Free Republic

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) -- Contraband candy has led to big trouble for an eighth-grade honors student. Michael Sheridan was stripped of his title as class vice president, barred from attending an honors student dinner and suspended for a day after buying a bag of Skittles from a classmate. The New Haven school system banned candy sales in 2003 as part of a district-wide school wellness policy, said school spokeswoman Catherine Sullivan-DeCarlo. Shelli Sheridan, Michael's mother, said he is a top student with no previous disciplinary problems. "It's too much. It's too unfair," she said. "He's never even had a...

Mike Huckabee has always been the most vocal about Romney 'buying' his support. At Ames, he accused Romney of buying his support, at CPAC, the same thing. Now apparently Huckabee has taken up the practice of buying support himself and he is now trying to hide it. On Monday the website Too Conservitive had a post by a Vincent Harris, who is officially "coordinating Governor Huckabee’s petition drive in NOVA," promising to pay those who would work for Huckabee to obtain signatures 50 cents per signature. Just hours later however as the word spread, the language promising to pay money...

Women buying creams made of tiny particles 'used as guinea pigs' By Nic Fleming, Science Correspondent (Filed: 05/05/2006) Consumers who use a new generation of cosmetics are being used as "guinea pigs", scientists said yesterday. Researchers called for the tightening of testing procedures governing face and sun creams, dietary supplements and other products that harness the special properties of tiny particles of matter, known as nanotechnology. Some of the beauty products which make use of nanotechnology About 100 people in Germany suffered health problems at the end of March after using a bathroom sealant called Magic Nano. Nanotechnology involves working...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - It might just take a Christmas miracle to deck out these spindly branches with ornaments or arrange a pile of gifts around their slender, bare trunks, but they've all been snatched up, and it's hard to argue with success. The trees, rented out by San Franciscans for $90 each during the holiday season, are designed to give residents an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional, firs and pines. The fruitless olives, Brisbane boxes and others range from six to 12 feet and aren't quite Charlie Brown's sad sapling, but they're definitely not the full-bodied evergreens most Christmas...

LOS ANGELES - A former education official was accused in a lawsuit of using his post to secretly buy almost 46,000 textbooks and other teaching aids he himself had written, bringing him nearly $1 million in royalties. The suit by the Los Angeles Unified School District also said Matthias Vheru illegally covered more than $3 million of the $4 million cost by using federal education funds that had been earmarked for programs that assist non-native English speakers. The district said Vheru, 55, skirted its purchase-approval process by making the orders when he was temporarily serving as the district's math curriculum...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Buying knockoff designer handbags and Hello Kitty T-shirts on city street corners may ultimately be helping terror groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, law enforcement officials and experts testified Wednesday. Profits from faux Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Prada purses, scores of pirated DVD movies, and counterfeited clothing and other goods have been traced to supporters of terror organizations, the experts said. "We have encountered suspects who have shown great affinity for Hezbollah and its leadership," Lt. John Stedman of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department testified at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing. In one example, Stedman said, a...

One day the public is going to wake up and realize that when analysts are telling them to buy things at all-time highs, it might be time to sell. The day after a government report showed that crude oil inventories have risen to their highest levels since July 2002, the esteemed Wall Street brokerage firm, Goldman Sachs, released an analysis forecasting a continued increase in energy prices that could result in oil hitting $105 per barrel. As reported by Reuters: "We believe oil markets may have entered the early stages of what we have referred to as a ‘super spike’...

A congressional investigation has discovered that dozens of terror suspects on federal watch lists were allowed to buy firearms legally in the United States last year. Over a nine month period, the panel discovered, 58 people suspected of ties to Islamic- based, militia-style or other groups applied to buy a gun, and 47 were approved. Yes, at the very same time U.S. troops were risking their lives to disarm terrorists in Iraq, 47 terror suspects were buying guns without so much as an official scowl. You see, it's not illegal for someone on a terrorist watch list to buy a...

NYC: Smokers Who Buy Online Need To Pay Up City Enforcing Cigarette Tax Laws Jan 13, 2005 12:20 pm US/Eastern NEW YORK (CBS) The New York City Finance Department has ordered smokers who bought tax-free cigarettes on the Internet to pay city taxes on their purchases. The demands were made in letters mailed this week. Finance Commissioner Martha Stark says “it's part of a new effort to enforce the cigarette tax laws." The city mailed letters to about 2,300 people whose names were obtained from cigs4cheap.com, which is no longer operating. The letters warned that recipients who failed to pay...

Call it the merchandising of the presidential election. With messenger bags querying "WWWD?" (for What Would 'W' Do?), pink tank tops bearing Teresa Heinz Kerry's "Shove it" remark and T-shirts boiling your choices down to "Great leadership versus great hair," the 2004 election has fueled an explosion of in-your-face political gear. In a nation that is split right down the middle over President Bush vs. Democratic challenger John Kerry, last election's apathy (Remember "Bush/Gore, Who Cares?") has been replaced by a white-hot interest in a horse race that every indicator has going down to the wire.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. A second Lincoln County resident has been indicted in the widening federal probe of election fraud in southern West Virginia. The grand jury alleges 35-year-old Jackie Adkins of Harts bribed four unidentified voters to influence the ballots they cast in May's primary election. The Division of Highways employee is the fifth person to be charged overall in a probe that has ensnared Logan County's sheriff, the city of Logan's police chief and a prominent Logan lawyer. A Lincoln County resident was indicted earlier in the probe. She was charged with falsely denying under oath that she and her...

DENVER - Kobe Bryant's defense team says the woman accusing him of rape has received more than $17,000 from a victims' compensation fund in what it calls a rich incentive to pursue a false claim against the NBA star, according to a court transcript released Thursday. The 20-year-old woman would be ineligible for at least $17,000 she has already received if she lied about the alleged rape, defense attorney Pamela Mackey argued in a June 21 hearing. She said the woman would have to reimburse the fund if lies were discovered — even more incentive to go forward with the...

<p>FRESNO, Calif. (AP) - Californians can help create more than 5,500 jobs and generate $1.38 billion in revenue each year if they shift 10 percent of their purchases to state-grown produce, according to a new study released Thursday.</p> <p>Californians can also generate about $188 million in taxes for local and state governments if 10 percent of their total purchases included state-grown fruits, vegetables and other California farm goods, according to a study funded by the Buy California Marketing Agreement.</p>