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Could it really take twice as long and four times as much money to replace the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge than it did to build it in the first place? The Key Bridge was built at a cost (adjusted for inflation) of about $200 million. Replacing it could take a decade and cost $400 million to $800 million dollars, according to experts in what has become a dismal field. “To actually recreate that whole transportation network" could take a decade or more, structural engineer Ben Schafer told USA Today on Wednesday. Huge projects, Schafer said, now take “rarely less...

President Joe Biden said the government would pay the “entire cost” of rebuilding the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, after a cargo ship hit the bridge after losing power early Tuesday morning. “It’s my intention that we will pay for the entire cost of reconstructing that bridge. I expect the Congress to support my effort,” Biden said in a White House press conference. “It’s gonna take some time. And the people of Baltimore can count on us, though, to stick with that every step of the way until the port is reopened and the bridge is rebuilt. We’re...

U.S.—As a potential SCOTUS replacement hearing looms, leftists are at their breaking point. So, they threatened to burn everything down. But oops! They already burned it all down. So, they are now frantically rebuilding the buildings, towns, low-income housing, black-owned businesses, and stores they destroyed in the previous riots so they can burn them all down again. The gangs of looters and rioters rushed stores and returned everything they stole, rebuilt the buildings they'd burned down, and replaced all the windows they'd smashed.

Gateway Church Dallas Campus Dallas, Texas3:43 P.M. CDTTHE PRESIDENT:  Nice place.  Wow.  I’ve been hearing about this one.  Great job.  (Laughter.)  Great job.  Thank you very much for being here.  It’s an honor.  And very important time in our country.  A lot of things are happening.  And I think when it all ends up, it’s going to end up very good for everybody.It’s an honor to be at Gateway Church with the Attorney General — our great Attorney General, William Barr.  Thank you.  (Applause.)  And my friend, Ben Carson, who’s done a fantastic job at HUD.  Secretary.  (Applause.)  And...

Kansas City officials, using a new housing inspection law, have moved residents out of a troubled Northland apartment building where they found roaches, severe plumbing problems and other dangerous health violations, the Health Department announced in a news conference Wednesday. In the building, city officials and elected leaders said they saw caved-in ceilings, mold and damp carpets. During their visit Friday, they walked through human excrement in an apartment where sewage had backed up into the toilet, sinks and bathtub. “Disgusting is the best way I can tell you what I saw,” Councilman Dan Fowler, who represents the area, said...

The countries share much of historical and political background, Duong Chinh Thuc tells VnExpress. As North Korea is apparently taking steps to opening its door, insiders and international observants have expressed confidence that Vietnam would be a top model, especially in how it has turned the U.S. from a war enemy into a major business and security partner. Duong Chinh Thuc, former Vietnam ambassador to North Korea and South Korea, who spent more than 20 years studying and working in the North from the 1960s, told VnExpress about the historical and political resemblance that would make Vietnam an "appropriate" example...

A number of people have argued over the past few days that Hurricane Harvey will NOT boost the US housing market. As if any such argument would or should be required. Hurricane Irma will not provide any such boost either. News about the ‘resurrection’ of New Orleans post-Katrina has pretty much dried up, but we know scores of people there never returned, in most cases because they couldn’t afford to. And Katrina took place 12 years ago, well before the financial crisis. How do you think this will play out today? Houston is a rich city, but that doesn’t mean...

US President Barack Obama said Saturday the United States needed to do more than just reclaim jobs lost to the recession, as he called for rebuilding the economy to make it secure for future generations. "Our mission isn't just to put people back to work - it's to rebuild an economy where that work pays; an economy in which everyone who works hard has the chance to get ahead," Obama said in his radio and Internet address. The comment came after new Labor Department statistics showed that the June jobless rate was unchanged from May at 8.2 percent, with 12.7...

Here's something positive in Japan to break up the unending headlines about Fukushima.Via Good Magazine, here's a before-and-after photo of a highway that was totally torn up after the earthquake.The time lapse is three days.Here's the press release on the status of highway repairs. Image: Good Magazine

A few years ago, a senior official at Japan’s finance ministry shocked a foreign guest by making a deliberately provocative statement. “What Japan’s economy needs is a really good earthquake,” he said. Now, tragically, his tongue-in-cheek wish has come true. What the official was trying to say was the following. First, the country was stuck in deflation. Since the mid-late 1990s it had failed to shake off the debilitating drip of gently falling prices. One way of tackling that, the official suggested in remarks that echoed the thinking of Ben Bernanke, now chairman of the US Federal Reserve, was to...

More than a year ago, Pollster Frank Luntz stood before a group of about 40 House Republicans in a cramped conference room. “I need to tell you something,” he said. “I’ve been looking at polling data from Congressional districts across America for the last three months. I’m convinced that you are going to be in the majority next year.” After a long pause, he added, “This time, please don’t screw it up again.” I don’t think we will. The message of the last two elections could not be louder or clearer. Great parties are built upon great principles and they...

Republican voters want Congress to repeal the healthcare overhaul, aren’t convinced that climate change is happening, and don’t think illegal immigrants should have a way to become citizens or that President Barack Obama has improved the United States’ global standing – all stances that put them at odds with the majority of voters, according to a new survey by Resurgent Republic. The findings, unveiled at a Tuesday morning panel by the group, highlight a major challenged faced by Republicans headed into the 2010 election cycle: While their base appears more motivated than that of the Democrats, they will have to...

ABU GHRAIB – A U.S. Soldier visited the site of a destroyed pedestrian footbridge here to meet with Iraqi representatives to discuss reconstructing the once-busy thoroughfare, April 6.Capt. Talgin Cannon, a member of the Joint Project Management Office of the 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, knows traveling to school should be a fun and safe experience for children.  But in this neighborhood, the journey for a good education has become treacherous without the footbridge. The bridge was destroyed by an improvised explosive device about two years ago, Cannon said, explaining that rebuilding would allow safe travel for...

Some commentators have suggested that Republican-Libertarian Rep. Ron Paul is responsible for the grassroots Tea Party movement rising up against the present Washington chaos. The truth is Paul's 2008 presidential campaign ignited long-held frustrations and also educated some of the younger generation regarding constitutional principles. Considered a "kook" by many of his congressional peers, Paul may be the only sane one there. This is the man who just returned $100,000 of his congressional budget back to the U.S. Treasury. His congressional frugality borders on treason within free-spending Congress. Nicknamed "Dr. No" because of his thriftiness, he votes no to any...

"If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism." — Ronald Reagan Nonconformist: of or characterized by behavior or views that do not conform to prevailing ideas or practices. Recently Fox's Glenn Beck offered citizens a quiz to pinpoint where they fall in their political beliefs. The Nolan Chart (www.nolanchart.com/survey.php) provides questions which when answered honestly will place the responder somewhere on the political spectrum depicting conservative-libertarian-liberal-statist-centrist sections. Citizens who consider themselves conservative might be surprised to find they're somewhere between conservative and libertarian. Commentators have had a difficult time labeling tea party citizens....

WASHINGTON -- A major proposition that I advance in a book that will be published later this month, "After the Hangover: The Conservatives' Road to Recovery," is that there exists an odious subgroup of conservatives who, since the beginning of the conservative movement, have made their way to prominence in the mainstream media by a cheap act. They disparage, with great melodrama, other conservatives. Liberals love it -- and, for a while, love the disparagers. In the late 1990s, Arianna Huffington exploited this instrument of self-promotion brazenly. For several years, David Frum has been doing it haltingly, even timorously. However,...

On a bright, brisk afternoon in mid-February, with snow still thick on the ground from storms that had battered Washington the week before, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele met with more than 50 members of the Tea Party, the Twitter Age conservative movement that is reshaping the U.S. political landscape. Steele, RNC chairman since January 2009, had invited them to the plush Capitol Hill Club, built as a clubhouse for the party's top brass next door to RNC headquarters. According to several accounts, not long into the meeting JoAnn Abbott, an activist from Virginia who calls herself the 'Tea...

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The political commentariat doesn't know what to make of those thousands of Americans who have spontaneously thronged to tea parties and town hall meetings to oppose the big government programs of the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders.Some on the Left attack them as fascists or racists, though evidence of that is sorely lacking. David Brooks in the New York Times compared them with the New Left campus radicals of the 1970s, which comes closer to reality but doesn't quite ring true.Some tea partiers, citing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, compare themselves with the patriots of 1776 and...

Dean Murray, Tea Party activist, has been elected to the New York state assembly! According to Fox News: The Tea Party followers can boast about their first elected official. Dean Murray, a 45-year-old Long Island, N.Y., businessman who organized Tea Party protests, will be sworn in as the new Republican state assemblyman representing Long Island's eastern 3rd Assembly District on Monday, after being certified the winner of a special election held last Tuesday. Murray beat his Democratic opponent 51% to 49%, and is believed to be the first Tea Party organizer who has attained public office. The district had been...