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The Utah mine where six workers were entombed after a thunderous collapse has been sealed, leaving expensive mining machinery inside, federal regulators said Tuesday.

School Violence Experts Prevented From Reviewing Material DENVER -- Statements made by the parents of the teenage gunmen who attacked Columbine High School will remain sealed for 20 years, frustrating at least one victim's parent who believes knowing what happened before the shootings could help prevent similar tragedies. U.S. District Judge Lewis T. Babcock's ruling Monday also prohibits a school violence expert and his assistants from reviewing the documents. "It can save lives, no question about it," said Brian Rohrbough, whose son Daniel was one of 12 students slain on April 20, 1999. A teacher and the two gunmen also...

WASHINGTON — President Bush stepped into the Justice Department's constitutional confrontation with Congress on Thursday and ordered that documents seized in an FBI search of a congressman's office be sealed for 45 days. "The Department of Justice's search was part of an important investigation of alleged public corruption. At the same time, the bipartisan leadership of the House of Representatives believe the search violated the constitutional principle of separation of powers and the speech and debate clause of the Constitution," according to the president's statement.

SAN FRANCISCO - The question of whether documents obtained during the Bush administration's domestic spying program should remain under seal is one of the central issues in a lawsuit challenging the program. The lawsuit, brought in U.S. District Court by privacy advocate Electronic Frontier Foundation, accuses AT&T Inc. of illegally cooperating with the National Security Agency to make communications on AT&T networks available to the spy agency without warrants. The goal of the lawsuit is to dismantle warrantless eavesdropping on Americans in the United States, a practice the Bush administration confirmed in December. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker set a...

Federal authorities have begun a criminal investigation into who leaked confidential FBI documents The investigation will be conducted by the U.S. attorney's office in San Diego. Attorneys representing Pellicano and six others under indictment in the wiretapping scandal also have been given FBI investigative reports known as "302s" and other documents in the case. Under a protective order issued by U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer almost four weeks ago, they can share the information only with their clients and potential witnesses. The confidential information was first disclosed two weeks ago, when the New York Times published the first of...

China Town Sealed After Police Shootings By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer Fri Dec 9, 6:40 PM ET BEIJING - Armed with guns and shields, hundreds of riot police sealed off a southern Chinese village after fatally shooting demonstrators and searched for the protest organizers, villagers said Friday. Although security forces often use tear gas and truncheons to disperse demonstrators, it is extremely rare for them to fire into a crowd — as they did in putting down pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989 near Tiananmen Square. Hundreds, if not thousands, were killed. During the demonstration Tuesday in Dongzhou, a village in...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Last January, as his presidential campaign was stirring to life, Howard Dean was asked why he had decided to keep nearly half of his records as governor of Vermont under seal until 2013. "Well, there are future political considerations," Dr. Dean told statehouse reporters. "We didn't want anything embarrassing appearing in the papers at a critical time in any future endeavor." Dr. Dean now says he was joking about why he invoked executive privilege to keep 145 boxes of his official records — about 47 percent of them — under a 10-year seal. But there is ample evidence in the...

On Monday’s Good Morning America, guest Howard Dean defended not releasing his gubernatorial records, from his time as Governor of Vermont, by charging: “President Bush sort of takes the cake for his sealing. He actually had his sent, as I understand it, to his father's presidential library, where there's a 50-year seal, so what I've said is every Governor does seal their records. I'll unseal mine if he'll unseal all his." In fact, Bush’s records are publicly available, but GMA didn’t follow up the next morning and has yet to correct Dean’s misstatement on their show, the MRC’s Jessica Anderson...

<p>HOWARD DEAN'S major asset as a candidate -- his trenchant criticism of President Bush -- is undercut by his continued foot-dragging on the 145 boxes of gubernatorial documents he has had sealed for 10 years in Vermont.</p> <p>While all of the Democratic presidential candidates criticize Bush -- John Kerry, Richard Gephardt, and Dennis Kucinich with notable vehemence -- none has equaled Dean's ability to score points with Democratic voters by attacking Bush on the war in Iraq, tax cuts for the rich, and a range of other issues.</p>

Whatever it is that Democratic presidential front-runner Howard Dean is trying to keep from the American public, the secret must be a beaut. It turns out that the Vermont Democrat - who ordered his state records sealed for ten years when he left the state's governorship earlier this year - initially wanted the telltale documents kept under lock and key till 2026 - just one year short of a quarter century. In memos made public by the Burlington Free Press on Wednesday, Vermont's state archivist Gregory Sanford revealed Dean's bizarre request to keep the electorate in the dark about his...

Graham: Release Sealed 9/11 Report Info 46 minutes ago By KEN GUGGENHEIM, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Citing the Saudi ambassador's claim that his country has "nothing to hide," Sen. Bob Graham called Monday on President Bush to declassify a 28-page section of the congressional report into the Sept. 11 attacks dealing with foreign support for the hijackers. Releasing the report "will permit the Saudi government to deal with any questions which may be raised in the currently censored pages, and allow the American people to make their own judgment about who are our true friends and allies in the...