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Police confiscated bullets and an antique gun from Charlie Sheen's luxury Beverly Hills mansion during a raid late last night, they have confirmed. Although Sheen has a firearms license his possession of the weapon violated a restraining order issued at the request of his ex-wife Brooke Mueller last week. In a statement the Los Angeles Police Department confirmed reports that officers had been searching for a gun. 'It came to the attention of the LAPD that Sheen is the registered owner of firearms,' a spokesman for the LAPD said. The spokesman added that the purpose of the raid was 'to...

On Aug. 26, Women's Equality Day, advocates for ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), called on President Barack Obama and members of the U.S. Senate to take action. The U.S. is one of very few countries -- and the only democracy -- that has not ratified the "women's treaty" since its adoption by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979. As a supposed world leader in human rights, the U.S.'s failure to have ratified this important treaty over the last 30 years belies that leadership claim. Three decades of foot-dragging and...

The decision on granting a hearing challenging President-elect Barack Obama's U.S. citizenship is still pending. The "Washington Times" reports that the U.S. Supreme Court held a private conference Friday morning to discuss whether to take up a lawsuit but it was not on the list of court orders for the day. According to the "Times" a Supreme Court spokesman said the decision to hear the case will most likely be announced next week.

The Earth is hurtling toward a warmer climate at a quickening pace, a Nobel-winning U.N. scientific panel said in a landmark report released Saturday, warning of inevitable human suffering and the threat of extinction for some species. After five days of sometimes tense negotiations, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change adopted its fourth and final report this year, along with a summary, on the science of climate change and the effects of human-produced greenhouse gases. It lays out blueprints for avoiding the worst catastrophes - and various possible outcomes, depending on how quickly and decisively action is taken. The document...

I HAVE some terrible news for anyone contemplating Australian citizenship. The Australian government has decided to introduce a special multiple choice test which all prospective citizens must pass. And believe it or not, the answers to some test questions are so obscure that even Australian-born citizens are getting the answers wrong. The Melbourne Herald-Sun newspaper recently released a list of sample questions that are meant to test prospective citizens on Australian culture, institutions and values. One of these questions has caused particular consternation. Question 15 asks: "Australia's values are based on the ... a. Teachings of the Quran b. The...

WHAT DO YOU have to do to get a little peace and quiet around here? It used to be possible to adopt an antiwar platform and be left entirely alone by most mainstream Americans. Sure, you'd be sneered at by the media, ostracized by the major political parties and, from time to time, your in-laws would accuse you of living on the radical fringe. But at least it was quiet out there on the fringe. That's the whole point of fringes, right? They're not supposed to be too populated. The antiwar fringe used to be sort of like the frontier:...

More Runners-Up Quotes in MRC's Awards for the Worst Reporting      Monday's CyberAlert featured the winners and Tuesday’s the first runners-up. So today, the second and third runners-up quotes in the MRC's “Best Notable Quotables of 2003: The Sixteenth Annual Awards for the Year’s Worst Reporting.”      For the winners, see item #4 in the December 29 CyberAlert: www.mediaresearch.org      For the first runners-up, see the December 30 CyberAlert: www.mediaresearch.org      And for the names of the 46 judges, see item #5 in the December 29 CyberAlert: www.mediaresearch.org      Or, you can find it all on the MRC Web site...

Since about April 2003, this question has been the cheapest, easiest way to take a shot at the Bush administration: "So why haven't we captured or killed Saddam Hussein?" The Bush administration, in the face of hostility from the French, a United Nations that refused to enforce its own resolutions, political opposition from half the Democratic party, and significant military risks, forms a Coalition of the willing and utterly destroys the regime of one of the world's most brutal dictators. An entire infrastructure of torture, oppression, and regional military strength is overrun in three weeks. And yet, to the eyes...

<p>Democrats yesterday downplayed the strongest quarterly economic growth in 19 years, refusing to give President Bush credit and stressing still-lagging job creation, while Republicans gloated over the news.</p> <p>"President Bush has compiled the worst economic record since the Great Depression, and it is going to take a lot more than one quarter of growth to clean it up," said Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean in a statement.</p>

Minnesota's shame Republicans don't like my criticism? Too bad. They have to answer for Norm Coleman's campaign, which exploited 9/11 in a way that was truly evil. Nov. 13, 2002 The hoots and cackles of Republicans reacting to my screed against Norman Coleman, the ex-radical, former Democratic, now compassionate conservative senator-elect from Minnesota, was all to be expected, given the state of the Republican Party today. Its entire ideology, top to bottom, is We-are-not-Democrats, We-are-the-unClinton, and if it can elect an empty suit like Coleman, on a campaign as cheap and cynical and unpatriotic as what he waged right up...

Colleges need to recruit more black professors I never really took into consideration the effect of having an African-American teacher until I got into college. In elementary school, most of my teachers were African-American. During high school, I had two African-American teachers who taught two different subjects. But at Alfred University, I don't have any African-American professors. During my freshman year, it didn't really affect me because I didn't notice or care. I was just happy that I was in college. But at the beginning of my sophomore year, I felt like I was lacking minority guidance in some classes,...