Free Republic

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) -- Gov. Bill Richardson found a surefire way to bypass traffic while heading to a bill-signing ceremony in Albuquerque last spring: Instead of driving the 60 miles south, he hopped aboard a speedy state police helicopter. The New Mexico governor has taken 40 trips on the sleek state-of-the-art chopper since December 2003, when the state bought it for $3.8 million to make search-and-rescue missions easier. There's nothing illegal about the governor's flights -- which take place, according to his administration, only if the aircraft is not needed by police. But some Republicans accused Richardson, who is...

An undercover informant helped investigators tape a conversation with one of the seven...radical environmentalists accused in a series of arson attacks and other crimes... Existence of the informant was disclosed last week by an investigator in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, N.Y., during a bail hearing for Daniel McGowan, 31, who faces indictments that he and another man firebombed the office of a wood products mill in Glendale and the office and truck shop of a tree farm in Clatskanie in 2001. The Earth Liberation Front, an underground group that advocates economic sabotage to stop environmental destruction, took credit for...

The incident began Sunday, when a good Samaritan who stopped to help a car stuck in the ditch smelled alcohol and noticed some venison — uncut and still kicking — in the trunk. She called 911. When the deputy arrived, 20-year-old Ryan Caples was still trying to free the car from the ditch and the doe was still trying to free itself from the trunk, kicking up a clatter... Caples allegedly told police he was a passenger in the car when it hit the deer and careened into the ditch. The driver, identified only as a man named Travis, allegedly...

A woman charged with damaging a transmission tower also is suspected in half a dozen other ecoterror crimes, including a firebombing at a Colorado ski resort, one of the costliest such crimes in the U.S. Chelsea Gerlach was ordered held without bail after Assistant U.S. Attorney Kirk Engdahl made the allegations against her. Gerlach, 28, was among six people arrested in five states last week on indictments alleging they set fires and damaged property between 1998 and 2001 in Oregon and Washington. The Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front took responsibility for most of the crimes. Gerlach, of Portland,...

A plan to build what could become the first large offshore wind farm in the United States would be effectively killed by a proposed amendment to a Coast Guard budget bill now making its way through Congress, people on both sides of the issue say. The amendment, offered by Representative Don Young, Republican of Alaska, would prohibit new offshore wind facilities within 1.5 nautical miles of a shipping lane or a ferry route. That would rule out construction of the installation, proposed for Nantucket Sound. The budget bill awaits action in a House-Senate conference committee. The developer, a private company...

Increase of 2.8 cents a gallon will begin Jan. 1 -- the biggest one-time jump in nearly 20 years, the N.C. Department of Revenue told the Observer Thursday. The latest tax increase, to 29.9 cents a gallon, will push North Carolina from having the nation's eighth-highest state gas tax to the sixth. "They're imposing a higher tax when the pain will be getting worse," said Mark Cooper, research director for the Consumer Federation of America. Republican state lawmakers proposed capping the gas tax at 24.6 cents to ease the pain of pump prices that passed $3 after Hurricanes Katrina and...

FBI agent testifies Arizona bookstore owner is suspected... A federal agent on Friday named an Arizona activist bookstore owner as the second suspect in the 1998 arson attacks at Vail resort that stood for years as the most damaging single act of eco-terrorism in the nation. Catalyst Infoshop owner William C. Rodgers was the second suspect this week linked by a federal law enforcement official to the $12 million conflagration that has been cloaked in mystery for seven years. FBI Special Agent Doug Linter testified in U.S. District Court in Flagstaff, Ariz., that investigators suspect the Prescott, Ariz., bookstore owner...

Iraq Interior Minister Bayan Jabir said terror attacks in the country decreased by 70 percent and no escapee has been arrested at Syrian borders for two weeks. In the statement to Kuwaiti reporters, Jabir indicates this figure was based on the latest statistics. The decrease in the number of these attacks is a big success, the minister noted, declaring by the end of next year Iraqi army could take over security. The US Army had declared after the months long operations against insurgents, suicide attacks had decreased to the lowest level in November and roadside bombings had been at its...

Stop the presses! Bill Clinton believed he had authority as President to authorize warrantless searches, and the NYT didn't repair to its fainting couch -- how come? Byron York on Bill Clinton & No-Warrant Searches on National Review Online In a little-remembered debate from 1994, the Clinton administration argued that the president has "inherent authority" to order physical searches — including break-ins at the homes of U.S. citizens — for foreign intelligence purposes without any warrant or permission from any outside body.

FBI document says group's missions plagued by errors Even as the Earth Liberation Front - a shadowy group of eco-terrorists that took credit for the Vail fires of 1998 - has eluded authorities for years, newly released evidence suggests some of the group's efforts have been plagued by almost slapstick gaffes. In one case, members driving on a mission to burn down a federal research facility in western Washington stopped along the way to shoplift some needed supplies from a big box hardware store. The plan was interrupted when one of the members was arrested for stealing sponges and a...

UNITED NATIONS - Secretary-General Kofi Annan lashed out at the media after a year of unrelenting attacks on the United Nations and criticism of his management of the $64 billion oil-for-food program in Iraq, calling one critic "an overgrown schoolboy." He criticized reporters Wednesday for what he said was unfair coverage of his role in the oil-for-food program and insisted reporters missed the big story. That, he said, was the more than 2,200 companies and invididuals from some 40 countries that paid kickbacks or illegal surcharges to Saddam Hussein's government to get contracts. An 18-month investigation led by former U.S....

While trying to find a nativity image for my last post before Christmas, I did an search for "baby jesus" on Google. This is the result. Notice that the top search result is for a sex toy that mocks Jesus. Other results on this search results page have more link traffic. A quick review of page's code shows no HTML meta information that should give it a favorable ranking. The page itself has a raw relevance ranking (search word divided by total words) of less than five percent. The only conclusion I can draw is that this page position ranking...

The Post article asserts at one point that Alito's answers on Roe and stare decisis "departed notably from those that [John Roberts] gave when asked similar questions during his confirmation hearing four months ago." But three paragraphs later, it contradicts itself, noting that Roberts was "reluctant" to address the issue and relying instead on his statements from his D.C. Circuit confirmation hearing in 2003. In sum, Roberts's and Alito's answers on Roe and stare decisis are substantively identical.

Compromise: The accord would divvy up the basin's water during dry years Representatives of the seven Colorado River Basin states announced Friday they have reached a tentative agreement about how the river will be managed during water shortages. The deal culminates a year of sometimes stormy negotiations between upper basin states Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico, plus California, Arizona and Nevada in the lower basin over how the river's precious resource should be shared. The stakes are enormous. Interior Secretary Gale Norton late in 2004 gave the seven basin states until February to submit a joint proposal for an...

Gov. Kathleen Blanco left for Holland on Monday to learn how the Dutch created the huge flood-control system that protects a land much farther below sea level than Louisiana. The trip means the Democratic governor will miss President Bush's visit to New Orleans, scheduled for Thursday... The governor was among more than 40 government, business and education leaders - including Sens. David Vitter and Mary Landrieu ... Landrieu said the ambassador told her about that country's flood of 1953, when 1,800 people died. "He said, `Why don't you all come over and see what we've done since then?'" Landrieu recounted....

Let's have some fun with statistics, shall we? In the senate judiciary committee hearings this morning, Ted Kennedy clumsily attempted to make use of a Cass Sunstein "study"... Writing for National Review Online two days ago, Byron York pointed out in advance that, with all its caveats, qualifications, and disclaimers, Sunstein's report is useful "to prove virtually nothing." Well, it does prove that if a bloated liberal senator gives Cass Sunstein enough money, in a very short time that scholar of unimpeachable credentials will produce a study of sufficient rigor to convince the bloated senator that what the bloated senator...

You've probably heard about the UMass student who claimed that Department of Homeland Security agents visited him after he checked out Mao's Little Red Book from the library. Well, he has now admitted that he made the story up.

Within the space of a single week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Sen. Edward Kennedy have managed to mangle reality with op-ed pieces in two of the nation's leading newspapers. ''As an environmentalist, I support wind power,'' began RFK Jr.'s op-ed piece in the New York Times, ... Then he proceeded to once again propagate the inaccuracies repeated like mantras by those opposed to the Nantucket Sound wind farm. ''The noise of the turbines will be audible onshore. A transformer substation would house...40,000 gallons of potentially hazardous oil... The Humane Society estimates the whirling turbines could every year kill thousands...