Free Republic

As Major League Baseball continues to discuss possible realignment, one idea that has come up is going to a league with 15 teams per league, reports ESPN's Buster Olney. Currently, the National League has 16 teams and the AL 14 for scheduling purposes. Should baseball go to two 15-team leagues, that would likely require interleague play every day of the season. Given baseball likes to treat interleague play as an event, that could dilute the appeal of interleague play to the point it would no longer be a moneymaker. However, there is still real resistance to the idea which has...

LOS ANGELES – Hollywood insiders and climate change experts agree that they can't shove messages about global warming down audiences' throats. They met at the Skirball Cultural Center on Tuesday to discuss how storytelling in film and TV can translate broad issues about climate change to everyday audiences. "The storytelling has to trump everything," said "West Wing" actor Bradley Whitford. --snip-- "One thing we've learned is that apocalyptic stories don't work very well," ..

BEIRUT, Lebanon - After this week's deadly violence in Lebanon, the pro-Iranian Hezbollah finds itself in a corner. It remains determined to unseat the U.S.-backed government, but if it pushes too hard, it could be blamed for throwing the country into civil war. It now faces the question of whether to reconsider its strategy of street protests that have sparked the violence. A senior Hezbollah official said Friday the Shiite movement was studying what steps to take next. "Things have taken a dangerous turn," said Mahmoud Komati, who blamed "government militias" for the violence, saying they were using guns in...

Rumsfeld Ponders Nuke Test Ramifications Thursday October 5, 2006 11:46 PM By LOLITA C. BALDOR Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday if North Korea successfully tests a nuclear weapon, it will show weakness on the part of the international community. ``And that failure ... is something that the international community would have to register and ask itself how comfortable are we being that ineffective in this situation,'' Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon during a visit by Croatian Defense Minister Berislav Roncevic. His comments came as U.S. officials warned North Korea anew not...

WASHINGTON – Rep. Loretta Sanchez says she may run for governor – in 2010. The Democratic political diva of Orange County has created "People for Loretta 2010," a political committee that allows her to raise money for a governor's race. "I think I need to go home and fix my state," the Santa Ana Democrat said in an interview on Friday. "I'm just keeping my options open. People know I love California. I come home every weekend." Despite taking this step, Sanchez isn't saying she's definitely going to run. "It's a ways off. I'm putting a marker down," she said....

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) - Tom Daschle says he might consider writing, lecturing or teaching now that his Nov. 2 election loss has cost him his Senate seat and the job of Senate minority leader. "I do want to affiliate in some way professionally with public policy," Daschle said Saturday in a telephone interview from his Washington home, where he was helping baby-sit his two grandchildren. "I'm also looking at the investment world." The three-term senator, who led the Democratic caucus for 10 years, lost the nation's highest-profile Senate race last month by 4,500 votes to former Rep. John Thune...

Republicans are pushing to rewrite budget rules in an attempt to remove financial obstacles that threaten the GOP’s effort to reform Social Security. The potential move to craft budget language that would direct the Congressional Budget Office to score Social Security reform legislation over 30 or more years would likely increase the chances that the bill would pass in the 109th Congress. Republicans could also write budget provisions that would remove the program entirely from the budget process.Reshaping Social Security, deemed the third rail of politics, has long been viewed as an almost impossible task. But with the deficit projected...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - NASA (news - web sites) is considering whether it can return its space shuttles to flight without making two safety improvements that have so far proved to be high hurdles for agency engineers, top officials said on Friday. After the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas last year and killed the seven astronauts aboard, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board drafted a lengthy list of ambitious reforms. Among other proposals, the board recommended NASA come up with a way to repair damage to the leading edge of a shuttle's wing, such as the kind that doomed...

(WASHINGTON) Senior Bush administration officials are for the first time openly discussing a subject they have sidestepped during the massive buildup of forces around Iraq: what could go wrong not only during an attack, but especially in the aftermath of an invasion. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has a four-to-five-page typewritten catalog of risks he keeps in his desk drawer. He refers to it constantly, updates it regularly and has incorporated suggestions from senior military commanders into it and discussed it with President George W. Bush. The list includes a "concern about Saddam Hussein using weapons of mass destruction against his...