Free Republic

This esisode of WHIO Reports focuses on highway construction around the Dayton area, especially the main projects such as the I-75 project and the I-70/I-75 project. The guests discuss how the construction projects are affecting the local economy now and when the projects will be finished. The guests acknowledge that they understand that drivers are getting frustrated and focus on the end result to make driving so much easier. They discuss when the projects began and when they plan to finish the new roadways, as well as the cost which is around $700 million. The construction is needed because the...

NEW YORK - The New York City Opera commissioned Charles Wuorinen to compose an opera based on "Brokeback Mountain," the 1997 short story by Annie Proulx that became the basis for a 2005 movie that won three Academy Awards. ADVERTISEMENT The opera is scheduled to premiere in spring 2013, City Opera said Sunday. It will be City Opera's second Wuorinen premiere, following "Haroun and the Sea of Stories," which was based on a Salman Rushdie novel and opened in October 2004. "Ever since encountering Annie Proulx's extraordinary story I have wanted to make an opera on it, and it gives...

Notorious D.C. Madam Debra Palfrey, whose long list of powerful prostitution clients kept the nation's lawmakers quaking, was murdered! That's the buzz rocking the Internet and filtering through political circles after she was found hanging by a nylon rope in a shed next to her mother's home in Tarpon Springs, Fla., earlier this month. Just weeks before her death, Palfrey, 52, had been found guilty of running a call-girl service that catered to Washington's power brokers. She faced four to six years in prison and was stated to be sentenced on July 24 but was appealing the vereict. So far,...

S&P Housing Index Shows Price of Single-Family Home Rose at Slowest Rate in More Than 10 Years NEW YORK (AP) -- Prices of single-family homes across the nation rose in November at the slowest rate in more than a decade, a housing index released Tuesday by Standard & Poor's showed, countering other evidence that the housing slowdown may be nearing an end. The S&P/Case-Shiller composite index showed a 1.3 percent year-over-year increase in the price of a single-family home based on existing homes tracked over time in 10 metropolitan markets. For its 20-city composite index, prices grew 1.7 percent, the...

You guys just HAVE to come over to the Tennesseean's forum section. If I don't get called a bigot or racist within the first hour after a post, I don't figure I'm doing my job good enough. LOL! Over there I am Tree of Liberty. Forum home And would you mind Freeping my polls? Poll 1 on parental notificationPoll 2 Is the DOW record a bad thing?

Tunisian singer and dancer Najla is trying eagerly to return to the scenes, yet decisions to ban her music surround her. According to the London based weekly, Sayidaty, Najla insists on presenting nudity as an essential part of her music videos. The most recent is Najla’s fourth music video for "Baghlat Fi Ismak" (I Mistake your Name). The music channel Mazzika was forced to delete a number of scenes in order to make it appropriate for the average viewer, but even after the deletion the clip is still considered too sexual. It contained scenes of Najla doing a strip tease,...

NBC OLYMPICS HOME PAGE Complete Olympic Schedule TV SCHEDULES usolympicteam.com

LOS ANGELES - George Takei, best known for his role as Mr. Sulu in "Star Trek," came out as homosexual in the current issue of a magazine covering the Los Angeles gay and lesbian community. Takei told The Associated Press on Thursday that his new onstage role as psychologist Martin Dysart in "Equus," helped inspire him to publicly discuss his sexuality. Takei described the character as a "very contained but turbulently frustrated man." The play opened Wednesday at the David Henry Hwang Theater in Los Angeles, the same day that Frontiers magazine featured a story on Takei's coming out. The...

London: Increasing numbers of lions are becoming man-eaters, placing lion conservation efforts in jeopardy. Nearly 1000 people have been killed or maimed by lions in Tanzania over the past 15 years, a study published in Nature says. The attacks have escalated in part because of Tanzania's rapid population growth - from 23.1 million in 1988 to 34.6 million in 2002 - and an associated loss of lion prey outside protected areas. Victims have included old people, nursing mothers, children playing outside their homes and people dragged from their beds. Lions often select smaller dwellings where it is more likely that...

Elephants, lions, cheetahs and camels could one day roam the western US under a proposal to recreate North American landscapes as they existed more than 13,000 years ago, when humans first encountered them. The plan, proposed in a commentary in Nature and co-authored by 13 ecologists and conservation biologists, would help enrich a North American ecosystem that was left almost devoid of large mammals at the end of the Pleistocene period. It would also help preserve wildlife that faces the threat of extinction in Africa and Asia. Between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago, 97 of 150 genera of large mammals...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Legislation to strengthen 1960s-era federal hate crime law and broaden it to cover gay people and the disabled overwhelmingly passed the U.S. Senate on Tuesday. The legislation was passed by a 65-33 vote as an amendment to a defense bill. Backers hope the large bipartisan margin will ensure the measure remains part of the bill after negotiations with the House of Representatives. The House, which has been less sympathetic to the hate crimes legislation, did not include hate crimes in its version of the defense bill. Eighteen Republicans joined all the Senate Democrats present to pass the...

A man's arm got stuck in the toilet of a commuter train when he tried to fish out his dropped cell phone -- halting his train and sending delays throughout the rail system. Thousands of commuters were delayed and several trains were rerouted while rescue workers tried to pull him out, a Metro-North Railroad spokesman said Thursday. "When this moron's arm went down the crapper, so did our evening commute," said Metro North's Dan Brucker. Edwin Gallart, 41, of the Bronx, dropped his cell phone in the toilet of his Mount Vernon-bound train shortly after it left Grand Central Terminal...

A New York Post stunt went horribly wrong when a reporter bought an 8-day-old lion - then dumped the deathly ill cub at an Ohio animal sanctuary yesterday, authorities said. Post reporter Al Guart told animal refuge officials that he bought the 4-pound cub for $1,000 on the Internet as part of an exposé about animal trafficking - but panicked when he realized he couldn't care for the animal. "This is a beautiful little lion and what they did is wrong," said Ellen Whitehouse, director of Noah's Lost Ark, near Cleveland. Mahoning County sheriff's deputies were called after Guart and...

A female version of Viagra, the drug that transformed the sex lives of millions of men, could soon be developed. It was previously thought that the little blue pill, which has been widely used by men all over the world since 1998, would do little, if taken by women, to improve their enjoyment of sex. But latest tests have suggested that more than half the women given Viagra reported heightened satisfaction during sex. The discovery has given fresh momentum to plans for the commercial production of a female version of the drug - nicknamed "pink Viagra" - which could help...

Tommy’s Tantrum by Jennifer King, Managing Editor September 30, 2002 "The Heretical Housewife" Last week, the Democratic Party took a remarkable leap to the far Left. Despite ample evidence that the American people hold a dim view of the loopy, anti-American, anti-military Left, the Dems trotted out the usual suspects in order to parrot the new Party Line - “No War With Iraq” (at least before the election). First came Al Gore, still droning on like he’s lecturing a class of dimwitted five year olds. Gore easily won the “nervous Nixon” award for onscreen profuse perspiration, as he relentlessly proved...

Caption this!

MIDI - I'M LOOKING THROUGH YOU I'm looking through you with my x-ray They are impressive…you've made my whole day I like them real, not plasticized The young ones are a nice treat for my eyes If you're in college, come right this way I'll check you out, dear, without a delay I like them real, not plasticized The young ones are a nice treat for my eyes I know the airport really doesn't pay much But if I hang in there I am hoping that I'll get to touch I hate old ones that droop to the waist...