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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Next year had been shaping up as a great year to get a big inheritance - no federal taxes on it. Congress, however, has other plans for the few wealthy heirs expecting a big boon. Uncle Sam may take a 45 percent cut after all. Under current law, the federal estate tax is scheduled to temporarily disappear next year before returning in 2011 at an even higher rate. But the House is expected to vote as early as Thursday on a bill that would permanently extend the current top rate of 45 percent on estates larger than...

Four years ago, on June 23, 2005, a 6-3 Supreme Court majority ruled in Kelo v. New London that the New London, Connecticut government could condemn houses in that city's Fort Trumbull area in the name of redevelopment. A bit over a year later, the city settled with the area's final two holdouts, the Cristofaro family and Susette Kelo. Since then the city has without success tried to engage a developer to build a hotel on part of the now-leveled area, and to put apartments or condos on the rest. Yes, you read that right; they're building residences where residences...

Frederic Bastiat Perverted Law Causes Conflict As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose — that it may violate property instead of protecting it — then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious. To know this, it is hardly necessary to examine what transpires in the French and English...

It was a fascist general in 1930s Spain who coined the phrase "Viva la muerte!" - "Long live death!" Essentially meaningless, the words captured the blind cult of soil, blood and savagery that coursed through European fascism, in its Francoist and other forms. President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela hates "fascists;" they are central to his repertoire of insults. But he has not hesitated to deploy the imagery of death to bolster his leftist brand of petro-authoritarianism, now operating under the ludicrous banner of "Fatherland, Socialism or Death!" The slogan looks almost quaint in its anachronism. Chávez would no doubt claim...

The documents seized in the FBI raid on the offices of Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) remain unread by Justice Department investigators, pending a federal Appeals Court ruling scheduled for August 27. [snip] But we already know a bit about the charges and some of the alleged partners of Congressman Jefferson. Two people have pleaded guilty to bribing him.

Although Syrian troops have withdrawn from Lebanon, their departure is little more than a symbolic acknowledgment of Lebanese sovereignty, extracted under enormous pressure from the international community. They had not been directly involved in policing the country for nearly a decade, and their number had already dwindled in recent years from a peak of over 40,000 down to 14,000. The backbone of Syria's power in Lebanon — its intelligence apparatus — has merely gone underground. The assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in February and the murders of prominent dissidents Samir Kassir and George Hawi in June suggest that Syria remains as capable as ever...

"I'm interested in land not [black people]." Cecil Rhodes Rarely has Western savagery been more destructive than in the Congo. After 115 years of Belgian colonialism and U.S. neo-colonialism, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) today is a war-ravaged, balkanized country where an incredible 2.5 million people have died during the last 2 ½ years and 2.3 million have been displaced. OXFAM called this "the world's biggest humanitarian disaster." The catastrophic war which began in August 1998 has been imposed on the long-suffering Congolese by U.S. proxies Rwanda and Uganda which have occupied the eastern half of the Congo and...

Common Dreams NewsCenter Sunday, July 03, 2005 Published on Wednesday, August 23, 2000 in The Irish Times Clinton's 'Plan Colombia': Disturbing Questions Concerning The Real US Agenda by Ana Carrigan http://www.commondreams.org/views/082300-106.htm Africa Faces New Threat of New Colonialism New Internationalist, Jan/Feb 2003 Title: "How (not) to Feed Africa" Author: Dr. Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher no.10 on project censored list 2004: The Top 25 Censored Media Stories of 2002-2003 http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2004/10.html Source: Left Turn, July/August, 2002 Title: "NEPAD: Repackaging Colonialism in Africa" Author: Michelle Robidoux Evaluator: Heidi LaMoreaux Briarpatch, Vol. 32, No. 1, Excerpted from The CCPA Monitor, October 2002 Title: "Ravaging...

MOSCOW, May 16 - A week ago, on the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and President Vladimir V. Putin appeared together in Red Square in a symbolic nod to the historical reconciliation between Germany and Russia. But a few blocks away, a museum exhibition showed how the war's dark legacies continue to divide the two countries. Shortly before Victory Day, as it is known here, the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts put on display 552 ancient works of art, including Greek bronzes, vases and amphorae, Etruscan figures, fragments of Roman wall paintings...

Liz Walker, the longtime Boston TV news anchorwoman, was standing in the middle of a sea of straw huts in a Darfur refugee camp, peering into a closet-sized shelter where six people live. In the midst of a recent fact-finding trip in which she had heard harrowing accounts of burned villages and gang rapes, Walker looked out at the tortured, parched earth of Sudan, where internal fighting has claimed the lives of 70,000 people and made 2 million homeless. For a long moment, she was overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness.

ATLANTA (AP) For the first time in two years, Gov. Sonny Perdue laid out good news to a Georgia Legislature weary of budget cuts, outlining a proposed $1 billion budget increase for next year that will put bulldozers to work on school, road and port construction projects across the state. But even as he outlined his proposed $17.4 billion spending package to a joint legislative session Wednesday night, he cautioned that the ``New Georgia'' he envisions as the first Republican governor since 1870 is one of making government an instrument to help people do more for themselves not to do...

Protesters Stone Nepal Mosque After Iraq Killings Nepalese protesters shout slogans as they stand on the dome of a mosque during a demonstration in Kathmandu to protest against the killijng of 12 Nepalese hostages in Iraq (news - web sites). Around 4,000 people set Kathmandu's biggest mosque ablaze and smashed up private job recruitment agencies in response to the killing of 12 Nepalese jobseekers in Iraq, witnesses said(AFP/Devendra M. Singh) Nepalese protester (R) shouts slogans as he stands beside a burning tyre during a demonstration in Kathmandu. The government clamped a curfew on the city after mobs ransacked a mosque...

The Bush tax cuts enabled America to climb out of the Clinton recession despite the financial devastations of 9/11 and stock market downturns. Ten straight months of economic progress and job creation have made the economy robust. So it is incongruous that Hillary Clinton would tell a San Francisco audience recently that Democrats will rescind the Bush tax cuts for the “common good.” Mrs. Clinton’s plan is not only wrong, it’s socialist. Ronald Reagan defeated communism, but we are still being leeched by creeping socialism. The 45 communist goals read into the Congressional Record in 1963 linger, and they were...

In a case that could bolster a long-running federal grand jury probe into Northeast Florida's construction industry, an undocumented Mexican worker permanently paralyzed on a job site is filing suit today in Jacksonville against homebuilding giant D.R. Horton. Jorge Gomez, 23, was injured Nov. 11 when a large beam fell on him and broke his neck at a D.R. Horton site in a Julington Creek subdivision, according to the lawsuit. The accident left him a quadriplegic. As an illegal alien, Gomez has no workers compensation insurance and has run up $500,000 in medical bills at Jacksonville's Memorial Hospital, which continues...

How the French Plunder Africa France's unchallenged political, economic, and military domination of its former sub-Saharan African colonies is rooted in a currency, the CFA franc. Created in 1948 to help France control the destiny of its colonies, fourteen countries--Benin, Burkina-Faso, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Bissau Guinea, and Chad--maintained the franc zone even after they gained independence decades ago. In exchange for France guaranteeing the CFA franc's convertibility, these countries agreed to deposit 65% of their foreign exchange reserves in a special account within the French Treasury and granted to...

SAN ANTONIO - The federal government will pay $2.15 million to the relatives of an undocumented immigrant, settling a lawsuit alleging the immigrant was paralyzed in a struggle with immigration officers. U.S. District Judge Fred Biery approved the deal for the five children and ex-wife of Serafin Olvera Carrera at a hearing in San Antonio on Tuesday. Olvera, who died at a Houston hospital in February 2002, was paralyzed March 25, 2001, during a raid at a Bryan home involving agents with the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, now U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In June 2003, a federal jury...

Beginning two to three days after President Bush proposed a plan that would allow illegal aliens to stay in the United States on renewable three-year work visas -- a plan that critics describe as an amnesty in disguise -- the number of illegal aliens caught trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border jumped dramatically, says a spokesman for the union representing Border Patrolmen. In the San Diego sector of the border "we have two to three times the number we had a few weeks ago," Senior Border Patrol Agent Shawn Moran told HUMAN EVENTS. Moran is spokesman for the local San...

<p>CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- A federal judge Monday dismissed a lawsuit brought by descendants of slaves against corporations they say profited from slavery, saying the plaintiffs had established no clear link to the companies they targeted.</p> <p>The court still left the door open for further litigation.</p>

Bush Immigration Plan Borders On Treason By Chuck Baldwin Food For Thought From The Chuck Wagon January 9, 2003 President George W. Bush wants to give some eight to ten million illegal aliens, most of them from Mexico, legal status. The plan would legalize these aliens as "temporary workers," which would allow them to work freely in the United States without fear of deportation. The plan is so disastrous to our country's well being and so fraught with potential risk to our country's security that the plan should be regarded as bordering treason! Already, more than ten percent of Mexico's...

Bush's Ridiculous Speech About Immigration Reform I just want to comment on a few of the things that jumped out at me as I read the text of Bush's speech about the horrendous new immigration legislation he is going to propose. To begin with, this line just chaps me..."As a nation that values immigration and depends on immigration, we should have immigration laws that work and make us proud. Yet today we do not."No, our immigration laws don't work or make us proud. You know why? Because we don't make an effort to enforce them. It's like telling your kid...