Free Republic

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stocks slid on Thursday with the Dow and S&P falling to 12-year lows as General Motors' warning of possible bankruptcy and concerns about the banking system's fate reinforced investors' reluctance to take on risk. The previous session's rally proved fleeting as worries about the financial system's health hit bank stocks again and investors focused on the possibility that troubles in the finance arm of widely held General Electric could lead to a debt rating downgrade for the entire company. ... Shares of Citigroup, once the world's largest bank by market value, fell as low as 97...

Consider a young man or woman who has just graduated from medical school and wishes to become a brain surgeon. Our young doctor will have to spend one year in a general surgical residency program, followed by six more years as a resident in neurosurgery. To recap: brain surgeon, seven years. And yet, the Florida Legislature this past week announced that its members cannot master the demands of their job within the measly eight years allowed by Florida's term limits. Nope. A Florida legislator really needs at least 12 years to learn the ropes in Tallahassee, the Legislature declared. And...

<p>NAPLES, Fla. - A homeless man received 12 years in prison for spitting on a Collier County sheriff's deputy during an arrest.</p> <p>David Michael Hird, 41, was convicted in June of battery on a law enforcement officer.</p> <p>Hird was arrested on a trespassing charge Feb. 18 and put into a patrol car by Cpl. Paul Boliek. Prosecutors said when Hird was in the back of the patrol car, he coughed up phlegm on the deputy. When Boliek asked what he was doing, Hird replied: "I'm trying to make you sick, man."</p>