Free Republic

The last seven days brought this: Dick Cheney suggested that the election of John Kerry would result in "devastating" terrorist attack. (His nominal boss merely opined that Mr. Kerry is a fan of Saddam Hussein.) Two generals informed the Senate Armed Services Committee that the C.I.A., in contravention of international and military law, kept up to 100 Iraqi detainees off the Abu Ghraib prison rolls in order to hide them from the Red Cross. The "Coalition of the Willing" lost another member when Costa Rica, which doesn’t maintain an army and never joined it in the first place, asked to...

BALTIMORE (AP) -- Jose Contreras' family defected from Cuba this week, and the New York Yankees pitcher left the team Tuesday and traveled to Miami to reunite with his wife and two daughters. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Barbara Gonzalez said she did not know details on how the family got out of Cuba. ``It's spectacular news,'' Yankees manager Joe Torre said before Tuesday night's game at Baltimore. Wife Miriam, 11-year-old Naylan and 3-year-old Naylenis were put in ICE custody by the border patrol early Tuesday and released from its control around 4 p.m., she said. After being examined by...

<p>JUST hours before Sen. John Kerry boldly announced, "I don't fall down," on a Sun Valley ski slope, he fell down.</p> <p>Kerry made headlines last week when, on his first snowboard run down Idaho's Mount Baldy, a skiing Secret Service agent collided with the Democratic presidential candidate, sending him tumbling into the powder.</p>

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. -- Amendments to Major League Baseball's drug testing policy don't appear like they are in the offing, at least not in the immediate future. Gene Orza, chief operating officer of the Major League Baseball Players Association, offered a pointed rebuttal on Thursday to the league's public cry for a more stringent drug policy in the wake of the BALCO scandal. "Let's assume that (steroids) are a very bad thing to take," said Orza, who was speaking on a panel at The Octagon World Congress of Sports. "I have no doubt that they are not worse than cigarettes....

<p>Simonya Popova is hot. Smoking. Close to it, anyway. It's a preposterously humid August afternoon in Bradenton, Fla., and Popova is on a back court at the Bollettieri Tennis Academy, midway through a series of practice sets. Strikingly attractive, her skin and hair colored by the sun, Popova is dripping sweat like a busted faucet. Her opponent, a toned and tanned academy instructor who claims to have played in the Davis Cup for Peru, is panting. "Never hot like this in Tashkent," says Simonya's father, Sergei, looking on from his usual perch behind the court. "This worse than Cairo."</p>

Attorney for Tottenville mom charged in case says she wants children spared legal proceedings The Tottenville mother accused of taking pornographic photos of eight children, including her two daughters, remains in jail, as her lawyer pushes to keep her case out of the courtroom and to avoid putting the kids "through the wringer." Sandra Delgrosso waived her rights to a speedy indictment during a grand jury action yesterday in Stapleton Criminal Court, according to her St. George attorney, John Murphy Jr. Such maneuvers are often a prelude to a plea bargain, which in this case would pre-empt the need to ...

Think of Maya Angelou and politics, and the first things that come to mind are her poetry reading at Bill Clinton's first presidential inauguration in 1993 and her unwavering support for Al Gore in 2000. But Angelou is singing a slightly different tune these days. She actually likes W. "I liked him a lot while he was down there at ground zero, when he said, 'We hear you. The world hears you,' " Angelou told us while in New York promoting her new line of Hallmark cards and trinkets. "That is what America needed at that moment. We needed to ...

This may be heresy, but my life didn't change as I know it after Sept. 11. Not that the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center and Pentagon weren't horrific, hateful and heart-rending. Not that I didn't cry for the firefighters and bond traders who lost their lives. Not that the day won't live on as a horrible, historic moment. But my life didn't change. I still had to work, my cats still had to be fed, and my cholesterol was still too high. I still traveled for business, flew to New York for vacation and opened my own ...

Both President Bush and Mayor Bloomberg are doing an unusual thing: treating people like adults rather than fools. As Bush spoke to the nation the other night, I was thinking of the last time I happened to actually see a President deliver a State of the Union address in person. It was January 1968. Both my friend Ernie Washington and his best pal, Sonny Davis, were young and alive. The speaker was Lyndon Johnson, and on that long-gone evening he looked right out at everyone assembled with those huge, feel-sorry-for-me, cocker spaniel brown eyes of his and lied. &quot;The enemy ...

I'd still be weeping as copiously as Linda Lay had I not subsequently read in The Wall Street Journal that she and her husband still owned 18 properties in Texas and Colorado, only two of which are up for sale, and that Ken Lay still owned $10 million in non-Enron stocks. Thankfully, others are lending emotional support to the couple in my stead. After ministering to Mr. Lay, Jesse Jackson likened him to Job. Linda Lay's "Today" performance was coached by a freelancing alum of Hill & Knowlton, the wonderful p.r. folks who have made Americans fall in love with ...

The American Red Cross expects to collect $850 million in its terrorist attack relief fund and plans to disburse 90 percent of the money by Sept. 11, 2002, charity officials said Thursday. The Red Cross already has distributed $490 million to victims' families, people who lost their home or job because of the terrorist attacks, and to disaster-relief services, according to David McLaughlin, Red Cross' chairman of the board. Former Sen. George Mitchell was appointed by the Red Cross in December to oversee a plan to disburse the final $360 million in the Liberty Fund. Mitchell said he met with ...

From: Dennis Hans To: Execs at CNN, MSNBC, Fox, PBS, CNBC and Comedy Central Subject: Leftwing Blondes Date: January 27, 2002 I’ve got just the thing to brighten your primetime weeknight lineup and send the ratings through the roof: an hour-long, five-nights-a-week gabfest called “Leftwing Blondes.” What could be more original and captivating than one liberal and one leftist all dolled up like Marilyn Monroe -- even if they’re gents -- discussing the issues of the day within a framework they establish and with guests they select? “Leftwing Blondes” will speak directly to Middle America. Although we’ll welcome viewers of ...

I'm old enough to know that the Greatest Generation didn't fight World War II for our right to burn books. Yet the recent news photos of Christ Community Church in Alamogordo, N.M., burning copies of "Harry Potter" and Shakespeare immediately recall the Nazis. Book-burning is only part of the outbreak of right-wing thought control brought on by the 9/11 attack. Groups large and small are affected. A friend reports a recent restaurant outing where one table of diners tapped a glass to demand that everybody stand up and sing "God Bless America." That most of the diners remained seated ...

NEW YORK -- The New York Yankees made a rare deal with the crosstown Mets on Friday, trading outfielder David Justice for third baseman Robin Ventura. The trade is the first in more than eight years between the teams and the first involving major leaguers since 1992. The teams have exchanged players only six times since the Mets began play in 1962. "It's kind of weird to be traded from the Yankees to the Mets with the rivalry and all of that," Justice said. "I'm at that point of my career where you can always be traded at any ...

Commissioner Bud Selig will testify today before the House Judiciary Committee in Washington that the Los Angeles Dodgers topped the roster of Major League Baseball's 25 unprofitable teams last season with a $69 million loss. A report Selig will unveil will also claim that Major League Baseball lost more than a half-billion dollars last season. Selig is seeking to eliminate two of the 30 major league teams, and his testimony will come before a committee that includes Representative John Conyers Jr., a Michigan Democrat, who is the House sponsor of a bill that would strip baseball of its antitrust ...

Family, neighbors saddened by war hero's outburst and confrontation with police Robert T. Boody is a man of stark contrasts. A highly decorated World War II pilot, Boody flew the flag every day outside his West Brighton home, welcomed new neighbors with parties, and was feted for his community service work. But the 81-year-old East Raleigh Avenue resident, who lost a leg in the war, is known as a loner, estranged from his wife and family by rigid views of law and order, patriotism and God, which kept them and others at a distance. Wednesday evening it all came crashing ...

NEW YORK -- After playing in four straight World Series, New York Yankees third baseman Scott Brosius decided he had done everything he wanted to in baseball and announced his retirement Tuesday to be with his family. "It's all about who I want to be as a husband, as a father and as a person," Brosius said in a conference call. "As a baseball player, there's no way to get away from 100 nights a year away from your family. My oldest daughter is 10. I spent over three years of her life away on road trips. I want ...

Stuff and stuff and nonsense. More than ever, America’s crazed consumerism seems absurd Dec. 3 issue — All I want for Christmas is a box of my friend Ronnie’s homemade peanut brittle, the sight of my children gathered around the fireside and the assurance that the next plane on which I fly will not have a plastic tail that detaches upon takeoff. I DO NOT NEED an alpaca swing coat, a tourmaline brooch, a mixer with a dough hook, a CD player that works in the shower, another pair of boot-cut black pants, lavender bath salts, vanilla candles or ...

Archie Ingersoll was miffed. It was Friday, Nov. 16, and Mr. Ingersoll, a junior at Columbia University, had learned that for only the second time in his five semesters in Morningside Heights, he was not going to make the Dean’s List. Mr. Ingersoll, a member of Columbia’s hockey and crew teams, hadn’t gotten any stupider, or taken some particularly grueling class, or frittered away too many nights boozing at the West End, the famous dive on Broadway. Rather, he was the victim of a sudden, rather traumatic change on campus: This semester, Columbia has raised the minimum G.P.A. that ...

Before Sept. 11, Senator James M. Jeffords of Vermont was in the political stratosphere for bolting from the Republican Party, becoming an independent and single-handedly delivering Senate control to the Democrats. The night before the terrorist attacks, Katie Couric interviewed Mr. Jeffords for "Today." In August, Mike Wallace interviewed him for "60 Minutes." Those interviews never ran. Before Sept. 11, Senator John McCain of Arizona was in greater demand than any other Republican (aside from the president) to travel the country on behalf of Congressional candidates. But these days, candidates are clamoring to appear with a lame-duck mayor who has ...