Free Republic

RALEIGH, N.C. — L.F. Eason III gave up the only job he'd ever had rather than lower a flag to honor former U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms. Eason, a 29-year veteran of the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, instructed his staff at a small Raleigh lab not to fly the U.S. or North Carolina flags at half mast Monday as called for in a directive to all state agencies by Gov. Mike Easley. When a superior ordered the lab to follow the order, Eason decided to retire rather than pay tribute to Helms. After several hours' delay, one of Eason's employees...

NEW YORK - Even as he scheduled an on-air meeting with radio host Don Imus, the Rev. Al Sharpton said he still wants Imus fired for his racially charged comments about the Rutgers University women's basketball team. Sharpton said Sunday he intends to complain to the Federal Communications Commission about the matter. "Somewhere we must draw the line in what is tolerable in mainstream media," he said. "We cannot keep going through offending us and then apologizing and then acting like it never happened. Somewhere we've got to stop this." Sharpton and MSNBC announced that Imus would appear Monday on...

Calling himself "a good person" who made a bad mistake, radio host Don Imus said Monday he would check his acid tongue after being lambasted for making racially charged comments about the Rutgers University women's basketball team. "Here's what I've learned: that you can't make fun of everybody, because some people don't deserve it," he said on his nationally syndicated radio show Monday morning. "And because the climate on this program has been what it's been for 30 years doesn't mean it's going to be what it's been for the next five years or whatever." Imus said he was "embarrassed"...

MURTHA DOESN’T NEED TO ‘CLARIFY’ – HE NEEDS TO APOLOGIZE (MONONGAHELA, June 28) – Washington County Commissioner and Pennsylvania 12th district Republican Congressional nominee Diana Irey – reacting to U.S. Rep. Jack Murtha’s press release yesterday declaring that he was “quoted out of context” regarding his recent comments stating that the U.S. presence in Iraq is a greater threat to world peace than the nuclear threat posed by North Korea and Iran – today released the following statement: “Yesterday, Jack Murtha said he was ‘quoted out of context’ regarding his comments on the ‘threat’ posed to world peace by the...

Israel is going to change its protocol for opening fire along the Egyptian border, which has been a peaceful border for the past 25 years. The new protocol will make it easier to open fire on infiltrators on the so-called "peace border," since "dangerous criminal elements" were involved in the smuggling of terrorists and weapons across the border, senior military sources said on Tuesday. A senior IDF official said that the army plans on beefing up its presence on the 240-kilometer border between the Mediterranean and Red Sea, and will probably add a new brigade headquarters along parts of it....

Mark McKinnon, the Austin political consultant who oversaw the advertising for President Bush in the 2000 and 2004 campaigns, has committed to help Sen. John McCain in a second presidential bid. McKinnon - one of the president's closest friends and confidants and a frequent mountain biking companion - met with the Arizona Republican over lunch this spring in the Senate dining room to discuss his support, a GOP activist familiar with the meeting told G. Robert Hillman of the Dallas Morning News. At this point, McCain, who lost to Bush in a bitter 2000 Republican primary, is in the early...