Free Republic

LONDON (Reuters) - British vicars are to fight the good fight. After a survey showed that one in eight ministers had been assaulted, Anglican clergy will be taught martial arts. The classes are being organized by the Manufacturing, Science and Finance Union which represents more than 1,500 clergy from the Church of England. "It is a sad fact of modern life that members of the clergy will come into contact with individuals who are likely to resort to violence," the Reverend Bill Ward, head of the union's clergy section, said in a statement. The union said being a vicar ...

New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said Friday he was quite surprised his city -- whose citizens have been called brave and tough but rarely genteel --would be named as America's most polite place. "One has to wonder. I won't say, 'What were they smoking?' I will say, 'What were they drinking?" Giuliani said at a news conference in response to an annual survey conducted by an etiquette expert deeming New York and Charleston, South Carolina, as the most U.S. polite cities. "One has to really wonder, just what are the other cities like?" he added. Etiquette author Marjabelle Young Stewart, ...

I know that I read here on Free Republic (awhile ago -- perhaps 3-4 months?) an article about research done on the gay lifestyle. The gist of the article was that an independent, non-Christian researcher had determined there is no proof that there is such a thing as a gene that "makes" someone a homosexual. The researcher seemed to be, in fact, surprised at the results of his research. I have searched here on Free Republic but couldn't find the article. Can anyone point me in the right direction? My son, a freshman in high school, is preparing to argue ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Shopping-phobic men have been given an early Christmas present by a Scottish retail center which is providing surrogate boyfriends to accompany female customers around the shops. The Braehead Shopping Centre in Glasgow is testing a scheme which lets women drop off their recalcitrant partners at a kind of boyfriend creche and borrow a fresh new shopping-friendly specimen for a few hours. "The Shopping Boyfriend is the ultimate retail therapist: enthusiastic, attentive, admiring and complimentary," said Carol-Ann Stewart from drinks company Lucozade Energy, which behind the pilot scheme. "He will browse with the girlfriend for hours on ...

A well-known Washington figure who doesn't want to be identified called with a novel idea for getting the hostages back from China. Noting, to his amazement, that a certain former president (remember him?) still plans to speak in China next month, he makes this suggestion: "Let them keep Bill Clinton in exchange for the American hostages. After all, they bought and paid for him and it's proper that we trade their hero for our heroes." (They might count the chopsticks before he leaves.)

The most fragile of President George W. Bush’s political assets is his centrist positioning as a “compassionate conservative.” Now, however, by responding slavishly to the pressure of the Republican right, this positioning is in danger. When Bush announced his candidacy in 1999, he was careful to describe, in detail, what it meant to be a compassionate conservative. He confounded the doctrinaire rightists by suggesting that the war to outlaw abortion was lost and that a patients’ bill of rights was inevitable. But Bush’s centrist credentials were imperiled when he had to move to the right to summon the party faithful ...

An excerpt. ------------------ Looks like it's payback time for comedian David Letterman, who hosted (and made fun of on a nightly basis) Al Gore and George W. Bush during the campaign. Now the "Late Show" host, along with "Late Show" writers Gerard Mulligan and Bill Scheft, will visit Gore's Columbia University School of Journalism class next Wednesday for a discussion on "the use of humor in the media to cover politics and national affairs." Sounds like it could be very entertaining for the kids. But we are assured it will actually be a sober discussion about the growing number of ...

"I think you serve a very useful purpose, especially tonight," President Bush told the members of the Fourth Estate assembled at the Washington Hilton last night. He then pointed out that he'd been studying arsenic in drinking water and experts told him he needed to test about 3,000 glasses of water. "Thank you for participating," he told the 2,300 or so radio and television broadcasters, congressmen, glitterati and assorted others of the Washington power set. And so began Dubya's maiden visit to the annual dinner of the Radio & Television Correspondents' Association. His onetime adversaries on the campaign trail ate ...

Harris/Excite Poll --------------- Do you approve of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as President? 55% say no and only 41% say yes. Freeping needed, please.

Doug from Upland -- hope you have stayed away from the beaches of Recife in Brazil! ------------------------------- A shark killed a young Brazilian man off a beach in the northeastern city of Recife, known for its shark attacks, officials said on Thursday. The body of the 20-year-old student washed up on the city's famous Boa Viagem beach two days after he went swimming. "The front of the thorax and all internal organs were ripped out," said Dr. Jorge Mota of the Institute of Legal Medicine. "The body was also missing a forearm, a part of the thigh and the face." ...

What is this with Salon.com quoting FreeRepublic all over the place? ------------------------------------------------- The case of the mole in the campaign of George W. Bush took another turn Tuesday when the FBI indicted Juanita Yvette Lozano, an aide for Bush's media firm Maverick Media, for sending preparation materials -- including a tape of Bush preparing for the debate -- to the Gore campaign. The New York Times reports Lozano has been charged with mail fraud, making false statements to the FBI and perjury before a grand jury -- and could face up to 15 years in prison and a $750,000 fine. ...

Just wondering how long this site has been "on the air". I first heard of FreeRepublic via Capitol Hill Blue. Was over here browsing for a long time before posting. The impeachment hooked me in. Thanks for answering the question, someone.

Alan Greenspan, considered by some the most powerful man in the world as head of the U.S. Federal Reserve, turns 75 today. Bespectacled, bookish, often pictured with his face pushed into his hands, Alan Greenspan doesn't appear to fit in with America's gadfly social set. But he once dated television journalist Barbara Walters and, in 1997, married Andrea Mitchell, NBC's chief foreign affairs correspondent, above, after a 12-year relationship. Greenspan's first marriage was to Joan Mitchell, a painter, in 1952. Their marriage was annulled after only a year. It was Mitchell who introduced Greenspan to Ayn Rand, the American novelist ...

To folks in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states -- Where is it snowing right now? I'm beginning to wonder if we will get any at all. It's been raining all day here in Western Maryland. And I'm having trouble finding up-to-date storm news on the Internet. (No cable and therefore no Weather Channel at this house.) Appreciating any updates from your neck of the woods.

Until Inauguration Day last month, tourists lingering outside the gates of the White House had the choice of having their photograph taken next to a life-size, cardboard picture of Bill Clinton or his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. They still have a choice — between the new cardboard cutout of President Bush and the old one of Mr. Clinton, whose specter won't leave the White House and whose likeness won't leave the sidewalk on Pennsylvania Avenue. So far, Mr. Bush's aides insist that the endless soap opera of Mr. Clinton's exit has posed little problem for Mr. Bush. Yes, they ...

President Bush offered the nation's governors an olive branch and the promise of a sympathetic ear Sunday, welcoming them with assurances that he won't neglect state needs. ``I admire the governors so much and I've got so many good friends here,'' Bush said at his first formal White House dinner in the State Dining Room. He pledged to the governors ``that it is possible to have debate in a civil way.'' He drew loud applause when he told the governors that education would be the cornerstone of his agenda. ``I will make the case that we need to spend more ...

With Bill Clinton no longer president and Al Gore having lost the White House, the Democratic Party suddenly lacks a leading national voice. On Tuesday night, however, two contenders for the top spot will get a chance to strut their stuff shortly after President George W. Bush delivers his first address to a joint session of Congress. Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota and House of Representatives Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri will give their party's official response to the new Republican president. In about a dozen minutes of prime-time television, Daschle and Gephardt may end up ...

It's time to bury the ridiculous and insulting notion that the former president is anything but white. Every time I think it's going to die, it rears its ugly head once again. I'm referring to the dishearteningly durable idea that former President Bill Clinton somehow shares a special kinship with black men. I'm not sure exactly whom to blame for giving birth to this nauseating notion. I do know that it first gained mainstream currency in the fall of 1998, when Toni Morrison launched a spirited defense of the scandal-ridden chief executive in a New Yorker essay. The normally reliable ...

Former President Clinton's disgraceful exit raises an awful possibility: Maybe he was as morally bankrupt as his right-wing enemies said. Former President Clinton needs to take a long, long sabbatical someplace far, far away. Jerry Brown's wanderings in the wilderness, after he left the California Statehouse, come to mind: He studied some Buddhism in Japan, ministered to the poor with Mother Teresa in India. Clinton should call Brown's travel agent immediately. Faced with a new president who's so far humiliating them politically, the last thing the Democrats need is a directionless, undisciplined ex-president who won't go away. Clinton's still reeling ...

The man Hillary Rodham Clinton beat to win a Senate seat had this reaction yesterday to the ethical clouds shadowing her: I told you so. "This is precisely why we raised the issues of character and integrity during the course of the campaign," former Rep. Rick Lazio (R-Suffolk) told the Daily News in a rare post-election interview. Lazio then rattled off a string of incidents. Lazio waves at the crowd from the campaign trail last fall. He cited Clinton's vacationing last summer at the Skaneateles, N.Y., home of a tax deadbeat, accepting an $8 million book advance before entering the ...