Free Republic

Hamas has made additional last minute demands of Israel in return for freeing abducted IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. Analysts say the demands could imperil the deal or postpone its implementation. While Hamas kingpin Khaled Mashaal has boasted that all Palestinian Authority (PA) female terrorist prisoners will be freed, his organization appears to have discovered at week's end that there are more such prisoners that it thought. The number of female PA terrorists in Israel's jails is 35, not 27 as Hamas apparently believed until now. Jacqueline Alfaraja, a lawyer for the PA's Prisoners' Club, told the PA based Ma'an news...

Secretary of State Kevin Shelley badly mismanaged a federally funded voter-rights program, costing counties the money they need to replace outdated voting machines, a state audit released Thursday concluded. Shelley -- California's chief elections official -- also failed to prevent his staff from improperly participating in overtly partisan Democratic events, the audit said. And his mishandling of Congressional Help America Vote Act funds and bungling of the HAVA program has left the state subject to federal penalties and in danger of missing a January 2006 deadline for instituting new voting requirements. "The office's insufficient planning and poor management practices hampered...