Free Republic

According to this web site, the couple, who decided to remain anonymous, has threatened not to have their baby if they are not able to raise at least $50,000 in 90 days. They believe this is the minimum amount needed to give their future newborn the life they think the baby should have. Although they know that this is not the total amount need it to raise the child into adulthood, they truly believe that with $50000 they will be able to start their newborn in the right path for a good life.

...By testifying in trials as expert witnesses, mental health professionals help us reclassify complicated moral and legal questions as seemingly clear-cut scientific matters. An endless stream of news stories about the latest advances in brain scans and the chemical conquest of personality enhances the experts’ credibility and feeds into a belief that we have come to a sophisticated understanding of the intersection between mind, brain, and behavior. But a close look at Andrea Yates’ legal saga, along with a less-famous Supreme Court decision about the insanity defense that was handed down shortly before she was acquitted, casts doubt on the...

We consider the Fourth Amendment’s limits on the use of trickery and force in conducting seizures. Facts Ascension Alverez-Tejeda and his girlfriend drove up to a traffic light. As the light turned green, the car in front of them lurched forward, then stalled. Alverez-Tejeda managed to stop in time, but the truck behind him tapped his bumper. As Alverez-Tejeda got out to inspect the damage, two officers pulled up in a police cruiser and arrested the truck driver for drunk driving. The officers got Alverez-Tejeda and his girlfriend to drive to a nearby parking lot, leave the keys in the...

The trouble in Jena started with the nooses. Then it rumbled along the town's racial fault lines. Finally, it exploded into months of violence between blacks and whites. Now the 3,000 residents of this small lumber and oil town deep in the heart of central Louisiana are confronting Old South racial demons many thought had long ago been put to rest. Advertisement One morning last September, students arrived at the local high school to find three hangman's nooses dangling from a tree in the courtyard.

The silver tiara matched his silver stilettos when Johnny Vera was named prom queen Saturday night at Roosevelt High School. He's the first transgender prom queen in Fresno -- and possibly anywhere.

Legislation introduced by Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Sam Brownback (R-KA) today would save Internet radio from a recent royalty hike that threatens to bankrupt the industry. The Internet Radio Equality Act would vacate a Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) decision to increase fees webcasters pay to play music online by a devastating 300 to 1200 percent. Companion legislation (H.R. 2060) introduced in the House of Representatives on April 26th, by Congressman Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Don Manzullo (R-IL), has already garnered the support of more than 60 cosponsors.

It’s only appropriate, perhaps, that the future of the First Amendment takes shape in a hippie law office in San Francisco’s North Beach district, surrounded by strippers. A light April rain falls on furtive patrons of the Lusty Lady and the Roaring 20s on the street below as legendary radical environmentalist Rodney Coronado sits in a conference room in the Pier 5 Law Offices, strategizing with some of this country’s finest civil rights attorneys.

SACRAMENTO — California homeowners are rejecting new rebates for solar power equipment, saying the state has made installing the rooftop panels far more costly than expected. As a result, Public Utilities Commission reports show a decline of 78% in rebate requests in the first three months of this year, compared with last year, and the solar installation industry says it is threatened with collapse across much of California.

NEW PORT RICHEY - For about eight minutes on Tuesday, through the streets near downtown, police chased a driver who had no arms and one good leg. He got away.

Senate Republican Whip Trent Lott (news, bio, voting record) said Monday that President Bush's new strategy in Iraq has until about fall before GOP members will need to see results. Lott's comment put a fine point on what Senate Republican stalwarts have been discussing quietly for weeks. It also echoed remarks made this weekend by House Minority Leader John Boehner (news, bio, voting record), R-Ohio, indicating the GOP's limited patience on the war. "I do think this fall we have to see some significant changes on the ground, in Baghdad and other surrounding areas," Lott, R-Miss., told reporters.

When Emilio Gonzales lies in his mother's arms, sometimes he'll make a facial expression that his mother says is a smile. But the nurse who's standing right next to her thinks he's grimacing in pain. Which one it is -- an expression of happiness or of suffering -- is a crucial point in an ethical debate that has pitted the mother of a dying child against a children's hospital, and medical ethicists against each other.

NAHANT - The Nahant Public Library wants to sell one of its most valuable possessions: a German machine gun captured by Army Sgt. Alvin C. York during World War I.

Background: Differences in medical care in the United States compared with Canada, including greater reliance on private funding and for-profit delivery, as well as markedly higher expenditures, may result in different health outcomes. Objectives: To systematically review studies comparing health outcomes in the United States and Canada among patients treated for similar underlying medical conditions. Interpretation: Available studies suggest that health outcomes may be superior in patients cared for in Canada versus the United States, but differences are not consistent.

... Tuesday is Tax Day, when millions of illegal aliens find themselves collaborating with one federal agency -- the Internal Revenue Service -- while trying to avoid another, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They hope a track record of on-time payments will aid their citizenship applications, but critics who favor tougher enforcement of federal immigration rules say it's absurd for the government to work with people it should be tracking down and deporting. It legitimizes the presence of immigrants who are here illegally, critics say, and sends a mixed message about the country's interest in enforcing its own rules...

On Friday March 30, 2007 at around 3:00pm, Mr. Kuldip Singh Nag, a Sikh American who was awarded the Bronze Star for his service in the U.S. Navy during the first Gulf War, was at his home in Joliet, IL when a local police officer noticed that a van parked on Mr. Nag’s private property had expired registration tags. Upon being confronted with this, Mr. Nag’s wife, Vera Kaur Nag, informed the officer that the van is parked on their driveway and was inoperable.

In 2007, the Pentagon's budget will exceed the combined military spending of every other country in the world. In round numbers, according to the U.S. Department of Defense's own Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), published this past February, the American military will spend more than $440 billion next year, supplemented with another $120 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would be more reassuring, then, if the Pentagon's four-year plan for how its strategic priorities and force structure align with its budget made for less schizophrenic reading.

LARGO - Today is the day Barbara Morris dreaded would come. Against Morris' wishes, her 9-year-old violent grandson is supposed to return home from a psychiatric center after her efforts to find him a group home failed. And now the 61-year-old widowed housekeeper faces the homecoming without her companions, two chihuahuas who gave her joy with their licks and jumps and romps through the back yard. On Monday, Morris sobbed as she reluctantly gave the dogs - plus five birds and one turtle - to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, to keep her grandson from injuring...

PYONGYANG, North Korea --New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson on Monday toured a U.S. warship captured by North Korea in the 1960s that is now used to inspire anti-American sentiment in the reclusive communist regime.

...In modern history, there is plenty of evidence that torturers are people who actually enjoy hurting people. What was true in medieval Munich was true again in the cellars of the Gestapo HQ in the Prinz-Albrecht Strasse, and what was true under Ivan the Terrible was true again in the Lubyanka and the Lefortovo. The frightening thing is that any regime dedicated to ruling by terror so easily finds a sufficient supply of lethal myrmidons. Even Americans, on those occasions when they bizarrely conclude that the third degree might expedite their policies instead of hindering them, never suffer from a...

For all the talk about potential candidates who haven't entered the 2008 presidential race — from Mayor Bloomberg to Vice President Gore to Senator Thompson and Speaker Gingrich — the one that who would bring the most to the race is Vice President Cheney.