Free Republic

A national emergency -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: August 29, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2005 Creators Syndicate Inc. On Aug. 12, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson declared a state of emergency "due to a " on his southern border. Three days later, Gov. Janet Napolitano followed suit in Arizona. Reason: the crisis on the border. The ally-ally-in-free immigration policy of George Bush and Vicente Fox, beloved of corporate America, has created a hell on our southern border. Those Southwestern states are being inundated by illegal aliens trashing ranches, killing cattle, committing crimes and eating up tax dollars. The traffic in narcotics and...

PRESIDENTIAL NEWS OF THE DAY: GRAPEVINE, Texas (Reuters) - President Bush, following the deadliest roadside bomb attack on U.S. forces in Iraq, said on Wednesday the best way to honor the dead was to fight the [terrorists] and train Iraqi troops, and he rejected any early U.S. pullout. "We're at war. We're facing an enemy that is ruthless. If we put out a timetable, the enemy would adjust their tactics," he said in a speech in Grapevine, a Dallas suburb. Those killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said, "have died in a noble cause and a selfless cause." "Their families...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - With 6.6 million Californians uninsured and costs soaring, state Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi called Wednesday for a series of reforms to save the health care system from what he called a "death spiral." Garamendi released a 73-page report entitled "Priced Out: Health Care in California" that, among other things, showed the average health insurance premium in the state increased 61 percent between 2000 and 2004. He said Californians are paying more for health insurance but getting less as employers offer fewer benefits or pass on a greater share of costs to workers. The increasing cost "is...

Illegal entrants crossing through the Tucson Sector this fiscal year are dying at a rate 14 times greater than they did seven years ago - when the U.S. Border Patrol started its concerted effort to save them. In 1998, the agency began the Border Safety Initiative, asking Mexican and Central American nationals not to cross the desert and putting in place its rescue teams in remote areas. At the end of the program's first year, the agency tallied 11 people dead in its Tucson Sector, about three for every 100,000 apprehensions made. Apprehension numbers this fiscal year are at about...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. The outsourcing-happy folks who run The Wall Street Journal opinion pages have forgotten one of the pillars of opinion-journalism ethics: truth in advertising. The article they ran July 14 by Goldman Sachs chairman and CEO Henry M. Paulson, Jr., titled "CAFTA is the American Way," was simply the usual pro-treaty drivel with one critical exception. Paulson never mentioned, and the Journal never disclosed, that the Goldman Sachs chief is a de facto paid agent of the Chinese government. After all, Goldman is advising the Chinese government-owned and controlled China National Offshore...

PRESIDENT BUSH NEEDS TO KEEP two facts in mind as he looks to replace retiring Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor (and, should he step down, Chief Justice William Rehnquist). The first is that he can win confirmation of almost any conceivable nominee for the High Court, screams of protest by Democrats and hostile media coverage notwithstanding. The second is that he has a promise to keep. Since he began running for the White House six years ago, he has declared endlessly his intention to select judges who interpret the law rather than create it--in a word, conservatives. On this,...

The Minuteman Project gained notoriety in April when volunteers policed the Arizona desert against illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico. Nearly 2,000 miles north of that first effort, a small number of Chicagoans who volunteered in Arizona are bringing the fighillegal immigration with incendiary rhetoric against some immigrant advocates, whom they call communiLindenhurst, co-founder of the Chicago proje Biesada, an ex-Marine who runs a trucking company, said he could relate to the original Minutemen, colonists who said they were ready to fight at a minute's notice during the Revolutionary War. He considers many current politicians to be committing treason. "In the...

FORT BRAGG, N.C., June 28 (Reuters) - President George W. Bush will say in a nationally televised speech to Americans on Tuesday night that the Iraq war is vital to U.S. security and there will be "tough moments that test American resolve." "Amid all this violence, I know Americans ask the question: Is the sacrifice worth it? It is worth it, and it is vital to the future security of our country," Bush will say, according to speech excerpts released by the White House. The White House said Bush will acknowledge the tough fighting and suicide bombings in Iraq but...