Free Republic

Gov. Rick Perry made a stop in Dallas on Monday to announce the creation of a task force he said would attempt to put the brakes on runaway property value increases that are straining family budgets statewide. He called the 15-member Texas Task Force on Appraisal Reform the second phase of his plan to bring property tax relief to Texans that began with a cut in school property tax rates enacted this year. "Now, we have to address the rest of that equation," he said. "This is the second piece of a very complex issue." Former Texas Republican Party Chairman...

GLEN ROSE -- This is a story of love turned obsession and of a green-eyed, bald little girl with a French accent who wished it to come true. This little girl was named Claire Smith. She lived with her mother, Sophie, her father, Craig, and her baby brother, Cole, in a house in a town called Keller. One day in April 2005, when Claire was 4 years old, the doctors told her she had a tumor named for a man, Max Wilms. It was very scary because Claire had to go through a lot of very painful treatments for six...

Pollard Rogers figures that for years, the Cantey & Hanger law firm in Fort Worth has had one of the largest medical malpractice defense practices in North Texas. And it probably still does. But it's nowhere near as big as it was before the state changed the tort system three years ago, said Rogers, the firm's managing partner. The Medical Malpractice and Tort Reform Act of 2003 put caps on noneconomic (pain and suffering) damages that could be awarded and raised the standard of proof necessary to win a malpractice case against an emergency healthcare provider. There is no cap...

A federal district judge in Detroit has ruled that the Bush administration's NSA surveillance of phone conversations is unconstitutional.

The distance separating the digital world and the real world got a little shorter last week when Hewlett-Packard showed off a tiny wireless chip that can attach data to physical objects...... ..........Memory Spot is similar to a radio frequency identification chip, whose uses include tracking goods in the supply chain. The big difference is that RFID chips store a pointer or reference to a database entry, while Memory Spot stores the data itself. HP's chip has 4 Mbits of memory, despite being about the size of the tip of a pencil. That opens a range of uses, from sticking the...

This is a fascinating series. This guy deals with problem dogs, feral dogs, dogs that were on death row. He turns them into calm, submissive animals that can become good pets. This episode will be followed by another, on the National Geographic Channel.

Gilchrist is on with Mark right now and Davis is taking him to task for his defense of Corsi's NAU theories. "Kook nonsense" is what Davis called it, and Gilchrist backed off, saying he would take Mark's words under advisement. Now, Gilchrist is saying that he split with Simcox because he did not want to use the same consultants Simcox was using, but refused to tell Davis why. He said there is a lack of accountability in Simcox's organization and many are there to see how much money they can earn. "Country before mood swings" is what Gilchrist said.

WASHINGTON – With Congress at a stalemate over immigration, Texas' two senators took different tacks this week in hopes of breaking the logjam and getting a bill to President Bush's desk. Sen. John Cornyn and fellow Republican Jon Kyl of Arizona on Monday urged the president to make a bold move and demand that Congress immediately free up nearly $4 billion for hundreds of Border Patrol agents, immigration inspectors and border fencing. Doing so, they said, will convince Americans that the federal government is serious about enforcing immigration law – and could increase support for a broader bill that includes...

Some words just don't go together. For example, county commissioner and global conspiracy. If I heard that some dirty commies were plotting to overthrow our government, the first place I'd check would not be under the Tarrant County Courthouse dome. Most of our county officials would be lucky to overthrow a domino table. But there on the Web is Commissioner Glen Whitley's name in black and white, on loony extremist political pages from both the right and left wings, blaming him for promoting a Texas tollway that is portrayed as part of a sinister plot to merge Canada, Mexico and...

WASHINGTON - Quelling a rebellion by mostly southern conservatives over landmark civil rights legislation, House leaders announced Wednesday they will vote this week to extend the Voting Rights Act. "We intend to go on Thursday," House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, told reporters after a weekly meeting of House Republicans. Although a group of Republican lawmakers forced a last-minute delay in the bill in June, it has broad bipartisan support and is expected to pass the House easily. The Senate plans to take up identical legislation later this year.

Congress may be surprised when its public hearings on immigration energize all of us moderate Americans The immigration bills passed by the House and Senate in recent months could hardly be more different. The House package is harsh, punitive and focused exclusively on tougher enforcement. The Senate bill balances toughness with pragmatism by including provisions to admit the workers we need to keep our economy growing and deal with the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already in the country. The prospect of reconciling the two bills has always looked difficult – the legislative equivalent of marrying a giraffe and a...

The Republicans running the House may not be as smart as they think they are. They may have misread the public mood, which prompted them to press GOP Speaker Dennis Hastert to put off immigration negotiations with the Senate until September. They also may have misread some in their very own party. A poll being released today by the conservative Manhattan Institute and conducted by the Republican Tarrance Group shows most of the 800 likely GOP voters questioned want a solution now, even one that deals with the 12 million illegal immigrants here. Some of those surveyed even will accept...

Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has been fined $250,000 for his actions after game 5 of the NBA Finals in Miami. Among those acts was shouting "F** You" at David Stern, NBA Commissioner as he was leaving the arena, coming on the court after the game and getting in the face of Ben Salvatore, the referee who called a foul on Josh Howard in the final minute of the game as he attempted to block a shot by David Wade. Cuban then held a news conference, mocking nearly every question asked by the media. This is not the...

3rd period, 15 minutes left, and the Canes are beating the Oilers 4-0. Edmonton has never been in the game and has been unable to match Carolina's fast-paced, aggressive play. This Stanley Cup series could be a sweep.

ACAPULCO, Mexico – Like the weather in this booming resort, Mexico's economy is hot. The government is awash in oil profits. Exports are at record levels. The stock market index has almost doubled in the last two years. Unemployment is at 3.3 percent. So why do thousands of Mexicans, such as beachwear vendor Cristina Vargas, risk their lives crossing into the U.S.? And why is the practice expected to continue despite rising prosperity at home and tough border legislation pending in the U.S. Congress? "The money is just better over there," said Ms. Vargas, who swam across the Rio Grande...

While the details of immigration reform are battled out in Washington, one thing is certain: The feds must beef up their electronic employment verification infrastructure. No system to do that on a wide scale exists. The Department of Homeland Security has a pilot program that supports 6,200 employers who voluntarily use it to verify employee status with online data from Social Security, IRS, and U.S. immigration databases. Nearly all the employers find it useful, the Government Accountability Office found in a June report. But weaknesses such as the inability to detect identity fraud could limit the program's effectiveness, the report...

"Dog owners would be willing to work longer hours, commute a greater distance and even switch jobs or consider a salary reduction if their four-legged friends could accompany them to work," Kathy Gurchiek writes in HR MAGAZINE. She adds that 70 percent of those surveyed by the dog-obsessed Web site Dogster.com and the job search engine Simply Hired said a dog-friendly workplace was an important benefit. There is no mention of how the dogs would feel about going to work every day.

This really isn't my fight, since President Bush and Republican conservatives have had so close a relationship that they have excluded the rest of us on big issues like tax cuts and stem-cell research. But I'm going to stick my neck into their familial dustup over immigration long enough to tell conservatives they may be making a big mistake on this one. If they believe they can roll Mr. Bush on immigration as they did in stopping Harriet Miers' nomination to the Supreme Court or forcing a Dubai company to sell its U.S. port management operations, they could be miscalculating....

LS is talking about why America wins wars. Very interesting. Medved is streamed live in ksky.com

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- Roy Moore's unsuccessful fight to display the Ten Commandments and keep his job as Alabama's chief justice made him a national hero to religious conservatives three years ago. But Moore isn't being treated like a hero in the state's topsy-turvy race for governor. He trails Governor Bob Riley 2 to 1 in the polls and has an even wider gap in fund-raising as they head toward the Republican primary June 6. It's a scenario that seemed unlikely in 2003, when Moore rose to national prominence and Riley took a body blow from voters who rejected his proposed...