Free Republic

BOULDER, Colorado — Boulder’s newly enacted “assault weapons” ban is meeting with stiff resistance from its “gun-toting hippies,” staunch liberals who also happen to be devoted firearms owners. Only 342 “assault weapons,” or semiautomatic rifles, were certified by Boulder police before the Dec. 31 deadline, meaning there could be thousands of residents in the scenic university town of 107,000 in violation of the sweeping gun-control ordinance.

For years, Naropa has battled some 150 persistent prairie dogs over 2.5 acres of prime real estate on its Nalanda campus. One side wants to build more classrooms, the other more tunnels. Davis recalled one of her professors asking, "I wonder what we'd do if we ever got termites?"

BAGHDAD - A Muslim imam dropped his cloak to the sidewalk. It was a signal for the gunmen to move. They surrounded the top Iraqi security official in a north Baghdad district. Iraqi military vehicles — commandeered by other Shiite militiamen — screeched into a cordon, blocking his exit. A gun was put to his head. Brig. Gen. Falah Hassan Kanbar, a fellow Shiite, managed to escape when his bodyguards pulled him into a vehicle that sped down an alley. Details of the Aug. 5 ambush emerged this week in interviews with Kanbar, U.S. military and intelligence officials. It remains...

WASHINGTON - I'm getting a little choked up at the thought of President Bush's State of the Union address tonight: It will be the first of these big addresses that I won't have worked on myself. Bush's 2001 State of the Union address was delivered at the end of February 2001. Such first speeches are not formally known as "States of the Union" at all: The theory is that a president who has been in office barely six weeks isn't yet ready to give a report. Instead, they are titled "Economic Messages," and they focus on the first budget the...