Free Republic

CHICAGO, Aug. 19 — The Democratic National Committee voted Saturday to penalize 2008 presidential candidates who defied a new nominating calendar devised to lessen the longtime influence of New Hampshire and Iowa, the two states that have traditionally kicked off the nominating process.

GEORGETOWN, S.C. (AP) -- An ex-con who co-wrote a book about life in prison was sentenced to death Friday for killing his live-in girlfriend and raping a 15-year-old girl.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 14 — After being outmaneuvered in the politics of national security in the last two elections, Democrats say they are determined not to cede the issue this year and are working to cast President Bush as having diminished the nation’s safety.

MAPLEWOOD, Minn. — Like most pastors who lead thriving evangelical megachurches, the Rev. Gregory A. Boyd was asked frequently to give his blessing — and the church’s — to conservative political candidates and causes. ...

Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s sons, Qusay and Uday Hussein, are killed after a three-hour firefight with U.S. forces in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. It is widely believed that the two men were even more cruel and ruthless than their notorious father, and their death was celebrated among many Iraqis. Uday and Qusay were 39 and 37 years old, respectively, when they died. Both are said to have amassed considerable fortunes through their participation in illegal oil smuggling.

TRENTON. July 6 — An agreement to raise the sales tax to 7 percent, from 6 percent, was reached today, according to Democrats in the New Jersey General Assembly. Half the revenue raised would go to close the $4.5 billion gap in the state's operating budget.

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Friday, June 30 — Israeli troops seized 64 members of Hamas in the West Bank on Thursday, including a third of the Palestinian cabinet and 23 legislators, a move that Israeli officials said indicated a significant change in Israel's policy toward the Hamas government.

For the last four decades, the predominantly black population of central Brooklyn has been represented in Washington by one of its own, a tradition that dates to the 1968 victory of Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress.

Something between 200,000 and one million people took to the streets of Madrid (see photo) for a demonstration against appeasement of terrorists. The ETA Basque terrorists, who are to enter talks with the government were the proximate cause. But also the Muslim terrorists who dream of reconquista - re-claiming Spain for the Dar al Islam. Speakers and many in the chanting crowd denounced PM Zapatero, who unexpectedly won Spain for the Socialists in the wake of the Madrid terror bombing and who now proposes to negotiate with the ETA thugs. The crowd was apparently chanting against both forms of appeasement.

WASHINGTON, March 29 — The battle among Republicans over immigration policy and border security is threatening to undercut a decade-long effort by President Bush and his party to court Hispanic voters, just as both parties are gearing up for the 2006 elections.

NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 24 — For a long time I hated Mardi Gras, and tried to flee the city in those weeks.... Bret Johnston, 4, waved as his father, David Johnston, held him on a ladder to watch the Excalibur parade in Metairie. It was the opposite of what made New Orleans beguiling, or so it seemed to me: loud and raucous, the city's ritual self-abasement enforced mass jollity. The workaday New Orleans, underpopulated, green and quiet, was best in its absolute regard for individual states of joy or gloom. For years I failed to see the point, a distaste...

THEY were a staple of Communist Poland, punishingly drab restaurants in which the menu was scrawled on a handwritten board above the cash register, room-temperature yogurt drinks sat lined up on the counter, and waitresses in smocks served food on trays through a small window. They are called milk bars, and despite their utter lack of charm, they are beloved by people who grew up in Communist Poland and remain popular there today. They are so beloved, in fact, that they also endure in the traditionally Polish neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, even as the area is being fast transformed by...

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 27 —Ladera Heights is a place that some black Angelenos aspire to and others scoff at. Skip to next paragraph Monica Almeida/The New York Times Alisa Ivie looking at the homework of her children, Joshua, 11, and Jessica, 6, at their home in Ladera Heights, near Los Angeles. It is a choice hilltop neighborhood filled with spacious houses, well-trimmed shrubbery and city and ocean views. Home to many African-American doctors, lawyers, teachers and other professionals, the community is sometimes called "the black Beverly Hills." But community leaders say just one thing is missing, decent public schools, and...

WASHINGTON - Senators Clinton and Schumer are asking the Pentagon to spend $123 million of its wartime budget for New York projects that the Department of Defense didn't ask for - but that in many cases are linked to the senators' campaign contributors. The two Democratic senators announced the projects - from a genomics research project at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan to cancer research on Long Island - in press releases this month, touting the impact they would have on the state economy.

It’s 8 p.m. on a Friday, and Adeena is lying on a bed in my apartment, squirming in pain, her pants unzipped to reveal a disturbingly large belly. We’re watching a DVD she chose from the corner Blockbuster: Coach Carter, starring Samuel Jackson and Ashanti. Jackson has just taken a job at a ghetto high school, and he’s supposed to whip a bunch of thuggish boys into a championship basketball team. Ashanti is tight-jeansed and saucy, but sweet enough to have for a boyfriend Kenyon, the one teammate who’s serious about college. Buff young men make jump shots to hip-hop...

Union organizers have obtained what they say is majority support in one of the biggest unionization drives in the South in decades, collecting the signatures of thousands of Houston janitors...

"There are difficulties inherent in some of KRI's markets (changing ethnicities in Miami, a world gone electronic in San Jose, manufacturing blight in Philadelphia, etc.)," she wrote in a research note to clients. "We believe investors should tread lightly, if at all, as no deal could hurt the sector's valuations."

State officials in Connecticut want to ban a holiday beer label they worry might entice children to drink beer, sparking a possible constitutional battle and virtually guaranteeing the beer will sell out.

If President Chirac thought he was going to gain peace with the Muslim community in France by taking an appeasement line in the Iraq war, it certainly looks like he miscalculated. Today the streets of the French capital are looking more like Ramallah and less like the advanced, sophisticated, gay Paree image Monsieur Chirac likes to portray to the world, and the story, which is just starting to grip the world's attention, is full of ironies. One is tempted to suggest that Prime Minister Sharon send a note cautioning Monsieur Chirac about cycles of violence. Back in the 1990s, the...

At least five people are feared dead and many wounded in two powerful explosions in busy markets in the Indian capital, Delhi. Police say the first occurred in Paharganj, in the heart of the city. The second took place in Sarojini Nagar, south of the city centre. Rescue teams and police have rushed to the scenes. The markets were crowded with people shopping ahead of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. There are also unconfirmed reports that there has been a third blast in another part of Delhi. A police official, who wished to remain unnamed, told the BBC News...