Free Republic

New York - A Saudi student who briefly shared a room with Zacarias Moussaoui in Oklahoma pleaded guilty yesterday to making false statements, including lying to the FBI about their plans to visit New York in August. Hussein al-Attas, 24, entered the plea to seven charges in U.S. District Court as part of a deal that keeps him in the country to testify, if needed, against Moussaoui, the only person charged with conspiring to help the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers. Under the plea agreement, al-Attas faces up to six months in prison.

AUSTIN — The Texas Transportation Commission on Thursday selected San Antonio's Zachry Construction Corp. and a Spanish toll road developer to plan a superhighway from Texarkana to Brownsville. The $5 million contract calls for Zachry American Infrastructure and ACS Infrastructure to create a financial plan for the Interstate 69 segment of the Trans-Texas Corridor. "This team represents the best in the balance of local and global expertise necessary to complete a project of this scope," said David Zachry, chief operating officer of Zachry Construction Corp. The private developers' plan calls for seven new loops around Corpus Christi and other cities...

No Suspects Or Motive In Case; Best Friends, 11 And 13, Shot To Death On Rural Road TULSA, Okla. (CBS) No suspect or motive has been identified in the mysterious killing of two girls who were shot to death along a dirt road in rural Okfuskee County, according to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. On Sunday, the bodies of 11-year-old Skyla Whitaker and 13-year-old Taylor Paschal-Placker were found on an isolated county road near this small town, about 70 miles south of Tulsa. The pair, best friends who lived a few miles apart in an impoverished part of the...

Oklahoma City (AP) - Democratic Rep. Dan Boren of Oklahoma said Tuesday Barack Obama is "the most liberal senator" in Congress and he has no intention of endorsing him for the White House. ... Boren, the lone Democrat in Oklahoma's congressional delegate, said that while Obama has talked about working with Republicans, "unfortunately, his record does not reflect working in a bipartisan fashion."

There have been many sites crop up recently that claim to predict what will happen in November. My favorite since 2004 - and I think the most accurate - has been Election Projection. They predicted the 2004 race between Bush and Kerry to within 3 EVs of the actual result and got every Senate race right in 2006. Anyone out there agree? Disagree? Discuss...

EDMONTON - TransCanada Corp. alone plans to ship more than one million barrels a day of oilsands production to the United States with an expanded pipeline construction program unveiled today. The Alberta oil and gas delivery mainstay added a second leg to its new Keystone export service that would more than double the system's capacity and extend it to the Texas coast of the Gulf of Mexico. TransCanada president Hal Kvisle said the added route is a companion instead of competition for projects underway by Enbridge Inc., which is also advancing more than one million barrels daily in new oilsands...

For years, Texas has been planning a privately financed super turnpike from Mexico to the Oklahoma border. But like rush-hour traffic, the plan for a Trans-Texas Corridor is only inching along. "It ran into a firestorm of controversy in Texas,� said Neal McCaleb, a former Oklahoma transportation secretary. Critics have a wide range of concerns about the corridor, which has a key stretch that would parallel Interstate 35. (Another stretch would extend from the Texarkana/Shreveport area to Mexico.) Particularly upset are landowners who may be in the corridor's path. The Texas Transportation Department calls many concerns myths. The department says,...

As the state's population continues to grow in its urban centers, expansion plans for the highway system continue to be the focus for transportation improvements. The Trans Texas Corridor proposal is aimed to alleviate traffic congestion, improve air quality and provide safer traveling for drivers, among other goals. In 2002, Texas Governor Rick Perry released the plan to create the passageway, which spans northeast from Laredo to Oklahoma and is set to total 4,000 miles in the next 50 years. The $140 billion project calls for the incorporation of new toll roads, commuter railways, power lines and gas pipelines, while...

Several Oklahoma legislators are concerned that individuals and organizations are quietly working on plans to create a privately-operated tollway in Oklahoma. Many referred to Spain-based Cintra, which has been involved in the development of a proposed Trans-Texas Corridor. Cintra also took over the operation of the Indiana East-West Toll Road from the Indiana Department of Transportation in 2006. Oklahoma State Sen. Randy Brogdon and state representatives Eric Proctor, Richard Morrisette, Scott Inman and Charles Key all expressed concern that efforts to open up Oklahoma to a privately operated tollway system were being kept out of the view of the general...

Brother Floyd Ferguson’s breath is visible during prayers in the cold, damp crypt at the Clear Creek Monastery near Some people say the world is slipping into a new Dark Age. Some might say the world has been in the Dark Ages for quite a while already. l In morality, in architecture, in craftsmanship and art and literature, the 21st century is a long way from the Renaissance, and many self-described “traditionalists” would suggest that it’s a long way down. l Less than a generation after the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, a growing number of Catholics want...

For Peyton Gilbert, the battle over the Trans-Texas Corridor is reminiscent of the moment in 1836 when Lt. Col. William Travis drew a line in the sand at the Alamo and invited those willing to fight thousands of Mexican soldiers to step across. "That line in the sand is the Trans-Texas Corridor, and it's a threat to our sovereignty again, just like at the Alamo," said Gilbert, 14, who is from Whitehouse, near Tyler. Gilbert was among a large crowd of people who marched down Congress Avenue to the Capitol on Saturday afternoon to demonstrate against the proposed highway-rail-utility corridor...

BELTON - There appears to be no easy way to address the challenges that inflation has brought to the Texas Department of Transportation. “We’ve seen 60 percent inflation over the last five years for transportation projects,” said Chris Lippincott, a TxDOT spokesman. To look to the federal government for assistance would appear foolhardy at this point as the Federal Highway Trust Fund is expected to become insolvent by 2009. The fund was created in 1956 to ensure a dependable source of financing for U.S. interstates and highways. “The Federal Highway Trust Fund is expected to go into the red very...

FORT WORTH -- The Trans-Texas Corridor is now so controversial, merely uttering the words in most political circles is taboo. "We're calling it a 'regional loop' because you can't say 'Trans-Texas Corridor' in the state of Texas anymore," said Michael Morris, transportation director for the North Central Texas Council of Governments. "The Trans-Texas Corridor is a lightning rod," he told visiting state representatives this week while explaining how the corridor would connect to regional highways by 2030. Opposition to the proposed construction of a $184 billion network of toll roads during the next 50 years is so strong statewide that...

SH 130 Concession Company LLC finalized the legal details of a financial close with Texas DOT on a $1,360m toll concession to build SH130 segments 5&6 Thursday and Friday last week in bankers' offices in New York City - at Orrick, 666 Fifth Avenue. The actual money flows should occur on Thursday or Friday (Mar 13 or 14) this week, Jose Maria Lopez de Fuentes, president of Cintra North America, told us this morning. Hundreds of documents and over 20 lawyers were involved last week representing TxDOT, private equity people, banks, mostly European, the TIFIA loan group from FHWA, and...

Topeka — Agreements with Mexico and Canada are setting the stage for construction of a huge highway that will gobble up Kansans’ property and jeopardize U.S. security, representatives from a wide range of groups said Monday. “Through incrementalism, apathy and inattention, our national sovereignty is being sacrificed on a cross of greed, socialism and globalism,� said state Rep. Judy Morrison, R-Shawnee. Morrison has introduced House Concurrent Resolution 5033 urging Congress to withdraw from further participation in the North American Free Trade Agreement and Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. At a hearing before the House Federal and State Affairs...

GLENDALE, Ariz. (AP) -- Rich who? The West Virginia Mountaineers didn't need coach Rich Rodriguez. They had Pat White, and their elusive quarterback led them to a surprising 48-28 romp over Oklahoma (No. 4 BCS, No. 3 AP) in the Fiesta Bowl on Wednesday night. White ran for 150 yards and threw for 176 and two touchdowns for the Mountaineers (No. 9 BCS, No. 11 AP), who rushed for 349 yards, most allowed by Oklahoma in a bowl game. Since arriving in the desert last week, the Mountaineers (11-2) said they had bonded behind interim coach Bill Stewart, who took...

Driving down to Austin lately has become a real trip. I-35 is usually packed for most of the 185 miles, and what used to take three or four hours now can take five or six. Flying down can take almost as long, when you figure in airline security delays, more flight delays, and the time it takes getting into and out of crowded airports. But what if it took 45 minutes to travel from the Metroplex to Austin by train or an hour to make a trip to Houston? Advocates of high-speed rail lines are floating these ideas once again...

AUSTIN - When it comes to road improvement and maintenance, by most accounts, the South Plains and Panhandle are fortunate. Despite a $1.1 billion accounting error, the Texas Department of Transportation recently reported no projects in the region have been canceled or delayed while cities like Dallas, Houston and Laredo had at least a half dozen highway projects delayed. But the $1.1 billion-error, which occurred because TxDOT inadvertently counted some bond money twice and consequently allocated more funding than it had, is just the latest problem plaguing the beleaguered agency. For months, TxDOT executive director Amadeo Saenz and other transportation...

HULBERT -- A vision born 35 years ago on the campus of the University of Kansas and nurtured in a monastery in France moved closer to reality this week, as monks at Our Lady of Clear Creek Monastery moved into their new residence building. The building is the first part of a monastic complex that will include an 80-by-180-foot church with a 110-foot bell tower. "This is a dream come true," said the Rev. Phillip Anderson, the prior, or leader, of the Benedictine community living at the monastery. "All of a sudden, after all these years, it's happening," he said....

The state lawmaker who wrote a new Oklahoma statute on illegal immigration that is considered one of the harshest such laws in the nation has said he plans to follow it up with "son of H.B. 1804" when the Legislature convenes in January. The Oklahoma Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act of 2007, also known as H.B. 1804, took effect Nov. 1. Republican State Rep. Randy Terrill also said Tulsa Bishop Edward J. Slattery's Nov. 26 pastoral letter concerning the law was "noble but misguided." Terrill said Catholic leaders oppose the law because "the fastest-growing parishes in Catholicism are non-English-speaking" and...

Road plans in Texas have conspiracy theorists in an uproar I am driving along a mostly empty road in rural Fayette County, Texas, about an hour east of Austin, looking for the NAFTA superhighway -- the one that Stephen Harper, George W. Bush and Felipe Calderón mocked as a conspiracy theory when they were asked about it at their trilateral meeting in Montebello, Que., in August. Critics, who say that behind the leaders' denials lurks a larger, nefarious plan to unite North America, fear that such a roadway will eventually be a four-football-stadium-wide artery connecting Mexico, the U.S. and Canada,...

TULSA, Okla. - Twenty years ago, televangelist Oral Roberts said he was reading a spy novel when God appeared to him and told him to raise $8 million for Roberts' university, or else he would be "called home." ADVERTISEMENT Now, his son, Oral Roberts University President Richard Roberts, says God is speaking again, telling him to deny lurid allegations in a lawsuit that threatens to engulf this 44-year-old Bible Belt college in scandal.Richard Roberts is accused of illegal involvement in a local political campaign and lavish spending at donors' expense, including numerous home remodeling projects, use of the university jet...

37 months for brother of man who 'exploded' at OU game By Sara Burnett, Rocky Mountain News October 5, 2007 A Colorado Springs man whose brother blew himself up outside an Oklahoma football game in 2005 was sentenced to 37 months in federal prison today for threatening an FBI agent. U.S. District Judge Robert E. Blackburn called Thomas C. Hinrichs, who had an AK-47 assault rifle and other paramilitary gear in his car when he was arrested, "a time bomb for our community." He also said Hinrichs should have a full mental evaluation and treatment while in prison and be...

"The NAFTA Superhighway stops here, at the border with Oklahoma," Randy Brogdon, a Republican state senator who has championed the fight to keep the Trans-Texas Corridor out of Oklahoma, told a packed 300-person audience at the first public meeting of OK-SAFE in Tulsa on Saturday. Oklahomans for Sovereignty and Free Enterprise, Inc. is a non-profit, Oklahoma corporation set up to oppose the NAFTA Superhighway and the North American Union, as threats to the sovereignty of the United States. Brogdon objected to the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America www.spp.gov, arguing that President Bush had entered the agreement after secret...

Just when you think, you have heard it all something else pops up. I have stated my opinion on the state's effort to utilize tolls as the future funding for highways in Texas. Just in case you missed it, I oppose the idea of tolls being the primary source of funding for state highways. I need to clarify my opposition by stating I am not so much opposed to new toll roads, but rather the idea of tolling existing roads. A large portion of the price for a gallon of gas goes to the state and federal folks for highway...

The Blackland Coalition is the largest of the grassroots coalitions fighting against the Trans-Texas 35 & 69 Corridors. It has been our priviledge to become acquainted with the Blackland Coalition leaders and members in the TTC “trenches� that we share. Some of them and members of CorridorWatch. org & IndyTexans will be joining together with citizens of our counties in attending the schedule of TTC-69 DEIS Hearings which will likely be in February 2008. Word of the February timeframe comes to us from the TTC-69 office of Jack Heiss (Texas Turnpike Authority TTC-69). As soon as an official hearings schedule...

Robert Poole, a mechanical engineer who has advised the administrations of George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to privatize U.S. highways, estimates that more than $25 billion in Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) highway projects are planned or approved in the United States. Now, a prominent Oklahoma state representative has invited Poole to promote his PPP toll road ideas, a move evidently designed to counter growing citizen opposition. Poole Lobbies for PPP Highways in Oklahoma Oklahoma House Speaker, Republican Lance Cargill, the founder of a group known as The 100 Ideas Initiative, has invited Poole to give a June...

TEL AVIV, Israel(AP)  Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday that diplomatic efforts to resolve the standoff with Iran over its disputed nuclear program are "working" and should be given a chance to succeed. Both the U.S. and Israel accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons _ a charge Iran denies. Gates said the international community "is united in telling Iran what it needs to do with respect to its nuclear program." The U.S. and its allies have led efforts to pass two U.N. Security Council resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment, a process...

Unruly crowd gathers at standoff Members of the Tulsa Police Special Operations Team team bring in an armored vehicle as they surround a murder suspect barricaded inside the Morning Star Apartments complex late Saturday.     4/15/2007   Police surrounded a north Tulsa apartment Saturday night attempting to take a murder suspect into custody. Units from across the city were called in to help disperse a large crowd that had gathered, with some in the crowd reportedly throwing rocks and firing a weapon toward police and others near where the suspect had holed up. The suspect, Rico Starks, 18,...

THERE'S GOOD NEWS in the latest Ports-to-Plains progress report for Lubbock and West Texas residents who recognize the evolving trade route's potential economic benefit to our area. Extending from the most active U.S.-Mexico border port, Laredo, through Lubbock and West Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Colorado, the Ports-to-Plains Corridor links the nation's plains states to the border centers of commerce. The Texas Department of Transportation is analyzing funding alternatives including opportunities for private investment and partnerships to pay for moving freight and utilities along the trade route. Using Ports-to-Plains as a case study, TxDOT will research the best potential applications...

The National Weather Service issued a tornado watch for much of North Texas Thursday afternoon, hours after a line of storms dumped rain across parts of the area. The watch, which covers Dallas, Tarrant, Collin, Denton, Parker and about 40 other counties, is in effect until midnight Thursday. Meteorologist Greg Patrick said isolated storms are expected to develop this afternoon along a line stretching from Abilene north to just east of Wichita Falls, and should move east around 40 mph. They could produce heavy winds and hail, and some tornadoes could develop as a result, primarily to the north of...

Note to Liberals and leftists of every stripe: Don't think that the fact you're as anti-Christian as are the Islamo-fascists who seek to destroy America will somehow inoculate you against Muslim-terrorist violence. Islamists don't care that you hate Christianity as much as they do: they still want to kill you.

Boats collide during 'poker run'; 5 dead JUDI BOLAND Associated Press WILLIS, Okla. - Steve Dover was vacationing at Lake Texoma when he saw two speedboats boats take off for a poker competition. They never returned. Dover said he knew something had gone wrong when he saw the Oklahoma Highway Patrol and other emergency vehicles. The boats collided during the High Roller Poker Run on Saturday. Four people died at the scene and two were flown to the hospital, where one later died, according to the patrol. "There was just floating debris," Dover said. "We've seen life vests, we've seen...

A federal judge on Friday said a Ten Commandments monument outside a courthouse can stay, rejecting arguments that it promotes Christianity at the expense of other religions. U.S. District Judge Ronald A. White in Muskogee, Okla., ruled that Haskell County did not violate the Constitution by erecting the monument. The county did not "overstep the constitutional line demarcating government neutrality toward religion," he wrote.

BOOKS of hate promoting suicide bombings, anti-Australian conspiracies and racism can be freely sold in the Muslim community after a ruling that they don't breach sedition laws. The material, found by The Daily Telegraph in bookstores in the Sydney suburbs of Lakemba and Auburn last year, was judged by federal authorities not to incite violence in the first known test of anti-terrorism laws. Police Commissioner Ken Moroney said last night he felt uneasy about the continuing threat posed by such material remaining on the streets. But he said NSW Police would abide by the "qualified and considered legal opinion" offered...

The Trans-Texas Corridor project, proposing four to six toll truck lanes and four to six toll passenger lanes from Laredo to Oklahoma, may be as near as five years. Greg Massey, a member of the Oklahoma Highway Authority, recently met with the Texas Department of Transportation. “We really didn't get any new information. The project is still proposed to cross over and connect with I-35 to come into Oklahoma. TxDOT did say they are five years out on the project,” Massey said. Ten different routes are proposed for the corridor. The major variations in the routes follow the three represented...

Assistant City Manager Tim Young is well-versed on the Trans-Texas Corridor project that has been proposed to make four to six toll truck lanes and four to six toll passenger lanes from Laredo, Texas through San Antonio, Texas and up I-35 to Oklahoma. “Dallas/Fort Worth doesn't want the truck traffic to go away as they are afraid of losing warehouse businesses to cities east and west of them,” Young said. Oklahomans are pushing for the widening of U.S. 69/75 to bring truck traffic through Durant and up through Tulsa. The Texas Department of Transportation has more information on the proposal...

The Times March 07, 2006 Why black sheep are barred and Humpty can't be cracked By Alexandra Blair, Education Correspondent TRADITIONAL nursery rhymes are being rewritten at nursery schools to avoid causing offence to children. Instead of singing “Baa baa, black sheep” as generations of children have learnt to do, toddlers in Oxfordshire are being taught to sing “Baa baa, rainbow sheep”. The move, which critics will seize on as an example of political correctness, was made after the nurseries decided to re-evaluate their approach to equal opportunities. Stuart Chamberlain, manager of the Family Centre in Abingdon and the Sure...

PHOENIX — Ignoring complaints by prosecutors, state senators voted Monday to make it more difficult to convict people who say they killed someone else in self-defense. Separate measures specifying that when someone claims self-defense, prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt it's not true, were given preliminary approval. The two proposals are similar. But one would make the change through legislation. The other would ask voters to adopt the language in November. The law already permits people to use deadly physical force ....

VIENNA, Austria - A man plummeted 130 feet from a helicopter Monday but escaped injury because deep snow cushioned his fall. The 42-year-old was suspended from the helicopter by a rope to make repairs when the knot came undone and he slipped free, police in the Upper Austria town of Hallstatt said in a statement. Although a fall from that height normally would result in death or serious injury, the deep snow drifts broke the man's fall, officials said. He was taken by rescue helicopter to a nearby hospital for a medical checkup as a precaution but appeared to have...

LAS VEGAS - A 22-year-old aspiring teacher from Oklahoma was crowned Miss America on Saturday night, the first time the storied but struggling pageant was held outside Atlantic City, N.J. Jennifer Berry, a student at the University of Oklahoma, outlasted 51 other women to become Miss America 2006, earning a $30,000 college scholarship and a yearlong speaking tour in the process.

OKLAHOMA CITY — Wind-driven grass fires that destroyed at least two dozen homes and forced hundreds of evacuations continued to burn Friday in southern Oklahoma, which remained extremely dry despite snowfall earlier in the week. The worst fires raged in Carter County near Ratliff City, after burning through at least 20 homes overnight, and west of Marlow in Stephens County, said Michelle Finch, fire information officer for the Oklahoma Forestry Department. Four heavy air tankers dropped retardant on the Carter County fire until dark Thursday and resumed doing so at first light Friday. The fire, which was four miles wide,...

Huge Protest Planned 4 Bush ' State of the Union Adress http://worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=401&Itemid=61 We can not stand by and allow them to get a free pass! This will be a Washington DC thing! http://www.worldcantwait.net/

Not sure what has happened yet. But there appears to have been a very large explosion in Choctaw, OK. Choctaw is just East of OKC and NE of Norman.

Following a fierce investigation, two suspects have been arrested in connection to a bomb scare in Marshall County. After the Kingston police found two homemade bombs within blocks of each other yesterday, authorities say a total of 28 bombs were recovered. Friday morning near the corner of Second and Chickasaw, Kingston police and the Oklahoma Highway Patrol bomb squad diffused two homemade bombs found in mailboxes. A U.S. Postal worker noticed a yellow liquid oozing from one of the boxes and then notified authorities. Today, police tell KTEN they found several more explosive devices at a house on the 500...

Alaska Refuge Drilling OK'd in Committee By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer 58 minutes ago WASHINGTON - A Senate committee voted Wednesday to include drilling in an Alaska wildlife refuge in a massive budget proposal, assuring that drilling opponents won't be able to use the filibuster to thwart oil development there. ADVERTISEMENT The Senate Energy Committee proposal, approved 13-9, calls for the Interior Department to put up for bid by Oct. 1, 2010 two oil leases in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. By making the issue part of a complex budget reconciliation process, supporters will...

An Ohio company gets credit from the FBI for putting an immigrant student, who raised suspicions when he tried to order thousands of dollars worth of pilot information, in federal custody. What raised the red flag is the credit card he used was declined. It was then that federal agents began to investigate. Mahmoud Maawad is an Egyptian-born citizen living in the U.S. illegally. According to an affidavit, Maawad "placed 11 orders by wire" to Sporty's Pilot Shop located near Cincinnati "for flight equipment." FBI agents say the 29-year-old logged on to the website for Sporty's Pilot Shop and tried...

This week, trouble is coming to Tennessee, New York State and Oklahoma, courtesy of deranged cult leader Fred Phelps and his Westboro group from Topeka, KS. From their website, this is the list of soldier funerals they plan to ruin: August 11, 2005 (Tomorrow) 2:30 pm - 3:00 pm McKenzie, TN McKenzie Funeral Home, 1749 E. Cedar Ave., for funeral of Army Spc. James Dustin "Dusty" Carroll August 12, 2005 10:30 am - 11:00 am Ronkonkoma, NY St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Fag (Phelps' words, not mine) Church, 800 Portion Rd., for funeral of Army Staff Sgt. James D. McNaughton...

Three men described as Middle Eastern-looking were seen aiming a rocket launcher at a low-flying B-1 Bomber near Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. Air Force security pursued the suspects, who got away, but left behind their rocket launcher, according to a July 14 Air Force staff directive obtained by WND. The three suspects were observed outside the perimeter of the air base, looking through binoculars and aiming the weapon at chest level, according to the report. The FBI and Air Force security are investigating the incident, which suggests a threat to military and commercial flights within the U.S. from...

Are you people smoking something ? Must be. Don't you understand that these Great Lords of the Jungle is crying out for our help - your help! They need us and we need them and it saddens me to see people like you all joking about this when in FACT it is a VERY serious matter. How would you feel if you were on the verge of exstinction ? It would not be a good feeling. Wouldnt you want something done about it ? Of course you would! These awesome cats dont come lookinf for trouble they would rather stay...