Free Republic

Just heard it on the radio. He deserves it.

John McCain has taken a modest lead over Barack Obama in Colorado this week. The latest Fox News/Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds the Republican on top 48% to 46% (crosstabs available for Premium Members).

WASHINGTON - Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd reportedly received two mortgages under a special Countrywide Financial Corp. program that gave preferential interest rates to "friends" of the company's chairman. A spokesman for Dodd, D-Conn., said Friday that the senator did not seek any special treatment.

LONDON - London's Science Museum canceled a Friday talk by Nobel Prize-winning geneticist James Watson after the co-discoverer of DNA's structure told a newspaper that Africans and Europeans had different levels of intelligence. James Watson provoked widespread outrage with his comments to The Sunday Times, which quoted the 79-year-old American as saying he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really." He told the paper he hoped that everyone was equal, but added: "people...

Over the years, as it became Exhibit A for critics of shareholders’ class-action lawsuits, the law firm of Milberg Weiss often enjoyed the support of Democrats who called the suits an invaluable weapon in the universal conflict between big business and the little guy. The Democrats, in turn, enjoyed the support of Milberg Weiss and its partners, who together contributed more than $7 million to the party’s candidates since the 1980s.

Just a few months ago, former Fed chief Alan Greenspan was musing out loud about the odds of a U.S. recession. Economists and investors were debating how soon the central bank would cut short-term interest rates to help ease the impact of a widening housing slump. But with both businesses and consumers in a spending mood, the economy bouncing back, and inflation apparently in check, those hopes for a rate cut have all but vanished.

WASHINGTON - Five years ago this month, President Bush stood in the Rose Garden and laid out a vision for the Middle East that included Israel and a state called Palestine living together in peace. "I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror," the president declared. The takeover this week of the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group dedicated to the elimination of Israel demonstrates how much that vision has failed to materialize, in part because of actions taken by the administration. The United States championed Israel's departure from the Gaza Strip...

Anti-death penalty forces have gained momentum in the past few years, with a moratorium in Illinois, court disputes over lethal injection in more than a half-dozen states and progress toward outright abolishment in New Jersey. SNIP What gets little notice, however, is a series of academic studies over the last half-dozen years that claim to settle a once hotly debated argument — whether the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder. The analyses say yes. They count between three and 18 lives that would be saved by the execution of each convicted killer.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court limited workers' ability to sue for pay discrimination Tuesday, ruling against a Goodyear employee who earned thousands of dollars less than her male counterparts but waited too long to complain. The 5-4 decision underscored a provision in a federal civil rights law that sets a 180-day deadline for employees to claim they are being paid less because of their race, sex, religion or national origin.

NEW YORK - Renee Weese has reached an enviable goal ? she?s become a millionaire. But like many others whose net worth has risen in recent years to seven figures, she doesn?t feel particularly wealthy. snip To people living paycheck to paycheck or who haven?t saved much ? which is the bulk of the U.S. population ? $1 million seems very far out of reach. But a growing number of Americans are accumulating that amount and more. According to research from Merrill Lynch & Co. and the consulting firm Capgemini, some 2.9 million people in the United States and Canada...

American fertility is roughly at the replacement rate, 2.1 children per woman. Nor does the U.S. rate merely reflect, as some think, a higher rate among Hispanic Americans. The fertility rate is 1.9 for non-Hispanic whites and about 2 for African-Americans, reports demographer Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute. What explains the American exception? Eberstadt cites three differences with Europe and most other advanced countries: greater optimism, greater patriotism and stronger religious values. There's some supporting evidence. A survey by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago asked respondents in 33 countries to react to this...

For most Americans, today’s rising gasoline prices are an annoyance, not a serious financial hardship. Then there are people like Kenneth and Edith Taylor of Baltimore, who already struggle to make their monthly social security checks of less than $1,700 last by cooking casseroles and soups at home instead of eating out and forgoing new clothes for as long as possible. Now, with neighborhood pump prices averaging $2.85 a gallon, the Taylors say they simply cannot afford the 80-mile roundtrip to visit their daughter more than once a month.

Zimbabwe has only two weeks of wheat supply left, while citizens are faced with soaring bread prices, Zimbabwe's main milling organisation has said. The cost of bread has risen by 30%, pushing Zimbabwe's inflation rate to more than 600%. Zimbabwe has been in economic decline since President Robert Mugabe began seizing white-owned farms in 2000. The government is reported to have put its security forces on alert in case the discontent leads to protests. David Govere, deputy chairman of the Millers Association, told AFP news agency the scarcity of wheat has meant a reduction in supplies to bakeries. It's a...