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<p>WASHINGTON — President Bush's commission to create a plan to mend Social Security is loaded with members who favor privatizing the federal retirement plan to some degree.</p> <p>Bush wants to allow voluntary private investment accounts. He will officially announce his commission on Wednesday. The group's task is to hammer out the details of a new plan by this fall.</p>

Could these poor hounds have been trained by the former hounddog in Chief bill clintoon. One wonders..

SAF Blasts Proposed San Francisco Handgun Ban: 'We Beat That In 1982' 12/16/2004 5:07:00 PM To: State Desk Contact: Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation, 425-454-7012 BELLEVUE, Wash., Dec. 16 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Calling it an "ill-considered return visit of anti-gun bigotry," the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) today blasted plans to put a handgun ban on the November 2005 ballot in San Francisco, Calif. reminding proponents of the measure that such a ban was declared illegal when first tried in 1982. "This issue was decided by the California courts more than 22 years ago, and the gun ban extremists...

The Arab world is all one big happy family again. OK, dysfunctional, but happy. No, well, unhappy and as twisted as usual. While visiting Kuwait today, Palestinian presidential front-runner, Mahmoud Abbas, apologized for his people’s support of Saddam’s invasion of the Gulf emirate in 1990. Isn’t that special? (remember Dana Carvey as the “Church Lady” on SNL?). This happened just after Kuwait’s sultans (or whatever they’re called) forgave the Palestinian people for supporting Saddam’s invasion. Kuwait’s leadership went so far as to say they didn’t even expect a public apology for Palestinian support of the 1990 war. Now, isn’t that...

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!

I was just thinking about the Jeremy Glick episode. O'Reilly may be moderate politically, but that doesn't mean unbiased these days. His problem is that he isn't neutral when it comes to the United States. He is pro-American. To the left, that's biased.

Don't waste your time, girls - some romances are not meant to be, writes Caroline Overington. Is there a woman alive who hasn't sat on the couch, sobbing and saying: "Why doesn't he call?" Well, now we know: he's just not that into you. Sounds simple, no? Yet a guide for women that explains this basic concept has taken the book world by storm. The book, He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys, has reached the top of the bestseller lists in The New York Times, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal. It was...

That sinking feelingAs we continue to defy the Kyoto Protocol, the islanders of the South Pacific watch anxiously as the rising waters wash away their future. Now they are joining forces to fight the tide By Charles Arthur 06 January 2004 It's possible that Kiribati has failed to make much of an impression on many people. The most easterly island in the world, it reached its apotheosis in popular recognition at the start of this millennium, when wealthy travellers flocked there in order to see the first sun rise on a new century. The chances are the island will fail...

A parent of a high school student asked local school officials last week (Nov. 14) to reconsider a Sept. 22 decision that paved the way for students to choose clothing that displays the Confederate flag. Stella Moore told members of the Jackson County Board of Education that her son had heard racial slurs at Smoky Mountain High School and described an incident where students ran across the football field (during a pep rally) carrying a Confederate flag and yelling "KKK." "Your decision was made without regard for the feelings of those who think that flag represents racism and slavery," Moore...

Fact or fallacy: Sexy tree too much for some Westside neighbors By DAN WHITESentinel staff writer A Westside resident called the cops Monday to report an allegedly phallic tree. Officers responded to the Liberty Street home but found no wrongdoing. They said the 20-footer — actually an evergreen hedge of the Luma genus — is protected by its owner’s right to artistic freedom. "We contacted the city attorney," said Sgt. Brad Goodwin. "It could be interpreted anywhere from being free speech to being artistic. It’s really nothing we have control over." All trees can be seen as "phallic," but some...

The Least Harm Principle Suggests that Humans Should Eat Beef, Lamb, Dairy, not a Vegan Diet. The following abstract and the aforementioned title were written by S.L. Davis, Department of Animal Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331.Wildlife Damage Control has received permission to reprint this abstract in its entirety which was "Previously published in the Proceedings of the Third Congress of the European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics, 2001, pp 449-450." Again, this article was NOT written by Stephen Vantassel. See my version of this principle written long before this article at Uneasy Conscience of the Animal Rights...

he computer program that helped NASA mistakenly decide that the shuttle Columbia had not been deeply harmed by a piece of falling foam would have predicted serious damage if used properly, said the retired Boeing engineer who developed the program. The engineer, Allen J. Richardson, said the program, known as Crater, was never intended to be used in a mission to predict damage, as it was in Columbia's fatal flight. Members of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, which is expected to release its final report on the disaster tomorrow, have disparaged Crater as a flawed tool. But Mr. Richardson said...

It started with the mind-numbing reading of a 200-page pension overhaul bill, erupted into a remarkably bitter name-calling match between House Republicans and Democrats, and ended with a GOP lawmaker summoning Capitol Police to evict an outraged gaggle of Democratic colleagues from a congressional library. Ultimately, nobody was assaulted or arrested. But the brouhaha that exploded yesterday morning in the Ways and Means Committee marked the most bitterly partisan spat thus far in the 108th Congress, a place already known for unusually angry relations between the Republican majority and the Democratic minority, especially in the House. The Longworth building showdown...

DULLES, VA - Tuesday, April 29, 2003 - In an important new chapter in the fight against spam, America Online joined with Virginia lawmakers and Internet industry leaders to unveil a much-needed, timely new weapon in the war against spammers: a strengthened state law that allows for the criminal prosecution of spammers with penalties that include jail time, asset forfeiture, and fines. The unveiling of the new state law comes on the eve of the first-ever Federal Trade Commission (FTC) forum on spam, to be held in Washington, D.C. April 30-May 2. The new anti-spam statute (SB 1139/HB 2290) now...

RALEIGH — Gov. Mike Easley and the state legislature have approved a revised budget for the current fiscal year that will likely result in hundreds of millions of dollars in new taxes on North Carolina businesses and families, further damaging an already weakened state economy, according to a preliminary analysis by the John Locke Foundation. John Hood, chairman and president of the Raleigh-based think tank, observed that the new budget directly raises the state tax burden by approximately $157 million, largely through changes in business taxes and the elimination of previously scheduled tax cuts that had been designed to help...