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A single-engine, four-seat plane on approach to Norwood Memorial Airport crashed this morning in a heavily wooded area between Rte. 95 and Neponset Street in Canton, killing the female pilot. Agnes Elizabeth Imregh, 57, of Dover, MA was killed on contact following the crash, according to investigators. Canton Police Chief Ken Berkowitz said the department began receiving calls around 10:20 a.m. from witnesses on I-95 reporting a plane over the woods was sputtering and may have gone down. Norwood Police spokesman Paul Bishop said Norwood airport officials, who had been in contact with the plane upon approach, called Norwood police...

When we moved to New Jersey some years back, I got great help from Freepers about places to live. Now we're looking to buy a condo in some Florida town for winter use. I'm looking for info on best places for recreation (I have two boys, 7 and 12), safety, interesting commerce/downtown culture, beaches, golf, etc. Lots of places look good, but, when I check crime rates and demographics, I have lots of questions that can only be answered by somebody who's actually there. I'll be starting out in the Tampa area, because I'm going there to get a kidney...

I downloaded IE 7.0 -- yeah, yeah, I know -- and have finally gotten all the kinks out but one. I can't highlight and copy a URL from the address window. I can highlight it, but when I hit the "edit/copy" function, it isn't functional, and the highlight on the URL disappears. Any answers? Thanks.

Is this a sign of things to come? In the name of nondiscrimination, will more states force religious organizations to swallow their principles or go out of business? Same-sex adoption is becoming increasingly common, but it is still highly controversial. Millions of Americans would readily agree that gay and lesbian couples can make loving parents, yet insist nevertheless that kids are better off with loving parents of both sexes. That is neither a radical view nor an intolerant one, but if the kneecapping of Catholic Charities is any indication, it may soon be forbidden.

On the 11th anniversary of the Battle of Mogadishu, which I wrote about in "Black Hawk Down," Maj. James Lechner was again fighting an urban battle, this one in Samarra, Iraq. Maj. Lechner had sustained a terrible gunshot wound to his lower right leg as a lieutenant in Mogadishu. Now he was commanding a unit responsible for training and then leading the 7th Battalion of the new Iraqi army on a mission to retake the northern city, which had been held for some time by insurgent forces. "There must be something about me and the first week in October," Maj....

Possible column for me in this. What Freepers can you think of who have discovered Web publishing or media through FR, then moved on to separate careers on the web or in media. I can think of Lucianne, The IowaHawk, congressmanbillybob, me, Dales, any others? Was Wretchard posting his thoughts on FR before starting The Belmont Club? Thanks to all. (Me: Lawrence Henry, The American Spectator)

In order to cite it in my TAS column, I need to find the 9/11 "blow by blow" thread as re-posted on FR this year on the anniversary of 9/11. My crude searches haven't found it. Thanks!

Print Article         Close Window     Ryder Cup Ridiculousness By Published 9/20/2004 12:23:46 AM NORTH ANDOVER, Mass. -- Here it is, 10 a.m. Ryder Cup Sunday morning, and like all golf fans, I should be looking forward to a ding-dong shootout in singles competition, taken down to the last of twelve singles matches between the European and United States teams in this biennial competition. Nope. Not this year. Once again, the U.S. side has made a hash of the first two days of matches, between two-man teams. They're behind by 11 points to 5. Europe needs only 3 more...

Refugees of communist takeover won't forget, forgive his past By Jan Golab "If you want to be president, you have to talk to everybody in America, and that is what we are going to do," Sen. John Kerry declared last July, when he spoke before the NAACP. It was a dig against President George W. Bush, who had declined an invitation to speak to that organization. But there's no way Kerry will ever speak to America's 1.2 million Vietnamese-Americans, most of whom live in California. Many of California's Vietnamese-Americans will be in Washington, D.C., today to join with Vietnam Veterans...

By Jan Golab I first heard "patriot" used derisively when I was a Vietnam War protester in the 1960s. "Patriot" and "flag-waver" were terms used to denigrate those we perceived as knee-jerk supporters of an immoral war. We felt we were the true patriots. We hated Nixon, because Tricky Dick portrayed us as anti-American. How dare he impugn our patriotism? As it turned out, Nixon didn't need to smear anybody. When Jane Fonda went to North Vietnam, I knew immediately that the anti-war movement should condemn her. By giving aid, comfort and hope to the enemy, she had crossed a...

If I could, I'd enlist today and help my country track down those responsible for killing thousands of innocent people in New York City and Washington, DC But, I'm over 50 now and the Armed Forces say I'm too old to track down terrorists. You can't be older than 35 to join the military. They've got the whole thing backwards. Instead of sending 18-year-olds off to fight, they ought to take us old guys. You shouldn't be able to join until you're at least 35. For starters: Researchers say 18-year-olds think about sex every 10 seconds. Old guys only think...

Print Article         Close Window     The Culture of Iron Will By Published 6/25/2004 12:06:25 AM Twenty years ago, I wrote an article for Music Connection, a Los Angeles-based consumer and trade pub for young rock and rollers, on "How to Get a Record Deal." I interviewed an old college friend, Bob Merlis, who was vice president of West Coast promotions for Warner Brothers Records. "We can all name people in this business who aren't very good," Bob said, "who just got where they are through an iron will to get across." That quote neatly summarizes a culture that...

Print Article         Close Window     A Father's Day Long Ago By Published 6/18/2004 12:06:41 AM ARLINGTON, SOUTH DAKOTA, 1959 -- Grampa had made a barbecue grill out of cement blocks, and we scorched hot dogs and hamburgers and ate them on buttered -- buttered! -- buns. After lunch Dad and Grampa played catch, Dad wearing my catcher's mitt, and Grampa wearing his old Bill Doak glove with the stubby fingers. Grampa sometimes used to play catch with me, but he was always so careful. He'd be wearing his little half smile. I'd pound the mitt, and yell, "Pour...

Help me with a letter to the editor I'm writing. What singers can you think of who've based their sound on Ray Charles? I've got Michael Bolton, David Clayton-Thomas, Steve Winwood, Joe Cocker, and a few others. I know there are more. Thanks.

Print Article         Close Window     What I Always Wanted to Be By Published 4/30/2004 12:07:39 AM The first good book I ever read, when I was about nine, was Ernie Pyle's Here Is Your War, dispatches from the North Africa campaign in World War II. During the war, Pyle held a place of regard and honor in American culture and letters comparable to that of Will Rogers. His Scripps-Howard columns ran in hundreds of newspapers. He was "one of us," the G.I.s said. When a Japanese sniper killed Pyle in 1945, the nation wept. Nowadays, people know Ernie...

Print Article         Close Window     A Georgia Preacher Takes on Massachusetts By Published 4/16/2004 12:05:00 AM "Gay Marriage Foe Eyes Run for House," blared the Boston Globe's front-page headline on April 10. Local radio stations picked up on it the same day. The "Foe" is Ron Crews, president of Massachusetts Family Institute, the leading advocacy organization for family issues in Massachusetts, and, thanks to Crews, one of the most prominently quoted and referenced such organizations in the country. When the news broke, Crews, a former state senator from Georgia who moved to Massachusetts four years ago, had just...

<p>Capitalism has its advantages, comrade.</p> <p>A federal judge in Manhattan yesterday said American trademark law protects Cuba's premium Cohiba brand of cigars and ordered a New York company to quit selling stogies under that name.</p> <p>Cohibas were originally created in Cuba as the personal cigars of Fidel Castro and were later given as gifts to visiting heads of state and other dignitaries.</p>

Print Article         Close Window     One Step Closer to Destruction By Published 3/15/2004 10:29:26 AM On September 12, 2001, I ran into a friend of mine at a coffeeshop in Westfield, New Jersey. My friend, the wife of a husband-and-wife partnership in a psychotherapy practice, asked me, "So what do you think?" She asked the question fearfully, I could see, wondering what she would hear. As a psychotherapist, a liberal, a sophisticated resident of the New York metropolitan area, she could be presumed to hold a certain set of beliefs. And she did not hold those beliefs now,...

Print Article         Close Window     The Twentieth Century Gentleman By Published 3/5/2004 12:06:06 AM The most famous thing Esquire magazine founding editor Arnold Gingrich ever said was, "The sonofabitch bit my finger!" In what he describes as "both the best-remembered and the worst-remembered day of my life," Gingrich found himself shuttling back and forth across the street between his boss Dave Smart's office in Chicago (where he was supposed to fire an unsatisfactory European contributor to a new magazine) and the historic Drake Hotel, where F. Scott Fitzgerald was falling off the wagon for perhaps the last time...

Print Article         Close Window     The Real Veepstakes By Published 2/27/2004 12:05:04 AM If you want a conventional analysis of the possible vice presidential picks for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry, you can't do much better than John J. Miller on National Review Online. Miller, however, overlooks important factors -- the most important factors -- in picking a running mate. These factors follow a theme, well-known to all presidential aspirants, but apparently less well-understood among media commentators, who consistently guess wrong about veep picks. The theme: The vice-presidential nominee must make the presidential nominee look good...