Free Republic

Self-serving speech I was in attendance last Saturday at the commencement activities at the University of Washington. I was both embarrassed and angered by the pontification and obvious self-importance of Rep. Dicks. Never could I have imagined a commencement speaker at a major university being booed and heckled while speaking to the graduates. Then again, I could never have imagined anyone giving such a self-serving, self-glorification speech as he did. A speaker at such an event is supposed to inspire the graduates who are now going out into the world to seek their own destiny. They did not come to...

AMMAN (Reuters) - Outraged by the prospect of a U.S. war on Iraq, Ryan Clancy left his music shop in the United States and put himself in harm's way in Baghdad last month to serve as a "human shield" against Iraqi civilian casualties. But, like others, he has found idealism at odds with the hard-nosed reality of Iraqi officialdom. Last month Clancy was among about 50 Western anti-war activists who rode on red double-decker buses to Baghdad after an overland trip that started at London's Tower Bridge. They hoped to avert a U.S.-led war by putting a human face on...

The delegations are widely diverse. Some members have celebrity status, such as Sean Penn and Bianca Jagger. Others said that until recently they had never thought of either protesting for peace or traveling to Iraq. Take Terry Kay Rockefeller, a 52-year-old documentary filmmaker from Arlington. The memory of the death of her sister, Laura, in the attack on the World Trade Center prompted Rockefeller to make the long journey to Baghdad. ''Afghanistan, the bombing in Bali, this war - every time, I feel it as re-experiencing Laura's death,'' said Rockefeller, a member of the group September 11th Families for Peaceful...

[b]N.Y. Councilmen say even water guns should be banned[/b] January 5, 2003, 5:31 PM EST NEW YORK (AP) _ Two city councilmen said Sunday that last week's fatal police shooting of a teenager who was holding a pellet gun highlights the importance of their proposed bill to ban the sale and possession of toy guns. Current city law permits the sale of only brightly colored toy guns constructed of transparent material. At a City Hall news conference, Councilman David Weprin, a Queens Democrat, brandished his daughter's water pistol, which he had painted black, to demonstrate that even obviously fake guns...