Free Republic

Do you think your house is safe from a thief? It's not if they have the key to unlock your door. According to recent FBI data, burglaries are the third most reported crime to police. Now an old culprit is making a new appearance. They're called “bump keys” and they can open up popular locks. When Sarah Jackson's opened up the door to her Fort Worth home, she says someone used a key similar to the one she uses to access her house. The problem is, it wasn't her key. It may have been a “bump key.” The internet is...

WASHINGTON -- Pollster Frank Luntz for the past decade issued warnings to his fellow Republicans that they did not want to hear, but never has been so out of touch with them as he is today. "The Republican message machine is a skeleton of its former self," Luntz told me. "These people have no idea how the American people react to them"... ...He has clashed frequently with Rep. John Boehner, the current Republican leader of the House who stifled ethics legislation last year when he was still majority leader. Boehner, elected chairman of the House Republican Conference when the party...

ANGLETON — A 17-year-old Angleton man has been charged with cruelty to animals after he allegedly tied up a stray cat and let the pit bull he got for his birthday tear the cat apart while he videotaped the incident. The video ended up on the popular Web site MySpace after he gave the video to friends, but it was quickly yanked. Paul Miguel will probably be booked today, Angleton police detective Sgt. Kirk Coleman said. The dog, a brown and white female named Brook, was seized by agents from the Houston Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,...

A professional GOP web toiler sent this around: Last night – despite the fact that Bush is changing the way the war is being fought — Jim Webb claimed that “the majority of our military” does not support “the way this war is being fought”. This is the poll that is being cited as evidence of his claim: “Only 35 percent of the military members polled this year said they approve of the way President Bush is handling the war, while 42 percent said they disapproved. […]Just as telling, in this year’s poll only 41 percent of the military said...

The civil liberty activist says news media must realize democracies are in a no-win situation Author and civil rights attorney Alan Dershowitz called on the American news media Wednesday to take greater stock of the way international terrorists fight their wars by deliberately putting civilians in harm's way. Dershowitz, who met with the Houston Chronicle editorial board, was in Houston for a speech arranged by the Holocaust Museum Houston titled, "Is There a New Anti-Semitism?" A commentator on wide-ranging issues that involve Israel, the war on terror and civil liberties, Dershowitz said that today's terrorists have a new way of...

WESTLAKE, La. — In the hours before his death on the evening of Dec. 30, the first black mayor of this overwhelmingly white town started learning his new job. About noon, he set City Hall's alarm system for the first time. He got instructions on how to raise and lower the U.S. flag. He had already ordered a new mayoral letterhead with his name on it and a button-down shirt embroidered "Gerald Washington, Mayor." A few hours later he indulged in a hobby, placing a $4 bet at a nearby horse racing track. But by 10 p.m. Gerald "Wash" Washington...

AUSTIN — They work as maids and busboys. They build homes and highways. They bone chickens on the way to market. They are worth billions of dollars to the Texas economy, but as members of the working poor they also are a drain of hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers. They are the 1.4 million illegal immigrants that the federal government estimates live in Texas. Half are divided evenly between the Dallas and Houston areas, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, with an additional 20 percent in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Less than 5 percent live in...

First Democrat to hold spot since '86 has said he plans no major overhaul DALLAS — The newly elected Dallas County district attorney fired eight of his top prosecutors, and at least nine others are resigning before he assumes the post on Monday. Craig Watkins, the county's first black district attorney and the first Democrat to hold the office since 1986, sent termination notices to the eight prosecutors Wednesday. Watkins' election in November was part of a Democratic resurgence in Dallas County that saw the party take 42 judicial races and six other countywide offices. Watkins, a longtime defense attorney,...

AUSTIN — Tom Craddick's bid to remain House speaker appeared increasingly uncertain Thursday with the announcement by a once-trusted member of his leadership team that he would oppose Craddick in what suddenly has become a three-way race among Republicans. Jim Pitts, 59, the affable Republican from Waxahachie whom Craddick appointed to chair the influential Appropriations Committee in 2004, said he decided to challenge the 63-year-old speaker from Midland because he is convinced he can win. While refusing to name names or discuss precise numbers, Pitts said at an afternoon news conference that he'd done the math and, unlike either of...

Thursday, October 3, 2002 GREAT FALLS, Montana (AP) -- Montana's Libertarian candidate for Senate has turned blue from drinking a silver solution that he believed would protect him from disease. Stan Jones,a 63-year-old business consultant and part-time college instructor, said he started taking colloidal silver in 1999 for fear that Y2K disruptions might lead to a shortage of antibiotics. He made his own concoction by electrically charging a couple of silver wires in a glass of water. His skin began turning blue-gray a year ago... ...He does not take the supplement any longer, but the skin condition, called argyria, is...

PENSACOLA, Fla. -- The White House did not hide its irritation Monday at Florida GOP gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist for ducking President George W. Bush at a campaign rally in the Republican friendly Panhandle. Crist said he considered the Pensacola area so firmly in his camp that it made more sense to campaign elsewhere in the state as the race to replace outgoing Gov. Jeb Bush tightened. On a tarmac in Texas where the president boarded Air Force One for the trip east, Bush political strategist Karl Rove mockingly questioned what kind of alternate rally Crist could put together that...

WASHINGTON — Oil company executives have been cringing at the poll results, economists all but screaming. Nearly a third of all Americans believe the oil industry, in cahoots with the White House, is orchestrating the recent drop in energy prices to help Republicans in November. So there was groaning again on Thursday when House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., issued a news release that was headlined: "Gas prices continue to fall during a Republican majority." "Oh, that just fuels it," Jim Glassman, senior economist for JP Morgan Chase in New York, said with a laugh. "That will just reinforce suspicions. ......

Heads, up! He is giving a great interview, calm, very charming, still witty, a nice contrast to the liars and backstabbers on the other channels right now.

Golf legend and Roanoke resident Byron Nelson, a man revered for his benevolence and humility as much as his on-course accomplishment, died Tuesday at the age of 94... ... Even his swing was the stuff of legend. As wood-shafted golf clubs were being converted to steel, he was the first notable player to incorporate his feet and legs for extra power. He is widely credited as being the father of the modern swing, to the extent that the U.S. Golf Association's club-testing apparatus is called the "Iron Byron."

RIO GRANDE CITY — First it was a trickle, now it's a flood. Rising numbers of undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central America are streaming into Texas to give birth, straining hospitals and costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, health officials say. Doctors and health officials say they are overwhelmed by both the new arrivals and those immigrant mothers who already are in the state. Even Houston's feeling the pinch. An estimated 70 percent to 80 percent of the 10,587 births at Ben Taub General Hospital and Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital last year were to undocumented immigrants, administrators...

Sandra Tanamachi, who led a lengthy campaign to get the slur "Jap" removed from street maps in Jefferson, Orange and Fort Bend counties, is being recognized for her work with an award from the Japanese government. In 1992, Tanamachi was teaching school in Beaumont when she noticed newspaper advertisements, billboards and radio spots for businesses on "Jap Road." "I found it very offensive. I started thinking other minorities would not tolerate anything like it. I just didn't feel it was right especially since I had uncles who were soldiers and veterans," Tanamachi, 61, said Wednesday. Houston Japanese Consul General Yoshi...

AUSTIN - Texas politicians who receive suitcases full of cash may not be required to report the amount of it, according to a draft ruling by the Texas Ethics Commission. Under the proposal, candidates for state offices could satisfy Texas disclosure laws by simply calling it "currency." Watchdog groups deplored Tuesday's draft opinion by the agency established to monitor campaign-finance laws. Agency commissioners are expected to vote on it Friday. "If the Texas Ethics Commission adopts this opinion ... public officials can take millions of dollars in cash and legally write 'currency' on their disclosure form," Craig McDonald, director of...

A Katy music teacher bitten by a bat returned to work Tuesday as another bat captured at the school tested negative for rabies. A public health official said students are not at risk of contracting rabies from the Mayde Creek High School orchestra teacher because he is not infectious. "He's perfectly fine once he has had his shots," said Rita Obey, of the Harris County Public Health and Environmental Services Department. Michael Jones, who was bitten Monday before school, declined to comment. He began rabies-vaccination treatment at Christus St. Catherine's Hospital in Katy as a precaution. As Jones was about...

CHRIS Bell is taking a bold new step in his race for governor. Tired of watching Republicans such as Gov. Rick Perry openly using some evangelical churches the way Democrats traditionally used labor unions, Bell is unabashedly wearing his Christianity on his sleeve. "It's the biggest mistake that the Democratic Party has probably made in the last 25 years," he told Peggy Fikac of the Chronicle's Austin bureau last week. "For us to leave people with the impression that we're not concerned about faith, that we're not concerned about morals and values, and that we're not going to be a...

Breakfast food company Kellogg's has come under fire from animal lovers furious about a television advert showing a man riding a dog like a horse. Nearly 100 complaints have been made against the new Crunchy Nut Cornflakes advert, which shows a very small man finishing work and riding home on the back of an Irish Wolfhound. Dog lovers say the behaviour in the scene is cruel and could be copied by children. However, no action is to be taken by the Advertising Standards Authority, which has dismissed the complaints. It says viewers would be able to spot that the scenes...