Free Republic

When Ron and Belinda Oglesby moved into Carson's Carousel neighborhood in 2003, they saw a solid, middle-class area where homeowners set down roots and lived for decades, where Santa Claus paraded through the streets on a firetruck and children returned to buy their own homes. This, they told themselves, was the perfect place to raise their three kids. Six years later, they noticed workmen drilling holes and leaving cryptic white marks on the streets. By last summer, they had discovered what the sudden activity meant: Preliminary tests under the direction of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board had...

Some say that if farmers don’t want problems from Monsanto, the simply shouldn’t buy Monsanto’s GMO seeds. But it isn’t quite that simple. Monsanto contaminates the fields, trespasses onto the land taking samples, and then sues, saying they own the crop. Meanwhile, Monsanto is taking many other steps to keep farmers and everyone else from having any access at all to buying, collecting, and saving of normal seeds: 1.  They’ve bought up the seed companies across the Midwest. 2.  They’ve written Monsanto seed laws and gotten legislators to put them through, that make cleaning, collecting and storing of seeds so...

Story last updated at 4:20 a.m. Sunday, August 27, 2006 Candidates log West Texas miles in race for House seat BY D. LANCE LUNSFORD AVALANCHE-JOURNAL Across 15,104 square miles, House District 85 covers 16 counties and a population of more than 145,000 West Texans. It's 275 miles from the district's northern point to its southern. Reaching the edges of Abilene with its borders a few miles from Lubbock's and San Angelo's outskirts, the district's most metropolitan centers are Plainview and Big Spring. The two candidates looking to replace retiring state Rep. Pete Laney, D-Hale Center, have burned a path between...

Brownfield church loses precious links to past in fire BY P. CHRISTINE SMITH AVALANCHE-JOURNAL A day after a raging fire destroyed the Brownfield church that many called their second home, a small group gathered to watch firefighters try to knock down a smoldering resurgence of the blaze before it got worse. The 54-year-old Brownfield Church of Christ building at 502 Lubbock Hwy. is a mere shell of its former self, but it is the loss of fragments of the past that so many mourn. "We had a lot of history in the library," said Debra Graham, the church's building and...

<p>SACRAMENTO (AP) - A key element of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign plank for new growth in older cities may be on the ropes, potentially leaving California farther behind national efforts to redevelop blighted industrial sites.</p> <p>Environmentalists aim Monday to block a developer bill that would relax standards to build new housing and stores on dormant industrial sites, typically in older neighborhoods. The bill is one of three on the Legislature's agenda Monday and Tuesday regarding an estimated 90,000-100,000 such sites in California.</p>