Free Republic

PARIS -- Minutes after cruising down the Champs-Elysées to close out his record-breaking sixth straight championship of the world's premier cycling race -- the Tour de France -- Lance Armstrong took a congratulatory overseas phone call from fellow Texan George W. Bush. "You're awesome," the president of the United States told the triumphant American athlete. If a similar gracious gesture was forthcoming from the president of France, however, I have yet to hear about it. And somehow I don't think I ever will. Armstrong's repeated success in this most-French of all international athletic competitions is not something the host nation's...

Crumbling edifice of the UN By Susannah Price BBC United Nations correspondent The landmark United Nations headquarters in New York was state of the art when it was built more than 50 years ago. Impressive from the outside... Its gleaming marble and glass tower, a familiar sight overlooking the East River, is a popular tourist destination where visitors gaze at the impressive General Assembly and Security Council chambers. Behind the scenes, it is a different story. The plumbing, electrical, heating and cooling systems also date back half a century and have gone well beyond their useful life. The UN is...

She kissed Madonna on stage and drunkenly married a childhood friend for 55 hours, but Britney Spears's new live show is her most shocking performance yet. The 22-year-old, wearing pink underwear with stockings and suspenders, cavorts with a male dancer and writhes suggestively on a bed as she tries to win over an older audience. It remains to be seen whether fans have tired of her attempts to shock with revealing outfits and erotic dance routines. The world tour is not a complete sell-out and tickets are still on sale for her rare UK dates. Spears, who performed at Miami's...

Site last updatedNovember 3, 2003 Morality Continues to Decay November 3, 2003 Of the ten moral behaviors evaluated, a majority of Americans believed that each of three activities were “morally acceptable.” Those included gambling (61%), co-habitation (60%), and sexual fantasies (59%). Nearly half of the adult population felt that two other behaviors were morally acceptable: having an abortion (45%) and having a sexual relationship with someone of the opposite sex other than their spouse (42%). About one-third of the population gave the stamp of approval to pornography (38%), profanity (36%), drunkenness (35%) and homosexual sex (30%). The activity that garnered...

"National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and vice." -Samuel Smiles I ask you, to which side has the scale tipped in these United States?

MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) - U.S. Episcopalian leaders moved closer on Friday to approving the church's first openly gay bishop, a step that church conservatives warned could shatter unity among the world's 77 million Anglicans. After a fierce public debate, Episcopal leaders attending the church's triennial convention voted behind closed doors to recommend ratification of New Hampshire bishop-elect Eugene Robinson, a divorced father of two. The vote count was not made public, and the debate participants were urged not to cheer after the terse announcement was made. Robinson's expected elevation to his post by the full convention on Sunday will be followed...

MORALISTS WITHOUT MORALS I would fain flee to Sarmatia and the frozen Sea when people who ape the Curii[1] and live like Bacchanals dare talk about morals. In the first place, they are unlearned persons, though you may find their houses crammed with plaster casts of Chrysippus;[2] for their greatest hero is the man who has brought a likeness of Aristotle or Pittacus,[3] or bids his shelves preserve an original portrait of Cleanthes.[4] Men's faces are not to be trusted; does not every street abound in gloomy-visaged debauchees? And do you rebuke foul practices, when you are yourself the most...

MSN Home   |   My MSN   |   Hotmail   |   Search   |   Shopping   |   Money   |   People & Chat   Thomas and Sandra Nunez with their son, Andrew, and daughter, Ava, at home in Denton, Texas She Works, He Doesn’t The number of American families in which the sole wage earner is the woman is small, but many economists think it’s growing By Peg Tyre and Daniel McGinnNEWSWEEK     May 12 issue —  Since the beginning of time, anthropologists believe, women have been programmed to seek a mate who can provide for a family—whether that means dragging the mastodon back to the cave or making the payments on the Volvo. So when Laurie Earp walked down...

UNITED NATIONS -- Over the next few days, the United Nations will again be the epicentre of world diplomacy, as leaders parade through its marble hallways with an urgency not seen since the height of the Cold War. But as the planet looks to the UN to forge an international stand on Iraq and North Korea, the world body faces another crisis of embarrassing proportions: Its New York headquarters is falling apart. "I never thought it would be such a dump," said Gary Bindermann, a German who was taking a recent tour through the often dimly lit and musty corridors,...

"Purchase lands in America, where liberty will maintain her empire till a dissoluteness of morals, luxury, and venality shall have prepared the degenerate sons of some future age to prefer their own mean lucre, the bribes, and the smiles of corruption and arbitrary ministers to patriotism, to glory, and to the public weal. No doubt the same causes will produce the same effects, and a period is already set to the reign of American freedom; but that fatal time seems to be at a great distance. The present generation at least, and I hope many succeeding ones... will enjoy the...

"Adam Sandler invites you to share some holiday cheer in the new, no-holds-barred musical comedy Adam Sandler's 8 Crazy Nights.. MPAA Rating: G-13 for frequent crude and sexual humor, drinking and brief drug references "

WASHINGTON, Sept 4 (Reuters) - Pressing his case against an assault on Baghdad, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark said on Wednesday the United States had no legitimate reason to attack Iraq and that it would be a grave mistake to do so. "The claim that Iraq is a threat is a complete fraud. I don't think they believe it for a minute," Clark said, referring to the Bush administration's stated grounds for seeking to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Clark, who served in the Johnson administration at the height of the Vietnam war, said it would be "the...

Unionized hotel workers voted 2,045 to 501 yesterday to authorize a strike against Hilton and Sheraton hotels in Waikiki, while hotels still struggle to bring in revenue in the aftermath of Sept. 11. "The members have voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike," said Eric Gill, Local 5 financial secretary-treasurer. "I'm overjoyed with that." The vote, taken at the Hawai'i Convention Center, covers 4,000 workers at Hilton Hawaiian Village and Sheraton's four Waikiki hotels. A strike authorization vote does not mean there will be a strike. That's up to union officials to decide. Gill said the union will attempt to reach...