Free Republic

LEONA VALLEY - The cherries are ripe, the orchards are open and the locals will be celebrating on Saturday. The 35th annual Leona Valley Cherry Festival, which starts at 11 a.m. with a parade through town, will feature a craft show, plenty of food and, of course, hand-picked cherries from the community's local orchards. "The orchards will be open, so you can go and stuff yourself with cherries," parade organizer Jim Bonn said. This year's theme is "Cherry Trees and Bumble Bees," an homage to longtime Leona Valley resident and orchard owner "Big John" Mayfield, who died in December. Mayfield...

There's no denying that the recently-released National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq is anything but rosy. But the key question is 'where do we go from here?' The answer, for every one of the Dem presidential contenders, is 'home,' at varying rates of speed. In editorializing on the NIE report, don't you think, then, that it would have been appropriate for the New York Times to mention what the report foresaw as the result of a hasty withdrawal? But the Times had better things to do with its ink, spending most of its editorial spinning the recent military success in Najaf...

Colorado could become the first state to scrap its winner-take-all system of casting electoral college votes for president and replace it with one based on a percentage of the popular vote. Supporters of the Make Your Vote Count campaign filed petitions containing more than 130,000 names Friday with state election officials. "And close to 20 percent of them (the signatures) are from Republicans," said Democratic political consultant Rick Ridder, campaign spokesman. "We see this as a multi-partisan effort." The measure would go into effect immediately for this year's presidential battle if voters approve. Had it been in effect here four...

Bush lied: * Bush allowed the neocons to create the Office of Special Plans to circumvent normal intelligence vetting procedures, * he asked only for info the backed his views and thus is guilty of cherry-picking data, * he distorted CIA reports in public speeches by removing caveats and disagreements between government agencies, * he used false logic ("we know he had em cause he used em"), * he jumped the gun several times after the invasion, saying we had "found WMD", and * he allowed Cheney to continue to make statements that were being contradicted by the CIA....

July 1995 Maryland pension system decides to use more minority money managers. Fall 1996 Nathan A. Chapman Jr. buys Minority Equity Trust, a fund invested in by a collection of minority-owned firms. One MET client is state pension system. December 1996 Chapman, as new MET owner, signs contract with pension system to manage some of its money. January 1997 Chapman signs contract with Alan B. Bond making Bond a manager in MET. Gives Bond $10 million in pension money to invest. January 1998 Chapman gets additional $40 million in pension money; gives $5 million of that to Bond to invest....