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A team of flyers risks their lives to deliver the mail in a mountainous South American country.

Hollywood star Hugh Grant has run into trouble with paparazzi yet again. According to a video posted on the celeb website TMZ.com, the 48-year-old star is seen kicking a photographer below the waist, in the groin. Grant was leaving a hotspot in New York when he was followed by a group of paparazzi. When they followed him in spite of his warnings, Grant kicked a photographer. This is not the first time for Grant. A few years ago he was also accused of throwing baked beans at a London photographer.

Roman Catholic, Anti-Communist Republican classic movie director Leo McCarey's "Once Upon A Honeymoon"(1942) with Republican movie superstars Ginger Rogers & Cary Grant. is airing on TCM on Monday morning. From its title, stars & director one might think it's a light romantic comedy like Grant's "The Awful Truth" and Miss Rogers' "It Had to Be You." And while it's partly in that genre, it's also a WII spy adveture. It's loads of fun to watch if you're a fan of Ginger, Cary, Walter Slezak(as Ginger's villainous Nazi husband), McCarey or 1940s WWII propaganda films. It also provides evidence that there...

THROW AWAY THE SCABBARD What if Stonewall Jackson had survived Chancellorsville? In this alternate history, Jackson survives Chancellorsville. With Jackson leading his Second Corps in an invasion of the North, the war shifts from the Virginia wilderness to the Pennsylvania countryside. After the Army of Northern Virginia wins a stunning victory on the banks of the Susquehanna, General Ulysses S. Grant comes east to drive the Confederates from northern soil. But when Grant fails to dislodge Lee's army, President Abraham Lincoln risks all in a desperate attempt to win the war and restore the Union. Throw Away the Scabbard is...

The trouble with many of the past ratings of America's presidents is that the "consensus" has been arrived at by academics who act alike, do alike, and think alike. In the view of many, they are suspect of viewing history exclusively through the prism of Ivy League faculty lounge discourse. Alvin Stephen Felzenberg (Ph.D.) — who has taken a fresh and comprehensive look at the nation's chief executives in his book The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn't): Rethinking the Presidential Rating Game — does not challenge the credentials of the conventional historians. Rather, as he explains in...

To justify their arrest warrant for BART Officer Johannes Mehserle, Oakland police claimed that Oscar Grant's hands were "restrained" behind his back when Mehserle shot him. Alameda District Attorney was only slightly more circumspect, asserting in his indictment that: After careful analysis of the video, it is clear that both of Grant's hands were behind his back, a position hands are commonly placed in by police officers in order to handcuff individuals, when the shot was fired into his body. On the contrary, however, frame by frame analysis of the shooting video proves that Grant's hands were NOT in a...

I apologize for the vanity, but I just had to ask if anyone else had seen all the ads on facebook and around the internet trying to get people to pay $3 (shipping and handling) to get 'free' information about how to get $12,000 (and more!) from Obama through a grant, "just for being married" within 30 days. I realize this is a scam, but has anyone paid the money out of curiousity and can you share with the rest of us what the scam is?

By his own admission, Bernard Madoff has catapulted himself into the major leagues of Wall Street fraud. That is no small accomplishment, given some of the more famous frauds of the past. But a $50 billion Ponzi scheme is no small thing. To be sure, the number of still unanswered questions is huge. How could a Ponzi scheme last as long as this one and reach so fantastic a sum? Why didn't he take the money and decamp to some extradition-free country instead of admitting the fraud and waiting for the cops to show up? And, of course, how could...

Adding the finishing touches to Grant ParkJames Janega | Tribune reporter November 2, 2008 Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama returns home Tuesday for an Election Night rally in Grant Park that has sparked huge civic interest and many questions about how the event will work. **SNIP** Q. How many people will show up? A. Daley estimated 1 million, a number he said was a guess. The campaign's permit said there would be 65,000 ticketed guests and 7,500 "participants" at the official fenced area. But interest is high and the weather is expected to be excellent, so expect quite a throng...

City Crews To Take Work Home For Obama RallyOct 26, 2008 7:35 am US/Central CHICAGO (STNG); Off-duty Chicago firefighters and paramedics have been ordered to take all of their gear home with them to speed deployment in the event of an emergency at Barack Obama's giant election night rally in Grant Park. The order begins next Wednesday and continues until Nov. 6 -- two days after the election. Firefighters have been ordered to take home gear that includes protective clothing known as bunker gear, gloves, face mask, helmet, boots and breathing apparatus tank. **SNIP** "This way, their gear would be...

Obama-Ayers link involved Annenberg grantBy Rita Giordano Inquirer Staff Writer Posted on Sat, Oct. 18, 2008 The Chicago education project that has linked the names of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and William Ayers, a former 1960s and 1970s radical turned college professor and education activist, was part of a $500 million initiative by Philadelphia publisher and philanthropist Walter Annenberg to aid schools around the country. The half-billion-dollar "gift," as it was described by President Bill Clinton at a 1993 White House ceremony, would go on to provide 2-to-1 matching-fund grants to 18 school districts around the nation. **SNIP** The...

A $100,000 state grant for a botanic garden in Englewood that then-state Sen. Barack Obama awarded in 2001 to a group headed by a onetime campaign volunteer is now under investigation by the Illinois attorney general amid new questions, prompted by Chicago Sun-Times reports, about whether the money might have been misspent. The garden was never built. And now state records obtained by the Sun-Times show $65,000 of the grant money went to the wife of Kenny B. Smith, the Obama 2000 congressional campaign volunteer who heads the Chicago Better Housing Association, which was in charge of the project for...

Grand Old Partisan salutes Ulysses Grant, the second Republican to serve as President of the United States. He was born in Point Pleasant, OH on April 27, 1822. Sometimes overlooked are President Grant's exemplary efforts to protect African-Americans from their Democrat oppressors.In 1870 and 1871, President Grant signed into law three laws known as the Enforcement Acts, one of which banned the Ku Klux Klan and other Democrat terrorist organizations. Grant then...[see http://grandpartisan.typepad.com/blog/2008/04/ulysses-grant-r.html]Each day, Grand Old Partisan celebrates 154 years of Republican heroes and heroics.

Chicago entrepreneur Robert Blackwell Jr. paid Obama an $8,000-a-month retainer to give legal advice to his growing technology firm, Electronic Knowledge Interchange. It allowed Obama to supplement his $58,000 part-time state Senate salary for over a year with regular payments from Blackwell's firm that eventually totaled $112,000. A few months after receiving his final payment from EKI, Obama sent a request on state Senate letterhead urging Illinois officials to provide a $50,000 tourism promotion grant to another Blackwell company, Killerspin.

WASHINGTON, March 26, 2008 – A grant of just $163 dollars from a group that supports military families turned out to be a really big deal -- not only for the recipients, but for the granting organization, as well. The grant put “Our Military Kids,” a group that supports families of deployed or wounded National Guard and reserve members, over the $1 million mark in grants given, said Gail Kruzel, one of the organization’s founders. This particular grant means that two young sons of Missouri Army National Guard Maj. Matt Bacon, who currently is serving his second tour in...

Soybean growers hold up University of Minnesota funds to protest biofuels paper Trade council unhappy with biofuels paper By Leslie Brooks Suzukamo lsuzukamo@pioneerpress.com Article Last Updated: 02/28/2008 09:41:51 PM CST Call it a soybean spat. The University of Minnesota isn't going to receive any research funding from the state's soybean growers council until the two parties have a heart-to-heart talk next week. The Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council voted to temporarily suspend its financial support after a study co-authored by U researchers in the journal Science said increased use of biofuel crops like corn and soybeans could worsen global...

MOUNT CLEMENS, Mich. -- A verdict of second-degree murder has been reported in the trial of Stephen Grant, accused of killing and dismembering his wife, Tara. Stay with ClickOnDetroit.com and Local 4 for more on this developing story. Grant will be back in court for sentencing on Feb. 21 2008. Watch Live As Stephen Grant Verdict is Announced Court officials have not released the name of the detained reporter at this time. Judge Druzinski said she will decide whether to press charges on the reporter at a later time. Earlier in the day, the jury asked the judge to provide...

I have to say at the outset that I am not impressed when someone quotes a long dead sage to “prove” a point. Appeals to authority are one of the weakest of the logical fallacies. However, sometimes the things you read about events long ago and men long dead strike a responsive cord and remind you that there are very few new things under the sun. I am re-reading Ulysses S. Grant’s Memoirs. Yes, THAT Grant: Ulysses S. Grant of Civil War fame. He was the Civil War General who finally commanded all of the Union armies and defeated the...

A diamond-adorned sword once owned by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant brought a winning bid of more than $1.6 million in an auction of Civil War items. The sword given to Grant, who later became the 18th president, was one of the marquee items among the 750 to be auctioned Sunday and Monday by Heritage Auction Galleries of Dallas. Another showcase item up for bid was Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer's frayed battle flag, which was auctioned for $896,250. Another item of note was a "Bonnie Blue" flag carried by the 3rd Texas State Cavalry, which drew a bid of $47,800....

BOISE - Boise Police officers & Ada County Sheriff's deputies are on the watch – working to snag aggressive drivers during a two week long program. (snip) The stepped up patrols are funded by a grants from the Idaho Transportation Department’s Office of Highway Safety. The money goes to help pay overtime for officers conducting the special patrols. An extra two to three Boise Police Officers are on duty each day.