Free Republic

Sprinkled in among the headlining technologies represented at the expo were small companies with ideas you may never have heard of, technologies that have found their way into niche markets and that are described below. As congressional staffers questioned the representatives from these companies, cost was one of the primary concerns. Again and again, the salespeople made the same pitch: their technologies, which tend to be more expensive up front, would pay for themselves in the long run.

Bad news: It’s not for America, but for Mexico and Central America. The Merida Initiative, which I have blogged about extensively (see here), passed earlier today by a 311-106 margin. Via CQ Politics: ------------------------------------------------------------------ The bill would authorize $595 million for fiscal 2008, $645 million for fiscal 2009 and $350 million for fiscal 2010. The Senate supplemental would provide $450 million for fiscal 2008; the House version would include $461.5 million. The administration had requested $550 million. Members cited Mexico’s increasingly violent drug war, which has taken some 6,000 lives in the last two years, including recent assassinations of two...