Free Republic

Companies Dig Deeper Into Executives' Pasts By ALEX KUCZYNSKI The nation's major corporations, facing a tide of public suspicion and investor mistrust, are responding by vetting candidates for top positions as never before, looking into all aspects of their professional and private lives with an intensity usually reserved for major criminal investigations or Park Avenue co-op board applications. Public companies are hiring accounting, security and investigative firms to pore over court documents, search federal databases and interview long-lost college girlfriends, ex-husbands and former employers. "What we do is everything short of 24-hour surveillance," said Robert Strang, executive vice president of...

Make Pinocchio CEOs Pay By ROGER LOWENSTEIN This was a tough week for corporate CEOs. They had to swear under oath that the numbers they are reporting to investors are actually true. I suppose you could call it putting your mouth where other people's money is. This provision of the newly enacted corporate reform law has gotten loads of ink, as well it should. CEOs could be criminally liable for bearing false witness. We can only hope that the requirement to truth-tell does not represent a trend, else so many other institutions, such as politics and matrimony not to mention...

<p>LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Lance Bass' space voyage was at risk Tuesday while Hollywood dealmakers and Russian bureaucrats squabbled over payment for the pop idol's $20 million trip.</p> <p>"We have a contract, but we don't have any money," Russian Aerospace Agency spokesman Konstantin Kreidenko said.</p>

Pat Oliphant on target. When are we going to take care of our Saudi problem?

Report Says Delta Pilot Refused to Fly Israeli Official Associated Press Monday, August 12, 2002; Page A03 CINCINNATI, Aug. 11 -- A pilot for a Delta Air Lines subsidiary would not fly Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Michael Melchior from Cincinnati to Toronto because the pilot thought Melchior posed a security risk, an Israeli radio station reported today. Melchior, who was being escorted by State Department officials, told Israel Radio that he waited on the plane Friday for more than an hour before the pilot evacuated it, saying there was a security risk. When Melchior disembarked, he said, he was told...

Teachers, follow A-Rod's example in contract talks By Thomas J. Cottle July 23, 2002 BOSTON -- For decades, critics of American culture have written about the sheer insanity of paying a teacher for one year's work what an athlete earns in a day. What utter madness underwrites a culture, these critics aver, that prizes entertainment over education, a society that literally values taking our minds off of important matters rather than learning these important matters in the first place. The utter irrationality of it all has recently been captured by the owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team who laments...

A Pakistan tribal council's horrific "punishment" by gang rape of a young woman last month was just the tip of a very ugly iceberg called honor. In the name of that most elusive of concepts, women are shot, beheaded, burned, stoned and beaten. And, in the case of Saleema, raped. Rest here...

The Princeton University admissions officers who peeked into a Yale University Web site 18 times in April returned again and again to a single account: that of a high school senior in Houston named Lauren Bush -- apparently President Bush's niece. In fact, they logged on to her online acceptance notice four times during a single afternoon. Rest here...

Way back when weapons were a significant part of the national culture (and part of judging a man's worth was based on his level of marksmanship), Harper's Weekly ran this cartoon on this day in 1875. Recaption if you'd like.

G.I.'s to Guard Afghan Leader Amid Concerns By CARLOTTA GALL ABUL, Afghanistan, July 22 — American soldiers, including Special Forces, will move into the presidential palace and take over responsibility for the security of President Hamid Karzai, illustrating concern for his safety after the assassination of a vice president this month, a presidential spokesman said today. In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the newest mission for American soldiers in Afghanistan might last several months and was intended to ensure that Afghans keep the leader recently appointed by a grand council of representatives from all over the country. "We...

U.S. Mulls Military's Domestic Role The Associated Press Jul 21 2002 7:14PM WASHINGTON (AP) - Homeland security chief Tom Ridge says the threat of terrorism may force government planners to consider using the military for domestic law enforcement, now largely prohibited by federal law. President Bush has called on Congress to thoroughly review the law that bans the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines from participating in arrests, searches, seizure of evidence and other police-type activity on U.S. soil. The Coast Guard and National Guard troops under the control of state governors are excluded from the Reconstruction-era law, known as...

Madison Avenue And Big Nasty Slugs: A Profound Economic Analysis I'm going to breed giant radioactive garden slugs that drip cobra venom, and latch onto prey like ticks on a cow, and turn them into formless gunch, and absorb them. I figure we'll feed them advertising executives. I put a bunch of slugs in a cigar box, with a radium watch thrown in so they'll mutate. I'm not sure how to get them to have a hunting instinct. Maybe I'll let them watch late-night TV about sharks and Nazis. I'll leave them at night on Madison Avenue. Come morning, some...

Perhaps I am too cynical, but I believe there is a separate class of people in this country called Too Rich to Go to Prison. With the peerless John Ashcroft at the helm of the Justice Department, I don't think any of the now-infamous CEOs need to lose sleep over the prospect. It's not exactly like Bobby Kennedy going after Jimmy Hoffa. On the other hand, the only AG we've got did instigate a 13-month-long undercover investigation that resulted in the arrest of 12 prostitutes in New Orleans. Amazing - they found 12 whores in New Orleans. Surely Osama bin...

July 11, 2002 Cubicle Crimes By SCOTT ADAMS ANVILLE, Calif. — Apparently, without anyone's noticing, our entire universe collapsed into a black hole and emerged in another dimension where everything is backward: Bill Gates (who used to be evil) is spending billions to vaccinate children in third-world countries, while the Catholic Church (which used to be good) is defending priests accused of molesting children. The stock market (which used to go up) now only drifts downward. And the surest way to lose respect is to mention you started a dot-com. But here's the strangest backwardism of all: People seem surprised...

July 8, 2002 Stepping Up to the Plate By BOB HERBERT illie Mays told me that when he was a teenager he tried to pattern himself after Joe DiMaggio because the great Yankee center fielder was such a wonderful all-around player. But when it came to hitting, just hitting, which is the most difficult of all athletic skills, there was one man who, in Mays's view, stood alone. "Ted Williams was the best hitter," he said. If you're an amateur in reasonably good physical condition you can make a few shots from the basketball foul line. You can run a...

Crown Prince: First aim is to stop the bloodshed By Crown Prince Abdullah Crown Prince Abdullah Bin-Abd-al-Aziz Al Saud, the effective ruler of Saudi Arabia, received members of the National Conference of Editorial Writers at his palace north of Jeddah on June 18. The prince has headed the kingdom since 1995, when his half-brother, King Fahd, suffered a series of strokes. While still alive and reportedly healthy, the king serves mostly as a consultant. Both are among the 37 sons (about half of whom are living) of King Abd al-Aziz, who founded Saudi Arabia in 1932. The group waited for...

July 4, 2002 More Women Taking Leadership Roles at Colleges By KAREN W. ARENSON PRINCETON, N.J., July 1 ? Last year, Shirley M. Tilghman became the first woman to be president of Princeton University. A week later, she named a woman as provost. This May, she named a woman as dean of the Woodrow Wilson School. And last week, without fanfare, she named a woman as dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science. With a woman already in place as dean of the undergraduate college ? Nancy Weiss Malkiel, who was appointed last month to another five-year term...

Never forget.

Not so humourous.