Free Republic

No wonder Mel Gibson is giving the thumbs-up. Full time has been called on his 28-year marriage to Robyn Moore. The Pope didn't give the order, though. That edict came from Mel's 90-year-old father Hutton Gibson, and it paves the way for his son to marry his pregnant Russian girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva by Christmas. Having had his request turned down by Catholic bishops, Mel, 53, pleaded his case in front of a tribunal of members from the Church of the Holy Family, his breakaway Catholic church in Malibu. Hutton, who once studied for the priesthood only to leave before he...

05:11 PM ET (Updates with background, comments) SAN FRANCISCO, May 13 (Reuters) - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, citing better-than-expected revenues, unveiled a revised state budget on Friday for the coming fiscal year that would raise spending to $115.7 billion and plug a shortfall estimated to have narrowed to $4 billion. Schwarzenegger also said he no longer sees the need for issuing debt, including $1.7 billion in economic recovery bonds, to balance the state's books. His initial spending plan issued in January for California's 2005-06 fiscal year totaled $111.7 billion and aimed to balance the budget by closing a shortfall then...

Hector Mata/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images Senator John Kerry, who spent the weekend at his family's home in Nantucket, Mass., took his boat out for a Sunday morning ride. NANTUCKET, Mass., June 20 - Thwarted by fog, a flat bicycle tire and a tricky wind, Senator John Kerry spent most of a shortened Father's Day weekend secluded in his wife's seaside retreat here in one of the nation's most exclusive summer playgrounds. His Boeing 757 campaign plane was grounded in Washington on Friday night when the weather prevented landing at Nantucket's airstrip, which has seen only one jet of...