Free Republic

Houston police and the federal Transportation Security Administration disagree over who is responsible for allowing a man with what appeared to be bomb components board an aircraft at Hobby Airport last week. The report states that a man with a Middle Eastern name and a ticket for a Delta Airlines flight to Atlanta shook his head when screeners asked if he had a laptop computer in his baggage, but an X-ray machine operator detected a laptop. A search of the man's baggage revealed a clock with a 9-volt battery taped to it and a copy of the Quran, the report...

There's plenty of ignorance on all sides in the belatedly, incredibly (as in manipulatively incredible) mushrooming of protests against use of Mohammed as a cartoon figure in a Danish newspaper more than four months ago. Unfortunately, again for all sides, the controversy highlights a cultural rift (OK, chasm) that will not be easily bridged, if it can be at all. That's not defeatism, or at least is not intended as such. It's just an assessment of where a crazy world seems to stand amid what currently passes for a clash of civilizations with intolerant hotheads on both sides. How else...

Over the next 30 years, most of Harris County's remaining open space will succumb to subdivisions, office buildings and shopping centers where millions of new residents will live and work, projections by local planners show. The spread of development, particularly west and northwest of Houston, is among the more striking trends shown in preliminary population and job growth projections developed by the Houston-Gal- veston Area Council for the eight-county Houston region. The potential loss of open space alarms conservationists and others concerned about suburban sprawl. It is among the factors driving an effort by business and civic leaders to find...

Good news! The war being waged by U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay and his allies against liberal activist judges who free criminals based on technicalities is bearing fruit. Take the case of State District Judge Pat Priest, a San Antonio Democrat. Some slick big-city lawyers from Houston wanted him to drop a felony money-laundering charge against their client based on what can only be described as a technicality. The $190,000 that was allegedly dry-cleaned, they noted, was in the form of a check, not cold hard cash. The peculiar wording of the Texas money-laundering law, the attorneys argued, did not include...

Traditional marriage under fire: Who's really to blame? Americans are less than passionate about institution By DANIEL ALLOTT Texas has become the 19th state to pass a constitutional amendment to preserve marriage as between one man and one woman. For traditional marriage activists, this vote represents another victory on the path to what they hope will be a federal marriage protection amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But, if and when a federal marriage amendment is ratified, marriage advocates may be surprised to discover that passing marriage protection laws may not be enough to save an institution in free-fall. The National...

Maybe Ronnie Earle has the goods on Tom DeLay and maybe not. I'm perfectly content to let a jury consider the evidence and decide. But if a jury does convict DeLay, I'm proposing a new nickname for the man who was, until Wednesday, one of the most powerful figures in national politics. Forget "The Hammer." He will be "Scarface." As in Al Capone. The connection? Capone was a monumental tough guy who ran gambling, prostitution, protection, bootlegging and other rackets in Chicago — only to be brought down on lower level charges that he cheated on his income taxes. DeLay...

Gov. Rick Perry is actively promoting Proposition 2, the proposed constitutional amendment against same-sex marriages, and many other Republicans are supporting it. But at least one GOP group is campaigning against it. The Log Cabin Republicans of Texas, a gay and lesbian group that has fought the state's conservative GOP leaders before, denounced Proposition 2 as discriminatory. "The proposed amendment to ban same-sex marriage would discriminate by singling out gays and lesbians and those in other committed relationships from the basic rights and responsibilities that married Texans enjoy," said Andy Hendricks, the group's president. "Individual liberty and freedom from governmental...

In 1981, rising young reporter Janet Cooke of the Washington Post made up an 8-year-old heroin addict named Jimmy and won a Pulitzer. When her falsification was discovered, she went into exile for more than a decade, but her journalism career remained dead. •More recently, USA Today star reporter Jack Kelley was forced to resign after editors learned he had fabricated multiple stories. The newspaper's top editor also resigned. •New York Times reporter Jayson Blair resigned when it was discovered that he had been making up parts of stories, including one about the Rio Grande Valley family of an early...

Witnesses say 14 family members are killed; Military 'regrets the loss' BAGHDAD, IRAQ - Five Iraqis were killed early Saturday when a U.S. warplane dropped a 500-pound bomb on the wrong house during an attack on insurgents in northern Iraq, the military said. People on the scene, however, said 14 people were killed. The military said in a statement that an F-16 fighter plane mistakenly dropped the guided bomb on the house, in the village of Aitha, about 30 miles south of Mosul. "The intended target was another location nearby," the statement said. It said an investigation was under way...

Reports that Oliver Spellman has been charged by the U.S. attorney in Cleveland, Ohio, with conspiring to obtain bribes will surely trouble the people whose image of him was so different when he worked for the city of Houston. Spellman, who had been recruited as Houston's parks director in 1998, came from a similar position in Cleveland. Once here, he charmed parks supporters and won plaudits for streamlining the bloated departmental bureaucracy and cleaning up and renovating city-owned green space. So highly regarded was Spellman that he was touted as a leading candidate for the parks directorship of New York...

WASHINGTON - House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's legal expense fund accepted improper contributions from two registered lobbyists in 2001 and this week returned the checks, totaling $3,500, fund trustee Brent Perry said Tuesday. House rules prohibit lobbyists from making contributions to a member's legal defense fund. The Tom DeLay Legal Expense Trust has raised more than $900,000 since its creation in 2000, said Perry, a Houston attorney. The reimbursement was prompted by Public Citizen, a Washington-based watchdog group, which combed through DeLay's fund and identified the improper contributions. Asked why it took the fund so long to return the checks,...

Between the end of the Republican National Convention and Election Day, the Houston Chronicle spent roughly 50,000 words on President George W. Bush and his campaign for re-election. Perhaps most impressive, one of its own columnists had major news to break on the race. He just didn't, umm, break it to the Chronicle. Russ Baker, a New York-based freelance journalist and contributing editor at Columbia Journalism Review, had been circling the reporting waters around President Bush for several months, dialing up hundreds of possible sources for material on the commander in chief. "I just didn't think we really knew enough...

Scroll down to the picture of the girl with "W" hair. Right click on her picture. Look at the file name.

The late, great columnist Murray Kempton said editorial writers were like partisan fighters who come down out of the hills after the battle and shoot the wounded. There is some truth to that, but I have a kinder, gentler simile in mind. J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, used to ask children to sit with him in his box during performances of his famous play. After the curtain came down one night Barrie turned to the little boy he had invited and asked: "So what part did you like best?" The little boy said, "The part I liked best...

Readers take apart the Chronicle By Kevin Whited Several readers emailed today to point out problems with Chronicle copy:Greg Gotlieb notes the following: Cleland, a fellow Vietnam veteran who lost three limbs during the war, was defeated in the 2002 election after Republicans questioned his patriotism. Cleland has been a political martyr of sorts for Kerry as he accuses Republicans of trying to tear down real American patriots. That excerpt came from an AP story that ran in the Chronicle and in many other news outlets. It shows just how pervasive the bias in the mainstream news media is, and...

WHEN you work for a newspaper, you get used to it. "Your paper is too liberal." "Your paper is too conservative." "It's too this." "It's too that." Then there was the phone call I got last week from Mike Papantonio, a talk host on the Air America Radio network — the liberal answer to Rush Limbaugh and conservative talk radio. He wanted to know why we didn't cover a story — even though we did. Air America has 15 stations across the country, but none in Houston. You can hear it on Sirius and XM Satellite Radio, however. Papantonio challenged...

Freudian slip The Chronicle has since corrected the problem in this story, but a google news search currently confirms an alert from a reader earlier: John Edwards a good and expedient choice Houston Chronicle, TX - 12 hours ago ... President Kerry overlooked Edwards' slim political experience because the son of a mill worker is an effective campaigner who excites the party faithful and ... We know that's your preference guys, but maybe you should at least wait until the election. ------- What liberal media? By Kevin Whited The Chronicle made OpinionJournal's Best of the Web today, although "worst" of...

AUSTIN -- Erica Anthony-Benavides is a junior at Trinity University in San Antonio, a member of Ladies in Physics and not very politically active. But because she signed a petition against the war in Iraq, a national conservative Internet site has declared her an enemy of America. "I don't know why they want to accuse us of treason. It's not fair. We haven't done anything. We've just said something that somebody doesn't like," said Anthony-Benavides, a native of Corpus Christi. Anthony-Benavides, 19, has been swept up in a new Internet war between the right and left in America that is...

Over the past few years, downtown Houston has experienced a dramatic makeover. After decades of blight, the area has seen the restoration of old buildings and the return of retail, particularly restaurants and clubs. Many of these new businesses suffered through months of road construction with the hope that the arrival of light rail would turn things around. It's been almost six months since rail's launch, enough time, perhaps, for retailers to gauge whether the train will have a positive effect on their businesses. It should be noted, of course, that no two businesses have the same story to tell....

When I eulogized my son, Nick, I said that he was my teacher and my hero. He was the kindest, gentlest man I know — no, the kindest, gentlest human being I know or have ever known. Did you know that he quit the Boy Scouts of America because they wanted to teach him to fire a handgun? Nick, too, poured into me the strength I needed and still need to tell the world about him. People ask me why I focus on putting the blame for my son's tragic and atrocious end on the Bush administration. They ask: "Don't...