Free Republic

Analysis: New pope's style takes shape UPI - Sunday, July 17, 2005   Date: Sunday, July 17, 2005 11:51:21 PM EST By ROLAND FLAMINI, Chief International CorrespondentWASHINGTON, July 17 (UPI) -- When Pope Benedict XVI left Rome for his two-week vacation in a chalet in the Aosta Valley in the Italian Alps last week he took with him a piano and three suitcases of books. This was a significant change from his more athletic predecessor, Pope John Paul II, who spent his holidays in the same location, but packed a knapsack and hiking boots.Pope Benedict may have been chosen...

Virginia's Hispanic population was less than 1 percent of the total in 1970, according to U.S. Census data. The 2000 census pegged the Hispanic population at about 350,000, or 4.7 percent. It is not known whether those figures include illegal aliens. There are an estimated 200,000 to 250,000 illegal aliens in Virginia, according to a June 14 study by the Pew Hispanic Center. The recent Arlandria-Chirilagua Festival had an estimated 40,000 attendees visiting food booths and vendors from Honduras, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, El Salvador and many other countries. "The goal behind it was to unite the Latino community," said Sue...

President Bush approved dozens of changes at U.S. spy agencies on Wednesday to better combat weapons of mass destruction, including creating a new center and moving FBI counterterrorism and intelligence operations into a new unit. Acting in the face of sharp criticism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Bush signed off on 70 of 74 recommendations from a special presidential commission and gave U.S. authorities new powers to freeze assets of companies believed to be helping North Korea, Iran and Syria pursue nuclear, biological and chemical arms. An executive order issued on Wednesday did not mention specific countries, but said...

The contentious debate over judicial confirmations is often portrayed as a referendum on the notion of a "living Constitution." Conservatives like U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia believe that judges should adhere to the original text of the Constitution as expressed in the meaning of the words and their understanding at the time the Constitution was ratified. Liberals respond that the Constitution must be adapted to reflect changes in society's values and attitudes. However, these viewpoints are not, in fact, mutually exclusive. In truth, no one seriously believes the Constitution is "dead." America's founding fathers provided a procedure for amending...

Far too few among the Christian community are willing to remain steadfast in their beliefs, in the face of the enormous pressures of liberal social change. Fortunately, Bruce N. Shortt exemplifies the meaning of such worthy resolve. Last year Shortt, along with T.C. Pinckney, made waves at the 2004 Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) by stating the obvious. America’s educational system has, over the past several decades, completely degenerated from any pretense of promoting academics. Instead, it is primarily focused on a program of indoctrinating students towards countercultural social transformation. Relentlessly working to eradicate any references to God or traditional morality,...

SAN FRANCISCO - Attorney General Bill Lockyer dropped plans to run for governor Thursday and said he would instead run for state treasurer, citing a wish to avoid the character attacks, money chase and partisan politics required to take on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. "Successful campaigns for governor require a commitment of more than a year to an obsessive and all-consuming chase for money, endorsements and exposure," Lockyer, a Democrat, said in a written statement. "As we have seen with the current governor, that chase has become obscene and replete with a political divisiveness that does nothing to help Californians with...

[“obstruction of legislation in the U.S. Senate by prolonged speechmaking,”] filibuster: The use of the term for “a politically delaying tactic such as a long irrelevant speech or several such speeches used by politicians to delay or prevent the passage of some undesired legislation” has now virtually obliterated its former semantic equivalence to freebooter which originated in the USA in the 1880’s. A freebooter is defined as “anyone who lives by plundering others, especially a pirate.” In the middle of the nineteenth century bands of adventurers organized in the United States were in Central America and the West Indies, stirring...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - A year ago, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed sweeping changes in the state's workers' compensation system, he promised the legislation would protect workers, save billions of dollars and root out fraud and waste. On Tuesday, unions and other groups representing injured workers will mark the first anniversary of those changes with rallies at the Capitol and Schwarzenegger's Los Angeles office. They'll be protesting, not celebrating. The changes, they say, have made things worse for employees who suffer job-related injuries, particularly in the way the administration has been implementing the new law. "The biggest issue we are going...

In the final, entirely predictable act of the United States government today, the US Supreme Court, with eight justices appointed by President Hillary Rodham-Blythe-Clinton, declared the United States Constitution and the US legislature unconstitutional. The ruling will hold despite a bombing at the Supreme Court. Said President Rodham-Blythe-Clinton, “The turning point in our war on the Constitution was the signature by former President George W. Bush,” on the so-called Campaign Finance Reform bill which effectively prevented individual citizens from criticizing their elected representatives for fear of the full force of the United States government being brought down upon them.” As...

Climate change computer models aren't much better than ancient oracles. In ancient times, priestesses at the Oracle at Delphi often answered important political questions with enigmatic predictions derived from dreams, signs, casting lots or reading animal entrails. Today, in the realm of climate change, that function is served by scientific priests and priestesses who offer forecasts of dubious value, derived from computer models. Investing in the stock market, like planning next summer’s vacation, is a dicey proposition. But if someone offered to eliminate the uncertainty — by using computer models to pick surefire investments and perfect weather windows at idyllic...

THE SECOND anniversary of the Iraq war’s commencement was met by about 400 fuming protesters in Oslo. Four hundred—or, the approximate number of people in line for the bathroom at similar demonstrations two years ago—were all that could be found in that city. In Sunday’s New York Times, the ideal place for a poignant antiwar plea, readers were disappointed to find an editorial not about the Mid-East, but about the burning issue of unbalanced ecosystems in the Mid-Atlantic. “White-tailed deer are a plague,” the paper coolly noted. Left-wing anger is still out and about, but in new form. For instance,...

"Virtually no one in Washington expected such a snowballing of events following Iraq's elections," recently explained the deputy editorial editor of the Washington Post, Jackson Diehl. Said another way, virtually no one in Establishment D.C. expected things would snowball the way Bush had predicted. Still, reports Diehl, the evidence is obvious: "Less than two years after Saddam Hussein was deposed, the fact is that Arabs are marching for freedom and shouting slogans against tyrants in the streets of Beirut and Cairo--and regimes that have endured for decades are visibly tottering. Those who claimed that U.S. intervention could never produce such...

Environmentalists are raising a stink about changes to the state's waste management board, which governs California's garbage collection and recycling system. Michael Paparian, a veteran Sierra Club leader in Sacramento, is out. Reportedly in is Scott Harvey, a one-time San Diego city councilman and former executive director of the San Diego County Disposal Association, a lobbying and education group funded by the region's trash haulers. "These decisions really tilted the balance of the board toward the industry and away from the environment," said Bill Magavern, legislative representative for the California Sierra Club in Sacramento. The Sierra Club yesterday issued a...

One Sunday this past November, President Bush’s chief strategist Karl Rove went on the talk show circuit to discuss the possibility that 2004 would be depicted by historians as being a realigning election. A little over three months later, with the nation fixated on Social Security reform, his opinions seem remarkably prescient. According to Wikipedia: “[A realigning election is one] in which geographic bases of power for each of the two parties [are] significantly altered, resulting in a new political power structure and status quo. It is generally believed that a realigning election happens only after a shift in partisan...

PORTLAND, Ore. Feb 16, 2005 — Howard Dean, the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, requested a media blackout of a debate with top Pentagon adviser Richard Perle, then quickly changed his mind Wednesday after news agencies complained. "DNC Chair Howard Dean has declared a news blackout of his appearance and requested the media not quote, record, and/or paraphrase his remarks," event coordinator Gabrielle Williams wrote in an e-mail sent to news agencies Wednesday morning. "We apologize for the late notice, but we were just informed of this request." Less than two hours later, Williams called to say: "We...

The Virginia-based missionary group WorldHelp has dropped its plans to place 300 Muslim "tsunami orphans" in a Christian children's home, the group's president, the Rev. Vernon Brewer, told news agencies Thursday. The children were still in the Muslim province of Aceh and had not been airlifted to Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, according to an electronic mail message under Brewer's name circulating among his supporters. In an interview Tuesday for an article published in Thursday's editions of The Washington Post , Brewer said that the children already had been airlifted to Jakarta and that the Indonesian government had given permission for them...

House GOP Considers Discipline Changes 11 minutes ago By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - House Republicans on Monday considered ways to make it harder to discipline members of Congress, prompted by a rebuke of Majority Leader Tom DeLay that infuriated some GOP colleagues. Preparing for a meeting to consider rules changes, some Republicans were ready to push for a new standard of conduct — a move that would base any future rebukes on more specific information than is required now. The change would continue a partisan feud over the House's method of disciplining lawmakers. Democrats opposed the change...

After being elected twice as a Republican to the position of county attorney in Anderson County, Kan., Fred Campbell decided following the Nov. 2 elections to drop his Republican Party affiliation in favor of the Libertarian Party, saying the GOP has abandoned the idea of minimal government. Campbell was re-elected in November with no opposition. He has been a Republican for years, primarily because he's "always been in favor of less government rather than more," he said. "I've always thought that the Republican Party was the major party that went along with that philosophy," Campbell explained. "But in the last...

The Schwarzenegger administration, under fire for attempting a quick rule change that would weaken the state law that guarantees lunch breaks for workers, backed off its plan for the emergency order on Monday. Instead, state officials say they will pursue changes to the lunch-break law under regular, drawn-out procedures that give the public an opportunity to weigh in at public hearings and during a public comment period. "We wanted to make sure all the interested parties had a chance to have their concerns heard," said Dean Fryer, spokesman for the state Department of Industrial Relations, the agency overseeing the division...

Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri is an Indian-born scientist who currently chairs the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He's also an unabashed environmental activist, a role he acts out as head, since 2001, of the Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI). This organization sponsors in thousands of India's schools the Green Olympiad movement, which is a competition designed to test and enhance the knowledge of Indian schoolchildren about environmental issues and whose winners will be invited to participate in Terraquiz, the only environmental quiz show on Indian national television. Well, thank God for small favors. At least there aren't two environmental...