Free Republic

What I want to ask John Kerry: In your acceptance speech, you essentially said that we won't attack unless we've been attacked. I would like to know what the threshold would be. Or, to put it another way, how many Americans will have to die before you react? 1 (Daniel Pearl/Nick Berg) 5 (1993 World Trade Center) ... if the military count 17 (USS Cole) 19 (Khobar Towers) 3000 (September 11, 2001) Or do we need to see a mushroom cloud over Manhattan? How many John? How many American lives are you willing to sacrifice on the altar of international...

The tens of thousands of people expected to welcome home Iraq war veterans at Saturday’s ticker-tape parade downtown should arrive early with their patriotism on display, organizers say.

Steve Hinkle on now: www.ksfo.com

BLAIR HORNSTINE is a straight-A student. Make that straight A-plus. She scored 1570 on her SATs out of a possible 1600. She'll attend Harvard in the fall. And until recently, it appeared as if she would be the sole valedictorian of her class at Moorestown High School, Burlington County. What makes her achievement all the more noteworthy is that Hornstine, 18, is a physically disabled, special-education student. She suffers from an immune-system disorder similar to chronic fatigue syndrome, which made it impossible for her to attend most of her classes at the school. But now Moorestown's schools superintendent, allegedly taking...

PAGE, Ariz. - For the life of them, the Kidmans cannot figure out how they could have kept most of their Navajo employees working in their family's burger stand if they had not enforced an English-only policy. It saved their business, the Kidmans say. But their ban on use of the Navajo language also has triggered the first-ever English-only discrimination lawsuit on behalf of Native Americans by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix on Sept. 27, has drawn national attention because it may shape the rights of all U.S. workers to speak languages...

DENVER - About six lawmakers walked out during the morning Senate prayer Tuesday after a Greeley pastor gave an invocation they characterized as offensive. Sen. Dave Owen, R-Greeley, who invited the pastor, later apologized to fellow lawmakers for remarks the pastor made that he said were inappropriate. Both legislative houses start each day with a prayer that is supposed to be nondenominational and nonpolitical. On Tuesday, the Rev. David Meek of Glad Tidings Church prayed for God's help in overturning Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that made abortion legal in the United States. "I pray, Lord, help this ...

There was something in Bogey's bark that wasn't quite right, postman Frank Thomas remembers thinking as he walked up to one of the townhouses on his usual route in southwest Colorado Springs. Bogey, a Maltese, usually greeted Thomas with a friendly "woof" every time he delivered mail at 711 Crown Point Drive. This time, his bark told him there was something wrong ... It was Monday afternoon and 80-something Sylvia Christensen was hungry. She put two eggs to boil on her electric stove, then started feeling a little ill. "So I laid down," Christensen recalled Tuesday. She is disabled and ...

Thanks to skeptical voters with the power of the citizen initiative, Colorado's legislature is arguably the weakest in the United States. "The Colorado electorate is leading the nation in terms of crippling its legislature," says Alan Rosenthal of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, a leading legislative scholar. While the legislature is still the most powerful branch within state government, the limits lawmakers have imposed on themselves and the limits voters have put on them combine to make Colorado's government comparatively toothless. Some members say it may be time to revisit a state constitutional amendment that ties their ...