Free Republic

One day my wife and I were leaving the Mountaineer Casino and Resort in Chester, W. Va. The casino has two installations connected by a shuttle bus. One is a hotel and casino, and the other is a racetrack and casino. As we departed the racetrack, a shuttle bus from the other installation pulled up to the door. A crowd filed off the bus, and almost everyone was holding an alcoholic drink. (You normally don't carry free soft drinks from one building to the other.) Also, many of the passengers were smoking cigarettes. In this day of political correctness run...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A judge refused a request by Ameriquest Mortgage Co. founder Roland Arnall to limit his ex-wife's look into his net worth as part of her attempt to get a higher divorce settlement. Sally Arnall's attorney, Vicki Greene, asked Superior Court Judge Richard E. Denner to approve a broad investigation into the finances of Arnall, who is President Bush's nominee to be U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands. "We want to assess all the assets that were not disclosed or undervalued," Greene said. But Leonard J. Meyberg Jr., lawyer for the Ameriquest founder, told the judge Wednesday that...

SACRAMENTO – The politically potent T-word "taxes" is being used by both sides in the debate over Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's main ballot measure in his special election Nov. 8. Analyses of Proposition 76 dryly talk about a limit on state spending, new power for the governor to make mid-year cuts if the Legislature fails to keep the budget in balance, and a change in the school-funding guarantee. In early television ads for his initiative, and in campaign events, the governor is hitting a hot-button issue: A spending limit is needed to prevent out-of-control spending by the Legislature from forcing a...

Minnesota waterfowlers will be allowed two fewer ducks in the bag this fall than last, and the limit on hen mallards during a 60-day season has been cut from two to one, the Department of Natural Resources said last week. The reduction from last year's six-duck daily bag limit was due in part to a drop last year in the Mississippi Flyway duck harvest of about 1 million birds from 2003. Minnesota's 2004 harvest declined 23 percent. Additionally, Minnesota's breeding duck population this spring was the lowest since the drought years of the 1980s. Mallards, down 37 percent from 2004,...

Armed Forces stretched beyond limit By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent (Filed: 15/06/2005) A damning report on the Armed Forces' ability to go on operations has concluded that more than a third of the military are experiencing serious weaknesses. The National Audit Office says today that there is a potential crisis facing the military with so many troops deployed in operations overseas and a possible brigade-size operation in Afghanistan next year. The Government's commitments abroad have used up a vast amount of equipment and led to serious curtailment of training, the Whitehall spending watchdog says. Under the Ministry of Defence traffic...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Hiring 2,000 new agents next year could push the U.S. Border Patrol to its limits in training and managing its ranks, Bush administration officials testified Tuesday. Previously, Homeland Security Department officials have questioned whether the Border Patrol could handle the new agents, as Congress mandated in an intelligence reform law last year and re-approved last week by the House. On Tuesday, training officials said it is possible - but warned that the new hires would not come without added costs. The 2,000 new agents would come close to making out what the Border Patrol could hire "without...

Gun-control advocates on Wednesday urged a gubernatorial advisory commission to endorse a proposal to limit handgun purchases in Pennsylvania to one per month when the panel makes recommendations next week. "We must rid the community of so many guns, make them harder to purchase and teach people other ways to settle their disputes," Diane Edbril of CeaseFirePA told a Capitol news conference. State Rep. W. Curtis Thomas, who also participated in the news conference, said the unlimited sale of handguns in Pennsylvania feeds a voracious underground market for illegal weapons used to commit crimes. "This is about whether or not...

California should have enough power to get through this summer without blackouts -- as long as nothing goes wrong. Keepers of the state's power grid say supplies are stretched so thinly that a widespread heat wave or wildfire could mean homeowners and businesses may once again wait their turn for the lights to go out. Rolling blackouts -- planned power outages that are "rolled" from area to area to protect the power grid when electricity supplies are critically low -- became part of Californians' life during the state's power crisis four years ago. Explosive growth in areas far from cooling...

A key panel of the California Public Employees' Retirement System endorsed a plan Tuesday to reduce wild swings in government contributions, following calls for a pension overhaul by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other critics. Under the plan, CalPERS would revamp a formula used to calculate annual pension contribution rates for the state, cities and other government agencies. It would also spread investment gains and losses over a 15-year period instead of three years, as it does now. At the same time, trustees agreed to explore legislation to create reserve accounts that government officials can tap to meet their pension payments...

Until Wednesday, 11 states issued driver licenses to illegal immigrants. On Wednesday, Utah's governor signed a bill that denies such immigrants licenses, offering them instead readily distinguishable "driving privilege cards." Utah's action points to a national wave of public concern about issuing to illegal immigrants a license to do far more than drive. It's a wave, too, that will become a veritable tsunami if federal legislation that just passed the House of Representatives makes it, as it should, through the Senate. In that event, states may continue to issue driver licenses to illegal immigrants, but driver licenses from those states...

WASHINGTON - A bipartisan plan to rein in spending by independent groups that exerted a profound influence on the 2004 presidential election - such as the liberal group MoveOn.org and the conservative Swift Boat Veterans for Truth - got a friendly hearing in the Senate on Tuesday. Sen. Trent Lott, the Republican chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, said he wants to move quickly to put limits in place by next year's midterm elections. But critics warned that if Congress caps the amount of money individuals can give to so-called 527s, known for the section of the tax code that...

A lobbying firm representing traditionally Democratic causes and a political consultant with ties to a Democratic congressman are seeking to qualify a handful of ballot initiatives that exempt members of Congress if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proceeds with a special election to force the redrawing of political districts years ahead of schedule. Jim Gonzalez and Associates, the Sacramento lobbying firm that submitted the four proposed initiatives to the state attorney general's office for consideration, and John Thiella, a consultant to the firm on the initiative proposals, say they are not working on behalf of specific clients but rather floating proposals that...

BOISE - UFOs are showing a keen interest in our nuclear weapons facilities, says investigator Robert Hastings, who has spent countless hours analyzing documents dealing with UFO sightings at nuclear missile launch sites and research labs in the United States over the past several decades. "You have reference to these objects hovering, racing away at blinding speed," he told Idaho 2 News. "There is no evidence we have an aircraft that can do that or anyone else on earth." Hastings, who has devoted countless hours researching UFOs and the U.S. government's reaction to them, was in Boise for a lecture...

Man arrested for going 140 mph over limit Wabasha, MN, Sep. 21 (UPI) -- The Minnesota State Patrol pilot couldn't believe his stopwatch when he clocked a motorcycle on U.S. 61 traveling at 205 mph. "I was in total disbelief," Al Loney told Tuesday's St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press. "I had to double-check my watch because, in 27 years, I'd never seen anything move that fast." In fact, Looney said the motorcycle was traveling faster than his airplane. Loney radioed another state trooper, who stopped the two motorcyclists Saturday and arrested the faster rider, Samuel Armstrong Tilley, 20, for reckless...

A few weeks ago, Jerry Seper at The Washington Times wrote a well researched three part series titled: "FREE PASS: America's losing fight against illegals."[1] It is still there for anyone interested in catching up on the topic. Last week, Seper struck yet again, this time describing the "Limits sought on Border Patrol" agents. According to Seper: "The Department of Homeland Security wants to restrict the U.S. Border Patrol's arrest of illegal aliens in the nation's interior, concerned that the recent apprehension of 450 illegals by agents in inland areas of Southern California failed to consider the 'sensitivities' of those...

So lots of changes to FR lately . . . and change is good. Except for one change. When I go to a thread - any thread - I can only see 50 posts at a time. That's not enough. I want as many answers per page as I can get - 250, the way it used to be! I've gone to More, then to My Preferences, and set Views to 250. Several times.

Arsenic in Tuscany water 'five times limit' By Bruce Johnston in Rome (Filed: 26/06/2004) Britons holidaying in Tuscany this summer may be drinking up to five times the permissable level of arsenic in water without being told, The Telegraph has learnt. Although a national law limits arsenic to 10 microgrammes per litre, Tuscany used a legal loophole to pass a decree making an exception in many towns in the centre and south of the region.As a result, water can contain up to 50 microgrammes until the end of the year. Many of the towns involved, including Siena, are popular with...

No obvious limit to immigration, says Blunkett By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor (Filed: 13/11/2003) David Blunkett blew open the political debate over immigration last night when he said there was "no obvious limit" to the number of foreigners who could settle in Britain. With figures today expected to show that net migration is running at a record level, the Home Secretary conceded that in some areas people felt swamped or overwhelmed by new arrivals. However, he declined to say how many people he thought Britain could comfortably accommodate. His comments are certain to ignite controversy over immigration policy, which...

<p>Sept. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Germany's draft federal budget for next year incorporates new borrowing that already breaches a European Union rule limiting deficits to 3 percent of gross domestic product, a lawmaker said.</p> <p>Finance Minister Hans Eichel plans to raise 28.8 billion euros ($31.3 billion) in new debt next year when a limit of 24 billion is necessary to keep the deficit below 3 percent of GDP, said Antje Hermenau, a Green Party lawmaker, citing talks with unnamed EU officials.</p>

Date limit set on first Americans By Paul Rincon BBC Science A new genetic study deals a blow to claims that humans reached America at least 30,000 years ago - around the same time that people were colonising Europe. Kennewick Man, a 9,300-year-old American The subject of when humans first arrived in America is hotly contested by academics. On one side of the argument are researchers who claim America was first populated around 13,000 years ago, toward the end of the last Ice Age. On the other are those who propose a much earlier date for colonisation of the continent...