Free Republic

The Vails' former ranch, now part of Channel Islands National Park, is no longer a home for cattle, cowboys or adventurous children. And now the family's last link to the place is being severed. For the family that once owned Santa Rosa Island, it was part Zane Grey, part "Robinson Crusoe." Generations of Vail cousins would arrive from the mainland and take refuge for months at a time. They would explore places with pirate-map names: Skull Gulch, Abalone Rocks, China Camp. They were city kids, but they rode with the island's cowboys and knew the island lore — stories about...

Americans are becoming only too aware of the financial tricks and deceit in which some of the nation's largest and most respected corporations engaged during the Clinton administration to pump up stock prices with fraudulently inflated profits. When the huge bubble no longer could be sustained the men and women at the top would bail out of their stock and pocket millions, leaving pensioners and other investors holding an empty bag. To market insiders these are known as "pump and dumps." While federal investigators are looking into the corporate malfeasance at Enron, WorldCom, Qwest Communications, AOL Time Warner and...