Free Republic

NEW YORK (CBS) ― New York Internet shoppers, take note: in five weeks, sales tax-free shopping will end on many Web sites thanks to rewritten state rules that are trying to force Internet retailers to collect. At Chrono Tech Watches in White Plains, Jerry Nally is glad the clock is ticking on many Internet retailers that don't charge New York sales tax. Nally says those so-called "e-tailers" steal his customers. "They'll come in our store, look at our product, touch it, play with it, look at the warranties, then go back to the web and buy it tax free," says...

PHOENIX — Arizona schools whose courses "denigrate American values and the teachings of Western civilization" could lose state funding under the terms of legislation approved Wednesday by a state House panel. SB 1108 also would bar teaching practices that "overtly encourage dissent" from those values, including democracy, capitalism, pluralism and religious toleration. Schools would have to surrender teaching materials for review by the state school superintendent, who could withhold state aid of districts that broke the law. Another section of the bill would bar public schools, community colleges and universities from allowing organizations to operate on campus if they are...

CHANDLER, Ariz. — A suspect in the sexual assaults of several young girls in Chandler has been arrested and police said Saturday that DNA positively links the man to the case. Santana Batiz Aceves, 39, was booked into a Maricopa County jail in Phoenix on 25 counts of kidnapping, sexual assault and trespassing in connection with the assaults that began in June 2006, police announced at a news conference. They said the most recent attack linked to the case occurred June 8 on a 14-year-old girl. Police had been searching for months for a man who raped four girls and...

John Edwards says if he's elected president, he'll institute a New Deal-like suite of programs to fight poverty and stem growing wealth disparity. To do it, he said, he'll ask many Americans to make sacrifices, like paying higher taxes. Edwards, a former Democratic senator from North Carolina, says the federal government should underwrite universal pre-kindergarten, create matching savings accounts for low-income people, mandate a minimum wage of $9.50 and provide a million new Section 8 housing vouchers for the poor. He also pledged to start a government-funded public higher education program called "College for Everyone." "It is central to what...

In a major shift, Gov. Eliot Spitzer is backing off his plan to allow illegal immigrants to obtain the same kind of driver’s licenses as other New Yorkers, after weeks of furor over the proposal. Instead, the governor said on Saturday, illegal immigrants in the state would be able to obtain a license that would permit them to drive but would not be accepted as identification to board planes or cross borders. Other New Yorkers who can prove that they are legal residents of the United States would be eligible for federally recognized ID cards. These would serve as driver’s...

Alarmed at the chance that the Republican party might pick Rudolph Giuliani as its presidential nominee despite his support for abortion rights, a coalition of influential Christian conservatives is threatening to back a third-party candidate in an attempt to stop him. The group making the threat, which came together Saturday in Salt Lake City during a break-away gathering during a meeting of the secretive Council for National Policy, includes Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who is perhaps the most influential of the group, as well as Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, the direct mail pioneer...

(CBS) NEW YORK They were celebrating outside the governor's office Friday as Eliot Spitzer handed a landmark victory to a half-million illegal immigrants. The state will no longer require proof of citizenship for driver's licenses. "We're changing our policy with respect to getting more people out of shadows and into the system so people don't hide they're here," Spitzer said. He said the current restrictions on non-citizens have filled the roads with unlicensed drivers five times more likely to get into accidents. But the also called it a matter of justice. "As long as I'm governor we won't pretend they...

The Sorbonne has no cafeteria, no student newspaper, no varsity sports, no desk-side electric plugs for laptops. France's most renowned university also costs next-to-nothing to attend, and admission is open to every high school graduate. President Nicolas Sarkozy says this picture is emblematic of much that is wrong with France, which seeks to recapture its economic luster and key role in international affairs.

This past Tuesday the governor of Virginia announced he would close the loophole that allowed Seung-Hui Cho to buy the guns he used to kill 32 people — and himself — on the Virginia Tech campus. OK, it's a good idea to keep guns out of the hands of people who are mentally unstable. But be careful about how far the calls for gun control go, because the idea that gun control laws lower gun crime is a myth.