Free Republic

CEO disputes $241K tab at topless club Attorney says charges were fraudulent NEW YORK (AP) -- American Express is suing the CEO of a communications company for payment of $241,000 worth of disputed credit card charges at a Manhattan topless club. American Express says in papers filed in state court that Savvis Inc. chief executive officer Robert A. McCormick was in the club Scores in October 2003 with at least three other men. After McCormick got the $241,000 corporate credit card bill, Savvis called American Express and complained that some of the charges were fraudulent, the lawsuit says. The communications...

NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip - Jewish settlers sobbed and screamed, some of them ripping their shirts in mourning, as Israeli troops dragged them from homes and synagogues Wednesday — the beginning of the end of Israel's 38-year occupation of the Gaza Strip. In the West Bank, a settler killed four Palestinian laborers in a shooting rampage, which Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon denounced as a twisted act of "Jewish terror" designed to stop the historic pullout. Despite the escalation of Israeli-Palestinian tensions, the eviction of die-hard settlers and their nationalist supporters who flooded into Gaza in recent weeks moved forward...

LITTLE FALLS — A Morrison AP) Little Falls, Minn. A judge in Morrison County has ordered a strip club, adult book and video store near Swanville, Minn. to close, citing the county's revised zoning ordinances. The ordinances restrict where adult-oriented businesses can locate and create a fee scale and licensing requirement. The ruling by Judge Thomas Godzala closes Lookin' Fine Smut and Porno, located at Minnesota Highways 27 and 28 near Swanville. Gordy Wheeler opened the business in October 2003. It is located about 930 feet from a tavern. The county's revised zoning ordinances prohibit any adult uses within 1,320...

Contents IntroductionWhat is the PSM/ISM?ISM Rewriting History ACT NOW! - OPPOSE GOOGLE'S PLAN Automatically send emails opposing Google's planSign a petition Introduction According to Lee Kaplan, writing for FrontPageMagazine.com: The Internet giant Google will give news agency status to the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), according to an anonymous source at Google. If true, the ISM—an affiliate of the anarchist/communist wing of the PLO—would be on par with professional news services such as CNN, Fox, and Associated Press. … The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and the Palestinian Solidarity Movement (PSM) are related and interconnected organizations that have one goal: the...

Clerics strip fugitive Taliban leader of power By Tom Coghlan in Kandahar (Filed: 20/05/2005) A crowd of 600 Afghan clerics gathered in front of an historic mosque yesterday to strip the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar of his claim to religious authority, in a ceremony that provided a significant boost to the presidency of Hamid Karzai. The declaration, signed by 1,000 clerics from across the country, is an endorsement of the US-backed programme of reconciliation with more moderate elements of the Taliban movement that Karzai has been pursuing ahead of the country's first parliamentary elections, due in September. Symbolically,...

A city lap-dancing boss said today he had been forced to stop male strippers performing at his club because of the abuse and intimidation they suffered at the hands of “rowdy” women guests. Allan Sartori, owner of The Rocket Club in Broad Street, Birmingham, said he had to hire extra security staff for his Saturday night listing in which three or four men would dance for women on request. Mr Sartori said he was axing the popular event because of the disruption caused by women guests and he blamed female emancipation for the unruly scenes. He said: “I am amazed...

Solidarity, Curiosity Sends Thousands of Israelis to Settlements By Julie Stahl CNSNews.com Jerusalem Bureau Chief April 29, 2005 Homesh, West Bank (CNSNews.com) -- Thousands of Israelis, taking advantage of a warm, holiday week, flocked to the West Bank settlement of Homesh on Thursday, one day after an even larger gathering in the Gaza Strip's Gush Katif settlement bloc. The YESHA settlers' council organized the gatherings to protest Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan. Under the plan, the government will remove some 9,500 Israelis from all 21 Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip and four in the northern West Bank,...

A strip club in the United States that attempted to get around a ban on full nudity by giving patrons sketch pads for special "art nights" was cited for violating the city's nudity rules, officials said. The citation was issued on Monday night to the Erotic City Gentleman's Club in Boise in Idaho. Boise allows full nudity for "serious artistic" expression only, so the club handed out pencils and sketch pads to patrons so they could sketch naked women. However, a police spokeswoman said officials concluded that patrons were not focused on art, so officers cited three dancers for violations...

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) - Chile's Supreme Court on Thursday refused to strip Gen. Augusto Pinochet of his immunity from prosecution, blocking yet another attempt to try him for alleged human rights abuses during his dictatorship. The Court's 15-4 vote rejected a lower court ruling that would have stripped the 89-year-old former ruler of the legal immunity he enjoys as former president. In announcing its decision the Supreme Court did not immediately publish the text of its ruling, which is believed to be based mainly on Pinochet's deteriorated health. On Dec. 2, the Santiago Court of Appeals had voted 14-9 to...

Jeremy Wright of Ensight.org, famed for many things including selling his blog for profit, auctioning his services on ebay and for being an all round good guy, has been detained, strip searched, and banned from the United States after attempting to legally cross the Canadian-United States border on a trip to New York to meet with uber-publishers McGraw Hill, who were set to sign him as a consultant to the company on blogging. Whilst posts to his site (since removed for legal reasons) are not clear on all the circumstances of the detention, Wright writes that US Immigration officials accused...

Researchers find rare letters from fifth century Gaza Strip Mon Jan 24, 3:48 PM ET Mideast - AFP GENEVA (AFP) - Swiss researchers have uncovered a rare exchange of letters written in ancient Greek during the fifth century in what is now the Gaza Strip , the University of Fribourg said. The discovery offers proof of a rich intellectual society in a region that is better known today for a bitter and bloody standoff between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, said one of the researchers, Professor Jacques Schamp. Located amid mounds of manuscripts stored at the Marciana National Library in...

School officials in Palo Alto are reconsidering their use of a popular speaker for an annual career day after he advised middle school students that they could earn a good living as strip dancers. William Fried told eighth-graders at Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School that stripping and exotic dancing could be lucrative career moves for girls, offering as much as $250,000 or more per year, depending on their bust size. "It's sick, but it's true," Fried, president of Foster City's Precision Selling, a management consulting firm, told The Associated Press. "The truth of the matter is you can earn a...

A top woman golfer has shocked the normally staid sport by launching a raunchy nude calendar. Sophie Sandolo has ditched her sensible slacks and Pringle pullover to give the game a new image. "Golf needs more visibility, glamour and a new image," explained the European tour's 44th best player in 2004. "My first sexy calendar is intended to represent my love for golf, my desire for freedom and a touch of coquetry. I'm instinctively attracted by fashion, elegance and glamour. "I've tried to bring my small contribution and hopefully open new doors which could bring more notoriety to the sport...

We're having four couples over for beef tenderloin over the holidays. My question is: Is Kobe beef all that they claim it is? I don't mind paying more if it really is much better. Help, please?

third of 12-year-old boys in the Gaza strip want to become martyrs for the Palestinian cause. Are they victims of Israeli oppression or their own side's propaganda? Ed O'Loughlin reports. A Friday afternoon in Gaza City and a Palestinian militant group is staging a passing-out parade for its newest graduates. On a dirt soccer pitch, 24 masked recruits of the Popular Resistance Committee go through a program of song, march and very ragged foot drill. Some clutch real rifles, others wooden cut-outs. The crowd of onlookers is appreciative, but smaller than it might have been. There are wanted men...

Israel raid 'kills Hamas chief' A senior Hamas figure was among two militants killed in an Israeli air strike in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian officials say. Medics say one of the men killed may have been Adnan al-Ghoul, a senior figure in militant group Hamas. Adnan al-Ghoul had been on Israel's wanted list for over 15 years, news agencies reports. There was no immediate word from the Israeli army, which has often targeted militants in missile strikes in Gaza. But Reuters quoted Israeli security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, as saying the air strike may have targeted Mr Ghoul....

Ms. Spencer estimated that since May, 800 of the roughly 4,000 adult clubs in America have launched voter registration efforts, registering an average of 200 voters per club. Few adult clubs have engaged in voter drives in previous elections. The registration efforts have taken many forms. Jim Halbach, owner of seven clubs in Wisconsin and Illinois, personally approaches customers as they come through his clubs' doors and asks them to sign voter registration documents. Mr. Halbach also has special voter drive nights, at which he waives normal door charges. "These nights, the dancers come down off the stage and tell...

Harrah's Entertainment Inc. is buying Caesars Entertainment Inc. (CZR) for about $5.2 billion in cash and stock in a deal that would create the largest gambling company in the world. The deal announced Thursday eclipses last month's high-profile MGM Mirage merger with Mandalay Resort Group (MBG) while setting up a battle for customers on the lucrative Las Vegas Strip. A source familiar with the deal, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Harrah's and Caesars began negotiating after MGM Mirage completed its deal last month to buy Mandalay for $4.8 billion in cash... Both deals will face intense scrutiny from federal...

MOURNING IN AMERICA Las Vegas Strip going dark for Reagan Only 7th time in modern history city's glitz dimmed -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: June 10, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com LAS VEGAS – The glamorous lights of the Las Vegas Strip will be darkened here tomorrow night to honor late President Ronald Reagan. Las Vegas Strip plans 3-minute outage It's only the seventh time in modern history casino operators have taken part in an intentional blackout, the last of which occurred three days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the U.S. The planned three-minute outage is slated to...

CAMP RED CLOUD, South Korea - The 2nd Infantry Division wants lap dancing banned in Area I nightclubs frequented by U.S. soldiers, according to documents to be presented this week to the Korean Special Tourist Association and local mayors. Club owners and mayors will have 30 days to respond to a proposed association and 2nd ID Good Commerce Practices Guide, which sets out standards expected of clubs near U.S. bases in Area I. Last year lap dancing was explicitly authorized in an attachment to the 2nd ID's 2002-2003 policy. The proposed guide states: "Though lap dancing is authorized under 2nd...