Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A judicial vetting committee of the State Bar is ranking California Supreme Court nominee Justice Carol A. Corrigan with the second-highest rating the panel offers, according to documents released Friday. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger nominated Corrigan, a San Francisco appeals court justice, to the state's highest court Dec. 9 to fill the vacancy on the seven-member court created when Justice Janice Rogers Brown resigned to fill a federal judicial post in the District of Columbia. The Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation, which consists largely of attorneys in various practices, told Schwarzenegger that, after reviewing her extensive record...

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) - Instead of paying social security taxes and wondering whether the government will ever deliver promised retirement benefits, Chilean workers bankroll their own retirements and manage their nest eggs. In visits to modern customer service offices as common as bank branches in this city of 5.5 million, they move money from one stock and bond fund to another and use ATM-like machines to make sure that monthly salary deductions go into pension savings. Two decades after Chile's military dictatorship scrapped the country's broken and bankrupt government-run social security system and replaced it with privatization, forced retirement savings...