Free Republic

We won't be able to say we weren't warned. Continued huge federal budget deficits will eventually mean huge increases in government borrowing costs, Erskine Bowles, co-chairman of Barack Obama's deficit reduction commission, predicted this month. "The markets will come. They will be swift, and they will be severe, and this country will never be the same." Bowles is talking about what the business press calls bond market vigilantes. People with capital are currently willing to loan money to the federal government, by buying U.S. bonds at low interest rates. That's because interest rates are generally low and because Treasury bonds...

It is time to confront the unhappy fact about our country: There are now two Americas. Not a rich one and a poor one; economic status plays little role in this division. There is a Red one and a Blue one. For most of my life I have believed, in what I now regard as wishful thinking, that the Right and Left wings have essentially the same vision for America, that it's only about ways to get there in which the two sides differ. Right and Left share the same ends, I thought. That is not the case. For the...

The median sales price for the American dream--new house, land included--is $236,000, according to government census figures. The average price--$313,000--is higher than the median. Many new houses are palatial. In Manhattan you can pay nearly the U.S. median new home price for a parking spot. "In Chelsea," wrote the New York Times last month, "eight people are vying to buy one of five parking spaces for $225,000 in a 34-unit condo building on West 17th Street. That translates into $1,500 per square foot." And, no, you don't really own the land. Here's a Blue State irony: In areas where U.S....

Pelosi a rare example of a woman who 'has it all' January 14, 2007 BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist I don't know where they stand on apple pie, but the Democrats have come out for motherhood in a big way. In fact, who needs apple pie when you've got the extra-sugary content of the Washington Post? Last Wednesday, the capital's newspaper of record (now available in print, online and in granulated form) published a column headlined ''Grandma With A Gavel.'' Can you guess which grandma it was, boys and girls? Yes, it was Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has single-handedly, as...

Two days before a King County deputy sheriff's live-in lover allegedly shot and killed a convenience-store clerk, he used the deputy's handcuffs and gun to rape a man in their Kenmore home while the cop slept upstairs, according to police reports. The incident in August is one of many revelations regarding King County Sheriff's Deputy Ferenc Zana's disastrous affair with a mentally ill felon. They were contained in more than 900 pages of documents the Sheriff's Office was forced to produce Monday under a court order obtained by the Seattle P-I.

The law requires that any resident of the Nutmeg State with an estate of more than $2 million pay a death tax of up to 16%--merely for the privilege of dying in Connecticut. The legislators in Hartford hope that the tax will raise $150 million in revenue each year--money that will come in only if the legislators in Hartford are also planning to build a Berlin Wall around the state. Otherwise, expect a stampede of retirees and family businesses out of Connecticut into the many states without a death tax, such as Florida, which has a constitutional prohibition against estate...

NEW YORK -- It began as child's play: a tug of war between two young girls over a rubber ball at a Memorial Day gathering in Brooklyn. But when one of the girls reached for a steak knife, the holiday turned to tragedy. The 9-year-old _ a skinny fourth-grader identified by the city only as Shanice K. to protect her identity _ was in custody on Tuesday, accused of stabbing her playmate to death. A Family Court judge ordered her detained until a hearing on Thursday, when she's expected to be charged with manslaughter. At a brief hearing, Shanice at...

A 9-year-old girl got into a fight with an 11-year-old girl in a Brooklyn apartment yesterday - family members said it was over a ball - and killed her by plunging a steak knife into her chest, the police said. The stabbing in the apartment building at 185 Wortman Avenue in East New York left the police scrambling to determine the appropriate charges for the youngest suspect in a killing that anyone in the department could recall. And it left the family of the slain girl, Queen Washington, not only grappling with the horror of her death, but also trying...

The other day, the guy on my local radio station mentioned that The Passion of The Christ was the Number One movie in America. ‘So congrats to Mel Gibson,’ he said. ‘And it’ll probably hold on to the Number One slot until the new Starsky & Hutch opens.’ It’s always useful to keep things in proportion. But, in fact, Starsky & Hutch opened and The Passion cleaned its clock. Last weekend, it took in $51.4 million, as against S&H’s $29.05 million. By then, The Passion’s total gross was up around $212 million. Pace my radio guy, mid-Seventies nostalgia is no...

City man charged in rape of senior during blackout By DANIEL VALENTINE and ERIC HARTLEY Staff Writ City police last night charged an Annapolis man with the rape and beating of a 89-year-old woman in her apartment during Monday's blackout. Police arrested Gregory Paul Moreland, 51, yesterday afternoon at his mother's apartment in the Glenwood Hi-Rise in the Clay Street neighborhood. The victim also lives in the building, run by the Annapolis Housing Authority. Mr. Moreland has been charged with first-degree rape, first-degree sexual assault, first-degree assault, second-degree assault and burglary. He is being held without bond at the county...

SUTTER, Calif. (AP) - The only grade school in this rural town is requiring students to wear radio frequency identification badges that can track their every move. Some parents are outraged, fearing it will rob their children of privacy. The badges introduced at Brittan Elementary School on Jan. 18 rely on the same radio frequency and scanner technology that companies use to track livestock and product inventory. While similar devices are being tested at several schools in Japan so parents can know when their children arrive and leave, Brittan appears to be the first U.S. school district to embrace such...

<p>BOSTON -- A Republican can be elected governor of the bluest state. Indeed, Republicans have held the statehouse here since Michael Dukakis' last year, 1990. Mitt Romney is the inexplicably happy holder of it now. What kind of person is preternaturally cheerful while governing with a Legislature in which 34 of 40 senators and 139 of 160 House members are Democrats?</p>