Free Republic

Lawsuit could mean return to principles Now that the state amendment against inclusive marriage has passed, I am happy to see that University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh professor Bill McConkey's court case might open a door for us in Wisconsin to get to a position consonant with our stated national and state principles ("Professor challenges amendment banning gay marriage," Dec. 30).As a child in what was then called civics class, I was taught that our form of government is exceptional because it protects the rights of a minority against the will of the majority. It was indicative that some of the rhetoric...

<p>This movie will make a billion dollars. Americans are dying in Iraq. Heck, Americans are being opprressed [sic] and starving in America. So what if some lame-brain character in a movie with a budget as large as the GNP of Zimbabwe succeeds in a make-believe quest in a non-existent country against pretend enemies? It's all so inconsequential!</p>

A growing number of African-Americans who have parted ways with the Democratic Party say they're working to gain a foothold in the state's Republican Party structure and aggressively recruiting others to join the GOP. "A few of us are coming out of the closet," said Gerard Randall, president of the Private Industry Council and a long-standing member of the GOP. Though African-Americans have deep roots within the Democratic Party, that allegiance is being tested as more blacks - believing the party has long taken their votes for granted - are aligning themselves with the Republican Party. Within the last year...

There is a growing belief within the Bush administration that bin Laden was injured in late November, possibly by U.S. air strikes against al Qaeda compounds. "We think we got a lot closer than we thought we had," a source tells the WASHINGTON TIMES's Rowan Scarborough... MORE..

<p>Since the war against terror started, polite British society has found an enemy to target. It's neither the Taliban nor al Qaeda, however -- it's the state of Israel and Jews in general.</p> <p>That's because a common belief has suddenly emerged in Britain that the Middle East is the cause of world terror and that Israel is to blame for the impasse there. This leads to anti-Zionism, which is consequently used as a thin disguise for anti-Semitism. People now make remarks that would have been inconceivable just a few months previously.</p>

ALEXANDRIA - In the cramped American Legion Hall in Old Town Alexandria, a small group of self-styled patriots, perhaps 20 in number, mostly veterans, gathered to remember a man they uniformly consider one of their betters. This was a modest event, featuring hot snacks and cold beer, intended to collect a few more dollars in the uphill battle to raise enough cash to erect a memorial to Rocky Versace, the Alexandria man whose death in Vietnam 36 years ago still provides inspiration for this band of men and women. "We're not professional fund raisers," said Mike Faber, an Air Force ...

SCOVILLE, Idaho -- "One man's waste is another man's treasure," says John L. Sackett.No man would argue he is talking real trash: the nation's 40,000 tons of toxic nuclear power-plant garbage. Dr. Sackett says he and the government's other nuclear engineers can transform that dangerous residue into a relatively benign -- and possibly even valuable -- material.The work is important because, if it is practical as well as possible to safely reprocess nuclear waste, doing so would help dissipate one of the single biggest clouds hanging over the Bush administration's desire to ramp up use of nuclear power: the question ...