Free Republic

Countering many of his Republican colleagues, former Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday the tea party is actually a positive movement for the GOP. “It’s an uprising, in part, and the good thing is it’s taken place within the Republican Party,” he said on NBC’s “Today.” “I don’t see it as a negative. I think it’s much better to have that kind of ferment and turmoil and change in the Republican Party than it would be to have it outside.” Mr. Cheney said that if it wasn’t for the tea party, his daughter, Liz, might not be seeking to unseat...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The multibillion dollar public works program proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will do more than just help California keep pace with a booming population, the governor told a crowd of business leaders Tuesday. It also will be a boon for construction companies and their workers, providing a long-term boost to California's resurgent economy. Schwarzenegger combined two of his favorite themes in an address to 250 business leaders who gathered at the University of Southern California to hear him promote his $222.6 billion public works package: job growth and the need to rebuild California's aging roads, schools,...

SAN FRANCISCO — Despite promises that California taxpayers could reap up to a billion dollars in royalties by supporting a state-funded stem cell research program, it is now unclear whether the public will reap any financial reward from the initiative passed overwhelmingly by voters a year ago under Proposition 71. What's more, taxpayers could end up paying more than the expected $3 billion in bonds over the next 10 years to fund stem cell research because of restrictions on the types of bonds that can be issued, experts and stake holders told lawmakers at a hearing Monday. State Sen. Deborah...

A Big Jobs Vote for BushGood economic news favors the incumbent. By Bruce Bartlett Friday’s employment report confirms that the economic expansion is accelerating. The creation of 288,000 payroll jobs in April was almost double the consensus forecast of 150,000. Coming on top of the 337,000 new jobs created in March (revised up from 308,000), the economy has now created 625,000 jobs in just two months. This is a very impressive performance after months of disappointment. The immediate effect of this good news has to be that George W. Bush’s electoral chances are improved. Despite the problems in Iraq, history...

<p>Investment banks are poised to make a killing off California's fiscal crisis after voters Tuesday approved an unprecedented plan to sell $15 billion in deficit bonds.</p> <p>The bond offering - which will be the largest issuance of municipal bonds in U.S. history - was put before voters by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature in part to cover a multibillion-dollar budget gap with debt to be paid back over the next decade.</p>

TELEVISION It's not pretty, but 'Animal House' defines a generation BY GLEN GARVIN ggarvin@herald.com LOS ANGELES -- Dean Wormer: Who dumped a whole truckload of Fizzies into the swim meet? Who delivered the medical school cadavers to the alumni dinner? Every Halloween the trees are filled with underwear; every spring the toilets explode. Marmalard: You're talking about Delta, sir. Nobody had ever seen anything like it. It was rebellious, it was anarchic, it was gross. It had kids getting wasted and puking and being promiscuous, sometimes all at once. Its heroes were drunks and slobs and Peeping Toms; its villains...