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Judge Who Ordered Euthanasia of Terri Schiavo Retires St. Petersburg, FL -- The Florida state judge who allowed the former husband of disabled patient Terri Schiavo to take her life by depriving her of food and water, has retired from the bench. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/01/03/judge-who-ordered-euthanasia-of-terri-schiavo-retires

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Kennedys have held congressional seats, the presidency and the public's imagination for more than 60 years. That era ends when Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island vacates his U.S. House seat next month, leaving a City Council post in California as Camelot's sole remaining political holding.

What comes to mind when you think of "the worst"? President James Buchanan. The 1962 Mets. Vanilla Ice. Now add to that list the 111th Congress, which is finally slated to wrap up business this week. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just didn't want to give up that gavel. This may have been the worst Congress since Lyndon Johnson's landslide ushered in the Congress that gave us the Great Society and the Vietnam War. Memo to voters: Democratic landslides are usually followed by disastrous results. The 111th Congress got off to a fast start. Barely two weeks into the Obama era,...

Reading "Masters and Commanders," Andrew Roberts's magnificent account of British and American leaders in World War II, I was struck by how many of them, working prodigious hours and under great strain, were struck down by heart attacks while in their 60s. This doesn't happen anymore, I thought, with the blood pressure and cholesterol medicines many of us routinely take. But it does, as we were reminded by the sudden death at age 69 this week of Richard Holbrooke, who was working prodigiously as Barack Obama's special representative for AfPak, i.e., Afghanistan and Pakistan. Holbrooke was known in cynical Washington...

Members of Congress retire all the time, but some retirements are leading indicators of the direction of our politics. Rep. Sherwood Boehlert's announcement last week to call it quits matters, and in a depressing way. The affable 69-year-old New York Republican is one of the last of a breed: a liberal Republican, though he calls himself a "moderate" and has the record to prove it. Boehlert's departure does not leave the House bereft of liberal Republicans -- Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa is more liberal than Boehlert. But Leach, alas, is an outlier. The spotted owl is in good shape...

Across the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, congregants and clergy today reacted with heavy hearts to word that Bishop V. Gene Robinson is retiring. Robinson, 63, whose consecration seven years ago as the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church divided the Anglican Communion worldwide, yesterday announced at the annual convention of the New Hampshire diocese that he plans to retire in January 2013, short of the mandatory 72-year-old retirement age for Episcopal bishops. He cited death threats and the considerable strain that the worldwide rift has placed on him, his family, and the church.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist says he has no regrets about quitting the Republican Party, despite his decisive defeat on Tuesday. In a phone interview with The Hill, Crist said he is proud of his Senate campaign and doesn’t regret his decision to challenge former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio (R) as an independent candidate. The decision to bolt the GOP initially moved Crist past Rubio in the polls. That lead quickly eroded, however, and on Tuesday, Rubio crushed Crist and Rep. Kendrick Meek (D) with 49 percent of the vote, compared with 30 percent for Crist and 20 percent for...

Montreal police Const. Anie Lemieux said the initial investigation suggests the youths may have been spray-painting graffiti. It's believed they had parked their cars near the scene before heading to the tracks. Lemieux said they were in an area where it would have been difficult to hear trains approaching.

Democrats on Capitol Hill and K Street are increasingly convinced that Speaker Nancy Pelosi would have little interest in being Minority Leader — and may start preparing to leave Congress altogether — if Republicans win the House next week. Pelosi and her allies adamantly refuse to entertain questions about a possible Democratic minority. But Democratic sources say they have a hard time imagining the 70-year-old, independently wealthy California Democrat would want to return to the less-powerful post that she held for four years before becoming Speaker in 2007, particularly after having spent the past four years driving the Congressional agenda....

Russ Feingold is a prime example of the career Washington insider that Americans want replaced in November. Wisconsin’s startling U.S. Senate race between Russ Feingold and Ron Johnson has transcended party politics and transformed into the national poster child for this country’s deep dissatisfaction with Congress, bloated government, reckless spending, redistributionist socialism, and the institutionalized ruling elite in Washington. From a wildly unpopular health care bill, to Washington’s blind eye to America’s immigration problem, to a pork-laden trillion dollar “stimulus” bill which was more like a sedative, the American voters that incumbents have not listened to are more than angry....

Teresa Lewis, 41, was executed die by lethal injection. (AP) JARRATT, Va., Sept. 23 - Teresa Lewis, who plotted with a young lover to kill her husband and stepson for insurance money, became the first woman executed in Virginia in nearly 100 years Thursday night when she was killed by lethal injection. Authorities pronounced Lewis dead at 9:13 p.m. Lewis's case generated passion and interest across the world. The European Union asked Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) to commute her sentence to life, citing her mental capacity. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cited the case at an appearance in New...

MINNEAPOLIS - The Hennepin County attorney’s office has declined to press charges against the bouncer who shot and killed a man at Grumpy’s Bar in northeast Minneapolis last month. 24-year-old Tirso Gomez Jr. was thrown out of the bar earlier in the evening, and allegedly came at the bouncer with a knife in the early morning hours of July 11. Bouncer Christopher Lamotte, who had a legal conceal-and-carry permit, shot and killed Gomez.

Marilyn Buck, a violent leftist incarcerated for 25 years for her role in some of the most notorious radical acts of the 1980s, including the bombing of the U.S. Capitol and a deadly armored car heist, has died in Brooklyn. She was 62. On Oct. 20, 1981, she was part of a group of Weather Underground and Black Liberation Army members who ambushed a Brink's armored car carrying $1.6 million at a mall in Nanuet, N.Y. One guard was killed at the scene. A second was badly wounded. Two police officers were subsequently killed after they pulled over one of...

LOS ANGELES — If the mark of a real independent is lack of friends, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the quintessential nonpartisan in American politics right now. His approval rating has not risen above 30 percent since May 2009. California remains in deep fiscal distress. He is despised by the state’s workers (whose pay he cut), Democrats (who loathe his aversion to new taxes and his desire to cut entitlements) and Republicans (who wish those respective aversions and desires were stronger), as well as college students, public school parents and people who hate the smell of cigars. As Governor Schwarzenegger prepares...

My gas-powered 100mhz boat anchor PC finally bit the dust, so you won't see me here for awhile and to add insult to injury, I won't be able to work at my new-found job as a loan originator and so can't buy another CPU. I'm on my stepson's laptop right now, as he's home for a few days. I'd appreciate your thoughts and prayers as I'm trying to do somnetghing in case my wife has another stroke and just to help out. Can't do physical labor or conventional work anymore and while my VA disablity comes in handy, it only...

TORONTO — Police raided a university building and rounded up more protesters Sunday in an effort to quell further violence at the global economic summit after black-clad youths rampaged through the city, smashing windows and torching police cruisers. Police said they have arrested more than 500 demonstrators, many of whom were hauled away in plastic handcuffs and taken to a temporary holding center constructed for the summit.....

Writing in the Washington Examiner, Michael Barone explains why the Dems are in even worse shape heading into the 2010 elections than it may at first appear from polling data: Obama's job rating among black voters is 91% positive. A lttle back of the envelope arithmetic suggests that Obama's job rating among the 88% or 89% of non-black respondents is about 39% positive and 54% negative. That's pretty weak - a whole lot more negative than the numbers you usually see for all voters. This is hugely relevant to the 2010 elections. Most of the states with seriously contested Senate...

Arlen Specter (D-Pa.-cum-R-Pa.-cum-D-Pa.), a.k.a. "Snarlin' Arlen," a.k.a. "Specter the Defector," is one of the most unloved people in politics. He is ornery, vain, disloyal and a brazen opportunist. He lacks a discernible ideology, puts his finger to the political winds before casting a vote and in the end does what is good for Arlen Specter. I will miss him. I will miss him because, whatever his faults, he fought the forces of party unity and ideological purity that are pulling the country apart. "Let me tell you," he complained in 2005, before both parties disowned him, "it's heresy -- I...

Watch this video at your peril. You will rethink every good thought you ever had about Modern Compliance Enforcement Officers (MCEO). Yes, they shot the dog. Again and again and again. As the crackshots they invariably are, it took four rounds to com