Free Republic

<p>Technology companies stung by the controversy over the National Security Agency’s sweeping Internet surveillance program are calling on U.S. officials to ease the secrecy surrounding national security investigations and lift long-standing gag orders covering the nature and extent of information collected about Internet users.</p>

Things have come full circle. Location counts again. That's why the East Bay towns — along with a few other places around the state, including neighborhoods in Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Pasadena and Silicon Valley — are still reasonably hot. There are more people who want to live in these areas than there are available houses.

The white populations of the District, Arlington and Alexandria have grown this decade even as the region's outer counties have grown more diverse, according to new census estimates to be released today that underscore how the area's soaring housing prices and job sprawl are reshaping its racial and ethnic dynamics. The city and those close-in Virginia suburbs had higher percentages of non-Hispanic white residents in 2004 than in 2000, a reversal of past trends, the estimates say. Minority groups grew more slowly than in the past, or declined. In the District, Arlington and Alexandria, whites became a larger share of...