Free Republic

Nearly half the $9.5 million Arnold Schwarzenegger has poured into the recall race has been in the form of loans that his campaign staff says can be repaid by fund-raising after the election. Most of the loans came late last week, as polls began to show Schwarzenegger's prospects for winning the governor's office strengthening. In announcing his run for governor Aug. 6, Schwarzenegger had said that he did not need money from others. ..... Robert Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies, a Los Angeles organization that promotes campaign reform, criticized the candidate's arrangement. If Schwarzenegger becomes governor, Stern...

Under Fire, Powell Receives Support From White HouseBy STEVEN R. WEISMAN ASHINGTON, April 23 — Since the end of the war in Iraq, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has come under intense fire from conservatives within the administration, in Congress and at policy institutes long favoring less diplomacy and more muscle in the American approach to the world. On issues from the Middle East to North Korea to the makeup of a postwar government in Iraq, Mr. Powell and the State Department have been battling hard-liners at the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office, administration officials say.In...

<p>WASHINGTON — South African politicians are accusing American charitable dollars of helping to promote oral sex between teenagers in their country.</p> <p>They say the country's leading AIDS charity, bankrolled by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Kaiser Family Foundation, has told thousands of teenagers to engage in oral sex in a bid to halt the spread of HIV, an epidemic that has infected one in five adults in South Africa and is expected to leave one million orphaned by the end of 2005.</p>