Free Republic

KEENE, N.H. -- Most people probably spent Sunday evening watching basketball, barbecuing, or taking it easy before another workweek. Joe Lieberman passed the time stopping at the Kahn house on Darling Road to hobnob with people willing to pay $25 each to talk 2004 politics. Nothing unusual about that, though, and the very fact that the political world takes such a visit - and the Connecticut Democrat's breakneck campaign schedule - in stride probably says much about where the 2004 campaign is heading. Lieberman spoke to about 60 local folks Sunday night at this house, tucked off a winding road...

Palm Beach International Airport security workers would be racking up heaps of overtime pay dealing with more than fifty false positives daily if their bosses were to install Visionics' terror-busting face recognition gear, the airport administrators have concluded. The kit had been installed free of charge for a trial run during which the airport, not surprisingly, decided to test it on volunteers who work there over four weeks' time. Using fifteen volunteers and a data base of 250 snapshots, Palm Beach County administrators enjoyed a success rate of less than fifty per cent. That is, more than half the people...

<p>The agency released the data a day after National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice outlined a few of the security directives, which are traditionally considered "classified" by federal statute, in a White House press briefing.</p> <p>A government official involved in transportation issues said Thursday that the FAA told airlines the situation in the Middle East was tense and terrorists might attack U.S. interests. The FAA mentioned Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda in alerts the agency sent to domestic airlines.</p>

Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former President Clinton, arrives at the Donatella Versace Fall-Winter 2002/2003 show in this March 5, 2002 file photo in Milan. Man in the background is not identified. It's a long road from gawky adolescent to twenty-something sex symbol, but Vanity Fair magazine says Chelsea Clinton has made the transition. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, File)

(KRT) - The federal government is asking airlines to eliminate size restrictions for carry-on baggage at airport security checkpoints nationwide - a shift that some warn could lead to crowded overhead bins and testy passengers.The Transportation Security Administration sent a letter to airlines last month, asking them to remove sizing templates at checkpoints, to provide consistency and offer "one standard that will allow for a smooth transition for the traveling public.""It's an effort to make the process as efficient as possible without any compromise of security," TSA spokesman Paul Turk said.For passengers with a penchant for bringing oversize bags onboard,...

Call it "gavelitis." Something comes over a tiny percentage of those who sit in judgment of the rest of us, and weird things start happening -- things involving firecrackers, wild turkeys and lingerie catalogs. Some judges suddenly think they have a license to do anything, including one judge in Arkansas who decided he had a license to issue licenses. Welcome to the fifth annual survey of, for lack of a better term, the stench from the bench. Here are 10 judges and ex-judges who won't be presiding this May 1, Law Day, and whose absence is cause for celebration....

EDUCATION SPENDING: Friday over lunch the question of education spending came up again; and I was reminded of an interesting statistical question -- what is the ratio, adjusted for inflation, of per-pupil spending in, say, 1959-60, compared to 1999-2000?      Whenever I ask this, someone nearly always says "Oh, spending back then was much greater than it is now" (again, adjusting for inflation). Well, if you go to the 2001 Digest of Education Statistics, table 167, you see the answer: Per pupil spending, in 2000-01 dollars, was $2235 in 1959-60, and $7591 in 1999-2000. Spending has risen by a factor of...

How to Think About SecurityIf security has a silly season, we're in it. After September 11, every two-bit peddler of security technology crawled out of the woodwork with new claims about how his product can make us all safe again. Every misguided and defeated government security initiative was dragged out of the closet, dusted off, and presented as the savior of our way of life. More and more, the general public is being asked to make security decisions, weigh security tradeoffs, and accept more intrusive security. Unfortunately, the general public has no idea how to do this. But we in...

Painful as it might be, as you pop your income tax returns in the mail today, you might want to say a small thank you to Connecticut's ultra-rich, and the New York financial markets that made them that way. In recent years, taxpayers in a handful of towns with the highest average state income tax payments - most of them in Fairfield County - have produced a huge chunk of Connecticut's income tax revenue, according to the state Department of Revenue Services. In 2000, for example, taxpayers in just 15 of Connecticut's 169 towns paid $1.1 billion - one third...

Last week, Democrats who control the state legislature showed they have no appetite for deep spending cuts to balance next year's budget. Monday night they also made clear they couldn't stomach raising taxes in an election year. So Tuesday, Democratic leaders who had hoped to solve the budget crunch through an open, orderly committee process ended up back at square one, scrambling into a closed-door meeting with Gov. John G. Rowland's budget chief and Republican lawmakers to begin negotiating a budget deal. By the time they emerged after a brief introductory chat, the leaders conceded that they wouldn't be able...

Man shoots, kills would-be robber in TV-style invasionBy Yolanda Jonesyojones@gomemphis.comApril 2, 2002Asize Lee Coady and her boyfriend, Odie Harper, were watching Law and Order Sunday night when a sudden knock on the door was like a scene from the cop drama. Shortly after 9 p.m., two men posing as police officers burst in Coady's southwest Memphis home in the 1200 block of Michigan yelling "police, police, get down," said Harper, 63. "Asize was the first one to the door, and when they burst in, she fell down," Harper said. "I didn't know what was going on." What happened next is...

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Joe Lieberman is always traveling with the ghost of 2000. But as he crisscrosses key 2004 primary states in search of money, friends and ultimately votes, it's unclear if the legacy of the last election is wind beneath his wings or the weight he can never shake. Either way, he cannot escape the shadow of the 2000 contest many believe he won and others got bored with long ago. "It's hard to determine the prevailing feeling," said Manchester, N.H., Democratic Chairman Raymond Buckley. Lieberman tries to have it both ways. He brings up 2000 while insisting...

Cheat-detection software Plagiarise. Let no one else's work evade your eyesMar 14th 2002 From The Economist print edition A window of opportunity for intellectual cheats is closing fast EVER since Al Gore invented it, the Internet has been a paradise for those with a creative attitude to facts. Students, for example, commission and sell essays with such ease there that online “paper mills” devoted to this trade are one of the few dotcom business models still thriving. With a few clicks of a mouse, a student can outsource any academic chore to “research” sites such as Gradesaver.com or the Evil...

Abstract This working paper presents an agent-based computation model of civil violence. We present two variants of the Civil Violence Model. In the first, a central authority seeks to suppress decentralized rebellion. In the second, a central authority seeks to suppress communal violence between two warring ethnic groups.   Full Article as a .pdf file

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Gun violence among teens and young adults declined during the 1990s, according to an analysis of national data presented recently at the Society for Adolescent Medicine's annual meeting in Boston. The father-daughter team of Dr. Lawrence J. D'Angelo and Marisa K. D'Angelo found good news in firearm-related information from the National Center for Health Statistics and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites)'s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance. While deaths and injuries from firearm-related incidents have played a major role in the lives of teenagers, the D'Angelos found, the trend in...

Patrick Washburn says the banished rifle is part of his heritage. ATHENS, Ohio -- Amid the fishing gear that adorns his office walls, Ohio University journalism Professor Patrick Washburn reserved a spot for a piece of family history. For 15 years, Washburn displayed his great-grandfather's rifle. But someone complained, and in January, OU police ordered him to remove the rifle. University officials say the school's workplace violence policy forbids the display. "It's been up all these years,'' Washburn said last week. "Why do they suddenly care?'' Washburn, 60, said neither he nor the 1878 Springfield rifle poses a threat ...

KALISPELL, Mont., March 2 — As its secrets began to spill out here this week, Project 7 sounded suspiciously like a Monty Python sketch. A dogcatcher was on its list of 26 local law enforcement officials who needed killing. The chief intelligence gatherer for the furtive far-right militia cell was a cleaning woman, according to Sheriff James R. Dupont of Flathead County, who himself made the hit list of Project 7. The militia's name comes from the Montana license plate numbering system, which uses the numeral 7 to identify residents of Flathead. The cleaning woman, Tracy Brockway, 32, was having ...

<p>WASHINGTON -- Dell Computers is under fire from gun aficionados after it refused to sell a laptop to a handgun maker.</p> <p>The flap began when Jack Weigand, the president of the American Pistolsmiths Guild, ordered a Dell Inspiron 4100 notebook on Feb. 13, with a promised delivery date of Feb. 21. When the date came and went, Weigand phoned Dell to find out what the problem was.</p>

As an avid hunter and conservationist, I have watched with growing alarm the way the gun lobby and its political allies have insinuated their way into Wisconsin's outdoor sports. We now see that the Wisconsin Conservation Congress has agreed to become a forum at its April meetings for Sen. Dave Zien's concealed weapon bill (Personal Protection Act, Senate Bill 357). Once again Zien is trying to force this pet legislation of the National Rifle Association down the throat of Wisconsin. It may interest you to know that Zien is listed as a contact person in an advertisement that accuses ...

<p>LANSING -- With a patch here and a plug there, Gov. John Engler presented a 2002-03 state budget Thursday that would lessen the pain of a $969-million deficit by tapping $660 million from reserve funds.</p> <p>Universities and community colleges: No funding cuts.</p> <p>Twenty school-based health-care centers: Funding restored.</p>