Free Republic

I am wondering if there are any ham radio operators amongst we FReepers? My brother is reading up on getting his license and I might give it a try, also. Is there a FReeper radio club?

I have a few questions. When did newspapers start endorsing political candidates? What authority do they have to do this? Isn't endorsing one candidate over another confirm the bias of a supposedly impartial media?

Efforts to raise money to build a national Martin Luther King Jr. memorial on the Mall have stalled because the memorial foundation so far has been unable to get permission from the King family to use the slain civil rights leader's image and words in the fundraising campaign. The King family wants to receive a fee as part of such an agreement, said Harry Johnson, president of the King National Memorial Project Foundation Inc. The memorial, estimated to cost $100 million, is to be built on a four-acre Tidal Basin site in the sightline of the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials. ...

My pictures from the Infinite FReep, so beautifully organized by Kristinn, Hail Caesar and several others. My brain is like a sieve so I don't remember many names, so I've not listed any. Scroll through each page and click on the link at the bottom to see the next page. The FReeping starts here.

The world's finance ministers and central bankers may have canceled plans to gather in Washington this weekend, but scores of protesters and activists have not. Organizers campaigning against the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are shifting their focus to the growing antiwar movement. Demonstrators spent months preparing for the meetings, which were set for Saturday and Sunday, until the World Bank and IMF canceled the sessions last week in light of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Police had estimated that as many as 100,000 protesters would fill the capital for a raucous week of marches ...

OCEAN CITY, Md., Aug. 18 -- In his first comments on efforts to repeal a new law protecting gay men and lesbians against discrimination, Maryland Gov. Parris N. Glendening said today he was outraged by the law's opponents and called the repeal campaign "mean-spirited." Glendening (D) pushed for protections for gay men and lesbians for more than three years and was finally successful this year when the General Assembly approved the measure, which was to take effect in October. But it has been put on hold until voters weigh in during the November 2002 election, because opponents of the new ...

She prayed to ward off the prison insects. She prayed that she might see her family again. And she prayed with hopes that her cellmate, a young criminal, might believe, too. Gao Zhan, the American University researcher who was released last week after five months in Chinese detention centers, told fellow worshipers at St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Falls Church yesterday that it was her Christian faith that sustained her. "God is the one who saved my life, who brought me back," she told the worshipers. "I prayed three times a day at least. And on the hard days, I ...

Just shy of a quarter-century ago, I had some unkind things to say about the Washingtonian Magazine. I thought that a magazine bearing the city's name ought to pay a bit more attention to the three-quarters of the population that wasn't white. On those occasions when it did write about black Washingtonians, it seemed to me, the stories were mostly negative. But what really set me off was the October 1976 cover: a rendering of an ice cream cone with (as I described it at the time) "a single dip of vanilla surmounted and overwhelmed by four scoops of chocolate." ...

Made-Up Murder Has Philly Editors Chagrined It was a dramatic column in the Philadelphia Inquirer about an early-morning confrontation in a local park: "One of the men pulled out a knife and demanded that the couple empty their pockets. . . . One of the robbers plunged the knife into one of the robbed. The victim fell, and the two criminals ran." What's more, freelancer Thom Nickels wrote last Saturday, "there was no news -- no mention -- of the killing in the daily press or on any of Philadelphia's TV stations." There was, it turns out, a reason for ...

Overstepping Their Bounds? By Lloyd Grove Washington Post Staff Writer and Reliable Source Columnist Thursday, April 12, 2001; 1:05 PM Just when the Bush administration's China crisis is cooling down, a major newspaper group's problems are heating up. The trouble started when Ball State University senior Amy Leong – a photographer-intern for the ASNE Reporter, the official publication for last week's American Society of Newspaper Editors convention in Washington – was assigned to cover the confab's opening reception at the J.W. Marriott. The 22-year-old Chinese-American native of Kokomo, Ind., wrote in the April 6 Reporter: "On stage and in the ...

It's something one learns at a very early age: You can't sign Mom or Dad's name on the report card that you're ashamed of, or on the field trip permission slip you left in your backpack. Bad things will happen if you do. So when officials at West Springfield High School in Fairfax County corralled 47 students in the cafeteria and asked them to forge their parents' signatures on a federal form, someone was bound to get in trouble. The incident happened March 22, after Principal David Smith realized about 125 of his 2,250 students hadn't filled out Impact Aid ...

The political battle over President Bush's tax-cut plan has centered on charges that it tilts too heavily to upper-income taxpayers. But the debate has obscured one fact about the nation's progressive tax system -- an increasingly small segment of the population pays a huge share of federal income taxes. Consider this: The 400 wealthiest taxpayers pay about as much in federal income taxes as more than 40 million individuals and families at the bottom of the income scale, according to Internal Revenue Service data. Read the rest of the article.

Just a little fun. The Washington Post's web site has a tiny picture of some civilians that were on the USS Greenville the day it sank the Japanese boat. They are pleading for our help in identifying any of the people in the picture. Check out the main page of the Post and send them your submissions. They did not indicate whether the names submitted had to be of people currently alive. E-mail the names of these "traitorous" civilians and business leaders to national@washpost.com You would be doing your country a great "public service."

NASA Janitor Allegedly Put Bodily Fluids Into Drinks A janitor at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center is being accused of sexual harassment after allegedly putting bodily fluids into employees’ drinks. Linda Gehrmann, who does contract work at the facility in Greenbelt, Md., says she collapsed after receiving an office memo Friday afternoon informing staff about the incident. It says a janitor had not only left “sexually explicit notes” on some women’s desks, but also had introduced “bodily fluids into their beverages.” “When I sipped my coffee about three times in the last two weeks … it tasted salty,” Gehrmann said. ...

Hillary Clinton Starts PAC to Help Democrats By George Lardner Jr. Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, February 7, 2001 ; Page A17 Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has established a political action committee, called HILLPAC, that advisers say she intends to use to help Democrats take back control of the House and Senate. The freshman senator from New York and former first lady also is considering launching an arm of the PAC that would take large "soft money" donations from individuals, unions and others. The PAC was registered with the Federal Election Commission on Jan. 5, two days after the then-first ...

I was just watching CNN at 5:35 pm and Judy Woodruff was discussing President-Elect Bush's meeting with pastors and grass roots organizations tomorrow, in Austin. Her guests were Rev. Eugene Rivers of 10 Point Coalition, in Boston and a gentleman named Robert Woodson. Woodruff took pains to point out the lack of support from the black community. Rivers and Woodson took turns telling Judy that Jesse, Al Sharpton and others like them do not speak for all black Americans. Judy squinted her eyes, pursed her lips and looked at her notes as if to find the Democrat Manifesto that says ...