Free Republic

Despite testimony from a market consultant who said Houston would be better served by one shared-ride company to shuttle travelers to and from the city's airports, several members of a City Council committee on Monday expressed concerns about awarding a contract to only one vendor. Council members have long agreed the city needs a shared-ride service, but the debate over whether to work with several companies or create what some council members call a monopoly has stalled the contract at City Hall for years. Chairman of the transportation committee Michael Berry called the last-minute meeting to try to put council...

Fires, injuries and arrests are reported in Columbus, Ohio, following last night's Ohio State win over Texas. The nation's top-ranked college football team knocked off number-two Texas 24-to-7 in Austin. That kicked off a wild celebration back in Columbus. A fire battalion chief says more than 30 fires were set, mostly in trash bins and couches left outdoors. There was little property damage but five people have been arrested. The chief says he and a university official and her husband suffered minor injuries when a car ran into them at a command post set up in a student union driveway....

Life in Houston hasn't been easy, with many lacking health insurance, jobs, survey finds Houston may be hot, unfriendly and frustratingly difficult to navigate, but more than two-thirds of the poorest New Orleans evacuees who fled to the city after Hurricane Katrina plan to stay, a Rice University survey released today shows. Almost 69 percent of the 1,081 people queried in the National Science Foundation-funded study conducted in July by political science professors Rick Wilson and Robert Stein said they likely will remain in Houston. That figure is up from about 57 percent in October and 51 percent in September...

Would be the first no-hitter in the major leagues since May 2004, the longest drought of no-hitters since World War II.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. - Democratic Senate candidate Alan Lichtman said Friday his arrest for trespassing at a televised senatorial debate the night before was unnecessary because he was involved in a peaceful protest. He was protesting the decision by sponsors of the debate to allow only Ben Cardin and Kweisi Mfume to participate. Lichtman and his wife, Karyn Strickler, were arrested along with a campaign worker when they tried to enter the Maryland Public Television building and refused repeated requests to leave a small vestibule at the entrance to the building. "I did not have to be arrested because I was...

Kinky Friedman, who is to be in El Paso when this article comes out (Aug. 20-22), wants it to be known he isn't a politician, and despite his never-ending run of the mouth that appears to make light of issues, he is serious. “I'm not going to become a self-important politician. The circus needs clowns like donkeys need elephants. Will Rogers said the politicians were the greatest jokers of all. Every time they made a joke it turned into law and every time they made a law it turned into a joke,” Friedman said. Still, as the campaign heats up...

BOSTON (AP) — A woman on a trans-Atlantic flight diverted to Boston for security concerns passed several notes to crew members, urinated on the cabin floor and made comments the crew believed were references to al-Qaida and the Sept. 11 attacks, according to an affidavit filed Thursday. Catherine C. Mayo, 59, of Braintree, Vt., was to appear in federal court later Thursday on a charge of interfering with a flight crew after disrupting United 923 as it flew from London to Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. The flight, with 182 passengers and 12 crew members, landed safely with the escort of...

GULFPORT, Miss. — A federal judge ruled today that an insurance company's policies do not cover damage from wind-driven water in a decision that could affect hundreds of upcoming cases related to property damage from Hurricane Katrina. U.S. District Judge L.T. Senter Jr. ruled that a Mississippi Gulf Coast couple cannot collect damages from storm surge caused by Katrina because Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co.'s policies do not cover wind-driven water damage. Senter Jr. said Paul and Julie Leonard of Pascagoula could be compensated for damage that they could prove was caused by high winds, however. "Almost all the damage to...

With one of his ex-wives wearing a T-shirt that read "I Play Dirty," Eric Eugene Cooper pleaded guilty late this morning and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. State District Judge Mike Wilkinson imposed the sentence after Cooper, 30, changed his plea from not guilty to guilty. A jury convicted him Tuesday of tampering with a government document for altering the car title of one of his wives. Seven ex-wives and former girlfriends of the convicted bigamist, who is accused of pretending to be a U.S. Navy officer, sat together in a Harris County courtroom Tuesday as the jury's...

A third day of heavy rain caused widespread flooding around El Paso on Tuesday, swamping mountainside homes, forcing evacuations and closing major roads. Emergency crews juggled an onslaught of distress calls, but there were no immediate reports of any serious injuries. "We're doing OK at the moment," said police spokesman Javier Sambrano. Authorities said at least 60 people had been rescued, some standing on roofs, others atop cars. Fire officials said they were worried about boulders and other debris falling from rocky cliffs around several El Paso neighborhoods. Rosa Reyes was given five minutes to evacuate with her 6-year-old daughter...

MEXICO CITY - A month after losing Mexico's closest presidential race in history, leftist leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador rallied with hundreds of thousands of supporters Sunday and said he would live among 47 makeshift campsites to pressure for a vote recount... ...Organizers of the Sunday rally said they had met their goal of 2.5 million protesters, but some capital police put the number at half that. Many demonstrators flooded subway stations on their way out of downtown even before Lopez Obrador spoke... ...Cab driver Juan Carlos Granados, 31, said he has been bringing supporters in from the nearby state...

Fox Sports and Turner Sports agreed Tuesday to seven-year contracts with Major League Baseball that will keep the World Series, All-Star Game and Saturday Game of the Week on Fox while moving the entire Division Series to cable and adding a Sunday afternoon Game of the Week on TBS beginning in 2008. Fox will pay about $250 million a year or $1.75 billion for the seven-year agreement, down from about $417 million per year under a deal that expires after the 2006 season. That figure included about $100 million a year for regular-season and Division Series rights Fox sublicensed to...

Too long to post in a single thread, but a fascinating almost minute by minute recounting of last night and insight into Mexico's state and national election politics. Perhaps most interesting is his outlining of why Mexico probably has a much more fraud-resistant election system than we do: "9:58. Televisa is showing video of the process at the polls. When a Mexican voter enters the polls his voter ID card--with its picture and signature and hologram--is checked by one official with the list which shows a replica of each registered voter's card. Then the card is checked and held by...

A September 11 commission co-chairman talks about the damage done by the latest New York Times leak. By Byron York Thomas Kean, the co-chairman of the September 11 Commission, was briefed several weeks ago about the Treasury Department’s terrorist-finance program, and after the session, Kean says, “I came away with the idea that this was a good program, one that was legal, one that was not violating anybody’s civil liberties…and something the U.S. government should be doing to make us safer.” Kean tells National Review Online that the New York Times’s decision to expose the terrorist finance effort — Kean...

Dallas: City plays the optimist, plans for 500,000 downtown ...If the Mavericks were to win the series in four games or five, Dallas would kick off a victory parade June 20, said Celia Barshop, manager of the city's Office of Special Events. A Finals victory in Game 6 would push the parade to June 22, and a win in seven means it would commence June 26, she said. The parade would begin at 11 a.m. for all scenarios, Ms. Barshop said... ... City officials say the Mavericks may feature various "crowd pleasers" during the parade, but there would be no...

A Houston police officer who criticized the Police Department's pursuit policies in car chases was fired Friday. Chad Hoffman, Houston Police Officers' Union attorney, said officer Thomas Nixon received an 18-page letter of suspension outlining the reasons for his firing, which centered on his criticism of the department's pursuit policy. "We knew that it was coming," Hoffman said. "We knew that the department intended to terminate him for those comments." Houston Police Lt. Robert Manzo, department spokesman, confirmed the firing, but had no further details. Nixon, an 11-year veteran of the force, publicly criticized the department's car chase policy after...

Dan Patrick, whose years as a conservative radio pundit helped him win a Republican state Senate nomination, is expanding the reach of his voice with the purchase of a Dallas-area radio station. By Labor Day, Dallas-area residents will be able to hear Patrick on station KMGS-AM (1160), based in the enclave city of Highland Park. Patrick, who announced the deal Thursday during his afternoon drive-time show on Houston-based KSEV-AM (700), says he plans to duplicate KSEV's conservative talk format on the North Texas station. Patrick owns and manages KSEV through Houston Broadcasting, a limited partnership. Patrick said the radio station...

New York millionaire Robert Durst now must report twice a month instead of daily to his parole officer and no longer is subject to electronic tracking of his movements around the Houston area, his lawyer said. "Bob is just a normal parolee now," defense attorney Dick DeGuerin said Monday. Durst was acquitted of murder in November 2003 . He admitted cutting up Galveston neighbor Morris Black's body and dumping the parts in garbage bags into Galveston Bay in September 2001. State officials said Monday a routine review of Durst's parole status resulted in Durst's reduced reporting requirements and removal of...

ATLANTA - Testing for the AIDS virus could become part of routine physical exams for adults and teens if doctors follow new U.S. guidelines expected to be issued by this summer. Federal health officials say they'd like HIV testing to be as common as a cholesterol check. The guidelines for routine testing would apply to every American ages 13 to 64, according to the proposed plan by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One-quarter of the 1 million Americans with the AIDS virus don't know they are infected, and that group is most responsible for HIV's spread, CDC...

...Rebuilding officials concede that the new price tag is breathtaking — "beyond reason" in the words of one member of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation board — and it is sure to set off another battle over development at the 16-acre site, with calls to cut costs, scale back theIt was supposed to be immune to the controversies that had en design or even start over... ...The new estimate, $972 million, would make this the most expensive memorial ever built in the United States. And that figure does not include the $80 million for a visitors' center paid for...