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CONROE, Texas - A jewelry store owner fired shots at three people who tried to rob him and threatened to kill his mother on Wednesday. Conroe police said two men and a woman walked into Wilkins Jewelry, 1712 N. Frazier St., about 10:30 a.m. One of the men asked Mitch Wilkins about getting a ring cleaned while the other man and the woman asked Wilkins' 77-year-old mother for help picking something out. Detectives said the men pulled out guns. Wilkins said he was pistol-whipped. "He vaulted over this case, and when I turned around he had a pistol in my...

Police video of a traffic accident, with illegal immigrants streaming out of the van like a wrecked clown car.

Since this is an AP photo, I don't think I can post to it or link it directly. But there is a link to the photo below. Same fly as on Drudge, but a better camera angle. My caption: BEELZEBUB, LORD OF THE FLIES

I am requesting prayers for my mother, who died this morning in Danbury Hospital, in Connecticut. After the doctor called from the hospital we drove down from Vermont yesterday, myself and two of my older daughters. We got there about 5:00 pm and stayed with her until about 9:30 in the evening. When we arrived, she was breathing very hard, although she was on oxygen, and seemed to be pretty bad. She was unable to talk, but after we had been there for a while she managed to open her eyes a little, although I'm not sure how much she...

WASHINGTON - As the region braces for another major storm, one local government is having trouble keeping their plows on the roads, WTOP has learned. As many as 60 of the District's snow plows are not working -- bad news for thousands of residents still waiting for their streets to be cleared.

Fonzie: "O.K. I admit it. He's Five Times Greater than I am. He's the Boss!"

Fonzie: "I admit it. He's five times greater than I ever was! He's the Boss!"

A massive energy bill that has already passed the House, and is currently before the Senate, would create new government programs that would not only encourage the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by utilities and energy companies, but set limits over time as to the quantity of that reduction over the next several years. The US Chamber of Commerce (USCC), a private business federation that is not affiliated with the federal government, went on record last August as being skeptical of any legislative or regulatory effort that assumes greenhouse gasses truly endanger human health. Late last month, the Chamber voiced...

There is nothing new under the sun: and I mean, nothing. It is a point brought home to us with increasing force by the expansion of the Internet. Conceive of an "original idea." Now, select two or more keywords suggested by it. Use them as search terms, and you will soon find that, say, 438,000 other people have entertained said "original idea," and a dozen are currently blogging on it. Before beginning today's column, my search terms were "Gorbachev" and "Obama." Yes: a lot of people have entertained the idea, that Mikhail Gorbachev was to the late great Soviet Union,...

Los Angeles is a city in mourning. And by that we mean Los Angeles is a city with dollar-signs spinning in its neon eyeballs, thanking its lucky stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for the Celebrity Death of the Century. What with the housing market and the Dow Jones and the unemployment figures, it couldn’t have come at a better time. With only three days to go before the Funeral To End All Funerals — or the Memorial To End All Memorials, as it might more accurately be called — this city has suddenly found itself the direct recipient...

http://www.snopes.com/politics/graphics/mugshot1.jpg

It was do or die for Twitter last week. To its credit, it didn't die. Every promising new technology reaches a point in its life cycle when it either grows up and becomes part of the everyday landscape, or it flames out and becomes a footnote to history. And as history illustrates, it's a process that often repeats itself like clockwork over surprisingly long periods of time. Almost twenty years to the day since student leaders of a massive protest in China's Tiananmen Square used then-novel fax machines to bypass traditional media, organize themselves and share their message with the...

The money paragraph to which Drudge links (Bloomberg): "The first case was seen in Mexico on April 13. The outbreak coincided with the President Barack Obama’s trip to Mexico City on April 16. Obama was received at Mexico’s anthropology museum in Mexico City by Felipe Solis, a distinguished archeologist who died the following day from symptoms similar to flu, Reforma newspaper reported. The newspaper didn’t confirm if Solis had swine flu or not."

The fed has announced that it will monetize more than a trillion dollars in debt, and gold soared $60 in the next hour. Inflation is coming down the track.

The buzz online today may have been about Robert Scoble's exit from Fast Company, but there's a major change afoot at the top of the NCSC: Rod Beckström, the director, has submitted his resignation to DHS head Janet Napolitano effective in one week (that is, Friday the 13th). The move comes after rumors of ferocious power struggles at NCSC, which Beckström has led since its inception last year. The politics at DHS, which oversees NCSC, can't have been much fun for the co-author of The Starfish and the Spider, a book advocating for "the unstoppable power of leaderless organizations." In...

Drudge has outdone himself today. Just check out his page. Effete Obama sipping wine while the world economy disintegrates. Check to deficit chart on the upper left. And I count 25 stories on this world-wide economic disaster and other leftist Obama mischief such as gun control.

"Recovery will take years, not months"

While President Obama and several million of his fellow Americans were shivering on the National Mall this morning, Macon Phillips and his team were swapping out files and posting the all-new whitehouse.gov. Phillips is the Director of New Media for the White House and had the signal honor of f1srt p0st!!!1 on the new White House blog. Phillips reiterates several of the promises previously made by the new Administration concerning community, transparency and participation, including the vow to publish all non-emergency legislation to the web site for five days, so the public can read and comment before the President signs...

NBC Universal made the first of potentially several rounds of staffing cuts at The Weather Channel (TWC) on Wednesday, axing the entire staff of the "Forecast Earth" environmental program during the middle of NBC's "Green Week," as well as several on-camera meteorologists. The layoffs totaled about 10 percent of the workforce, and are among the first major changes made since NBC completed its purchase of the venerable weather network in September.

Something to cheer us up on election eve. I don't know who was flying that plane, but maybe it was "Ace" McCain.