Free Republic

AP photographer gives his account of the raid As the government operation unfolded, Alan Diaz, 43-year-old freelance photographer on assignment for The Associated Press, was inside the house with his camera. MIAMI (AP) -- ''They're here! They're here!'' a cameraman shouted in the darkness. Then, suddenly, all was chaos. Somehow, before a team of federal agents went in, I hopped a fence and ran inside the modest home where Elian Gonzalez had lived since he was rescued from the ocean on Thanksgiving Day. Inside, family members screamed. I heard the door slam shut behind me. ''Go to the room -- ...

Spin control can't erase boy's trauma by Peter Gelzinis Sunday, April 23, 2000 Two thousand years ago, it was about a man's resurrection. Today, it is about a U.S. Border Patrol officer's trigger finger. Sadly, what passes for a ``miracle'' on this first Easter of the new millennium is that a man's finger did not slip . . . that a machine gun, pointed in the direction of a 6-year-old boy, did not go off . . that only rocks were hurled, only tires and trash bins went up in flames, instead of a third of Miami. For that, Bill ...

Security officials question use of force by Laura Brown Sunday, April 23, 2000 Some hostage rescue and security experts yesterday questioned the ``extreme'' tactics used to rescue Elian Gonzalez and suggested the operation may reinforce the public's image of law-enforcement officers as frightening storm troopers. ``I think that the risk here was very, very high,'' said Gary Stubblefield, a former Navy SEAL who now works for Washington, D.C.-based GlobalOptions, a security consulting firm. Stubblefield argued that the rescue was unnecessary with court actions in the case still pending. ``What if there were weapons there and someone elected to use them? ...

April 17, 2000 PNTR Trip Gets Axed By Susan Crabtree As the battle over permanent normalized trade relations for China intensified late last week, the White House was scrambling to respond to two unexpected pitfalls in its push for the landmark trade deal. Citing a lack of interest by Members, administration officials decided to scrap a lobbying trip to Beijing, just as the money spent on the White House campaign to promote the trade pact came under attack by a prominent Republican Congressman. The trip was designed to convince Members of Congress who are undecided about granting permanent normalized ...

Selleck To Get Pepperdine Doctorate MALIBU, Calif. (AP) -- Pepperdine University is giving an honorary doctorate to Tom Selleck. Selleck, who attended the University of Southern California, was chosen because of his outstanding character and ethic, the school said. The degree will be bestowed during commencement ceremonies April 28. ''It's a privilege to address young people graduating from a university which emphasizes the value of character,'' Selleck said. Selleck starred in TV's ''Magnum, P.I.'' and the films ''Three Men and a Baby'' and ''Quigley Down Under.'' He's a board member of the non-profit Michael Josephson Institute of Ethics, which holds ...

WASHINGTON: You've got to hand it to David Westin. The president of ABC News has achieved the impossible: He gave the Clinton White House the moral high ground. Bill Clinton relished turning the tables on his press tormentors. Now it was ABC that was guilty of parsing words and shading truth. ``ABC doesn't know whether Leo and I had an interview, a walk-through, or a drive-by,'' Clinton joked at a press banquet. ``Don't you news people ever learn? It isn't the mistake that kills you; it's the cover-up.'' On March 31, an ABC News posse took Leonardo DiCaprio to talk ...

NEW YORK: I don't know anyone outside Seattle who is really pro-Microsoft. But a lot of us are, at least mildly, anti-anti-Microsoft. That is, we worry that the crusade against Bill Gates sets a bad, even dangerous precedent. Let's admit the obvious: Microsoft has what amounts to a monopoly position in the operating-system market. You can argue that potential competitors have always limited Microsoft's pricing power, and anyway as we move from the wired to the wireless age that monopoly is a rapidly wasting asset. But the dominance of Microsoft's position is hard to dispute (and the company's efforts to ...

On his radio program this evening, Mike Reagan, adopted son of President Reagan, stated that his dad is the kind of person who would forgive would be assasin John Hinckley, and would be in favor of his release if Hinckley has sufficiently recovered from his mental illness. Unfortunately, Ronald Reagan is battling Altzhiemer's disease and can't speak for himself. Mike is heard on KIEV 870 am, here in the Los Angeles area, but he is also heard nation wide on the internet at www.Reagan.com

Gore Mistakenly Puts Drug Firms On ‘Enemies List’ Vice President Al Gore displays a mostly friendly face toward high-tech "New Economy" industries – except one that regularly saves lives: the pharmaceutical industry. Increasingly, Gore is putting drug companies on his enemies list, along with HMOs, insurance companies, the National Rifle Association and Big Tobacco. In his latest campaign finance reform speech, Gore blasted drug companies for "price gouging" and listed them among the special interests that use campaign contributions to block progress in Congress. During the primary campaign, he attacked former Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) for receiving campaign funds ...

PBS station KCET (Los Angeles) is running a pledge drive at the moment asking for the usual 'sign up now' to pay us money to keep us on the air. You guy's know how it goes,"we can't survive without your support" type stuff and all that.Well, I for one have not forgotten the fact that PBS stations have shared their donor lists with the DNC (Clinton/Gore). It might not have been against the law, but ethical? I don't think so. A mild stink was made about it back when this news was released and I wonder if they know how ...

Who shot D.R.? Cuban insists Rodman was released for basketball reasons Mar 8, 2000 9:03 p.m. ET By Keith Olbermann FOX Sports News Logic would suggest either the Dallas Mavericks couldn't afford all those jerseys he was throwing into the stands, or that internet billionaire Mark Cuban suddenly realized that he was being told how to run things, by a 38-year-old man with purple and white hair who has back-to-back arraignments coming up for drunk-driving and waitress-fondling. Bill Janscha/AP Dennis Rodman was released by the Mavericks after playing in only 12 games But in a conversation with Fox Sports News, ...

McCain doing "a real service" against Bush-Daschle Updated 3:31 PM ET February 23, 2000 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Arizona Sen. John McCain is doing the country -- and Democrats -- "a real service" by cutting up Republican front-runner Texas Gov. George W. Bush and proving a Democrat-style agenda can win, Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle said Wednesday. After a White House meeting, Daschle of South Dakota told reporters he found the Bush-McCain battle for the Republican nomination for president "amusing, helpful and, ultimately, very encouraging" because it was consuming money and energy that otherwise would be trained on Democrats. Daschle demurred ...

Pentagon Purchasing System Flawed By LARRY MARGASAK Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- An electrical bell that cost $714 and a $350 ball bearing show that changes in the Pentagon's purchasing system haven't erased all traces of the wildly inflated prices that caused acute embarrassment to the military more than a decade ago. There have been improvements: It's less likely under the new purchasing rules that a warplane will be stuck on the ground for want of a crucial part, an Associated Press review found. But a Defense Department buying system that brings faster deliveries and fewer burdens on contractors ...

Teacher Exam Scores Delayed January 25, 2000 By ANJETTA McQUEEN WASHINGTON (AP) - The Clinton administration is buckling to pressure from colleges in delaying a requirement that they report the scores of their graduates on teacher licensing exams, a key Democrat in Congress charged Tuesday. The reports were to begin this April under a 1998 student aid law but the Education Department is delaying them a year, claiming they didn't have enough time to create one reporting system for varying state exams. The law also directed states to publicly identify colleges that consistently produced poor teaching candidates. And based on ...

Ex-champ hurt by portrayal in "The Hurricane" by Bernard Fernandez - Philadelphia Daily News 2/12/2000 The silver-haired senior citizen, unnoticed and unrecognized, settled into his seat for yesterday's 12:30pm screening of "The Hurricane" at AMC Riverview Plaza 17 on Columbus Boulevard. But Joey Giardello, 69, was not just any member of the matinee audience. A former middleweight champion of the world, Giardello was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1969 and last year was named the fourth greatest Philadelphia fighter of all time by the Daily News. Giardello (real name: Carmine Tilelli), disturbed by reports his Dec. ...

This Hurricane is full of hot air 01/13/00 Pop stars come and pop stars go, but amid all this change there is one eternal truth: Whenever Bob Dylan writes a song about a guy, the guy is guilty as sin. That was the case with California psychopath George Jackson ("Lord, lord they shot George Jackson down"), New York mobster Joey Gallo ("Joe-eee, Joe-eee, why did they have to come and blow you A- way") and Paterson's own Ruben "Hurricane" Carter (In perhaps the dumbest couplet of a dumb career, Dylan rhymes "trigger" with the N- word.) Juries twice found Carter ...

-- ONE OF THE SAD Christmas stories in San Francisco was about low-income residents of cheap hotels, who were being evicted during the holidays. Some of these are elderly men who have lived in the same hotel for decades. The hotel owners are of course being blamed for being heartless. But the real villains are those politicians who have recklessly pushed rent control laws, even though such laws have a worldwide track record of causing housing shortages. Why are the hotel owners evicting these tenants? Because they would rather get out of the hotel business than keep losing money by ...

So, what do you all think of the hoax that was called Y2K?

Who is the sleaze? http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- IT HAS BEEN one full year since President Clinton was impeached for perjury and blatant obstruction of justice. And who is in legal jeopardy? Linda Tripp. After a year of Democrats caterwauling that the investigation into President Clinton's conduct was motivated only by politics, we are now witnessing a prosecution for wiretapping that is so obviously political in nature that it may well qualify as "selective prosecution" --- an ethical and legal transgression for prosecutors. Tripp faces up to five years in prison and a possible fine of $10,000 for tape-recording Monica Lewinsky's conversations. ...