Free Republic

A failure to resolve twin strikes of the writers’ and screen actors’ guilds could lead to “devastating effects” if no deal is reached soon, according to billionaire media mogul Barry Diller. snip Mr. Diller, a former Paramount Pictures CEO, said on July 16 that the situation could compound if not resolved quickly. “These conditions will potentially produce an absolute collapse of an entire industry,” he told CBS News. “I would call for a September 1 deadline. There’s a strike deadline. I think there should be a settlement deadline, because unless it happens by September 1 … The truth is, this...

Despite what you may have heard from the mainstream media, Mitt Romney does not have the Republican nomination locked up. In fact, he is rapidly losing delegates that almost everyone assumed that he already had in the bag. To understand why this is happening, you have to understand the delegate selection process. Each state has different rules for selecting delegates to the Republican national convention, and in many states the "voting" done by the public does not determine the allocation of delegates to particular candidates at all. And the truth is that delegates are the only thing that really...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A week ago, I pondered whether public-school integration was dead. I got my answer Monday as I sat in the audience listening as the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court probed and prodded on the matter of race. Diversity, as a tool of public education, is dead as a doornail. It was in the air. The elegantly gilded courtroom turned somber as one justice after another dismissed the notion of purposeful diversity efforts in public education. Someone next to me whispered they had just seen the widow of former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. As a...

Cuban leader Fidel Castro has accused President Bush of plotting with organized crime to kill him. At the end of a five-hour address to anti-free trade activists in Havana, Mr. Castro said Friday that President Bush had made a commitment "with the Cuban-American mafia" to assassinate him. There was no immediate comment from the White House. The Cuban leader also vowed that if the United States were to invade the island, he would, "go down fighting." He said Cuba is prepared for a conflict, and will not budge from its principles. Last month, the White House said a special commission...

HAVANA - Cuban President Fidel Castro accused President Bush on Friday of plotting with Miami exiles to kill him as part of his administration's hardening policies against the communist island. The Cuban leader didn't back up his accusations with details. His comments came at the end of a 5 1/2-hour speech that began Thursday night and continued into early Friday at the close of a conference bringing together activists across the region who oppose the Free Trade Area of the Americas. "We know that Mr. Bush has committed himself to the mafia ... to assassinate me," the Cuban president...

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuban President Fidel Castro vowed on Friday to die fighting "with a gun in my hand" if the United States invaded Cuba to overthrow his communist government. "I don't care how I die, but for sure, if they invade us, I will die fighting," the 77-year-old leader said at a meeting of anti-free trade activists from across the hemisphere. Castro, who was the target of countless CIA assassination plots in the 1960s, called on the Bush administration to clarify to the world what its policy was on assassinating foreign leaders. Earlier this month, Bush Administration officials accused...