Free Republic

MANATEE - Getting shoved around, handcuffed, manhandled and witnessing a police beating - these are the memories two young hurricane relief workers from Manatee County say they took away from Bourbon Street in New Orleans on Saturday night. After about a month of volunteer work in areas hit hard by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Manatee County residents Calvin Briles and Mike Monaghan decided to take it easy in the Big Easy for an evening. The two men, program consultants for the Volunteer Center of Manatee County, had spent the day buying chain saws and delivering them to volunteer reception centers...

With bucolic Crawford, Texas (pop. 705, except when President Bush takes his August vacation there) and its environs groaning under the weight of Cindy Sheehan's protest, protesters protesting Cindy Sheehan's protest and the media covering it all, locals are beginning to long for the days when their rural roads were dusty and, well, empty. Now one wants to return to a quieter time. McLennan County Commissioner Ray Meadows, who told TIME he was "mad as a hornet" when he first saw cars and tents spilling over the ditches on Prairie Chapel Road in what was to become Camp Casey, has...

WASHINGTON, July 17, 2005 – Two American soldiers in Iraq were killed by improvised explosive devices July 16. Another two soldiers were wounded. In the first incident, a soldier assigned to the 155th Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward), died July 16 of wounds received July 15 from a car-bomb attack. The incident reportedly occurred during combat operations near Iskandariyah. Also on July 16, at about 4:00 p.m. in the Kirkuk province, an IED killed one Task Force Liberty soldier and wounded two other soldiers. The two wounded soldiers were taken to a coalition forces medical treatment facility....

Thriving women-only village is attacked by jealous locals By Mike Pflanz in Archer's Post (Filed: 16/07/2005) A group of Kenyan women who fled abusive husbands to set up their own women-only community are facing increasingly violent attacks by local men angry at their success. Turning traditional African patriarchy on its head, 15 women established Umoja village in 1990, as a refuge after their husbands' behaviour forced them to flee their homes. Mkamasiye Lebwaketa and Paulina Lekuriya wear the tribal bead necklaces their ‘women-only’ village sells Since then the village where women rule has expanded, its 48 members earning a living...

Jackson 'Avenue of Hearts' angers locals 10.06.05 By Andrew Gumbel A fan wears a t-shirt proclaiming Michael Jackson's innocence. Picture / Reuters Michael Jackson's neighbours have had it. They've put up with months of hoopla surrounding the court proceedings in Santa Maria, in the heart of central California wine country, and they've put up with the fans plying the narrow road to Neverland. But now the jury has retired, passions on both sides are growing as surely as the tension over the looming verdict. The results have not always been pretty. Every day this week, the fans have erected an...

WASHINGTON, May 16, 2005 – Iraqi army and Task Force Baghdad units captured nine terrorists and confiscated a variety of weapons and explosive materials May 15. In central Baghdad, a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol captured a self-professed bomb maker along with $4,500 in U.S. currency in sequential $100 bills and washing machine timers that could be used to detonate bombs. Minutes later, Task Force Baghdad soldiers, acting on a tip from an Iraqi citizen, arrested five suspected terrorists thought to have participated in drive-by shootings in southeast Baghdad. Numerous cell phones, wires and bomb making materials were found with the suspects,...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed two East Bay residents to the board overseeing the agency that operates the state's electrical power grid. Elizabeth Lowe, 41, of Danville has served as vice president of Onsite Energy Corp. since 1997; earlier she was vice president of Western operations for DukeSolutions, Inc. Lowe is a member of the Power Association of Northern California, the International Association of Refrigerated Warehouses and the California League of Food Processors. She is registered to vote without a party affiliation. Mason Willrich, 71, of Piedmont was president and CEO of PG&E Enterprises before becoming an independent consultant advising clients...

Thurmond's biracial daughter earned her spot on monument. With little fanfare, Essie Mae Washington Williams, accompanied by her daughter, returned three months ago to her roots in Edgefield County. According to a front-page article in the weekly Edgefield Advertiser ... she visited the grave of her late father, U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, and paid calls on relatives and friends of both her parents. Last week, her name was added to that of the four other Thurmond children on the senator's monument on the State House grounds in Columbia. What also should be recorded for posterity is what a remarkable woman...

Flee! The Democrats are coming to Boston Massachusetts braces for convention to cause traffic snarls; locals aim to leave Anna Badkhen, Chronicle Staff Writer Sunday, July 11, 2004 Medford, Mass. -- When the Democratic National Convention kicks off in Boston in two weeks, Medford Mayor Michael McGlynn would like to be there, mingling among some 35,000 fellow Democrats, and celebrating the presidential nomination of a Massachusetts favorite son. Instead, McGlynn said, he will be manning a red, white and blue roadblock on an interstate off-ramp in Medford, seven miles north of Boston's convention center. "Don't get me wrong," said Glynn,...