Free Republic

It's the latest internet sensation--amateur footage of three red lights in a triangular formation hovering in the night sky above the town of Lafayette in Colorado. The video, shot last Monday, shows that the sky was clear and witnesses said they could not see anything connecting the lights. Leroy Vandervegt, a 50-year-old who has lived in Lafayette for 16 years, shot the video Sunday evening after his 17-year-old son saw the glowing orbs move from south west to south east along the horizon. 'I had no idea what it is,' he said. 'It wasn't a satellite, it wasn't an airplane

SACRAMENTO -- Dick Messer likes driving around Los Angeles with Peaches, his Pomeranian, in his lap and thinks it's ridiculous that a proposal in the Capitol would make him an outlaw for doing so. The proposal, which would prohibit drivers from carrying "live animals" on their laps behind the wheel, is one of several that would regulate who can drive, when, where and how. Bills regulating cars and drivers "It's just nuts, the stuff legislators come up with instead of dealing with the real problems facing the state: crime, the economy, the . . . budget deficit," said Messer, director...

Louisiana governor's political future in doubt Associated Press Sept. 11, 2005, 5:33PM Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco acknowledges applause from worshipers after she was introduced during a mass at Saint Joseph's Cathedral in Baton Rouge, La., Sept. 4.SLIDELL, La. — "I've probably been to hell and back," Gov. Kathleen Blanco said as she traipsed back to a military helicopter that would lift her from this hurricane-ravaged city back to Baton Rouge. Her eyes were bleary but she looked fitter than she had in the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina's Aug. 29 strike. Waylaid by one reporter after another, she granted interviews...

A SARS vaccine in three years? Glacial pace of vaccine development hits overdrive By DANIEL Q. HANEY (AP) - Fifteen or 20 years to create a new vaccine is considered quite speedy. So the U.S. government's blueprint for a shot to stop the SARS epidemic in a mere three years seems positively head-snapping. Can it be done? Certainly, says Dr. Gary Nabel, chief of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "If everything went perfectly," he qualifies. "If all the stars were aligned." The stars almost never align precisely in medical research. But if...