Free Republic

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) - The author of the bill that created the Tennessee Lottery says he may consider working on a bill to create a national lottery to pay of the national debt when he heads to Congress. Democratic state Senator Steve Cohen will succeed Congressman Harold Ford Junior in Tennessee's 9th District. He also has plans to support a raise in the minimum wage and a Medicaid waiver to allow more home health care for senior citizens and those with disabilities. Cohen says he wants to become the first white member of the Congressional Black Caucus and a member...

DUBAI DUETS Late Friday, Department of Justice lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel were attempting to determine if former President Bill Clinton had registered as an "Agent of a Foreign Principal." Federal statute requires that anyone -- even a former President -- doing political or public affairs work on behalf of a foreign country, agency or official must register with the Department, and essentially update his status every six months. It was not clear the Clinton had done so. If his status is less clear, here is what we do know: If Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton did not know...

Paul Pillar Speaks, Again The latest CIA attack on the Bush administration is nothing new. by Stephen F. Hayes 02/10/2006 4:15:00 PM IN A BREATHLESS front-page, above-the-fold article in today's Washington Post, Walter Pincus reports that a former senior CIA official named Paul Pillar accuses the Bush administration of "misusing" intelligence to take the country to war in Iraq. According to the Post account, Pillar uses a forthcoming article in Foreign Affairs to claim that the Bush administration "politicized" the intelligence on Iraq. Bush administration policymakers did this subtly, Pillar says, by repeatedly asking the CIA questions about Iraq, its...

Thanks to Bush's Incompetence, Bin Laden Won By Richard Cohen NEW YORK -- I hear bin Laden laughing. I heard him all day on Sunday and Monday as the mass murder of Sept. 11, 2001, was memorialized at the Pentagon and in that field in Pennsylvania and, especially, here where the most people died and where countless cameras recorded it all for posterity and an abiding, everlasting, anger. He laughs, the madman does, whenever George Bush says, as he has over and over, that America is "winning this war on terror.'' Osama bin Laden knows better. He has already won....

The state Board of Pardons refused Thursday to recommend commutation of the life prison sentences for a man who committed one of Delaware's most notorious crimes and then killed a San Francisco businessman. The board deliberated less than three minutes in deciding not to recommend commutation for Charles Cohen, 41, who pleaded guilty but mentally ill in the brutal 1988 murders of his parents, Martin and Ethel Cohen. "In light of the heinous nature of these crimes, the opposition of the state Board of Parole, and the obvious threat to society, we will not recommend that commutation be granted," Lt....

From the (Vermont) Burlington Free Press: Peace activist Cindy Sheehan cancels Vermont visitJuly 28, 20Peace activist Cindy Sheehan has canceled her visit to Vermont because she plans a trip to Jordan for peace talks there, organizers announced today.Sheehan was to have attended a rally Sunday at Montpelier's Unitarian Church.The rally will still be held, with Vermont organizers planning to address renewed efforts to end the war in Iraq and pursue impeachment of the Bush administration.The event is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. and is free and public. It’s sort of like Ike saying he would go to Korea.Only different.

Kohanim, Tribe of Levi to have 'family reunion' Groundbreaking 'Gathering of the Tribe' will include leading researchers and rabbis. Conference is set to take place in Jerusalem in summer 2007 Ynetnews Recent scientific research and DNA testing has shown that today’s descendents of the biblical priesthood known as Kohanim are genetically related. Although the descendents of Aharon, the brother of Moses, have spread throughout the world over the past 3,300 years, the members of this extended family are being invited to participate in the first ‘family reunion’ held since the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE. Participants...

Our mission is to change America's budget priorities to reflect a national commitment to education, healthcare, energy independence, job training and deficit reduction -- at no additional taxpayer expense -- by shifting funding from obsolete Cold War and nuclear weapons New Hampshire Business Leaders Click here to join the 20 business leaders who have joined our campaign -- and here to see who already has NH Democrats endorse the Common Sense Budget Act A resolution endorsing the Common Sense Budget Act was approved without discussion by the 700 delegates at the NH Democratic Party convention at Saint Anselm College. Our...

The New York Times is once again under attack. This time, though, the attack is not related to its coverage of Iraq or to Jayson Blair or Judith Miller or even that ridiculous front-page piece it did on the Clintons' marriage -- an article that caused eyestrain from trying to read between the lines -- but to its stock price. Wall Street thinks it is too low. The phrase "Wall Street thinks" is a tsunamic oxymoron because Wall Street, by and large, does not think. Instead, it is ruthlessly reptilian, instinctively striving only for profits, which means money, which means...

Newton officials are calling their refusal to allow FBI agents access to library computers without a warrant during a terrorist threat last week “their finest hour.” Law enforcement officials say it’s a “nightmare.” Police rushed to the Newton Free Library after tracing a terrorist threat e-mailed to Brandeis University to a computer at the library. But requests to examine computers Jan. 18 were rebuffed by Newton library Director Kathy Glick-Weil and Mayor David Cohen on the grounds that they did not have a warrant. Cohen, defending the library’s actions, called the legal standoff one of Newton’s “finest hours.” “We showed...

The only thing standing between Joe Biden and the presidency is his mouth. ... snip The tragedy is that Biden, who is running for president, is a much better man and senator than these accounts would suggest. But his tendency, his compulsion, his manic-obsessive running of the mouth has become the functional equivalent of womanizing or some other character weakness that disqualifies a man for the presidency. It is his version of corruption, of alcoholism, of a fierce temper or vile views -- all the sorts of things that have crippled candidates in the past. It is, though, an innocent...

ALMATY, Kazakhstan (AP) Kazakhstan needs to chill out and leave Borat alone, an international media watchdog group says. Reporters Without Borders is criticizing Kazakhstan for going too far in its war over the words of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, best known in the U.S. as the title character of the satirical "Da Ali G Show." The leaders of the Central Asian ex-Soviet nation, fuming over Cohen's brutally satirical portrayal of an ignorant Kazakh journalist, pulled the plug this week on his Web-site use of a Kazakh Internet domain name. That move led the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders to issue...

ETROIT, Aug. 29 — For nearly a year, the three foreigners picked up at an apartment here a week after the Sept. 11 attacks seemed like just another group of Arab men caught up in the government dragnet. They languished in prison while facing charges that seemed minor; federal agents had actually been looking for the previous occupant when they raided the apartment.But at least one thing appears to have separated the Detroit trio from hundreds of other Arabs swept up by the government in the last year: a cooperative witness. A fourth Arab man who once lived with...

NEW YORK As if responding to the escalating battle with famed TV personality Borat Sagdiyev, a character on HBO's "Da Ali G Show," the Kazakhstan government today published a four-page advertising section in The New York Times. The section, titled, "Kazakhstan in the 21st Century," carried testimonials to its oil production, its democracy, education system, and purported "power and influence" of women. The feud has been simmering for the past year, after Borat and his frank depictions of life in his homeland (where, he claims, gypsies are still hunted for sport and women rank somewhere below farm animals in the...

Russ Gilbert has been named vice president of Interactive for Air America Radio, including the network and its flagship station WLIB AM New York. The announcement was made by Air America President Gary Krantz. .... “I'm looking forward to working with the incredible talent at Air America to take www.airamericaradio.com to the next level,” said Gilbert.

Liberal yakker Al Franken blasted the man who founded his Air America radio network as "a crook" on Monday - even as he laughed off the financial scandal that continues to dog his broadcast. After weeks of on-air silence about an $875,000 loan that Air America finagled from a Bronx community group that serves poor kids and Alzheimers patients, Franken was finally forced to discuss the scandal when a caller asked him to explain. "Here's the deal," the Air America host said. "The first guy who was chairman of the board of Air America - Evan Cohen - was a...

The New York Sun takes on the Air America story today and advances it by leaps and bounds, talking with the president of the non-profit which had its money taken by Air America founder Evan Cohen. It turns out that Cohen didn't just get money for the netlet, but also managed to get plenty for his own pockets as well while sitting on the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club board: Initially, members of the executive committee viewed Mr. Cohen fondly because he had thrown a tremendously successful fund-raising affair for Gloria Wise in Manhattan last year. They recalled being...

LINK TO VIEW THE INDICTMENT Hillary Campaign Finance Director Indicted Rosen charged with fudging numbers for 2000 Hollywood fundraiser JANUARY 7--The finance director for Hillary Clinton's 2000 U.S. Senate campaign was indicted today on federal charges of filing bogus financial reports with the Federal Election Commission. According to the below indictment, David Rosen reported the false numbers in connection with a "Hollywood tribute" honoring Clinton. Investigators allege that a "wealthy individual" paid more than $1.1 million to underwrite the Clinton gala and that those payments were delivered through "several corporate entities controlled by him." While that whopping sum should...

<p>Tonight it is, March 23, 2005, over five days since Theresa Marie Schiavo commenced her ordeal of purposeful and legally sanctioned dehydration and starvation. We await a decision from the three judge panel from Eleventh Judicial Circuit as to her fate, as her family struggles with seeing Terri's physical health deteriorate.</p>

The inane and bitter Richard Cohen spewed forth a few days ago and -- shockingly -- he wrote of the Democratic movement rustling through the Mideast: '...something momentous is stirring: democracy, freedom, independence. Something. Or, as an Arab acquaintance just e-mailed me from the region, "I can smell the winds of change in the air wherever I go." ...' A gracious and glowing concession to the Reaganesque moves of the administration? Of course not. '...Given what's happening, it's understandable that many eyes have shifted to Washington with a new sense of appreciation. Could it be that the neocons were right...