Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO - California has a housing bubble, but it may not pop with a bang, UCLA researchers said in a quarterly economic forecast. “There is no reason that a house should be worth 40 percent more today than it was two years ago,” UCLA Anderson Forecast economist Christopher Thornberg wrote in a report. “This is a bubble.”

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - The co-founder of the Cali drug cartel, which at its peak ruled the world's cocaine industry, was sent in handcuffs on a plane Friday to the United States to face trial for drug trafficking and related charges. Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela, known as "The Master" for his genius in concealing cocaine shipments, was indicted in Miami in 2003 along with his brother, Gilberto, on charges of drug smuggling, money laundering and obstruction of justice. The brothers face maximum life sentences if convicted. Gilberto was extradited three months ago. Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela, surrounded by armed guards, walked slowly...

A Cali cartel leader in detention in Miami and his brother -- who is awaiting extradition to the United States -- are offering federal prosecutors a deal: Leave our relatives alone and we'll plead guilty. In exchange they are also offering new information they claim to have about unsolved murders in Colombia and corrupt judges, lawyers and government officials. The offer was published Sunday in the Colombian magazine Semana. The article -- online at www.semana.com.co -- cited a five-page letter sent Dec. 7 to U.S. Attorney Marcos Jiménez in Miami by an attorney for drug lord Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, who...

LASER ETCHING IDENTIFICATION PROPOSED FOR HANDGUN AMMO If a proposal from the California Attorney General's Office is enacted, all handgun ammunition possessed in public or sold or imported into the nation's most populous state will be laser etched with an individual serial number. TRhe high-tech tracking system would require all cartridges in a box packaged for retail sale to have matching identification numbers. The package would be scanned and the information linked to the identity of the purchaser. The micro-stamping system used to etch the serial numbers was developed by Seattle-based Ravensforge Inc., whose technology was subjected to a successful...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Back when federal lawmakers legally could be paid for speaking to outside groups, John Kerry collected more than $120,000 in fees from interests as diverse as big oil, tobacco, the liquor lobby and unions, records show. Between 1985 and 1990, Kerry's first five years in the Senate from Massachusetts, he pocketed annual amounts slightly under the limits for speaking fees set by Congress. Unlike many colleagues, he donated a speaking fee to charity only once, according to annual financial disclosure reports reviewed by The Associated Press. One of the companies to pay Kerry $1,000 for a speech...

This California recall has enabled us to take a close look at the inner workings of California politics, and of some of the shadowy interests which manipulate teh GOP to serve the interests of a numerically small but very noisily ideological group of malcontents from within the party. I have taken the time to come up with links to articles and excerpts of what is contained within so as to provide FReepers with some of the connections which exist between various individuals and groups within the California Republican Party, as well as the beliefs espoused by each.When reviewing these excerpts...

Software executive Stuart Vance is an opponent of the attempt to recall California Governor Gray Davis (D). Vance thinks he has an ingenious way to derail the recall election: make it an absolute impossibility to conduct with a list of recall replacement candidates so long that none of the approved voting machines could handle a ballot of that size. Think of it as "a denial-of-service attack on the recall," says Vance, referring to the term when Internet servers get so swamped with activity that they crash because of the overload. He wants more than 1,000 people to run in the...