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Here's a question for legal immigrants to the U. S.: How much does it cost in fees and such to become a citizen of the U. S.? I ask because the sleeping immigration bill charges illegal immigrants a total of $5,000, and Bush calls that a penalty that means it isn't an amnesty. So, for those who play by the rules, is the cost less than $5,000? How much? Thanks.

It's Not Over [Kathryn Jean Lopez] A Senate aide cautions: First, yes, the victory yesterday - a product of tireless efforts by a handful of conservative Senators and staff - is a nice pause in this debacle. But I am afraid that is all it may be... the White House is still 100% committed to getting this bill passed. Harry Reid is looking to actually accomplish SOMETHING for crying out loud... and there is no tiring by ... the entire "deal-making" team. The White House has a full plan of attack. They are ready to start plucking votes one-by-one. Conservatives...

I recently ordered some stuff from a mail order company. I ordered a quantity of three and they shipped me those three, which arrived one day, and two more of the same items, on a different order number, and they arrived the following day. I understand that federal law says if you receive an item you didn't order, it is considered a gift from the company, and you are not required to send it back. My question is: Which federal law? Anyone got a link to it, or a cite? No moralizing, please. I'll decide that for myself.

Pet Diary Excerpts The Dog 8:00 am - Dog food! My favorite thing! 9:30 am - A car ride! My favorite thing! 9:40 am - A walk in the park! My favorite thing! 10:30 am - Got rubbed and petted! My favorite thing! 12:00 pm - Milk bones! My favorite thing! 1:00 pm - Played in the yard! My favorite thing! 3:00 pm - Wagged my tail! My favorite thing! 5:00 pm - Dinner! My favorite thing! 7:00 pm - Got to play ball! My favorite thing! 8:00 pm - Wow! Watched TV with the people! My favorite thing! 11:00...

This is a very long analysis of Vista & DRM: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html Well worth the read, with a few funny statements thrown in along the way.

Hollywood, CA - Sony Pictures movie downloads will feature a memory erasing sequence of sounds and flashing light that will cause viewers to forget that they've just watched a movie. Sony hopes the system, called “NoMemory Stick,” will increase the number of repeat downloads for its popular movie titles from online download services like iTunes and Wal-Mart. Memory Erasing“We're masters at getting people to buy the same content over and again,” said Sony Pictures Vice president of Marketing, Kevin Fullbanks. “Look what we did with laser discs, VHS DVD, Blu-Ray and now digital. Now with the NoMemory Stick technology, we...

This is a must see video. Trust me. http://www.filecabi.net/video/spiders-drugs.html Mild profanity. (As*, bitc*)

I need help making a decision. I'm planning a weekend getaway with my wife in a couple of weeks and I want to make it special. I'd like to give her a nice bouquet of flowers, but I'm conflicted between having the local flower shop deliver to the room after we arrive and before we head to a special dinner (tricky timing) and making arrangements with the hotel to have the flowers set up in the room when we arrive. All kept secret from my wife until the moment she sees the flowers, naturally. So, women of FReepdom: Which would...

This is the latest Naitional Republican Senatorial Committee ad for Michael Steele in Maryland. High production values and a great closing line. http://www.gopsenators.com/video/?ID=5A64A751-88C8-4957-8664-A173733F0ED9

This is a touching song intended to comfort employees everywhere who are suffering mistreatment. Enjoy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlL5iG6gmFM

I just had a great experience wuth New Balance, the sport shoe manufacturer, and I have to tell you all about it. I'll be brief. Earlier this afternoon, I was filling my Hot Rod Lincoln with overpriced fuel. The pump failed to automatically shut off when the tank was full, and gasoline spilled out all over the ground and all over my New Balance walking shoes. The station manager told me that if I needed to pay to have anything cleaned, he'd pay for it. I told him I'd check things out after I got home. At home, I called...

I need help. Windows XP SP2 on my computer will not start. Earlier this morning, everything was going great, then Firefox locked up while doing a Google search. Locked up tight, and I had to press and hold the power button for several seconds to shut down. Now, when I power up, everything goes well through POST until Windows tries to start up, then the screen goes black and all disk activity ceases. After waiting several minutes with nothing happening, pressing the power button for a fraction of a second shuts the computer down. I've tried booting to Last Known...

I'm submitting an article for publication in a local newspaper, and I need to know the accepted coding for italics. In other words, I have a section that I want to be printed in italics. I was thinking to enclose that section between (italics) (close italics). Right? If not, what's correct? Thanks.

The Smoking Gun has obtained internal budget documents detailing where the money was allocated on an assortment of big-budget Tinseltown productions. The records provide a line-by-line account of spending on each movie up to its completion, but do not reveal what the studio paid after that point for marketing and advertising (that secondary sum usually adds tens of millions to a movie's total cost). Since this is our first posting of such Hollywood records, TSG has decided to initially focus on a quartet of movies by the same director (M. Night Shyamalan) and which were distributed by the same studio...

Florida: The Harri Hursti Hack and its Importance to our Nation By Susan Pynchon, Florida Fair Elections Coalition January 21, 2006 [updated January 21, 2006] I was one of ten people present at the "hack" of the Leon County, Florida voting system, which took place on Tuesday, December 13, 2005 around 4:30 in the afternoon at the county elections warehouse. Leon County's voting system is the Diebold Accu-Vote OS 1.94w (optical scan). The Leon County Supervisor of Elections, Ion Sancho, authorized a "test" of his Diebold voting system to see if election results could be altered using only a memory...

North American Cooperative Security Act, H.R.2672 and S. 853, seems to be a grand move toward effectively removing our borders with Canada and Mexico. It also forms security teams containing officers from both U. S. and Mexico, together. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:s.00853: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:HR02672: Comments?

Jack is back! More terrorists to whup! Chloe! Oh, my!

10 November 2005 Trojan horse exploits Sony DRM copy protection vulnerability Sophos issues tool to detect and disable "cloaking" flaw exploited by Trojans The Trojan horse exploits a vulnerability introduced by Sony's CD copy protection software. Experts at SophosLabsâ„¢, Sophos's global network of virus and spam analysis centres, have detected a new Trojan horse that exploits the controversial Sony DRM (Digital Rights Management) copy protection included on some of the music giant's CDs. The Troj/Stinx-E Trojan horse appears to have been deliberately spammed out to email addresses, posing as a message from a British business magazine. Typical emails look as...

OKAY, HERE'S A PRETTY INTERESTING THEORY [John Podhoretz] From e-mailer A.P., echoing something Hugh Hewitt has been hinting at: "Bush does not really care about conservatism or shifting the court in any direction - he only cares about war. He has a litmus test alright, but it's not "Will (s)he overturn Roe?" (as everybody assumes) but rather "Will (s)he set Jose Padilla loose?". Courts have potential for a lot of mischief in the war against Islamofascism and in fact a district court ruled in favor of bin Laden's driver not long ago. That decision was subsequently overturned by certain Judge...

I am having the weirdest computer problems and I need help. I built this computer myself a couple or three years ago, a P4 2.4GHz with 1GB RAM, WindowsXP Service Pack 1 (I won't go to SP2). Everything was working fine all of yesterday. Last night when I shut down, it was a normal shut down. This morning, after I booted up, Mozilla Thunderbird would not open. It loads fine, as I can see it taking up more than 6,000KB in the Processes tab of Windows Task Manager. It just doesn't open. I discovered later that when I disable Zone...