Free Republic

May 1, 2007 -- FOXY Philadelphia TV reporter Alycia Lane is in hot water after a series of private e-mails and saucy snapshots she sent to handsome NFL Network anchorman Rich Eisen were intercepted by his wife. Suzy Shuster, a sideline reporter for ABC's college football broadcasts, hit the roof when she discovered seven e-mails and several bikini photos sent by Lane - who works for CBS affiliate WKYW-TV and is recently divorced - to an account she and her husband, Eisen, share. That had Shuster firing off to Lane a scathing letter, a copy of which was obtained by...

Commuters who want to take proposed high occupancy toll lanes may pay high cost Commuters using planned high occupancy toll lanes on Interstates 95 and 395 could pay as much as $1 per mile to drive on certain segments. The prices are in a project proposal from the Virginia Department of Transportation and the private companies that want to build the lanes, according to The Washington Post. The document was submitted Friday to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. It was unknown what the prices would be for motorists using Interstate 95 HOT lanes south of Prince William County. The...

Skinny, hatchet-faced, bespectacled American character actor, ubiquitous in literally hundreds of films. With his prominent nose, his rimless eyeglasses and his permanent scowl, he typically portrayed short-tempered and often loudmouthed bureaucrats, yes-men and other minor minions, principally in lighter fare.

[... snip ...] Attorney David Lane said that on June 16, Steve Howards was walking his 7-year-old son to a piano practice, when he saw Cheney surrounded by a group of people in an outdoor mall area, shaking hands and posing for pictures with several people. According to the lawsuit filed at U.S. District Court in Denver, Howards and his son walked to about two-to-three feet from where Cheney was standing, and said to the vice president, "I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible," or words to that effect, then walked on. Ten minutes later, according to Howards' lawsuit,...

COCOA — Local motorcycle builder Billy Lane turned himself in at 1 p.m. today in connection with a fatal accident Sept. 4. Among the charges Lane faces are driving under influence, manslaughter and driving with his license suspended. Lane, 36, arrived with his lawyers at the Florida Highway Patrol office on State Road 520. FHP spokeswoman Kim Miller said Lane’s blood alcohol level was .192 when the accident occurred on State Road A1A south of Melbourne Beach. She said bond would be set at $15,000. Investigators have said Lane was trying to pass two other vehicles on a double-yellow-lined stretch...

GALESBURG - Some of the Republican Party's heaviest hitters are now lending cash and clout to the campaign of 17th District congressional candidate Andrea Zinga. Zinga, along with U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Peoria, made stops Monday in the Quad Cities, Galesburg and Peoria to announce she has the party's full backing. "Between now and Election Day, you're going to see this race get a lot of attention nationally," LaHood said in Galesburg. Zinga, 56, of Coal Valley won the March primary election, edging out Jim Mowen of Rock Island. Brian Gilliland of Aledo finished a distant third. In November, she...

Illinois Democratic Rep. Lane Evans announced yesterday that he will retire at the end of this year, after having served 12 terms in the House. Evans cited his ongoing battle with Parkinson’s disease, diagnosed in 1995, as the reason for his decision. The announcement sets up a potentially competitive race for his eastern Illinois district, a traditionally Democratic area that has trended slightly more Republican in recent years. It also opens the senior Democratic position on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee for the first time since 1995. Evans, 54, has been staying at his Washington-area home for the past month after...

South Florida drivers who don't ''move over'' when they see the flashing lights of a law enforcement officer or medic working on the roadside may find themselves in trouble this week. While some troopers are stopping speeders on several freeways across the region, others will be lurking on nearby overpasses ready to target motorists who don't vacate the lane closest to the shoulder where officers have the speeders stopped. ''People are not aware of the move-over law, or they are completely ignoring it,'' Florida Highway Patrol Lt. Pat Santangelo said of the legislation passed in 2002. Here's how the project...

Top officials in Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s administration ordered the dismissal of a succession of mid-level state workers, plucked from a sheet of paper that an aide called the "death list," a former state personnel official told top lawmakers yesterday. The targeted employees were fired, in some instances, solely because they were Democrats, and in each case to make room for Republican political appointees, said Tom Burgess, who yesterday became the first former state employee to testify under oath before the panel investigating Ehrlich's personnel practices. The panel was convened this fall to examine complaints that Ehrlich (R)...

A former personnel manager for the Department of Human Resources told a legislative committee today that the Ehrlich administration ordered that some employees in his agency be fired "so supportive Republicans could be put into office." Thomas Burgess, a Republican who stayed on for about a year after Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. took office, said he was also fired and was told his name was put on a "hit list" because "I had the nerve to recommend that a Democrat be promoted" to a high-ranking position in the department. The workers who lost their jobs were at-will employees who...

Lawmakers heard colorful testimony Tuesday describing the hiring and firing practices of the Ehrlich administration, saying the governor's staff employed a hit list among state workers. WBAL-TV 11 News reporter David Collins reported that a former state worker testified for three hours before a special legislative committee. Thomas Burgess, a Republican who worked 15 years in state government, characterized Gov. Bob Ehrlich's administration as highly partisan and paranoid to the point of spying on their own people. Collins said the underlying theme to Burgess' three hours of testimony was that the Ehrlich administration wanted to weed out Democrats and bypass...

[Commentary on the book, "The Woman and the Dynamo: Isabel Paterson and the Idea of America", by S. Cox] The history of libertarianism has played out in the catacombs of standard American intellectual history. And so, even after an age of feminist theory and history, it is little noted that in 1943 three foundational documents of modern libertarianism were issued, as the journalist John Chamberlain put it, by “three women—Mrs. [Isabel] Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, and Ayn Rand—who, with scornful side glances at the male business community, had decided to rekindle a faith in an older American philosophy. There wasn’t...

Deidra Lane, who five years ago killed her estranged husband, former Carolina Panthers player Fred Lane, could get out of prison in less than four years. The 30-year-old mother of two children, who shot her husband in the chest and head with a 12-gauge, pump-action shotgun, has been given credit for the nearly three years she spent in jail awaiting trial.

5/18/05 BALTIMORE CITY PAPER Who’s Accusing WBAL-TV of Copying Other Media Outlets’ Reporting? LIVE, LOCAL, ALREADY BROKEN?: WBAL-TV reporter David Collins faces accusations of iffy reporting--accusations which may stem from his pursuit of the Joseph Steffen scandal. An anonymous letter delivered to City Paper last week accuses WBAL-TV reporter David Collins of plagiarizing The Sun and of misrepresenting information that had been published months earlier in The Washington Post and the Montgomery County Gazette as his own exclusive reporting. Collins and the local NBC affiliate deny any wrongdoing and say that he is the victim of a politically motivated campaign...

New e-mail messages obtained by the WBAL-TV 11 News I-Team could shed new light on the governor's claim of a political double crossing. WBAL-TV 11 News I-Team lead investigative reporter Jayne Miller said the e-mails are all tied to the former Ehrlich aide who was fired in February for spreading rumors about Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley's personal life on the Internet. Miller said the new messages provide details about former Ehrlich appointee Michelle Lane who was once a friend of Joe Steffen, the former Ehrlich aide who admitted to talking about the O'Malley rumor on a conservative Web site. --Snip--...

The WBAL-TV 11 News I-Team has learned that an Ehrlich aide met with an O'Malley cabinet member concerning rumors being spread about Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley. --Snip-- I-Team reporter David Collins said Michelle Lane, another aide to the governor, met with Baltimore City Health Commissioner Dr. Peter Beilenson in March 2003. Beilenson said most of the conversation dealt with her concerns over the state's foster care system. "She implied that (Steffen) was sort of, I guess the best term to be used would be, like a mole" in the Ehrlich administration, Beilenson said. "I'm not sure why she brought him...

E-mail messages detail a romantic relationship between two aides to the governor that abruptly ended before one was fired, the WBAL-TV 11 News I-Team has learned. Michelle Lane once dated Joe Steffen, who was a longtime aide to Gov. Bob Ehrlich. E-mail messages between the two indicate they had an office romance that abruptly ended, WBAL-TV 11 News I-Team reporter David Collins reported. Steffen resigned in February when it was revealed that he had spread rumors on the Internet about the personal life of Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, Collins reported. The E-Mail Messages Steffen called Lane "Chelle" and "sweetness." Acquaintances...

Towson nursing faculty member Michelle Lane believes the administration of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich pressured the University not to renew her contract, her lawyer asserted last week. Attorney Daniel Clements said the governor believes Lane was instrumental in exposing the actions of longtime Ehrlich aide Joseph Steffen, who was fired in February for spreading rumors about Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley. Clements wouldn't comment on whether or not Lane played a role in exposing Steffen. Despite the alleged interference, Lane is still scheduled to teach three courses in Fall 2005. "She came to understand that people in the administration were attempting...

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. yesterday accused a Baltimore County woman who threatened to reveal more information about the dealings of former administration aide Joseph F. Steffen Jr. of being a disgruntled ex-employee who worked with high-ranking Democrats to exact revenge on him after she was fired. The woman, Towson University pediatrics and nursing instructor Michelle Lane, released documents last week showing her dismissal came after she made a series of complaints to her supervisors at the Maryland Department of Human Resources about inadequate care for troubled children. Speaking on Stateline with Governor Ehrlich on WBAL-AM yesterday morning, Ehrlich suggested...

When Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. stood in front of the State House on Thursday and called on news reporters to investigate Michelle Lane, he said he suspected a little digging would expose her role in a politically motivated conspiracy to tar his reputation. Instead, lawmakers and public advocates have begun to review documents and e-mails that the former Ehrlich loyalist wrote in 2003 before being fired from her state job. They say Lane's correspondence may reveal something altogether different: deep flaws in the governor's handling of the state's foster care system. --Snip-- Paul E. Schurick, Ehrlich's communications director,...