Free Republic

After 16 years and $1.5 billion of other people’s money, it is almost showtime for NASA and Sam Ting. Sitting and being fussed over by technicians in a clean room at the Kennedy Space Center in preparation for a February launching — and looking for all the world like a giant corrugated rain barrel — is an eight-ton assemblage of magnets, wires, iron, aluminum, silicon and electronics that is one of the most ambitious and complicated experiments ever to set out for space. The experiment, if it succeeds, could help NASA take a giant step toward answering the question of...

As we look back to that day 66 years ago, we should reflect on the qualities that allowed us to achieve victory over tyranny. And we should do our best to rebuild those qualities, now that we need them again. But if we need a reminder of what those qualities are, we need only look at our multi-racial, multi-ethnic armed forces. They are role models for us all. On D-Day, soldiers didn’t wonder whether the man next to them was a “real” Latino or a “real” whatever. They already knew he was a real American. Nothing else mattered then. It...

Obama Orders Costly Energy Standards on Appliances Thursday, February 5, 2009 12:56 PM WASHINGTON – Eager to show action on the energy front, President Barack Obama ordered his government on Thursday to establish higher efficiency standards for everyday household appliances such as dishwashers, lamps and microwave ovens. "This will save consumers money, this will spur innovation, and this will conserve tremendous amounts of energy," Obama declared during a visit to the Energy Department, where he touted his economic jobs plan. Obama announced he had signed a presidential memorandum directing the Energy Department to get moving on energy standards for appliances,...

CHICAGO – Citing an "economic crisis of historic proportions," President-elect Barack Obama urged Congress to pass a costly, job-creating stimulus bill as quickly as possible, a rare pre-inaugural call to action delivered as the outgoing Bush administration approved fresh billions to bail out one of the nation's largest banks. Stock prices surged — the biggest two-day percentage gain for the Dow Jones industrials in 21 years — as investors took heart Monday from the actions and words of the incoming and departing chief executives. "If we do not act swiftly and boldly, most experts now believe that we could lose...

THE local returns from Tuesday's election made one thing quite clear: Angelenos are generous when it comes to schools. So generous, in fact, that they have just agreed to continue to encumber themselves and their neighbors with hefty property taxes for decades to come. In fact, it was a little bit astonishing that voters in Los Angeles overwhelmingly passed the fifth building bond for LAUSD in the past decade - at $7 billion, the largest yet. It didn't even seem to matter that school officials hadn't made any real effort to make a plan to use the money. They knew...

What is it?" Kelly Charles asked as he walked to his job as a custodian in downtown Los Angeles and gazed up at a rather odd construction project. "A roller coaster?" As I wandered the neighborhood, other guesses were: A ski jump. A toboggan run. A water slide. What's got everyone talking is the odd-looking tower that rises 140 feet above the 101 Freeway, directly across from the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. The futuristic metallic edifice, with a wraparound spiral Dr. Seuss would love, is not part of a theme park. It is the signature adornment on...

Medical-bill confusion costly for Ohio patients Trying to understand a hospital bill can be a challenge. It usually provides little detail about the medical care you received, and the first version you get in the mail might say "This is not a bill." The next statement could include how much you owe and tell you that you need to pay in 30, 60, 90 or 120 days. Is this the final amount you owe? Are there more bills coming? Patient advocates say few people are prepared for the amount of paperwork that follows a hospital stay or surgery and even...

You Get What You Pay For? Costly Placebo Works Better Than Cheap One ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2008) — A 10-cent pill doesn't kill pain as well as a $2.50 pill, even when they are identical placebos, according to a provocative study by Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at Duke University. "Physicians want to think it's the medicine and not their enthusiasm about a particular drug that makes a drug more therapeutically effective, but now we really have to worry about the nuances of interaction between patients and physicians," said Ariely, whose findings appear as a letter in the March 5...

High levels of cancer-causing benzene and the suspected carcinogen MTBE have been found in the ground water beneath a Citgo gas station in Monrovia, the Frederick County Health Department said Tuesday. Both chemicals are gasoline additives.There is no indication that the contamination has migrated offsite, the health department said. All property owners within a half-mile of Green Valley Citgo will be notified of the sampling results, the agency said. The health department said benzene, a known carcinogen, was detected at a level of 66 parts per billion, or about 13 times the federal Environmental Protection Agency's maximum contaminant level of...

We have watched the news cover the Jessica Lunsford trial and to know that a child suffered at the hands of a sex offender, when it could have been prevented should be galvanizing our law makers, to enact. This could have been your daughter, just imagine the anguish any parent would have to live with, if this happened to them. John Couey, who was convicted, had a record as a sex offender and was just released from prison, at the time of her murder. There are many John Couey types and one could be living next to you. Often, administration...

WASHINGTON - A Washington lobbyist and his partner twice insinuated themselves into the tribal elections of an Inland tribe, which paved the way for them to receive lucrative contracts worth more than $7.2 million which the two split in a secret deal, according to a nearly 400-page report released by a congressional committee Thursday. The report by the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs is the most detailed account so far of how the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians in Palm Springs came to hire Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his partner, public relations specialist Michael S. Scanlon. Abramoff, who...

YUBA CITY, Calif. (AP) - It's been almost two years since Kimberly Ward moved from North Carolina to California with her husband, yet finding a job that pays well enough to keep pace with the state's high cost of living continues to be a struggle. She's had several jobs that paid $9 an hour - well above the state's minimum wage of $6.75 an hour - but each was temporary. The sales jobs she has been seeking at a local mall in this suburb north of Sacramento aren't likely to pay much more than the minimum. "They should raise the...

Republican political strategists had harsh criticism for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign team in the wake of a special election that saw all of his measures go down to defeat. After an election in which five key advisers have already been paid more than $900,000 for their work, they said the governor should now be asking what he got for his money. "I think the governor would want to audit how the money was spent," said longtime Republican political strategist Ken Khachigian. "Was anybody raising their hand and saying, 'Maybe we shouldn't be doing this?' " As Republicans came to grips...

The monthly cost to the US of the war in Iraq is now greater than the average monthly cost of the Vietnam War, a report by two anti-war groups says. The report put costs in Iraq at $500m (£278m) a month more than in Vietnam, adjusted for inflation. This makes Iraq the most expensive US war in the past 60 years, they say. But an analyst from the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) said the cost was small in the context of the whole US economy. The report by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and Foreign Policy in Focus...

WASHINGTON - Forty-four members of Congress flew to Cape Canaveral for the scrubbed launch of space shuttle Discovery at a cost of more than $73,000, according to figures provided to The Associated Press on Thursday. Some lawmakers would be willing to try again once NASA sets a new launch date, but it depends on the congressional schedule. The Air Force flew 35 lawmakers to Florida on Wednesday in two C40B aircraft, the equivalent of a 737-700 business jet. The cost, based on an hourly rate of $7,960, totaled $63,680, the service said. The round trip is about four hours. NASA...

Gov. Schwarzenegger is fighting the good fight, so we can forgive him when he occasionally misfires. His "Million Solar Roofs Initiative" to subsidize photovoltaic (PV) systems is one such error. PV systems convert sunlight into electricity. This is great but for a few problems: the systems are costly; they rarely produce the electricity claimed; and, even with subsidies, PV does not pay for itself. Senate Bill 1 is the legislative vehicle for the governor's initiative. It passed the state Senate on a 30-5 vote with only Republican opposition. The next stop is the Assembly, then the governor's desk. California has...

Alek Boyd at VCrisis has an interesting new article out about what London's oil traders say about Venezuela's Marxist president, Hugo Chavez who controls one sixth of our oil. Boyd points out that not only does Chavez raise oil prices by his trash talk, but also by cutting available supply. He's doing the latter through the destruction of existing oil contracts among U.S. oil companies and general neglect of his state oil company. At The American Thinker, we also have noted how Chavez's abuse of oil workers is hitting world oil prices. And Chavez, through his current actions, is doing...

<p>A California commission has picked a new state building code favored by a firefighters union that is among the biggest donors to Gov. Gray Davis' anti-recall campaign.</p> <p>Critics say the new code will lead to delays and higher costs in construction.</p>

<p>Democratic State Controller Steve Westly on Monday urged California voters not to recall Gov. Gray Davis, calling the Oct. 7 election ``a distraction from good public policy'' that could cost the state an extra $1 billion in higher borrowing costs over the next three decades.</p>

<p>SACRAMENTO - Gov. Gray Davis is so unpopular that his advisers don't plan to persuade voters to like him. And he may face so many rivals in the Oct. 7 recall election that he won't be able to win the way he's always won before, by attacking his opponent.</p>