Free Republic

We live in a time of child killers. On any morning, we may learn that another child has entered the record book as the youngest killer. When 2000 began, the record was at age 6, but by the end it had fallen to 3. When 3-year-olds and 6-year-olds kill, we understand that they may have little or no idea of what they are doing. They are not tried as juveniles, much less as adults. But we do not extend the period of formal irresponsibility very long. Michigan has tried and convicted a child for a murder committed at the ...

Al Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile is telling the troops at Nashville headquarters that they're just going to have to skip Sunday church services from now on. Inc. has learned that Brazile is telling her staff that new working hours are 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.--including Sundays. She says that, if they feel the need for organized prayer on the Lord's Day, try "Our Lady of the Pillow" and "Holy Mattress," which they can hit in their rare off hours. You could argue, what with that welcome post-convention bounce in the polls, that the Gore folks could use a ...

     Two Bavarian lawyers are trying to protect children from reading the Bible because of its purportedly violent, homophobic and anti-Semitic content. The two have written German Family Minister Christine Bergmann on behalf of a few parents of minors, asking the Bible to be put on a list of books considered dangerous for children.      "It preaches genocide, racism, enmity towards Jews, gruesome executions for adulterers and homosexuals, the murder of one's own children and many other perversities," Christian Sailer and Gert-Joachim Hetzel said about the Bible in an Agence France Press report. The Bible should remain on the dangerous list ...

EHUD Barak is the only man in history to wear Napoleon's hat under Neville Chamberlain's umbrella. His parliament gone, his public opinion polls falling by the minute, his inner circle broken - just yesterday, his ever-faithful chief of staff quit - Barak soldiers on in his quest for a peace without honor. If he succeeds, he will not only lose his country's heartland, he will have destroyed Israel's proud position as the only democracy in the Middle East. Ehud Barak works alone; his contempt for democracy is as palpable as the ever-present grin on his face. His No. 2 ...

CNS Commentary from the Cato Institute At a recent talk on school reform, Harvard professor Charles Willie chastised sociologists and other leading experts of the 1930s and 1940s for failing to foresee the coming expansion of the civil rights movement and the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. Willie, who has a booming voice when he is irritated, thundered that the most important court case in education in the 20th century, perhaps in all of American history, was approaching, yet just about no one predicted the coming changes. The failure of experts to predict some of the most ...

(CNSNews.com) - Bill Clinton, hailed in 1992 as the first president from the baby boom generation, has not transferred that popularity to Vice President Al Gore - a fact that may say as much about changes in the culture of the baby boomers as it does about Texas Governor George W Bush. Polls show Bush beating Vice President Al Gore by as much as 12 points among baby boomer men - the husbands of the so-called "soccer moms" who have attracted so much attention from political analysts in recent years. What is surprising about this fact is that these ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Days after the government was absolved of wrongdoing in the 1993 siege and fire at the Branch Davidian compound, the White House released Monday testimony from President Clinton in April that he "felt personally responsible" for the roughly 80 deaths. Clinton believed he "made a terrible mistake" in allowing FBI agents to storm the sect's compound to end a seven-week standoff, according to testimony during an April 21 interview with Justice Department investigators probing alleged campaign finance violations. The president was asked specifically about a meeting with Indonesian businessman James Riady at the White House on ...

I was still exploring the Internet, crawling through websites on my old 486 and making my first posts on Free Republic, when I had the idea for an op-ed essay: An open letter to Dr. James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family. Dr. Dobson had just been vilified by the New York Times's Frank Rich as a "Godzilla of the Right" for suggesting that Christian conservatives might leave the Republican party "and take a lot of people with us." My idea: To suggest to Dr. Dobson that, in fact, he was winning, that all the furor over his ...

Saturday July 15 10:14 AM ET RUNNYMEDE, England (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno joined some of America's top lawyers in a English watermeadow Saturday to commemorate the Magna Carta, the cornerstone of English, and later American, law. The ceremony at Runnymede, on the River Thames west of London, was held by the American Bar Association (ABA) which has shifted its annual convention to Britain this year. Some 3,000 U.S. lawyers are due to descend on London for the week-long convention, which opens Monday with an address by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose wife Cherie is a ...

Act One, 1994: The Boston Globe, one of the furthest-left newspapers in America, hires a token conservative columnist, Jeff Jacoby. Will Jacoby be accepted by the true believers in this famously orthodox leftist seminary? Act Two, 1997: No, he won't. The other seminarians are after him. Robert Hardman, one of the two gay copy editors who handle Jacoby's column, is furious yet again, this time about a Jacoby column criticizing gay militants at Harvard for not letting others speak. Hardman tries to get the column killed. Editorial page editor David Greenway refuses to censor the column, which he finds ...

(CNSNews.com) - Calling homosexuality a "divisive" issue that is not necessary to children's education, a coalition of Oregon citizens is seeking to prevent public schools from "advocacy teaching" of the subject in an initiative they hope will be on the ballot in November. The Oregon Citizens' Alliance, a grassroots coalition of parent volunteers of all political stripes, collected 83,281 signatures to send to the Secretary of State's office in Portland, some 16,000 signatures more than needed for the issue to go to voters. State Secretary Bill Bradbury, a liberal Democrat, has 30 days to conduct a random sampling of ...

Despite my current political disposition, at the beginning of the Clinton Administration I did not wish the President any ill will. I was a moderate Democrat then, only three days away from voting for him myself, when I found I could no longer tolerate the half-truths coming from his camp. Not satisfied with Bush and no longer comfortable with Clinton, I voted 3rd party for the first time and threw my lot in with Perot. Nevertheless, when Clinton won, I had high hopes for his presidency. No one who truly loves their country hopes for a disastrous President; what ...

A pair of recent flaps in the news business provides all the insight people need to truly understand how the establishment national media regard American conservatism and the means by which this is manifested within their corporate hierarchy. On June 29, CBS Early Show host Bryant Gumbel was caught in an unguarded moment uttering an obscene insult in reference to one of his guests, a conservative policy analyst who supported the Boy Scouts of America decision to exclude homosexual scoutmasters from their ranks. The incident barely raised an eyebrow at the network. Eight days later, Boston Globe columnist Jeff ...

Normally I do not remark upon the affairs or administration of Christian denominations other than my own. Religion is an intense topic that stirs passionate debate among believers and non-believers alike. And the inter-denominational squabbles, theological disputes, and ancient prejudices are hardly going to be ended by me, a Greek Catholic layman, or my words. However, the current Episcopalian conference that is going on in Denver, Colorado (my home state) does deserve comment. An estimated ten thousand members of the Anglican Communion in the United States have converged upon the Mile High City to commence a meeting that happens ...

Wednesday July 5 9:38 AM ET JERUSALEM (Reuters) - President Clinton will host a summit with Israel and the Palestinians near Washington on July 11 aiming to reach a deal before their September target for a final peace, an official close to the negotiations said Wednesday. Speaking less than an hour before Clinton planned to make an announcement at the White House at 1415 GMT, the official told Reuters: ``Both sides have accepted to come to a summit near Washington on July 11.´´ There was no immediate word from either Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak or Palestinian President Yasser ...

The Clinton administration misappropriated at least $45 million dollars in taxes paid by gun owners, which were supposed to underwrite a "sportsmen's trust fund," but were earmarked instead for a variety of pet causes -- including a group dedicated to the elimination of hunting. The White House's shellgame with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service money was first uncovered when the General Accounting Office submitted the results of their investigation into conservation tax expenditures to the House Resources Committee earlier this year. "In at least one instance, pressure was applied to an employee of the USF&WS," reported American Rifleman Magazine ...

TITLE: "Happy 224th" That's since 1776. But if you count from the time the US adopted its current constitution, in 1789, then this is Happy 211th. (SNIP) Texas under Governor Bush: 1st in student improvement on test scores, especially for African-American and Hispanic students. 1st in reducing the amount of releases and disposal of toxics - more than all 49 other states combined. 1st in the nation to allow a patient to appeal an HMO's decision to deny care. 1st to create a prison ministry to help offenders reintegrate into society. 1 of only 3 states to require reductions ...

By Angie Wagner Associated Press Writer LAS VEGAS (AP) - Darrell Hankins knew he was wasting his life. He was dealing drugs, belonged to a gang and had fathered four children by four different mothers. He never thought anyone would take a chance on a 10th-grade dropout and a deadbeat dad. But an unlikely combination - a burger joint and an upscale casino - proved him wrong. Flipping burgers for eight months changed his life. "I learned that working is the key," Hankins, 27, said. Hankins is the first graduate of the Burger King to Bellagio, or Work First, ...

There has been a lot of press lately about the latest Mel Gibson movie, "The Patriot." Not having seen the picture, I cannot speak to its historical accuracy. However, I must admit that I am pleased to see someone once again tackle the American Revolution in cinema. I fear that far too many Americans--particularly our young people--no longer know or care anything about the sacrifices that were made to give us this great nation. For this July Fourth weekend we should try to learn something about those brave men. The holiday weekend is not solely for parades, outdoor barbecues, ...

A TRIAL started last month in New York City against Visa and MasterCard that could easily impact everyone of us who carries a credit card. But there's more to this trial than meets the eye and we think consumers deserve to know the facts behind the Department of Justice's case against two well-know brand names, Visa and MasterCard. Despite the fact that consumers receive nearly 4 billion credit card solicitations a year, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Visa and MasterCard claiming they stifle competition. Why, and what will consumers gain from this suit? Perhaps analysis by ...