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Shirley Basore, 72, says she was sitting in the hairdresser’s chair in wealthy Grosse Pointe, Mich., back in 1963 when a rumpus started and she discovered that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and her governor, George Romney, were marching for civil rights — right past the window. With the cape still around her neck, Basore went outside and joined the parade.

BOSTON (AP) — Republican Mitt Romney, in a statement likely to be well received by fiscal conservatives in early voting Iowa and New Hampshire, on Friday criticized a $555 billion budget deal approved by Congress this week for including thousands of earmarks for legislative projects. "This is exactly the type of fiscal irresponsibility that the American people have demanded that those in Washington end. Yet, this bill brings the total number of earmarks Congress has approved this year to nearly 11,900 earmarks," the former Massachusetts governor said. Romney applauded President Bush, a fellow Republican, for pledging to use executive authority...

Huckabee 28% Romney 27% Thompson 8%

Poll of 418 highly likely voters conducted 12/16 and 12/17: Romney 28% Huckabee 25.1% Thompson 10.8% McCain 6.9% Paul 5.5% Giuliani 5.1% Tancredo 3.7% Hunter .5% Undecided 14.4%

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney are tied for the lead in South Carolina’s Republican Presidential Primary. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey shows both Huckabee and Romney with 23% of the vote followed by John McCain at 12%, Fred Thompson at 12%, . . .

AR: In the kind of health care programs Americans don’t really purchase through their employer; and as governor, of course, you famously persuaded Massachusetts to pass ROMNEY: Well, not at this stage. I haven’t seen the full results of the implementation of the program, and I’m sure it’s going to take some time to be able to see what impact the Massachusetts plan is having on health care costs. There are some very encouraging signs, however, at this early date. One is that the premiums, for instance, for an individual have gone from $350 a month to $180 a month....

Rudy Giuliani has either stalled or fallen some in the polls over the last month, and questions are being raised about his campaign’s “theory of the race” — which is, basically, that he can successfully wait to win a state until Florida’s primary on January 29 and use his victory there to rack up a huge number of delegates a week later when Republican voters in 21 states go to the polls to select a nominee. Friend and foe alike ask whether Giuliani can really afford to lose the first three states of the primary season — Iowa, New Hampshire,...

Now with a commanding lead in the lead off Caucus, and big lead in New Hampshire, Romney has extended his lead while Huckabee is starting to lose steam. It would appear as if voters were beginning to look at his record and not like what they see. Romney now has 29% of Likely Caucus voters followed by Huckabee trailing Romney by thirteen percentage points, who now has 16%. In a virtual tie for second is Rudy Giuliani at 15% and Fred Thompson at 14%. Further back are John McCain (6%), Ron Paul (4%), Tom Tancredo (4%), and Duncan Hunter (2%)....

Billions of dollars are pouring into Iraq to fight the war and rebuild the country, and companies are vying for a piece of the action. In some cases, contractors paid kickbacks to military contracting officers to gain the upper hand. For Eric W. Barton of Tennessee, he may have had an Barton is accused of having an affair with Air Force Capt. Sherrie L. Remington, a former contracting officer in charge of awarding some of the lucrative work. The Army claims Barton used a six-month relationship with Remington to his advantage to win at least $2.5 million in contracts for...

Get ready Florida for another nail biter presidential election. A new St. Petersburg Times/Bay News 9 poll shows America's biggest battleground state is up for grabs by either Republicans or Democrats, and that neither of the front-runners for their party nominations, Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Rodham Clinton, has Florida locked up yet. *snip* Among Republican voters, former Tennessee Sen. and Law & Order star Fred Thompson is proving to be nowhere near the force many had expected when he entered the race in September. The poll showed him in fifth place with 8 percent support, behind former Arkansas Gov. Mike...

A flagrantly and shamefully dishonest thread has been posted by aMorePerfectUnion for the purpose of duping careless readers into believing that Mitt Romney wants to legalize abortion. In fact, Mitt supports the idea of allowing states to criminalize abortion (abortion is already legal). That's the same position taken by just about every other Republican candidate for president including former abortion lobbyist Fred Thompson.

1. Anti-gun terror bill (S. 735 )On June 7, 1995, the Senate passed an anti-gun terror bill (S. 735) by a vote of 91-8. This version of the terror bill included: a BATF pay increase of $100 million; a provision authorizing "roving wiretaps" allowing government officials to wiretap one's home if a person under investigation visits the home -- even if one had no knowledge the person was a suspect; a weakening of the Posse Commitatus law to give the military more authority to get involved in law enforcement in certain circumstances; a grant of power to the FBI to...

Here we are at debate #3, but has anyone heard a Republican besides Mitt Romney utter their one-time favorite word “family?” In fact, most of the top Republican presidential nominees are studiously avoiding the biggest social problem of our time, namely, family breakdown. There’s a good reason for this, of course; aside from Romney, the leading candidates, whether committed to running or only flirting, are divorced, and at least one of them has a marital history that verges on the baroque. It’s understandable that a presidential contender would want to avoid reminding voters about a messy personal history. Understandable, but...

HH: Joined now by one of our favorite guests, Victor Davis Hanson, professor of military history, noted author, and observer of the war. Victor, good to talk to you again. VDH: Thank you for having me, Hugh. HH: I want to start with a little bit of an off-the-wall question, Professor, because Sparta is the subject of the movie, “300.” It made $70 million dollars this weekend. You are an expert on the Greeks, and what is the appeal of the story in modern America? VDH: I think Americans always identify with an underdog, remember our own mythology of the...

How Europe Can Stop the Hate By Rudolph W. Giuliani Anti-Semitism is the Western world's oldest and most persistent species of hatred. There are larger and more widespread minority groups than Jews -- at 13 million, they comprise about 0.2 percent of the world's population -- but the Holocaust made clear how virulent hatred of them has been. To the extent that anti-Semitism persists, we have yet to fulfill the promise of "Never Again" to those who were martyred. President Bush has asked me to head the United States delegation to a conference on combating anti-Semitism, held by the Organization...

Columbia, SC –- After months of debate, today the South Carolina Education Oversight Committee unanimously ratified high school biology standards requiring students to understand why "scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory." The South Carolina State Board of Education adopted the standards unanimously last month, and submitted them to the EOC for approval. South Carolina’s new evolution standard does not require teaching the theory of intelligent design. The biology standard approved requires students to be able to, “Summarize ways that scientists use data from a variety of sources to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary...

Thousands of Mexicans took to the streets Monday to support migrants in the United States and celebrated what they called a "Day Without Gringos" by shunning U.S.-owned supermarkets, fast-food restaurants and American goods. Measuring the boycott's impact proved difficult, however, because business is normally reduced to a fraction of normal volume on Mexico's May Day holiday. Some Mexicans vowed not to buy from or patronize any businesses related to the United States, while others said they found it difficult to avoid doing so. Customers streamed into some branches of Wal-Mart, McDonald's and Burger King in the Mexican capital despite the...

Charles Darwin: None. But if it could be shown that the bulb entered the socket without a series of clockwise turns, my theory would absolutely break down. ACLU: None! We have separation of church and state in this country. Eugenie Scott: None. To say a Darwinist did it is not a scientific explanation. Panda’s Thumb: None. To say that light bulbs don’t screw themselves in is not a testable proposition. You can’t prove they don’t. That would be an argument from incredulity. You are committing a ‘Darwinist Of The Gaps’ fallacy. Generic 1: None. Time and chance are sufficient. Eventually...

Recently I highlighted how the coverage of Tiktaalik revealed the fascinating phenomenon that only after discovering a new "missing link" will evolutionists acknowledge the previously paltry state of fossil evidence for evolution. This behavior is again witnessed in coverage of the discovery of Australopithecus anamensis fossils in Ethiopia. The media has also exaggerated and overblown claims that this evidence supports "human evolution." The latest "missing link" is actually comprised of a few tooth and bone fragments of Au. anamensis, an ape-like species that lived a little over 4 million years ago. Incredibly, claims of "intermediacy" are based upon 2-3 fragmented...

DR. PIANKA TRANSCRIPTFrom Recorded Audio at speech, March 3, 2006 Texas Academy of Science Note: Brackets indicate possible wording. Two sets of remarks follow. Set 1 is based on audio from the speech itself. Set 2 is from the question and answer period that followed. SET ONE: From the Speech We've got an airborne 90 percent mortality human killing [agent]. Think about that. Now, so far, it’s been down, down, down. Let’s start up. But we can’t get up very far. Aldo Leopold is one of the greatest ecologists of all times. He was really the first conservation biologist. And...