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A Plymouth father facing a felony charge for using a belt to spank his 12-year-old son over forgotten homework says he's the victim of overzealous authorities with no business telling him how to discipline his child. ``My record is spotless and all of a sudden I have a felony charge?'' an exasperated Charles Enloe said following his arrest by Plymouth police. ``. . . How is a parent supposed to raise a child these days? You can't spank them, you can't yell at them in stores. I feel I was wrongly charged.'' Enloe, a 42-year-old divorced father, was charged with...

PLYMOUTH - A father who used a belt to spank his 12-year-old son over forgotten homework is facing a felony assault charge and an investigation by the state Department of Social Services. Charles S. Enloe, 42, of 4 Cortelli Court, Plymouth, hit his son on the buttocks three times with a belt after the boy forgot his homework assignment at school, police said. He was charged with assault with a deadly weapon. Enloe said he was surprised at his arrest, but that he doesn't blame police for doing their job. ‘‘I never knew it would be considered assault with a...

With the recent toppling of CBS's Dan Rather and now CNN's top news executive, Eason Jordan, I think we can declare without fear of contradiction that rigor mortis is settling over the carcass of the Fourth Estate. At least as we once knew it. I make this pronouncement without pleasure, and in fact, suggest that we're really witnessing a double funeral. One is for traditional journalism as the omnipotent gatekeeper of information. As bloggers -- authors of Web logs -- have gleefully pointed out the past several days, everyone with access to the Internet is now a journalist. Given the...

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- A Senate committee advanced a bill Tuesday that would require drivers and all passengers to wear seat belts in trucks, SUVs and cars. After hearing emotional testimony from family members of those killed in crashes, the Senate's public policy committee voted 10-0 to endorse the bill. It now moves to the full Senate, which approved similar legislation last year before it was blocked in a House committee. The bill requires people in front and back seats to buckle up in all vehicles with seat belts, with exceptions for trucks used on farms. People who cannot wear seat...

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!

Scientists Find Another Huge Mini-World in Outer Solar System The most distant object ever seen orbiting the Sun is nearly as large as Pluto, expanding astronomers notions of how the solar system formed and what resides in its outskirts. The round world is currently three times farther away than Pluto from the Sun, a distance that expands even further on its 10,000-year orbit. It sits in a part of the solar system that some astronomers had thought empty. It is redder and brighter than anything astronomers have seen in the outer solar system, and scientists don't know why. The object...

London-based Al Hayat newspaper: Saddam Hussein is wearing an explosive belt, for use if he is captured by U.S. forces.

SEATTLE - "It's all about safety." That's been the Washington State Patrol mantra around the "Click it or Ticket" law. Of course, now we come to find that writing 3 seatbelt tickets an hour means that troopers can "safely" pocket overtime pay. The devil, as they say, is in the details. And the details are in a contract with the State Traffic Safety Commission and law enforcement agencies, including the state patrol. The contract spells out how federal money is funneled into enforcement of the seat-belt law: write "x" number of tickets and the state gets federal grant money, which...

Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission Moves Ahead; NASA Approves Full-Scale Development for APL-Managed New Horizons The solar system's farthest known planetary outpost is closer to getting its first visitor. This week NASA gave The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Southwest Research Institute and their partners the go-ahead to start full development of the first mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. The New Horizons spacecraft is scheduled to launch in January 2006, swing past Jupiter for a gravity boost and scientific studies in 2007, and reach Pluto and its moon, Charon, as early as summer 2015. The arrival date depends...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 March 2 In the Center of the Trapezium Credit: J. Bally, D. Devine, & R. Sutherland, D. Johnson (CITA), HST, NASA Explanation: Start with the constellation of Orion. Near Orion's belt is a fuzzy area known as the Great Nebula of Orion or M42. In this nebula is a bright star cluster known as the Trapezium, shown above. New stellar systems are forming there in gigantic globs...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 December 25 Orion Rising Credit & Copyright: Jimmy Westlake (Colorado Mountain College) Explanation: Orion always comes up sideways ... and was caught in the act earlier this month by astronomer Jimmy Westlake, stargazing eastward over the Rocky Mountains north of Leadville, Colorado, USA. To make this gorgeous image, Westlake placed his camera on a tripod for two exposures. The first lasted for 18 minutes allowing the stars...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 November 13 Asteroid Annefrank Credit: STARDUST Team, JPL, NASA Explanation: NASA's interplanetary probe STARDUST, on its way to Comet Wild 2 in January 2004, passed asteroid 5535 Annefrank earlier this month. Annefrank, named for a holocaust victim who kept a famous diary, is a member of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Just prior to closest approach at about 3300 km distant, the robot spacecraft...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 July 24 Our Busy Solar System Credit & Copyright: MPC, CBAT, Harvard CfA, IAU Explanation: Our Solar System is a busy place. Although the major planets get the most press, a swarm of rocks, comets, and asteroids also exist. The above plot shows the placement of known inner Solar System objects on 2002 July 20. The light blue lines indicate the orbits of planets. The green dots...

JULY 19, 2002 Bizarre study trick proves fatal BANGKOK - A university student here has been found dead after a bizarre study method which involved looping a belt around his neck and fixing it to a door handle went tragically wrong. Eak Chongsawatwattana's mother said the belt kept him awake while he was studying, a trick he had learnt from other university students. If he nodded off, the jerk of the belt would wake him up. 'I warned him many times not to do this, but he just didn't listen. Now he's dead,' she said. Eak, 21, was reportedly found...