Free Republic

Marriage experts hope pact turns tide on divorce Associated Press DENVER — Saying they have taken the wrong approach to marriage counseling for three decades, more than 100 scholars, religious and civic leaders pledged to turn the tide on divorce. The pact to take a new tack in fostering strong marriages was signed Thursday at a conference addressing the breakdown of the family and growing divorce rates. "For the past 30 years, marriage counselors have been operating with faulty information, and the divorce rate has soared," said Diane Sollee, director of the Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education. "It's ...

It's a Fact: Teachers Are Typically the Dregs of the College-Educated Population Wednesday, June 28, 2000 By Thomas Sowell Over the years, the shallowest and silliest letters that have arrived in the mail have usually come from schoolteachers. In order to lessen a needless burden on the post office, let me answer those letters -- past, present and future -- once and for all, so that both the senders and the recipient can save themselves a lot of time. What teachers object to most often is my pointing out that the people who teach in our public schools are drawn ...

Bosnians Endure Life as Lab Specimens of the New International Order Tuesday, June 27, 2000 BY GEORGIE ANNE GEYER UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE WASHINGTON -- In Sarajevo two years ago, Haris Silajdzic, the respected Bosnian prime minister, was impassionedly sharing his ideas about his tragic country -- ideas that are, unfortunately, all too relevant today. "Bosnia is a symbol," he told me then, as we sat at dusk in the handsome old presidency on the Bosna River. "That's why it is important. What we had here were not Serb nationalists, but fascists; and so Bosnia broke the World War II barrier ...

Attack shows culture's sexism By Paul Ginnetty Newsday The notion of post-traumatic stress applies not only to the direct victims of a crime but also to those who are at the scene. Courtesy of the ever-present amateur videographer, we have all been indirect victims of the June 11 so-called "wilding" in Central Park. How have we been affected, indeed traumatized? First, we have all taken a hit to our sense of personal safety in public places. This occurred in stark daylight in the midst of a festival crowd — so much for there being safety in numbers — in one ...

Would-Be Pub Robber Hospitalized After His Hostages Overpower and Severely Beat Him Wednesday, June 21, 2000 SCRIPPS-McCLATCHY NEWS SERVICE LAS VEGAS -- An armed robber and hostage taker had the tables turned when his victims overpowered him, then beat him. The hostages pummeled the 24-year-old suspect so severely that he was taken to University Medical Center on Monday. A gunman entered PT's Pub about 5:20 a.m. and robbed the bar, police said. An employee was able to trip the silent alarm, and when police contacted the bar, the robber told dispatchers to leave him alone. He apparently pointed a gun ...

Freedom's waning in the 'People's Republic of Canada' By Marianne M. Jennings Canadian Mounties have lacked credibility since Nelson Eddy, clad in a red Nehru jacket, crooned to Jeanette MacDonald, "When I'm calling you," with the "you" stretched mercilessly into "youhoohooooo." Moose emerged from the forest primeval to query, "What is that noise?" But, civilian Canadian conduct over the past few months has made Jeanette and Nelson look positively cerebral, despite the yodeling. Even the moose are skittish. Our neighbors to the north have been wearing their toques too tight, as manifest by lunges into decadence, communism and general nuttiness. ...

The Poverty Industry May Be Hurting Blacks and Other Minorities Friday, May 26, 2000 BY ROBERT WOODSON, SR. THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE For many years in America, we have acted on the belief that our societal problems were caused by racial injustice, poverty and lack of political power. Our public and private programs and policies were driven by these assumptions. Now, 35 years and $5.3 trillion later, we've had civil rights laws and the War on Poverty, and people of color are in positions of political power in most major urban centers. But our problems have not been solved, and ...

Bureaucrat Math Friday, May 26, 2000 Most people would see nothing wrong with a deal in which a private citizen was treated fairly by the government, but then most people are not federal bureaucrats. Jack McDonald was, and though he is retired he retains a mastery of the obtuse government computations that so often baffle the rest of us. Once the chief appraiser for Utah's office of the Bureau of Land Management, McDonald has prompted an investigation of several St. George-area deals in which owners traded property devalued by the Endangered Species Act for cash or other government land. He ...

Robbers Shoot 4-Year-Old to Quiet Her Crying Thursday, May 25, 2000 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- A 4-year-old girl was shot in the chest during an armed robbery, apparently because she would not stop crying. Vanessa Peralta was in fair condition Wednesday at Carolinas Medical Center. The girl's mother, Mirna Adia Machuca, was leaving the family-owned La Providencia grocery store when the robbery happened Monday night, police said. She locked up the store and was heading with Vanessa and her other daughter, an infant, to her vehicle when two men with handguns approached, police said. "One of the men ...

Milosevic gags media critics; foes block traffic in protest Associated Press BELGRADE, Yugoslavia — Making good on threats of a crackdown, police Wednesday took control of several media outlets critical of President Slobodan Milosevic and his government. Police in woolen masks took over Studio B television and the popular independent radio B2-92 overnight at the stations' headquarters in downtown Belgrade. Employees of the leading private newspaper Blic and the student Radio Index also found their offices padlocked early Wednesday. About 50 employees of the four main media outlets stood outside the high-rise where their offices were located after security guards ...

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The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement "May we live long and die out" VHEMT (pronounced vehement) is a movement not an organization. It's a movement advanced by people who care about life on planet Earth. We're not just a bunch of misanthropes and anti-social, Malthusian misfits, taking morbid delight whenever disaster strikes humans. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Voluntary human extinction is the humanitarian alternative to human disasters. LINK, IF YOU DARE!

Timid Half-Measures May Indeed Trap Us in a Colombian Quagmire By Georgie Ann Geyer WASHINGTON -- Last year, when the Colombian government awarded a piece of land the size of Switzerland to the country's Marxist guerrilla movement to use as a safe haven, hard-nosed Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori telephoned his Colombian counterpart with a delighted response: Now you have them all in one place and can wipe them out easily! But Colombian President Andres Pastrana, an aristocratic-looking former journalist, was horrified by the words of the wiry, relentlessly determined Japanese-Peruvian president. Fujimori had utterly wiped out his brutal guerrilla movement, ...

Idaho lab drops gay sensitivity order Associated Press IDAHO FALLS, Idaho — The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory is dropping plans to require workers to attend a training session on homosexuality in the workplace after receiving objections based on religious principles. The laboratory had scheduled mandatory attendance at a presentation by Dave Pallone, a gay umpire who formerly worked for Major League Baseball, designed to educate workers about sensitivity to homosexuals in the workplace. There have been a number of incidents at the Idaho plant in which gay employees have overheard conversations they did not appreciate, said Bernie Meyers, ...

A look at Viet War — through 'enemy' eyes Associated Press Online photo essay of North Vietnam photos HANOI, Vietnam — The final, frenzied days of the Vietnam War were rich with dramatic images. Panicked Vietnamese scaled the walls of the U.S. Embassy. An American helicopter lifted off with evacuees still trying to climb aboard. But these powerful images from April 1975 — and almost all of the conflict's best-remembered pictures — were taken by foreign and South Vietnamese photographers with access to only one side of the story. Largely unseen to this day are equally striking images by North ...

Faith-based declaration is a breath of fresh air By Linda Seebach Scripps Howard News Service Amid all the Earth Day hype, did you happen to hear anything about the Cornwall Declaration? Didn't think so. It's a manifesto for free-market environmentalism grounded in religious faith. Can't have that. Not on a holiday dedicated to pagan socialism. The 20th century brought unprecedented improvement in human health, nutrition, life expectancy and environmental quality; We have an opportunity, and a moral obligation, to build on these advances, and share them with less fortunate people in America and developing nations; None of this would be ...

Nike Founder Ends Donations to Alma Mater Tuesday, April 25, 2000 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS PORTLAND, Ore. -- Nike founder Phil Knight said Monday he will make no further donations to his alma mater, the University of Oregon, because of its membership in a student-driven labor rights organization that has criticized Nike. Knight noted he has given $50 million to the school in Eugene. Knight said he was "shocked" to learn on April 14 that the university had joined the Workers Rights Consortium. Student activists have supported the consortium. The consortium intends to conduct surprise inspections with independent monitors and release ...

Turner: World's Problems Stem From Overpopulation Monday, April 24, 2000 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS MOSCOW, Idaho -- Increasing numbers of people are putting a harmful burden on the planet's resources, media mogul Ted Turner told a University of Idaho forum. Turner, the founder of Cable News Network and vice chairman of Time-Warner Inc., noted Saturday was the 30th anniversary of Earth Day. He was the closing speaker at the Borah Symposium on "Natural Resource Conflicts in the 21st Century." Turner said Friday that he first got involved in environmental issues by supporting efforts to save whales. "If we stopped killing the ...

Environmentalists Are Today's Fundamentalists Friday, April 21, 2000 BY ROBERT JAMES BIDINOTTO On April 22, millions will dutifully engage in the now-familiar rituals and incantations of America's fastest-growing religion. In public places, they will gather to listen to sermons about the sins of human selfishness, about redemption through self-abasement, about the duty to exercise stewardship of the earth. In schools, they will indoctrinate their children in the gospel according to John -- John Muir, that is. In their homes, they will engage in symbolic acts of self-denial -- by digging through germ-laden garbage for recyclables, by denying themselves the pleasures ...

Black Student Arrested for Racist Threats Friday, April 21, 2000 LOS ANGELES TIMES IOWA CITY, Iowa -- After nearly a month of unnerving racist threats against minority students at the University of Iowa's College of Dentistry, police arrested an unlikely suspect early Thursday -- a 23-year-old black woman in her second year at the school. Tarsha Michelle Claiborne of Baton Rouge, La., allegedly sent several threatening e-mail messages from a university computer -- including a bomb threat that closed the college on Tuesday as 30 bomb squad officers from around the region went through every locker and desk. Claiborne is ...