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The Hubris of the Trillion-Dollar Man Posted by David Boaz Former President George W. Bush said Thursday that America must resist the “temptation” to allow the government to take over the private sector, taking a subtle shot at his Democratic successor by warning that too much state intervention and protectionism will squelch the economic recovery… “As the world recovers, we will face a temptation to replace the risk-and-reward model of the private sector with the blunt instruments of government spending and control. History shows that the greater threat to prosperity is not too little government involvement, but too much,” said...

MANILA - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday that she is optimistic a peace pact between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) will happen before President Arroyo steps down in 2010. Clinton said she believes Mrs. Arroyo is ready to make "difficult decisions" regarding the peace talks with the MILF before the end of her term.

A US ban on online gambling, which has sparked criminal investigations and sent share prices at betting companies around the world plunging, could be eased under legislation to be presented by the House financial services committee. Barney Frank, Democratic chairman of the committee, wants to introduce a licensing regime for online gambling companies that would modify anti-gambling laws under which investigations into executives at companies such as UK-listed PartyGaming were conducted.

2009 Scientists are baffled by the latest fossil find. It's an octopus they claim is 95 million years old. And, guess what? It looks just like a modern-day octopus – complete with eight legs, rows of suckers and even traces of ink. In all that time, it seems, the octopus hasn't evolved – not one tiny bit. What's rare about this find is that octopuses are almost all muscle and skin. When an octopus dies, it quickly decays and liquefies into the oozy slime from which evolutionary scientists claim life began. After just a few days, there's nothing left at...

Application for Treasury Investment in a Legacy Securities Public-Private Investment Fund This application (this “Application”) is for private assets managers (“Applicants”) to apply to the U.S. Department of the Treasury (“Treasury”) to be pre-qualified to serve as a manager (a “Fund Manager”) of a Legacy Securities Public-Private Investment Fund (each, a “Fund”) that will invest in legacy securities (“Eligible Assets”) on behalf of taxpayers and private investors pursuant to terms set forth in Attachment I. Fund Managers will be pre-qualified based upon criteria that are anticipated to include: • Demonstrated capacity to raise at least $500 million of private capital....

The federal sentencing of three ex-Atlanta police officers for the illegal drug raid that left a 92-year-old woman dead closes only one chapter in the tragic case, the Atlanta Police Department said Wednesday. ... Carnes imposed the most severe sentence — 10 years — on Smith, 36, who obtained the illegal, no-knock search warrant allowing officers to batter down Johnston’s door. A terrified Johnston, thinking she was victimized by a home invasion, fired a warning shot through the door. Narcotics officers responded with a hail of gunfire, killing her. ...

So, you are sitting in your mothers basement right now, checking your favorite message boards while tending to the carpal tunnel syndrome you have developed from too many hours playing world of warcraft. You have a crush on that level 60 wizard, and she claims she is a girl, but then again, its probably another dude in his mothers basement. You'd like to get out sometimes. Sometimes you even do. You make it to the comic book store once a week, and sometimes even travel to local star trek conventions. Still, you wonder why you have not received the publicity...

This summer Price, 57, plans to continue on a journey to prove just that as he joins an expedition to Mount Ararat. His team believes that it is there, in Eastern Turkey, where Noah's Ark remains preserved underneath layers of rubble and ice. "There's a whole trail of history pointing to it [Mt. Ararat]," Price said in a recent interview. "But in our age, people tend to think it is more of a story like Jack and the Bean Stalk.' Our aim is to show that the Bible is good history." ...... A Kurdish shepherd told them that he had...

A Long Island man says his ex-boss is a real beef jerky who fired him after deeming his vegetarianism to be "gay." In papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, former Calyon in the Americas trader Ryan Pacifico says he was mercilessly mocked, labeled "a homo" and canned for not eating meat. "You don't even eat steak, dude. At what point in time did you realize you were gay?" the suit quotes beef-loving boss Robert Catalanello as saying. "Then everything changed drastically," Pacifico said. Catalanello did everything he could to make Pacifico uncomfortable - including only ordering hamburgers and pepperoni and...

Investigators are calling Monday's teacher disappearance a hoax, saying she's responsible for the anti-gay slur spray painted on her garage door, the broken window on her house and the blood and hair found in the kitchen. However, they stated, she hasn't committed a crime and will face no charges in an ordeal that she contends can't remember anything about. "We don't feel like she was abducted. There is no evidence she was abducted," said Capt. Vic Hollifield of the McDowell County Sheriff's Office. "We feel like what we saw at the scene was overkill versus what we usually see with...

The disappearance of a West McDowell Junior High School teacher took a bizarre but fortunate turn Monday night when the woman authorities had been searching for all day came out of the woods unharmed about a mile from her house. Capt. Vic Hollifield of the McDowell County Sheriff's Office said 28-year-old Amanda Fields appeared at a home on Candee Acres off Stacy Hill Road wearing multiple layers of clothing, including her pajamas, and baseball cleats. She had part of a rope around one wrist and a loose cord dangling from one foot. She sustained minor cuts and bruises, and there...

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — Federal agents raided a medical marijuana dispensary in South Lake Tahoe on Thursday. At about 11 a.m., five agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency — joined by members of the Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement, the South Lake Tahoe-El Dorado County Narcotics Enforcement Team and the South Lake Tahoe Police — served a federal search warrant on Patient to Patient Collective, located at 2314 Lake Tahoe Boulevard. Agents seized between five and 10 pounds of processed marijuana and a “small amount” of U.S. currency from the collective, said DEA Special Agent Gordon Taylor. Police made...

She didn't charge as much as Ashley Dupre -- the call girl who cost Eliot Spitzer his job as New York governor. But authorities say Barbara Anderson Cohen did not come cheap. Cook County Sheriff's spokesman Steve Patterson said Cohen was busted on a prostitution charge Jan. 16 after she flew in from Las Vegas and agreed to have sex in a Loop hotel. Her price, $1,000 for two hours, was the highest rate of any of the 120 women arrested by the sheriff's office in stings over the last two years, Patterson said.

Probation for pupil sex teacher Alison Smith Smith was placed on the sex offenders register at an earlier court hearing A former Aberdeen school teacher who admitted having sex with a 15-year-old pupil has avoided a jail sentence. Alison Smith, 29, a teacher at the city's Bankhead Academy, confessed the incident to church associates and her parents before going to the police. Smith was placed on probation for 18 months and given 200 hours community service at Aberdeen Sheriff Court. She had been charged in July last year over the allegations of an inappropriate relationship. The incident happened in June...

Listen to me and you shall hear, news hath not been this thousand year: Since Herod, Caesar, and many more, you never heard the like before. Holy-dayes are despis'd, new fashions are devis'd. Old Christmas is kickt out of Tow Yet let's be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn'd upside down. The wise men did rejoyce to see our Savior Christs Nativity: The Angels did good tidings bring, the Sheepheards did rejoyce and sing. Let all honest men, take example by them. Why should we from good Laws be bound? Yet let's be content, and the...

OK, in Oklahoma you can't buy 6 point beer that is already cold. So I go to the liquor store, and I buy some Beck's. When I get home, I put some in the FReezer. As usual, I forget to take them out of the FReezer, but I have different beers on different levels, so some are colder than others. Some, right near the top, have ice in them. So I put them aside until they that. Others near the bottom are very cold and drinkable. But, there is this recurring phenomenon where I will take a beer out of...

So, Were Dinosaurs on the Ark? In Genesis 6:19–20, the Bible says that two of every sort of land vertebrate (seven of the “clean” animals) were brought by God to the Ark. Therefore, dinosaurs (land vertebrates) were represented on the Ark. How Did Those Huge Dinosaurs Fit on the Ark? Although there are about 668 names of dinosaurs, there are perhaps only 55 different “kinds” of dinosaurs. Furthermore, not all dinosaurs were huge like the brachiosaurus, and even those dinosaurs on the Ark were probably “teenagers” or young adults.

LAWRENCE, Kan., Jan. 6 (UPI) -- A sixth-grader at a Lawrence, Kansas, school has successfully lobbied for a change in a municipal law that barred him from keeping a hedgehog as a pet. Judson King, 11, said that he began his lobbying campaign a year ago with a letter to the city commission, the Lawrence Journal-World reported Tuesday. In December, after written and oral presentations, the commissioners, convinced that hedgehogs pose no threat to the Kansas beef cattle industry, changed the law. Hedgehogs, which look something like small porcupines, are native to Europe and Africa. They were banned in Lawrence...

When the Bush Treasury decided to bail out Detroit, GM and Chrysler quickly said yes to the taxpayer cash, but Ford Motor Co. said it didn't need the money and declined. Ford's reward for this show of self-reliance? Treasury is now helping GM again by giving it a credit pricing advantage against Ford in the marketplace. That's one little-noted result of Treasury's action earlier this week to rescue GMAC, the GM credit arm that, as it happens, is 51% owned by the Cerberus private-equity shop that also owns Chrysler. With $5 billion in taxpayer cash in its pocket, GMAC quickly...

Charles Barkley's Oral Statements Ex-NBA superstar told Arizona cops he was racing to get a "blow job" DECEMBER 31--Following his arrest earlier today for drunk driving, Charles Barkley told Arizona cops that he ran a stop sign because he was in a hurry to pick up a girl who had "given him a XXXXX' one week earlier," which the former NBA star described as "the best one he had ever had in his life." According to a Gilbert Police Department report, a copy of which you'll find here, police asked Barkley where he was going at the time of the...