Free Republic

Donations Accepted Beginning Jan. 12 DETROIT -- A Detroit elementary school is asking for donations of toilet paper and light bulbs to keep their school functioning. The principal of the Academy of Americas sent a letter to staff, parents and partners asking for donations of items "that are of the utmost importance for proper school functioning and most importantly for student health and safety." In the letter, Principal Naomi Khalil cited budget constraints within the district as the reason why the school could no longer stock the items. The district is grappling with a more than $400 million budget deficit...

MARINE CORPS PLAN TO COURT-MARTIAL SERGEANT-MAJOR AT MIRAMAR. MARK KELLISON PICKED UP FOR D.U.I. - ALSO CHARGED WITH UNAUTHORIZED LEAVE, MAKING FALSE OFFICIAL STATEMENTS AND FOUR VIOLATIONS OF ORDERS. TOP-RANKING ENLISTED MAN HAS 28 YEARS SERVICE - COULD FACE BUST TO JUNIOR NCO For nearly 30 years, everything Mark Kellison did in the Corps smelled like roses. Fast promotions, doting officers, the Massena, N. Y. native was at one time, senior drill instructor at the Parris Island MCRD. A sergeant-major in MilitaryCorruption.com's favorite branch of the military, the lanky top-ranking non-com had it made as the most powerful enlisted man...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — An explosion in the house of a Hamas militant killed him and wounded 16 of his relatives and neighbors, health officials said Saturday. Doctors say two are in critical condition. The Palestinian Interior Ministry says it's investigating the cause of the blast at the home of Hamas activist Nader Abu Shaban. Hamas officials say Abu Shaban was handling explosives just before the blast.

Bands of soldiers, war veterans and Zanu-PF activists have been terrorising outlying rural areas which voted against the party and Mr Mugabe in the first round. They have razed villages and beaten, tortured, abducted and murdered MDC activists. The body of one was found this week with his eyes gouged and his tongue cut out. At least 50 people have been killed, 1,600 treated in hospital and 50,000 forced from their homes.

Iraqi police in Basra shed their uniforms, kept their rifles and switched sides. Mehdi Army fighters loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr hold their weapons while flashing the V sign in Basra Abu Iman barely flinched when the Iraqi Government ordered his unit of special police to move against al-Mahdi Army fighters in Basra. His response, while swift, was not what British and US military trainers who have spent the past five years schooling the Iraqi security forces would have hoped for. He and 15 of his comrades took off their uniforms, kept their government-issued rifles and went over to the...

Latinos’ Education Failure is Their Own Fault! Latinos score lower than whites on tests and drop-out of school more often and it is largely their fault!!!! The same goes for Black American youth! Wow!!! That was risky. One can get fired for saying such things. So to cover my buns let me just clarify that nothing in this paragraph had anything to do with race. Culture, not I.Q. or innate ability, explains this discrepancy. And if you really want to minimize the achievement gap between Latinos, Asians, Whites and Blacks, you should read on. Fifth graders in Taipei, Taiwan spend...

Snip..... In what could be the biggest State Department scandal since State Department official and United Nations founder Alger Hiss was exposed as a Soviet spy, a top Clinton State Department official and former Time magazine journalist has been identified as having been a trusted contact of the Russian intelligence service. Snip... The sensational charge against Strobe Talbott is made in a new book based on interviews with a Russian defector. Snip... Talbott has been and continues to be a major foreign policy thinker. Back in 2000, when he was named head of the Yale Center for the Study of...

CARACAS, Venezuela — A mysterious Venezuelan air force flight came under attack from vigilantes when it touched down last week at an airfield in northern Bolivia amid fears that the transport plane was delivering weapons. Suspicions were only deepened when officials confirmed that a Venezuelan banking official on board the flight had been carrying a briefcase stuffed with $160,000 in cash. The airfield, at Riberalta, is located near a Bolivian uranium-mining area, adding to long-standing suspicions that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is trying to purchase uranium from his Latin American neighbor for transshipment to Iran.

The Prince of Wales was embroiled last night in a diplomatic row after the leaking of e-mails in which his senior staff made disparaging comments about Israel. Internal e-mails between two of the Prince’s closest aides make clear that there was “no chance ever” of Clarence House accepting an invitation to visit Jerusalem. The e-mails, published in The Jewish Chronicle today, also disclose a fear that Israel would want the Prince “to help burnish its international image”. The e-mails are understood to have been copied accidentally to the out- going ambassador, Zvi Heivetz, who left his post on Wednesday night....

Liberal Senate Democrats and the U.S. State Department are desperate to get the U.N.'s Law of the Sea Treaty ratified. But Senator David Vitter, a conservative Republican, keeps getting in the way. Through skillful questioning during Thursday's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, the Louisiana Republican got a leading treaty supporter to acknowledge that America's enemies can manipulate the process of mandatory dispute settlement under the treaty so that the United Nations Secretary-General plays the key role in the outcome. Vitter called this a "recipe for disaster" for America and urged more hearings into the treaty's flaws.

Perhaps Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico and Democrat presidential candidate, and his handlers misunderstood: Candor, not cluelessness, is the new political-speak. It is the only plausible explanation they can use following his abysmal performance on "Meet the Press" last Sunday, an appearance peppered with so many apologies and I-shouldn't-have-said-thats that one might think they were at a backwoods revival. His "Meet the Press" mistakes came in every size -- big ones and small ones, even medium-sized ones: from immigration flip-flops to character flaws that reflect a propensity for exaggeration. Heck, he even flubbed his favorite baseball team. SNIP Then...

(04/19/07 -- DURHAM) - A week after state Attorney General Roy Cooper dropped all charges in the Duke Lacrosse case about a dozen people are protesting that decision. Thursday morning they gathered outside the house on North Buchanan Street, where the infamous party took place, calling for justice. They say the Attorney General made the wrong decision. On March 13, 2006 an exotic dancer accused three Duke Lacrosse players of kidnapping and raping her. All of those charges have been dropped citing insufficient evidence. AG Cooper said in a press conference last week the accuser could not identify the...

SOEST, Germany – More and more Germans are converting to Islam. Last year approximately 4,000 persons became Muslims. According to the Central Islam-Institute in Soest, the numbers have been rising since the turn of the century. Up to the year 2000 the annual number of conversions stagnated at 300, but it has been rising ever since. The institute’s director, Salim Abdullah, has no plausible explanation for this trend, as he told the evangelical news agency "idea." In the past, converts were chiefly women, who married Muslims, or academics with an "affection for the Orient."

Press Release Source: Ford Motor Company NAACP Recognizes Ford Motor Company With 'Top Honors' on Automotive Industry Report Card Wednesday July 19, 9:00 am ET - NAACP votes Ford as one of its highest performers on 2006 Economic Reciprocity Initiative Report Card - Ford to serve as title sponsor of Youth Freedom Fund Dinner - Baton to be passed to Detroit as the host city for the 2007 NAACP Convention - Ford to serve on host committee WASHINGTON, July 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- For the second year in a row, Ford Motor Company was one of two automakers to earn top...

BEIRUT -- Israel intensified its air assault on Lebanon yesterday, bombing central Beirut for the first time and pounding seaports and a key bridge as it tightened a noose around this reeling nation. Trying to defuse the crisis, Lebanon's prime minister indicated he might send his army to take control of southern Lebanon from Hezbollah -- a move that might risk civil war. In a more ominous sign that the struggle could spread, Israel accused Iran of helping fire a missile that damaged an Israeli warship, a charge Iran denied. Hezbollah guerrillas, meanwhile, fired waves of rockets ever deeper into...

A bankruptcy trustee for a carnival company whose owners received a pardon from President Clinton is seeking to garnish the bank accounts of Mr. Clinton's brother-in-law to recoup more than $100,000 in loans. Anthony D. Rodham, one of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's two brothers, got the loans from United Shows of America Inc. after its owners obtained the presidential pardon in March 2000 over the objections of the Justice Department. Michael E. Collins, trustee for United Shows, filed papers in Alexandria bankruptcy court seeking the return of $107,000 plus $46,034 in interest from Mr. Rodham, 51, for the loans he...

On Recent Wars Things Not Figured Out May 17, 2006 People ask how we got into our splendid mess in Iraq and why we can’t get out. The question is a subset of a larger question: Why, since WWII, have so many first-world armies gotten into drawn-out guerrilla wars in bush-world countries, and lost? Examples abound: France in Vietnam, America in Vietnam, France in Algeria, Russia in Afghanistan, Israel in Lebanon, etc. Why don’t they learn? The answer I think is that militaries are influenced by a kind of man—call him the Warrior—who by nature is unsuited for modern wars....

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- Somali militiamen who skirmished with U.S. Navy vessels claimed Sunday they did not fire the first shot and that they had been patrolling Somali waters to stop illegal fishing vessels. On Saturday, two U.S. Navy ships exchanged gunfire with suspected pirates off the coast of Somalia, killing one suspect and wounding five others. (Full story) It said that the incident took place on international waters and the Navy had taken 12 suspects, including the wounded, into custody after the gunbattle. Saleban Aadan Barqad, a spokesman for the militias, confirmed the casualties Sunday to The Associated Press....

He was a family favourite, a harmless if over-the-top entertainer. Now he is a pariah who will spend the next few months in a filthy jail WANNA be in my gang? Gary Glitter sang in the 1970s, as thousands of children chanted their agreement. Yesterday, the once-adored glam rock star began a three-year prison sentence in Vietnam for molesting two underage girls, his glitter utterly tarnished by sordid sex crimes against children. Today that invitation to join Glitter’s gang seems to carry grim sexual overtones. In the annals of celebrity scandal, there has never been anything quite like Glitter’s passage...

THREE years may sound like a relatively light sentence for a man who was at one point facing the death penalty, but Gary Glitter’s time in Vietnamese custody will be extremely tough. “Conditions are terrible,” Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said. “Creature comforts are nonexistent, prisoners sleep on mats on concrete floors, food is minimal and there are widespread lice. “There is also regular abuse, although I don’t expect Glitter to be abused because it would be too hard to cover it up. He is luckier than his cellmates in that respect. “He may be able to...