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Hi, everyone: As you may or may not know, His Holiness the Dalai Lama visited New York City recently, appearing at a concert. A friend who was there relates the following humorous anecdote, which I have verified through other Internet sources. Take it for what it's worth: Since he had to be in bed early, the Dalai Lama spoke at the beginning of the concert on Sunday night at Avery Fisher Hall... Tom Waits, who closed the show in his usual guise as a lowlife sage, wisecracked: "So his holiness goes to bed at 7:30? That's not the holiness I...

If the National Cattlemen's Beef Association has its way, beef will not be just for dinner anymore. Looking to emulate the success of Chicken McNuggets and fried mozzarella sticks, the group is hoping to inject some red meat into the American snack food diet with cheeseburger fries. The fries, which look like a squat version of standard French fries, are made of a meat-and-cheese compound that tastes — as the name suggests — like a cheeseburger. Breaded, then deep-fried and served with ketchup or barbecue sauce, cheeseburger fries have found their way onto menus in several states including Nebraska,...

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX MON SEPT 22, 2003 13:44:25 ET XXXXX THE OTHER LIMBAUGH: NEW BOOK CALL TO ARMS AGAINST 'CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION' **THE RELIGIOUS WAR IS NOT IN THE MIDDLE EAST, IT IS IN THIS COUNTRY! **IN 1776, 99.8% OF THE PEOPLE IN AMERICA WERE PROFESSED CHRISTIANS The new season may be only one day old but the most controversial book of the season may just be: David Limbaugh's PERSECUTION: HOW LIBERALS ARE WAGING WAR AGAINST CHRISTIANITY. Limbaugh enters a very crowded new book release week [O'Reilly, Albom], but the nationally syndicated columnist and brother of Rush has delivered a...

SADDAM Hussein has been in secret negotiations with US forces in Iraq for the past nine days, we can reveal. The Iraqi dictator is demanding safe passage to the former Soviet republic of Belarus. In exchange, he has vowed to provide information on weapons of mass destruction and disclose bank accounts where he siphoned off tens of millions of dollars in plundered cash. President Bush is being kept abreast of the extraordinary talks by his National Security advisor Condoleezza Rice. She is co-ordinating negotiations in Baghdad which are led by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of American forces in...

A school is fighting to keep out a girl who knifed another student at a previous school - despite an Education Ministry threat that it legally can't refuse to take her. The ministry has warned the Bay of Plenty high school the 13-year-old girl must be allowed to enrol. The intermediate school boy she attacked with a Stanley knife needed about 40 stitches to a leg wound. The school's principal told the Sunday Star-Times if the girl came through the gates he would fear for the safety of students and staff. The principal has sought legal advice. The girl's father...

Freepers, Poetry is the soul of our hearts. We can converse, pontificate, and rally til the cows come home, but we really show our humanity, wit and truest selves in our poetry. Doug From Upland is a fine example of such an artist. In his poems, we feel -- but we not only feel, we feel each other. Let's show our true colors and show the world the Conservatives are not just lovers of freedom -- we're lovers of words, heart and feelings as well. Post your original poem here. It need not rhyme. If you see a poem you...

THE smoky romance of the barbecue pit, with its dry rubs and wet mops, its fruit woods and burnt ends, has long been a New York fantasy. But real barbecue has proved harder to produce locally than baguettes, baba ghanouj and banh mi put together. Food-obsessed New Yorkers harp on the diversity of the city's kitchens and the excellence of their offerings, but most are unhappily conscious of barbecue as a magnificent native dish that is perpetually out of reach. Would-be pit masters have tried to please them but have had to contend with emission-control laws, strict fire codes and...

The Atkins diet has triumphed, the French diet guru Michel Montignac is in resurgence and ''low carbs'' has become the mantra (or is it war cry?) of the fit and fabulous. So in a clever bit of adaptation, bread, once the benign starter to every restaurant meal, has migrated to the other, more sinful side of the menu. It has become dessert. Bread pudding, of course, has long been a favorite of children of all ages. And the French have always paired bread with chocolate; pain au chocolat is now ubiquitous. But the grilled chocolate sandwich is both simpler and...

Click on this link and vote in the poll: Will Bush be reelected in 2004? Right now Bush is leading by a margin of 7%. Not bad, but we can do better. Get to work, monkeys!

It is forgotten now that a book published in 1999 charged, among other things, that George W. Bush was arrested for cocaine possession in the early 1970s and the bust was covered up through the influence of his father. The charge was made in Fortunate Son, which briefly made the best-seller lists and sparked a flurry of press interest before lawyers for Bush threatened a lawsuit and it was revealed that the book's author, James Howard Hatfield, had served five years in prison after being convicted of attempted murder. Bush never precisely denied the charge, nor did he need to:...

July 12, 2003 Arnold N. Nawrocki, Cheese Innovator, Dies at 78By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS rnold N. Nawrocki, the man who made it practical to sell individually wrapped slices of cheese in the 1950's, died on June 30 at his home in Sun City, Ariz. He was 78. The cause was complications of kidney disease, his family said. Mr. Nawrocki first tried to wrap slices of cheese with wax paper before finding a profitable way to do it with cellophane while working at the Clearfield Cheese Company in Curwensville, Pa., in the 1950's. Wrapping the cheese — which required a...

July 10, 2003 Chaim Engel, 87, a Sobibor Escapee, DiesBy DOUGLAS MARTIN haim Engel, who helped carry out a group escape from a Nazi death camp, driven by the need to kill for revenge and hoping to save himself and his future wife, died on July 4 in New Haven. He was 87. Mr. Engel had a stroke after a car accident and then developed pneumonia, said his daughter, Alida Engel. He lived in Branford, Conn. During World War II, Mr. Engel was a prisoner at Sobibor, a secret death camp in eastern Poland, where 250,000 people, chiefly Jews,...

As many of you know, Ann Coulter's new book "Treason" has jumped to number 2 on Amazon's Best Seller list. However, those who hate Coulter and what she stands for are attacking her book, by using the "recommendations" feature at Amazon. "Mein Kampf" and "Big Lies: Right Wing Propaganda" are the only two choices being offered as recommendations. Of course, this is a nasty bit of slander against Ann. Here is a link to Treason's page at Amazon. There are two things you can do to help quash this effort: 1. Recommend another book. If we all start off by...

PERSONALS by Bruce McCall Lonely ex-barfly in severe withdrawal needs to mooch smokes, preferably off ex-bartender. You bring the bar nuts, cocktail napkins, and swizzle sticks, I’ll tell the dirty jokes until the coffin nails run out or I fall off the stool. Lady deep inhaler, haggard, jumpy, no appetite, yearns to be totally hooked on a tobacco baron who’s into monogrammed silver cigarette cases and gold Dunhill butane lighters. Let’s share the joy of flying off on your personal Gulfstream jet to some paradise where the government runs the tobacco business, smoking our brains out all the way and...

In “The Fabulist: A Novel,” published last week by Simon & Schuster, Stephen Glass, once a young star writer for The New Republic, who, in 1998, was fired for fabricating a spectacular series of stories, tells the story of “Stephen Glass,” a young star writer for “The Washington Weekly,” who gets fired for fabricating a spectacular series of stories. Like Stephen Glass, “Stephen Glass” fakes not only the stories but also the notes and documentation to back them up, the better to fool his magazine’s editors and its fact checker, Victoria. Victoria maintains a “rulebook,” which begins like this: acceptable...

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Another health scare, another lunch in front of the cameras. Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien tucked into a prime Alberta steak in a downtown Ottawa restaurant Wednesday in a bid to allay public fears over mad cow disease. Chretien, who critics said had not done enough to reassure Canadians during the height of a recent SARS crisis, grabbed the bull by the horns after one case of mad cow disease was confirmed in the western province of Alberta Tuesday. First the Liberal prime minister appeared before reporters early Wednesday morning to say he expected the cow...

I enjoy watching "Fox and Friends" each morning on Fox News. No, I'm not completely crazy about every show, but I do enjoy it. This morning, however, one of my pet peeves received the last straw as I watched a clip of radio "personality" Mancow. I think Mancow is a nosebleed, and finally wrote friends@foxnews.com to let them know. I'd like to know what other Freepers think of the show. Do you like it? What are you least favorite aspects of the show? If you were the producer, how would you change this program? I'll start off with my...

Filed at 9:43 p.m. ET RABAT (Reuters) - At least 20 people were killed in at least four separate bomb attacks in Morocco's commercial capital Casablanca on Friday night, the state news agency said. Jewish, Spanish and, apparently, Belgian targets were also struck, the MAP agency said. Three of the blasts were car bombs. Two policemen and a security guard at a Spanish center were among the dead. Glass, blood and debris littered the scenes. ``There are body parts all over the place,'' Moroccan journalist Aboubakr Jammai told the BBC, describing an eyewitness account from the Spanish center. He said...

For the past four years, a lot of people have been obsessed with the movie “The Matrix.” As the sequel, “The Matrix Reloaded,” arrived in theatres this week, it was obvious that the strange, violent science-fiction film, by the previously more or less unknown Wachowski brothers, had already inspired both a cult and a craze. (And had made a lot of money into the bargain, enough to fuel two sequels; “Matrix Revolutions” is supposed to be out in November.) There hasn’t been anything quite like it since “2001: A Space Odyssey,” which had a similar mix of mysticism, solemnity, and...

March 6, 2003 -- A Brooklyn woman responsible for her 4-year- old daughter's scalding death walked out of court yesterday - free to try to get back her three other children. Tarajee Davis, 28, was sentenced to five years' probation as part of a bargain in which she pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide in the death of little Da'Jhanae. The young girl was scalded by bath water in the family's Flatbush home on Feb. 3, 2002 - and succumbed to her injuries nearly three weeks later. Davis is still trying to get back her boys, ages 2 through 9,...