Free Republic

WASHINGTON — On a Friday afternoon in mid-June, President Obama sat down with advisers in the Oval Office and learned that the F.B.I. planned to round up the largest ring of Russian sleeper agents since the cold war. After discussion about what the agents had done, the conversation turned to the fallout: what to do after the arrests? In that moment was born a back-to-the-future plan that would play out four weeks later, a prisoner exchange with surreal and even cinematic overtones as Russian and American airplanes met on a sunny tarmac in the heart of Europe on Friday to...

Pay at the pump. Pay at the odometer. Pay to avoid traffic on the bridges and on car-pool lanes throughout the Bay Area. Pay to use a state restroom on the side of the highway. This is the vision of transportation in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's California Perfomance Review, nicknamed the "Blow Up the Boxes Commission" by some around the Capitol. The nickname comes from Schwarzenegger's inauguration speech, in which he vowed to reform state government by blowing up boxes, not moving them around. On Tuesday, he took a step toward delivering on that promise as his small army of advisers...