Free Republic

British Muslim activists have stepped up a campaign to deface or rip down advertising billboards featuring scantily-clad women in communities with large numbers of Muslims, the media reported. Sky television news reported from the English city of Birmingham on Saturday that the campaign has achieved some of its goals as there were now few such billboards close to mosques. The Advertising Standards Authority said that increasing numbers of posters were being torn down or painted over in predominantly Islamic areas, the Times newspaper reported. Ads for perfume, hair dye, bras and television programmes are among those that have been attacked,...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Sept. 11 commission's final report says there's no evidence suggesting President Bill Clinton ordered airstrikes on Osama bin Laden targets to distract attention from his affair with Monica Lewinsky. But the report says the affair, coupled with other issues, likely affected later discussions about using force against the terrorist leader. Following U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the Clinton administration planned and launched cruise missile strikes on alleged terrorist assets of bin Laden in Sudan and Afghanistan. The report said reaction to the Aug. 20, 1998, strikes included "scalding criticism" that the action was "too...

COLLEGE STATION, Texas -- Two Texas A&M football players have been charged with alcohol-related crimes after they shouted racial slurs outside a fast food restaurant. Police, who were called to the restaurant to investigate, followed a sport utility vehicle driven by A&M football player Geoff Hangartner from the restaurant early Monday to a nearby home where Hangartner failed a field sobriety test, The Bryan-College Station Eagle reported in Tuesday's editions. Hangartner was charged with driving while intoxicated. His passenger and teammate, Cole Smith, was cited for public intoxication, according to the newspaper. Coach Dennis Franchione said the charges against his...

NORMAN, Okla. -- A University of Oklahoma football player will play in the Alabama game Saturday despite being arrested and ticketed after failing to stop at a stop sign. Safety Brandon Everage was cited for disregarding a stop sign at 24th Avenue S.E. and Alameda Street in east Norman about 10 a.m. Friday. He also received citations for driving without a valid driver's license, transporting an open container of alcohol, not having insurance verification and driving with an expired tagZ, said Lt. Tom Easley, a spokesman for Norman police. Everage, 22, of Granger, Texas, told police he ran the stop...

The uncertain times after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have given rise to all sorts of rumors. E-mails have circulated about malls that will be attacked on Halloween, about Osama bin Laden being spotted in Utah and Oliver North having warned about bin Laden at the Iran-Contra hearings in 1987. None of these turned out to be true and quickly were debunked on Internet sites devoted to "urban legends." The most prominent of these is Snopes.com, a Website started in 1995 as a hobby by David and Barbara Mikkelson, respectively a Web programmer and housewife in the Los Angeles area....

By Washington Bureau WASHINGTON -- Arnold Schwarzenegger has given Democrats thousands of dollars in political donations over the past two decades, including $1,000 to Massachusetts senator and liberal lightning rod Ted Kennedy. At the same time, campaign reports show, the GOP actor and gubernatorial hopeful has been a lukewarm financial supporter of Republican candidates. Ultimately, say political observers, Schwarzenegger's history of political giving indicates little beyond what already is known -- that he is a moderate Republican who married into the Democratic Kennedy clan via NBC news correspondent Maria Shriver. But conservative activists argue the pattern underscores a questionable political...

For years, legend had it that there was a group of powerful men in Bakersfield secretly living gay lives, sometimes with deadly consequences. When the county's No. 2 prosecutor was stabbed to death in his home last year, the "Lords of Bakersfield" legend broke out into the open and the city's daily newspaper decided to confront it head-on.In a series of stories that ran in January, The Bakersfield Californian found evidence of a ring of closeted gay men who had sex with teenage boys and used their influence to keep from being prosecuted. Four of the men ended up slain...