Free Republic

A brand name author with many admirers in the military criticized the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, citing it as proof that "good men make mistakes." That same writer said he almost "came to blows" with a leading war supporter, former Pentagon adviser Richard Perle. The author is Tom Clancy. The hawkish master of such million-selling thrillers as "Patriot Games" and "The Hunt for Red October" now finds himself adding to the criticism of the Iraq war, and not only through his own comments. His latest book, "Battle Ready," is a collaboration with another war critic, retired Marine Gen. Anthony C....

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly ordered traffic enforcement agents to stop ticketing cars parked at meters that are too close to fire hydrants...Kelly issued the order yesterday after the Daily News revealed that drivers were getting $115 tickets for parking too close to a hydrant in Park Slope, Brooklyn, even though they were in a metered spot and assumed they were legally parked.

PORTLAND, Ore. - The city of Portland has agreed to pay $145,000 to an elderly blind woman after police pepper-sprayed and shocked her with a stun gun. The altercation began as an attempt to remove shrubs and appliances from 71-year-old Eunice Crowder's yard, and ended with police citing her for harassment and disobeying an order. This week, the city agreed to settle her excessive force lawsuit out of federal court, a month after a Multnomah County Circuit Court judge dismissed the violations against her. "This case goes to show that police misconduct and excessive force can happen to anybody outside...

OK, let's talk about whatever you can think of to break the boredom, but nothing so deep that we'll have to think...OK?

Last fall Paul O'Neill, then Secretary of the Treasury, wanted a simple answer to a thorny question: How prepared was the nation today to pay all its future bills? Two government experts worked for months to calculate the answer. Their findings, which shocked even them, were never published—the Bush administration made sure of that. The reason for the silence was that by the time the two researchers had completed their study, O'Neill had been thrown out of the Treasury and replaced by the more politically astute John Snow. No savvy administration power player would dare point out, right in the...