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To hear them tell it, the five police agencies who apprehended 39-year-old Oregonian David Pyles early on the morning of March 8 thwarted another lone wolf mass murderer. The police "were able to successfully take a potentially volatile male subject into protective custody for a mental evaluation," announced a press release put out by the Medford, Oregon, police department. The subject had recently been placed on administrative leave from his job, was "very disgruntled," and had recently purchased several firearms. "Local Law Enforcement agencies were extremely concerned that the subject was planning retaliation against his employers," the release said. Fortunately,...

There’s a new reason to worry about the security of your Social Security number. Turns out, they can be guessed with relative ease. A group of researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University say they’ve discovered patterns in the issuance of numbers that make it relatively easy to deduce the personal information using publicly available information and some basic statistical analysis. The research could have far-ranging implications for financial institutions and other firms that rely on Social Security numbers to ward off identity theft. It could also unleash a wave of criminal imitators who will try to duplicate the research.

WASHINGTON - Republicans in the House Wednesday pressed a budget plan that would cut taxes and radically overhaul Medicare, offering a stark alternative to blueprints offered by President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies. The plan, drafted by Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, the top Republican on the Budget Committee, also freezes overall spending on domestic programs passed by Congress each year and repeals most of the spending in Obama's recently passed economic stimulus bill.

Whew. Now that 2008 is in the history books, $8.5 trillion in federal bailout money is in the pipeline, and bold leadership is set to take command, Americans can all breathe a little easier, right? Uh, no. The unhappy fact is that 2009 is almost certain to feature more economic hardship than the year that preceded it. President-elect Barack Obama may think he has steeled himself and his administration for this outcome, but three major factors argue against Obama truly being prepared for what's to come. Insane expectations. It was no mistake that Vice President-elect Joe Biden was dispatched to...

Since 2003, worldwide oil prices have quadrupled. According to a new study, the price of oil is rising at a faster-than-exponential rate, and cannot be sustained. In other words, we’re in the midst of an oil bubble, say researchers Didier Sornette and Ryan Woodard of ETH Zurich in Switzerland and Wei-Xing Zhou of the East China University of Science and Technology in Shanghai, China. By analyzing oil prices over the past four years, the researchers have demonstrated more support for the hypothesis that the recent oil price run-up has less to do with supply-demand interplay and more to do with...

Hillary wins Pennsylvania

Humans existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunters and gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer and would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in winter. The 2 most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer. These were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into 2 distinct subgroups: Liberals and Conservatives. Once beer was discovered it required grain and that was...

A coffee shop called Starbucks bang in the middle of Kandahar is hardly something one takes in one's stride. Before we go any further let's be clear - it is no relation of the US-based international chain of the same name. Kandahar's coffee shop may not have the crisp decor and skinny lattes which are regulation fare for Starbucks the world over. But customers in the southern Afghan city say it is a welcome diversion from dusty, narrow streets, haywire traffic and conservative views. Kandahar's Starbucks boasts its own lively atmosphere with smartly dressed locals - some in trousers and...

I wandered over to the local grocery store and the usual stuck in the sixties hippies and clueless anarchists were protesting. I was pleased to note a counter protest had formed on the opposite corner, waving signs such as "Honk if Hippies Piss You Off." Or, and this sign was in response to the hippie "2000 died for what?" sign, "2000 died for You." The counter protesters also had American flags taped to a signal pole. I wandered through enemy lines and congratulated the fine young men. I also said, loudly, as I wandered through enemy lines that "it's always...

WHITE House speechwriters first learned the name Harriet Miers in January 2001, when drafts started reappearing full of corrections, instructions and particularly annoying requests for factual substantiation. In the campaign, life had been simpler, the editing and fact-checking a little more casual. Now the old ways wouldn't do anymore because "Harriet said" this or "Harriet said" that. Who was this woman, and could the staff secretary please confine herself to secretarial duties? --snip-- It is true that Harriet Miers, in everything she does, gives high attention to detail. And the trait came in handy with drafts of presidential speeches, in...

The American magazine Time has recommended the little-known sport of yak skiing in India as one of the 10 best ways in Asia to relax the mind. The magazine's Asian edition says this "implausible extreme sport" involves going at rocket speed uphill attached by rope to a yak charging downhill. The skier attracts the yak from up high by shaking a bucket of nuts, which must be put down fast before the fun begins. "The sport may be a barmy injunction to even barmier tourists," Time says. Nervous wait According to the article, yak skiing is carried out in the...

My old friend and frequent critic Geoffrey Wheatcroft once tried to define a moment of perfect contentment and came up with the idea of opening a vintage wine while settling down to read an undiscovered work by P.G. Wodehouse. Another comrade identified bliss with writing or reading very hard in the afternoon, knowing that someone really, really nice was coming to dinner. I, too, have a taste for the simpler pleasures. Can I convey the deep sense of delight that stole over me when I learned that George Galloway and Jane Fonda were to go on an "anti-war" tour together...

I know hardly anybody who comes out of this examination with complete credit. There were neoconservatives who jeered at Rushdie in 1989 and who couldn't see the point when Sarajevo faced obliteration in 1992. There were leftist humanitarians and radicals who rallied to Rushdie and called for solidarity with Bosnia, but who--perhaps because of a bad conscience about Palestine--couldn't face a confrontation with Saddam Hussein even when he annexed a neighbor state that was a full member of the Arab League and of the U.N. (I suppose I have to admit that I was for a time a member of...

WASHINGTON — Escalating its courtship of a politically powerful constituency, the Bush administration is teaming up with some of the nation's best-known and most influential black clergy to craft a new role for U.S. churches in Africa. The effort was launched last week, when more than two dozen leading African American religious figures met privately with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and senior White House officials at the State Department, according to administration officials and meeting participants. The hourlong session focused largely on how the administration's faith-based initiative could be expanded to combat the spread of HIV and provide help...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A Senate rider inserted in an emergency appropriations bill in the dead of the night, which would close a rare window into political foul play at the Internal Revenue Service, was quietly removed Tuesday in Senate-House negotiations. That offers full disclosure of a major scandal that has been percolating for a decade. The rider would have de-funded the investigation begun in 1995 of then-Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros by Independent Counsel David Barrett. The amendment was sponsored by three highly influential Democrats, purportedly to stop leakage of federal money in a run-on program and end persecution of a...

A leader in America's financial services industry stopped by Bakersfield Wednesday. KW Associates, Realtors Richard Kovacevich, chairman and chief executive officer of Wells Fargo & Co. in San Francisco, addressed graduate students in the School of Business and Public Administration at Cal State Bakersfield, professors and local business leaders. His appearance was part of the school's Executive Briefing series, in which prominent professionals speak at the school. In case you're wondering, Kovacevich is not related to the local farming family with the same last name. Before Kovacevich stepped to the podium in the CSUB lecture hall, he sat down with...

Fake News Under Bill Clinton If the media is truly so outraged about these VNRs, why were they not outraged during the Clinton adminstration? Listen to the radio version Send this page to a friend Format this page for printing While the media created a "scandal" over the Bush administration's use of video news releases (VNR), they continue to decline to report any details about the Clinton administration's production and use of VNRs. Clinton, like Bush, produced VNRs on a Medicare drug benefit. The VNR contained prepackaged news segments which were very similar in that they were not labeled as...

OJAI, Calif. (AP) - Lance Armstrong was a surprise entry at a cycling race, stunning riders at the line minutes before the start and then finishing 15th in the Lemire Memorial Grand Prix. Wearing a blue and white jersey, the Tour de France champion took his place with others for the 90-minute criterium race through rural Ventura County on Sunday. Armstrong, who rarely rides in the United States, is tuning up for an attempt this summer for a record seventh straight title at the Tour de France. He is scheduled to ride in the Tour of Georgia on April 19-24....

There was an honest, forthright case for ending the life of Terri Schiavo. It was that her life no longer had any value, for herself or others, and that ending it — the quicker the better — would spare everyone misery. We disagree with that view, holding it wiser to stick with the Judeo-Christian tradition on the sanctity of innocent life. But the people who made this case deserve some credit for straightforwardness. But while the public may have agreed with the removal of Schiavo's feeding and hydration tube, apparently there are limits to the public's willingness to tolerate euthanasia...