We have repeatedly been told that the "welfare reforms" implemented during Clinton's administration have resulted in a 50%, or 60%, or 70% "reduction in the welfare rolls" (actual percentages seem to vary with time or by source). However, the politicians and media sources have never said just how much the "welfare reduction" has save us in monetary terms. Being of a somewhat suspicious mind, I recently decided to check the federal budget figures to see just how much we have saved as a result of these "huge reductions in the welfare rolls." ...

The major liberal mediacrats (e.g., New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Boston Globe, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, etc.) are constantly beating the "popular vote" drum, saying, in terms of the latest/final figures, that Gore won the popular vote by 495,000 votes (50,811,267 to 50,316,368). What these major liberal mediacrats fail to say though is that outside of any one of few (four) major cities (new York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, OR Chicago) Bush actually won the popular vote in the remaining vast majority of the US. For example: Outside of New York City, the only major city in the ...