Free Republic

The Texas Transportation Commission never fails to amaze us. Bottom line - this leopard has not changed its spots. Nothing has changed. The Commission and TxDOT are hell bent to sign deals and give away the farm before the legislature can rein them in. Rain, sleet and snow won't stop the mail; and, moratoriums, legislative intent and a sunset review won't stop TxDOT. Just a week ago TxDOT tried to impress everyone with how responsive they could be as they announced their recommendation that TTC-69 focus on using existing facilities rather than building a new highway. The only thing that...

WASHINGTON - Five years ago this week, a federal election regulator predicted that corporate sponsorship of political conventions would eventually be as common as it is for football bowl games. "I look forward to the day, by 2008, when Americans can turn on their TVs and watch the Nokia Democratic Convention, or the AT&T Republican National Convention," joked Bradley Smith, then a Republican member of the Federal Election Commission. That day has pretty much arrived. The Democratic and Republican conclaves this summer in Denver and St. Paul, Minn., will be financed overwhelmingly by private money from some of the nation's...

need help finding the definition I saw once, maybe in a 'conservative dictionary'. couldn't find it. possibly pj o'rourke?

PROVIDENCE — With the nation’s eyes trained on former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s alleged involvement with a prostitute, Rhode Island lawmakers are considering a bill that would close the loophole in this state’s laws that makes prostitution legal if it occurs indoors. The proposed legislation has become something of a perennial bill in recent years, but has never been passed by the General Assembly. This year’s version came before the House Judiciary Committee again last night, where its sponsor, Joanne M. Giannini, D-Providence, argued that extending the state’s misdemeanor prostitution statute to cover indoor activity would make it easier...

---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Click here to add your name: "The richest tycoons on Wall Street shouldn't pay a lower tax rate than the rest of us. Congress should close the mother of all tax loopholes." Sign the petition How much more do you pay? See how much more you're paying in taxes than you would if you paid the same rate as Wall Street investors! Try our calculator: Dear MoveOn member, If the richest tycoons on Wall Street get their way, you'll face a significant tax hike this year so they can buy another tropical island. Sound fair? Here's...

RICHMOND, Va. -- Virginia's governor said Monday he has closed the loophole that allowed a mentally disturbed Virginia Tech student to acquire the guns he used to kill 32 classmates and faculty on April 16 in Blacksburg. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said he issued an executive order requiring immediately that the names of persons found dangerous and ordered to undergo involuntary mental health treatment be entered in a database barring the sale of firearms.

For Immediate Release: February 15, 2007 BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today called on New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his colleagues in the “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” coalition to devote all their resources to closing the government gun loophole. The Washington Post this week revealed that between February 2002 and September 2005, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported 160 missing firearms. That is in addition to the 352 missing guns the FBI reported lost or stolen in a similar audit in 2002. The newspaper reported that at least 18 of...

OAL Post 2007-3 Legislative Update from Olympia 19 January 2007 NEW BILLS INTRODUCED REWRITE OF HB 1011 (ALIEN FIREARM LICENSES) HB 1126 SCHEDULED FOR PUBLIC HEARING CORRECTED LEGISLATIVE CALENDAR DATES WASHINGTON CEASEFIRE RADIO ADS CALL YOUR SENATOR Two new gun-related bills were filed this week, both in the Senate. SB 5456, by Senator Bob Morton, addresses the temporary possession of firearms by foreign visitors. SB 5465, by Senator Mark Schoesler, clarifies and simplifies the procedures to restore firearms rights for individuals convicted of certain crimes. We have not had time to fully evaluate the language of either of these bills....

North finds reinsurance a source of hard cash September 20, 2006 -- North Korea has filed claims with British and Russian reinsurance companies after four disasters in the North, and seeks millions of dollars in compensation, a source in Seoul said yesterday. His comments were confirmed by government officials. The sources said the claims were filed by Minjok Insurance General Company, and asked for payments related to two rail crashes and two other incidents. Reinsurers help policy-issuing insurance companies spread the risk involved in their policies to other insurance companies around the world. Companies buy "packages" composed of parts of...

There stands Planned Parenthood, right behind Senate Democrat leaders, whispering seductively in their collective ear the promise of lots of votes and lots of cash. That's an interesting looking wallet Planned Parenthood has. Oh, baby skin. Of course. The addiction to power is arguably the most powerful addiction. This is obviously what's behind the Democrats' obstruction to the Child Custody Protection Act, which would stop non-parents from trafficking minor girls for abortions from states with parental notification laws to states without them. CCPA would also rescue girls from incestuous households by eliminating the loophole around state parental notification laws that...

SACRAMENTO – The Schwarzenegger administration yesterday closed a pension loophole that would have allowed some state firefighters to retire with pensions higher than their final salaries. But the move does not address the state fire department's troubling high vacancy rate among top manager positions – 34 out of 151 division chief positions – that some fear could weaken response and jeopardize safety as the fire season begins. The excessive pensions, which may have been limited to about a dozen people, stem from the same lucrative labor contract that gives rank-and-file firefighters more pay than supervisors, making the top jobs hard...

RUSH: Just to once again demonstrate that I'm not off the reservation on immigration, let me tell you -- it's a very fine line here -- but I have some experts from a floor speech made by Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama about the bill. This is a 500-page bill and most of the Senate has not even seen it. They've not read it all. Perhaps their staff is digging deep and reading it now, but some of stuff in here is shocking. Now, the point of this is to show you just how desperate some of these senators are...

The Honest Leadership & Open Government Act The Pledge: Sign Here The Democratic Proposal Governor Dean's Letter Read Ongoing Coverage Democrats offer an aggressive reform package to reverse Republican excesses and restore the public trust. Our program for change embodies the following provisions:Close the Revolving Door. Close the revolving door between the Congress and lobbying firms by doubling (from one year to two) the cooling-off period during which lawmakers, senior Congressional staff, and Executive Branch officials are prohibited from lobbying their former offices. Eliminate floor privileges for former Members of Congress and officers of the Senate and House who return...

Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, and last week permitted Palestinians to pass between Egypt and Gaza through the Rafah border crossing. The agreement to open this border point was hailed as a positive step for Palestinians -- but who cares about the consequences for Israel? It looks like Rafah will become another security loophole for Palestinian terrorists (Jerusalem Post): Rafik al-Hasanat, a senior member of Hamas who has been wanted by Israel for more than a decade, on Wednesday night returned to the Gaza Strip through the Rafah border crossing. ... A senior member of the armed wing of Hamas,...

Public employee labor unions say Proposition 75 would "cripple employees' ability to fight on a level playing field," by restricting the use of members' dues for political purposes. But even if the measure is approved, unions would have nearly unfettered ability to collect and spend members' dues for issue advocacy - a catch-all category in state law that can include voter "education" or television ads attacking a politician over a particular issue not related to an election. (snip) Supported by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and business interests among others, the measure would bar public employee unions from using dues collected from...

Sacramento -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, taking advantage of a technicality in campaign finance laws, has been collecting rent from political action committees that he controls. During the past three years, campaign committees controlled by Schwarzenegger have paid $166,859 in rent to Main Street Plaza, a three-story building in Santa Monica that the governor owns. Bob Stern, an expert in campaign finance law who helped write the state's Political Reform Act of 1974, described the rental arrangement as "taking advantage of a ridiculous loophole'' in the law. The governor is able to accept the rent only because Main Street Plaza --...

A loophole in US law may allow people to get away with any major crime within a 50-square mile "zone of death" in eastern Idaho, according to a Michigan law professor. This lawless oasis is said to exist on the edge of Yellowstone National Park because of a poorly drafted statute in the Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution. Criminals are entitled to be tried by a jury drawn from the state and legal district they committed their crime in, the constitution says. But, argues Prof Brian C Kalt, while Yellowstone comes entirely under the district of Wyoming, small parts...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has freed numerous illegal aliens into the community who are dangerous murderers, rapists and child molesters under a legal loophole created by Supreme Court decisions, the Bush administration said on Thursday. In testimony to a Senate subcommittee, a senior Justice Department official said Congress should urgently pass legislation to close the loopholes, which have already resulted in the release of several extremely violent offenders, with others scheduled for release soon. "Among them are vicious criminals who have murdered their wives, molested young children and brutally attacked their enemies," Jonathan Cohn, a deputy assistant attorney...

Microsoft is closing a loophole that enabled unscrupulous resellers to use Windows XP product keys that were stolen from large OEMs. The result: customers who purchase Windows on a new PC will not be able to activate, nor reinstall their operating system without first calling Microsoft.

The Homeland Security Department's No-Fly List has always seemed a bit absurd to me. Only the stupidest terrorist would try booking a flight under his own name (or his known aliases) three years after the 9/11 attacks, and one thing I hope we've all learned is that our most dangerous enemies aren't stupid.

Google Inc founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have said that some new features on the world's top search engine and other services will come from its research centre in the southern Indian city of Bangalore, where they are on a hiring spree. "One approach we are taking is that Bangalore is where we run a mirror exactly of what we have in the United States in terms of development," Brin told reporters in Bangalore, the capital of Karnataka state. Page and Brin said they were visiting India looking for "extraordinary talented entrepreneurial people who want to make a big...

Jailed Assassin 'Weds' Using Loophole Fri Sep 3,10:25 AM ET By Dan Williams JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Defying a life prison term in isolation, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassin has secretly married by proxy, his bride said Friday. Larisa Trimbobler said she hoped her in-absentia wedding to Yigal Amir last month would help overturn a court ban on conjugal visits for the ultranationalist who shot Rabin at a 1995 rally in a bid to block peace deals with the Palestinians. Jewish law requires that two men witness a bride receiving her ring and marriage contract from the groom. According to...

Theresa Heinz Kerry: You pay taxes, I don't Gerard JacksonBrookesNews.Com Theresa Heinz Kerry likes taxes so much she thinks the little people should pay even more. She doesn't put it like that, of course. But what is one to think when the "sexy" Theresa Heinz Kerry supports increased taxes for others while drastically slashing her own taxes. Several months ago I was discussing Theresa Heinz Kerry and her fortune with a friend who had personal experience in that particular field. He reckoned that her assets were yielding an annual average return of at least 8 per cent. Well bless...

Jan 16, 2004 Convicted Sex Offender Who Escaped Mental Health Facility Says He Researched a Legal Loophole The Associated Press ST. LOUIS (AP) - A convicted sex offender says he broke out of a sexual-predator unit in 2001 knowing that a legal loophole would prevent Missouri authorities from charging him with escape. Thomas Ingrassia, 47, said he used the library at the Sexually Violent Predator Unit in Farmington to brush up on the law before he cut through a fence. "Missouri's so quick to make up laws without researching whether it's proper," Ingrassia said in Friday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "They're...

Nearly half the $9.5 million Arnold Schwarzenegger has poured into the recall race has been in the form of loans that his campaign staff says can be repaid by fund-raising after the election. Most of the loans came late last week, as polls began to show Schwarzenegger's prospects for winning the governor's office strengthening. In announcing his run for governor Aug. 6, Schwarzenegger had said that he did not need money from others. ..... Robert Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies, a Los Angeles organization that promotes campaign reform, criticized the candidate's arrangement. If Schwarzenegger becomes governor, Stern...

SACRAMENTO - As attorneys argued in court Thursday over whether Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante violated state law by accepting single campaign contributions of up to $1.5 million, the judge who must decide the matter showed obvious frustration with the agency responsible for interpreting and enforcing the law. ``I would agree with you that the FPPC pronouncements have been less than clear,'' Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Loren E. McMaster told Bustamante's attorneys, referring to statements by the Fair Political Practices Commission about how the state's campaign-contribution law is supposed to work. Bustamante is defending himself against allegations that he...

Fake drivers licenses easy to obtain Government investigators easily dupe state agencies, warn of terror loophole NBC's Bob Hager reports on how easy it is to get a fake driver's license. By Bob Hager and Bob Sullivan MSNBC AND NBC NEWS Sept. 9 — Armed with fictitious birth certificates, utility bills, out-of-state licenses and other falsified documents, congressional investigators easily convinced motor vehicle agency employees around the country to issue genuine drivers licenses, a security flaw that could open the door to future terrorist attacks, a government report to be released Tuesday says. THE REPORT from the General Accounting Office,...

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Thursday suspended sales of toy guns in its stores throughout the state of New York, only hours after Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer sued the world's biggest retailer, accusing it of selling such toys without required safety markings to distinguish them from real weapons. The toy guns have orange caps on their barrels, as required by federal law, but they don't have nonremovable orange stripes down the barrel's length as New York law requires, Spitzer's lawsuit contends. Safety experts say the brightly colored markings help police officers distinguish toy guns from real weapons, and that the permanent...

Okay folks, This is "It"!!! VAHV had several Board members lobbying the Senate Courts of Justice committee today to determine if SB698, (designed to close the gun show loophole in Virginia) really had any kind of real chance. They have just reported back that if we can flood the offices of the committee members tomorrow with phone calls and faxed letters, then the bill does in fact have a real chance. YOU ARE NEEDED!!! Please take a moment and make a phone call and or send a fax. Simply say that you hope that you can count on your legislative...

'Odd Couple' Senators Join Forces on Gun BillSens. Schumer, Craig join forces on background checksBy Elaine S. Povich, WASHINGTON BUREAU July 31, 2002 Washington - New York Democrat Sen. Charles Schumer yesterday found the unlikeliest of allies to strengthen the instant background-check system for gun buyers - Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig, a National Rifle Association board member and longtime Schumer nemesis on gun control legislation. Schumer, Craig and Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), the icon of the liberal left, along with John McCain, the maverick Arizona Republican, joined forces on a bill that would give states incentives for forwarding records...