Free Republic

The dwindling cadre of academics who try to hold the line on standards have a particularly rough time of it when choosing textbooks. “Every semester I have to pick a new book and I have to pick the least bad book and it’s really depressing,” Suffolk County Community College professor Thomas E. Woods, Jr. says. “You need a good stiff drink.” “Other conservative academics from across the country have the same problem.” Dr. Woods teaches history at Suffolk, which is affiliated with the State University of New York. His partial solution to the textbook dilemma was to write his own...

ABC television, which has hosted the annual beauty pageant telecast from Atlantic City, New Jersey, since 1997, has decided not to renew its option to carry the show in 2005, a network spokesman said. No further details were immediately available, including whether another television network would pick up the event.

October 16, 2000 - CBS has established an endowed scholarship in the amount of $50,000 in Dan Rather's name at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, Rather's alma mater. The scholarship honors the CBS EVENING NEWS anchor and managing editor for a continuing career in broadcast journalism marked by the highest standards of integrity and fairness, as well as unparalleled scope. The scholarship fund was announced by Leslie Moonves, President and CEO, CBS Television, and Andrew Heyward, President, CBS News. The CBS/Dan Rather Scholarship will provide a full tuition scholarship every year for a student majoring in journalism or...

Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry said Saturday that his daughter Vanessa has won a Fulbright scholarship to study medicine in London. Vanessa Kerry is a 27-year-old Harvard medical student who frequently travels with her father's campaign. According to the Fulbright Web site, about 1,000 U.S. students are awarded the federally funded fellowships each year of about 4,500 who apply. Kerry told reporters traveling with him to a long weekend vacation in Idaho that Vanessa recently found out she was one of this year's winners.

Welcome to Blogspirator.John Kerry had a history going back decades with Senator Senator J. William Fulbright. For example, Kerry testified before the Fulbright Committee. McCain: Hanoi Hilton Guards Taunted POWs With Kerry's Testimony [Newsmax.com] ...after he was released from the Hanoi Hilton in 1973, McCain publicly complained that testimony by Kerry and others before J. William Fulbright's Senate Foreign Relations Committee was "the most effective propaganda [my North Vietnamese captors] had to use against us." "They used Senator Fulbright a great deal," McCain wrote in the May 14, 1973, issue of U.S. News & World Report.While he was languishing in...

ROME, Georgia (AP) -- A high school football star whose college career was derailed by a rape conviction will attend Hampton University in Virginia this fall on an athletic scholarship. Marcus Dixon spent 15 months in prison after being convicted of aggravated child molestation, a felony, and statutory rape, a misdemeanor. He was accused of assaulting a 15-year-old classmate in a trailer behind Floyd County's Pepperell High School in February 2003, when he was 18. A jury acquitted Dixon of rape, but he was sentenced to 10 years in prison on the molestation charge. Some called the case an injustice...

The annual duck celebration in Stuttgart, Ark., was winding down — the Queen Mallard beauty pageant was over and the world's best duck dog had been determined. Then Daniel Duke stepped onto the Main Street stage. Duke, a teenage veteran of more than a dozen duck-calling contests, wowed the judges with his renditions of the four required blasts: hail, feed, comeback and mating. Duke, from the nearby town of Brinkley, triumphed — and bagged one of the nation's more unusual college scholarships. "I knew I had a shot at it," the 19-year-old said of the $1,500 award, which he hopes...

TEMPE - Pat Tillman's legacy will endure through a collaborative effort between ASU and the Cardinals to establish a scholarship fund in his name.

Foundation Awards Scholarships to Children of Fallen Marines By Donna MilesAmerican Forces Press Service Washington, April 6, 2004 -- With increased U.S. Marine deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation is stepping up fund- raising so it can honor its pledge to award scholarships to all children of Marines killed in combat during the war on terror. The foundation also has pledged to award scholarships to all children of Navy corpsmen killed in combat while serving with the Marines, and to any children of Marines and former Marines killed on Sept. 11, 2001. Scholarships run up...

SIERRA VISTA - A scholarship to honor the memory of a Buena High School graduate who was killed in action in Iraq has been established by a anonymous donor at Cochise College. College Spokeswoman Denise Merkel said the $1,000 a year stipend is named the Sgt. M. Matthew Merila Memorial Scholarship. The first award of the scholarship will be made this year to a Buena High School graduating senior, she said, adding the scholarship is limited to Buena High School seniors and is valued at $500 a semester. To be eligible for the scholarship an applicant must show financial need,...

The $250 award -- which required an essay on "why you are proud of your white heritage" and a recent picture to "confirm whiteness" -- has invited the wrath of everyone from minority groups and school officials to the chairman of the Republican National Committee himself.

BRISTOL, R.I. - On the sleepy coastal campus of Roger Williams University, a small liberal arts school unaccustomed to student activism, the College Republicans are reveling in the debate they've kicked up by offering a scholarship for whites only. The $250 award _ which required an essay on "why you are proud of your white heritage" and a recent picture to "confirm whiteness" _ has invited the wrath of everyone from minority groups and school officials to the chairman of the Republican National Committee himself. Jason Mattera, a junior who started the conservative campus group in his freshman year, said...

The relentless assault of the Supreme Court liberal justices on the United States of America continues. What made them turn against us? Why are they so harsh and callous? What did we do to them? These kinds of questions come to mind when we see the constant attacks of this band of justices we once trusted and knew as the embodiment of wisdom and character. Wondering about this endlessly only helps them gain precious time in their insidious battle against us, however. Never mind why they do it. They had the advantage of surprise. We have been milling around in...

Households earning less than $40,000 annually will not be required to contribute to the cost of their children attending Harvard as part of the university's new initiative to reach out to students from low and moderate-income families. Through the initiative, announced Saturday, Harvard also will reduce the contributions expected of families earning between $40,000 and $60,000 and intensify its efforts to recruit talented students from disadvantaged backgrounds. It will set aside an additional $2 million to cover the expanded financial aid commitment. "We want to send the strongest possible message that Harvard is open to talented students from all economic...

Justice Scalia: "What next? Will we deny priests and nuns their prescription-drug benefits on the ground that taxpayers' freedom of conscience forbids medicating the clergy at public expense?" (KRT) In a major victory for advocates of a strict constitutional separation of church and state, the Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a Washington state ban on taxpayer-funded college aid being given to students pursuing theology degrees. The 7-2 ruling buoyed opponents of school-voucher programs who said it might bolster their case that public money shouldn't be used to assist parochial-school students. But advocates of such programs took solace in the narrowness...

What is the nature of the State’s asserted interest here? It cannot be protecting the pocketbooks of its citizens; given the tiny fraction of Promise Scholars who would pursue theology degrees, the amount of any citizen’s tax bill at stake is de minimis. It cannot be preventing mistaken appearance of endorsement; where a State merely declines to penalize students for selecting a religious major, “[n]o reasonable observer is likely to draw … an inference that the State itself is endorsing a religious practice or belief.” Id., at 493 (O’Connor, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). Nor can Washington’s...

<p>WASHINGTON — TheSupreme Court (search), in a new rendering on separation of church and state (search), voted Wednesday to let states withhold scholarships from students studying theology.</p> <p>The court's 7-2 ruling held that the state of Washington was within its rights to deny a taxpayer-funded scholarship to a college student who was studying to be a minister. That holding applies even when money is available to students studying anything else.</p>

A "whites-only" scholarship set up as a prank by Republican students at an obscure New England university has ballooned into a cause célèbre, with basic American themes such as race, equal opportunity and freedom colliding. "Why shouldn't I do anything in my power to put myself in the best position possible?" asked Adam Noska, 20, after winning the £130 award at Roger Williams University in New England. "I'm a college student. I live in a house with rats." He had a point. But Mr Noska and his friends had also challenged one of the orthodoxies of today's United States: that...

<p>An official of the American Foreign Service Association recently chided the heirs to a family fortune for wanting to end a Princeton University scholarship program founded by their parents to train future diplomats.</p> <p>"The truth is the opposite," said one of the heirs to the A&P supermarket fortune, William Robertson, in a statement sent to Louise Crane in response to her criticism in a newsletter. Ms. Crane is the vice president of AFSA and represents State Department employees.</p>

'White' scholarship ignorant of affirmatice action, racist, intolerant, totally unacceptable Not everyone can laugh at the state of race relations in America. White, black, whatever. Some people have a problem with a serious topic like racism and stereotyping being mocked. Rightfully so, and to each his own. Racially motivated comedy has a huge share of supporters - look up "Chappelle's Show" if the rock you live under doesn't get cable yet - but it has some prerequisites for breaking into the scene. One of those criteria is that you certainly can't be racist. If you're willing to mock something while...