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WEST COVINA, Calif. - A woman made a 911 call from her suburban mansion to report an attempted break-in, but her pleas were interrupted by gunshots, then silence: She had been shot to death. The woman told the dispatcher late Wednesday morning that someone was trying to break into her home in upscale West Covina, Los Angeles County sheriff's Lt. Dan Rosenberg said. "Deputies heard gunshots followed by silence and an open phone line," he said. Investigators combed the neighborhood Thursday outside the three-story house with a tennis court, pool and four-car garage. Investigators examined the opening mechanism of the...

John Hofmeister, the Houston-based president of Shell Oil's U.S. operations, expressed doubt about the validity of peak oil theory in an appearance on CNBC's Squawk Box show. "The peak oil theory has really swamped the world. God bless Matt Simmons," Hofmeister told CNBC anchor Carl Quintanilla, according to a transcript provided to WND by CNBC. "His assumptions are correct based on his hypotheses, but his hypotheses are too narrow." Matt Simmons, a Houston-based investment banker who specializes in the energy industry, is widely known for his 2005 book, "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World...

ELEX FUNDS FOR GAL WHO SAYS: I NEVER HELPED HIM Gov. Paterson's campaign-finance reports show he paid $1,000 to a woman who says she barely knows him, didn't work for him and never received money..... Luisa Vizcarrondo, 49, was listed as "staff" on Paterson's campaign for Senate...payment was made June 25, 2002....Vizcarrondo said she had never worked for the Democratic pol... The East Orange address Paterson listed for her is a prior address property records show. ...she said she hardly knew Paterson. Paterson's spokesman yesterday also denied a relationship. "She was someone who worked for the campaign"........ performed "writing...

Making the Case for McCain By Burt Prelutsky Friday, March 21, 2008 A while back, I admitted that John McCain was not among my three favorite candidates for the Republican nomination. But I went on to say that if he emerged as the standard bearer for the GOP, he would get my vote. And to tell you the truth, I don’t feel I’ll have to bite the bullet in November so much as maybe gum it a little bit. Needless to say, I have been hearing from a great many conservative hardliners. Among the things they’ve called me are sell-out,...

Hi Just curious if any other freepers have the photography bug... didn't seen any threads about it in search. Link/post some good shots if you want to share. So heres some of mine, I shoot a bit of everything. You can click for bigger sizes

Click for Bill's advice: Click below for related story: Click to see why they laugh: Click below for video: Click below for audio: Click below for audio: Click below for related story: Click below for Wright's chickens: This Thread Brought To You By The Letter "W":

--snip--Obama explicitly denied that he was excusing Wright’s views, even as he did it in exceptionally high-toned sophistry. The reason Obama had to give a 38-minute speech is that he was incapable of saying four unadorned words, “I made a mistake.” He could have said long ago that his gratitude to Wright for bringing him to Christianity and his bond with the church community blinded him to Wright’s lies about America and hateful rants. Most of the public would have understood, and forgiven him.--snip--In the end, Obama made the case for the respectability of a man who is a hater...

A strange thing happened today. I agreed with Nancy Pelosi and disagreed with George Bush. Today Nancy Pelosi said this "If freedom loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China and the Chinese in Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak out on human rights," It is a sad day when a Liberal Democrat does the right thing while conservatives sit on the sideline and watch

<p>“This is not a hot button issue, it’s a life or death issue,” state Rep. Matthew Hill, R-Jonesborough, said Thursday night about a handful of measures to strengthen DUI laws proposed by state legislators this session.</p> <p>Hill, along with District Attorney General Tony Clark, were the key speakers at a town hall meeting on DUI laws at the Jonesborough Visitors Center .</p>

In order that we might all raise the level of discourse and expand our language abilities, here is the daily post of "Word for the Day". FulminationNoun 1. a violent denunciation or censure: a sermon that was one long fulmination. 2. violent explosion. Rules: Everyone must leave a post using the Word for the Day in a sentence. The sentence must, in some way, relate to the news of the day. The Review threads are linked for your edification. ;-) Practice makes perfect.....post on.... Review Threads:Review Thread One: Word For The Day, Thursday 11/14/02: Raffish (Be SURE to check...

PHILADELPHIA — Stephanie Gill, a bartender in a white working-class neighborhood, noticed the shift immediately. A week ago, her customers at Rauchut’s Tavern in Tacony didn’t have much to say about Barack Obama. But when she returned to work Wednesday, a day after the Illinois senator attempted to quell the furor over his pastor’s racially incendiary remarks, the reaction inside the corner bar was raw and unapologetic. “People are not happy with Obama,” Gill said. “It’s the race stuff.” Obama has always been a tough sell in largely white Northeast Philadelphia and in the city's blue-collar river wards, a collection...

Last week, Dallas officials reviewed the numbers and decided that a quarter of the cameras they had installed to catch motorists running red lights were too effective. So they shut them down. They are not alone. Faced with data showing that drivers pay attention to cameras at intersections — resulting in fewer ticketable violations and ever-shrinking revenue from fines — municipalities across the country are reconsidering red light cameras, which often work too well.

NASA Spacecraft Make New Discoveries about Northern Lights 12.11.2007 Dec. 11, 2007: NASA's fleet of THEMIS spacecraft, launched less than 8 months ago, has made three important discoveries about spectacular eruptions of Northern Lights called "substorms" and the source of their power. The discoveries include giant magnetic ropes that connect Earth's upper atmosphere to the Sun and explosions in the outskirts of Earth's magnetic field."The mission is only beginning but THEMIS is already surprising us," says Vassilis Angelopoulos the mission's principal investigator at the University of California, Los Angeles.The discoveries began in March less than a month after the...

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, the nation’s only Hispanic governor, is endorsing Sen. Barack Obama for president, calling him a “once-in-a- lifetime leader” who can unite the nation and restore America’s international leadership. Richardson, who dropped out of the Democratic race in January, is to appear with Obama on Friday at a campaign event in Portland, Ore., The Associated Press has learned.

It is a fairly easy demonstration that nothing any larger than the largest elephants could live in our world today, and that the largest dinosaurs survived ONLY because the nature of the world and of the solar system was then such that they did not experience gravity as we do at all; they'd be crushed by their own weight, collapse in a heap, and suffocate within minutes were they to. A look at sauropod dinosaurs as we know them today requires that we relegate the brontosaur, once thought to be one of the largest sauropods, to welterweight or at most...

Spurgeon's Morning & Evening - March 21 -------------------------------- Morning Devotional "Ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone." - John 16:32 Few had fellowship with the sorrows of Gethsemane. The majority of the disciples were not sufficiently advanced in grace to be admitted to behold the mysteries of "the agony." Occupied with the passover feast at their own houses, they represent the many who live upon the letter, but are mere babes as to the spirit of the gospel. To twelve, nay, to eleven only was the privilege given to enter Gethsemane and see...

I’ve been thinking about this for some time. I just did a bit of googeling but found no satisfactory answers, really none at all. Many jobs require background checks. Law Enforcement and military get even greater scrutiny, and as the job level and contact with sensitive data increases the level of scrutiny goes up. Do presidential candidates undergo Security background checks? If not, WHY NOT. Could Clinton or Obama pass a security background check for a high level job at say the FBI or CIA? If someone were to apply to those agencies and it was found out that their...

OSAN AIR BASE, South Korea — Arming fighter planes with bombs during wartime is no off-the-shelf, one-size-fits-all proposition. Munitions airmen with the right tools and training must prepare munitions to order, assembly-line fashion, at what can be a relentless, keep ’em coming pace. Airmen of the 51st Munitions Squadron at Osan have been honing those skills this week as part of the annual Foal Eagle exercise. The squadron is part of Osan’s 51st Fighter Wing. “It’s meant to be an assembly line,” Capt. Andrea Wild, the squadron’s maintenance operations officer, said Wednesday. “There’s a lot of different components that are...

TOKYO, March 21 (AP) - (Kyodo)—The Japanese Air Self-Defense Force said Friday it suspended a 33-year-old captain for 30 days from its base in Okinawa Prefecture over an incident in 2006 in which information, including intelligence related to U.S. operations in Iraq, was leaked on the Internet from his private computer. The ASDF also reprimanded the then first lieutenant's three superiors at the time, who belong to Air Squadron 302 based in the prefectural capital of Naha, saying they failed to prevent him from leaking the information from a personal computer loaded with a file-sharing software Winny in November 2006....