Free Republic

BRATENAHL, Ohio (AP) -- As the nation pauses on Memorial Day to honor its war dead, one woman is working to keep alive the memory of her son, who was killed in Iraq while serving as a civilian contractor. Donna Zovko wants Americans to remember her son Jerko "Jerry" Zovko and other contractors along with the fallen members of the nation's military. "How will Americans treat or remember my son as a contractor that was killed?" she asked. "It's their choice, but he was there to protect our freedom and to help the Iraqis. He was not there for the...

McALLEN TEXAS — Chacho’s Kids in downtown McAllen is brimming with dresses of all colors, eagerly anticipating a seat on a church pew on Easter Sunday. Soon, many of those frilly little dresses will have homes, as hundreds of eager buyers pour into the store during one of the busiest shopping weeks of the year — Holy Week. It’s the week retailers call “Christmas in April.” “The weekends do get very busy,” said Patty Tuerne, daughter of owner Nagle “Chacho” Emilio Tuerne. Today is the unofficial beginning of Holy Week, the Christian Observance leading up to Easter on April 8....

NEW YORK To viewers of David Letterman's late night television show, he was known as Larry "Bud" Melman. Calvin DeForest has died after a long illness. He was 85. As Melman, DeForest made dozens of appearances on Letterman's shows from 1982 through 2002, handling a variety of twisted duties. He did a duet with Sonny Bono on "I Got You, Babe" and handed out hot towels to arrivals at New York's Port Authority Bus Terminal.

EDINBURG TEXAS — University of Texas-Pan American will announce a plan next week to cover all tuition costs and fees for Texas students whose families make less than $25,000 annually. Administrators are still ironing out details of the plan, which is part of a system-wide UT effort to make college more affordable for the lowest-income students. Although many low-income students contribute little out of pocket — their costs are largely covered by federal and state grants — the word "free" sends a powerful message to poor students who do not think college is an option, according to administrators and local...

The Freedom View (Editorial page) The Colorado Springs Gazette Regular readers of this page may have followed the plight of the Devil’s Hole pupfish, a rare creature confined to a single limestone cave in remote Death Valley, whose already tenuous existence has taken a turn for the worse since winning federal protection as an endangered species. Unlike many listed species, the pupfish really is a rarity — the kind of animal for which the much-misused Endangered Species Act was designed. We’ve followed its travails because the creature’s plummet toward extinction has actually accelerated under the care of bumbling wildlife bureaucrats,...

It hardly seems possible that one year has passed since Hurricane Katrina churned her way toward infamy. Pat and Vanna were spinning the Wheel of Fortune with New Orleans flair last week; I suppose to remind everyone that the Crescent City still is alive. Despite the gaiety associated with those Gulf Coast contestants solving puzzles for big bucks, Katrina fatigue is beginning to affect me. It took Katrina about two weeks to expose decades of poor planning and seemingly non-existent preparedness. It took less time for the blame game to start. Sadly, that game still is being played and that’s...

I was channel surfing and came across Ann Coulter on TBN "Behind the Scenes" at noon. Not being a regular TBN watcher I was intrigued at the thought of Ann being on the same station as Paul and Jan Crouch.;o) The show was excellent! I got to hear Ann's thoughts on Darwinism, Jesus, liberals and politics without the usual gasps, screaming or cross-talk you get with most of Coulter's appearances on TeeVee. *Alert* Ann said she follows responses about her and her books on Free Republic!!! I checked the TBN schedule and "Behind the Scenes" will air again tonite at...

Two people have been killed and 13 injured after a giant, inflatable sculpture blew free from its moorings. Many were inside the artwork, which consists of connected rooms, when it lifted 30ft into the air at Riverside Park, Chester-le-Street, County Durham. The Dreamspace sculpture is thought to have drifted for about 40m. A 38-year-old woman from the town and a 68-year-old woman from Seaham died. A three-year-old girl was seriously injured and was flown to hospital.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One of the main cameras on the aging Hubble Space Telescope, known for its unparalleled views of distant galaxies and infant stars, has stopped working and engineers are studying the problem, scientists said on Saturday. One of three cameras in the Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys shut down on Monday after indicating that power supply voltages had exceeded their limits, the Space Telescope Science Institute said in a statement. The exact cause of the problem and a potential fix were under investigation, the statement said. The other two cameras were still operating and engineers were hopeful the...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Vince Welnick, who took over as the Grateful Dead's keyboard player in 1990 after a succession of predecessors met untimely deaths, has died at the age of 55, according to an announcement on his Web site. "Vince passed from this earth on June 2, 2006 ... after a decade of battling tragedy while creating beauty and light around him," the announcement said. It did not give a cause of death. The San Jose Mercury News said he died in a hospital on Friday after being taken from his home in Forestville, California, and it quoted a...

NEW YORK -- The United States agreed under pressure yesterday to the creation of a system to transfer funds for salaries and humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians -- a softening of its unbending effort to isolate Hamas. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also announced a donation of $10 million in emergency medical assistance for residents of the Gaza Strip, where hospitals are reporting shortages of medical supplies because of the cutoff of aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian government. As much as $4 million worth of supplies could be distributed as early as today, according to the State Department, with the...

McALLEN TEXAS — Daniel McKenna, a beloved McAllen musician and former guitarist for the band that struck a hit in 1978 with “My Angel Baby,” was found dead in his home early Wednesday morning. McAllen police said McKenna, who had been part of the country-folk band Toby Beau, shot himself in his bathroom. The 54-year-old’s death stunned his family and many people who knew him well, including his First United Methodist church community and former Toby Beau band member Art Mendoza. “It’s hard to believe he did that,” Mendoza said, remembering the time he spent with the young McKenna touring...

BENTON, Tenn. - A bear attacked a family at a camp site in the Cherokee National Forest on Thursday, killing a 6-year-old girl and injuring her 2-year-old brother and mother, authorities said. The attack took place near a pool of water on Chilhowee Mountain, said Dan Hicks, spokesman for the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency. Witnesses described the bear picking up the boy in its mouth while the mother and other visitors tried to fend it off with sticks and rocks, Hicks said. The mother was injured before the bear was chased away.

Kerrville Texas - The usual splashes of blue along roadsides have become more scarce due to limited rainfall. However, a quick drive down Interstate 10 between Comfort and Kerrville shows a few patches of the state flower popping out along the median. Standing out against yellow coreopsis and orange Indian paint brushes, the bright blue flower can bloom in fields spanning acres or appear with a few flowers scattered here and there. “But they’re not the big patches we’re used to,” said Patrick Williams, with the Kerrville Convention and Visitors Center. In 1901, the Texas Legislature adopted the bluebonnet as...

CNN Headline news just reported that the President and First Lady will fly to Texas to vote in the primaries. They reported that WH staffers hadn't got the absentee voting ballot on time. They were asking for emails on wheather it was appropriate for the President to go to the expense of flying to Crawford to vote. I emailed them this... Is it appropriate for the President to fly to Texas to vote? Absolutely. It sets an example for all US citizens about the importance of voting. Despite attempts by many in the press to suggest otherwise, these are the...

As most folks know, ad nausea, Vice President Dick Cheney is under fire by the national media for a quail hunt up the road gone bad. Not that the city boys of the Washington press corpse actually give a damn about Harry Whittington, Cheney's unwitting target and self-confessed Republican lawyer. Instead, the real problem is that the Brokeback Mountain Press Gang got scooped by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, a community daily paper - the real deal, the paper most of us read over coffee, just like the Valley Morning Star. It's time the big media got off its high horse...

McAllen Texas - Travelers crossing into the United States from Mexico on Tuesday endured at least an hour-long wait after Mexican soldiers searched cars at the 11 international bridges between Brownsville and Laredo. The Mexican official in charge of his country’s federal bridges and roadways said the new program came out of discussions last year at the Conference of the Americas in Monterrey. Mexican President Vicente Fox informed President Bush Mexico’s soldiers would be at the bridges during a phone conversation Monday, said Alberto Gonzalez Karam, director of Mexico’s Caminos y Puentes Federales. Mexico’s soldiers will be posted at the...

It's almost time to start gettin' ready to see about fishin'!

McALLEN Texas — Mexico’s fourth-largest bank will make its entry into the U.S. market with branches in the Rio Grande Valley, after it buys 70 percent of McAllen-based Inter National Bank for $259 million later this year, the companies announced Thursday. Mexico City-based Grupo Financiero Banorte will also have the option to acquire the remaining 30 percent of INB, which is Hidalgo County’s fourth-largest bank. That purchase would be worth $370 million. "I see this bank as a jewel," said Banorte CEO Luis Peña Kegel, through a translator, during a news conference Webcast from the Monterrey headquarters of the financial...

LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - Rockers David Bowie and Cream, country icon Merle Haggard and late comic innovator Richard Pryor are among the recipients of the Recording Academy's 2006 Lifetime Achievement Award. Also being honored this year for their career-long artistic contributions are blues legend Robert Johnson, opera star Jessye Norman and folk group the Weavers. Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, engineer Al Schmitt and producer Owen Bradley will receive the Trustees Award, presented for nonperforming contributions. Engineer/producer Tom Dowd -- subject of the 2003 documentary "Tom Dowd & the Language of Music" -- and Bell Labs/Western Electric will receive Technical...