Free Republic

An upstate man whose beloved squirrel was cruelly killed by the state said he was treated like a “terrorist” when 10 government agents descended on his home during a five-hour raid. Mark Longo, whose pet Peanut captured the hearts of 3 million social media users, was stunned when a convoy of vehicles carrying officials from the state departments of Environmental Conservation and Health arrived at his Pine City home Wednesday. “They treated me like I was a terrorist. They treated this raid as if I was a drug dealer. They ransacked my house for five hours,” Longo told The Post...

Property owners or tenants who don't remove graffiti within two weeks after receiving notice from the city could be fined up to $500 under a proposal sent to the City Council on Monday. Councilman Adrian Garcia, chairman of the committee, said the change would help city officials enforce rules that require Houstonians to remove graffiti on their property in a timely manner. "People don't want to be at risk of getting a ticket," he said. Existing law requires property owners to abate graffiti within 30 days, or ask the city to do it.

MPAA Trains Dogs to Sniff Out Pirate DVDs Two black Labradors are being employed in the fight against piracy in the U.K. Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service Thursday, May 11, 2006 The Motion Picture Association of America is putting some bite behind its bark in its fight against illegally copied CDs and DVDs. The movie industry group has funded the eight-month training of two black Labradors, called Lucky and Flo, who can now sniff out optical discs at customs points and other locations. The MPAA worked with its U.K. counterpart, the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT). While dogs have long...

Linda McQuaig argues that proposed $7 billion in tax cuts would be better spent on 250,000 homeless LINDA MCQUAIG An amazing thing happened last spring. Fearing it was about to be toppled, the minority Liberal government of Paul Martin gave in to NDP leader Jack Layton's demand that almost $5 billion in corporate tax cuts be cancelled and the money spent instead on things Canadians desperately want — including housing, public transit and the environment. And the country didn't collapse. Economist Mike McCracken notes that the $5 billion in corporate tax cuts would have mainly ended up in the coffers...

In the early 1990s, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics issued standards that disparaged basic skills like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, since all of these could be easily performed on a calculator. In a comparison of a 1973 algebra textbook and a 1998 "contemporary mathematics" textbook, Williamson Evers and Paul Clopton found a dramatic change in topics. In the 1973 book, for example, the index for the letter "F" included factors, factoring, fallacies, finite decimal, finite set, formulas, fractions and functions. In the 1998 book, the index listed families (in poverty data), fast food nutrition data, fat in...

It seems our math educators no longer believe in the beauty and power of the principles of mathematics. They are continually in search of a fix that will make it easy, relevant, fun, and even politically relevant. In the early 1990s, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics issued standards that disparaged basic skills like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, since all of these could be easily performed on a calculator. The council preferred real life problem solving, using everyday situations. Attempts to solve problems without basic skills caused some critics, especially professional mathematicians, to deride the "new, new math"...

More on yesterday’s “unseemliness” story. The blogger who runs the site that goes by the now-obsolete title of “CrushKerry.com” has compiled a list of donors to the W. Re-Inaugural who are also donating to the tsunami victims. Putting together a list like this is tough: Many of the Inaugural donors are individuals who do not necessarily make a public disclosure of their other charitable benefactions. Still, he did find information on 15 corporate Inaugural donors. They have contributed $30 million to tsunami relief, or more than the total given to the Inaugural by all donors, corporate and individual. Click here...

<p>The Bush-Cheney campaign yesterday accused Sen. John Kerry of "raw political opportunism" and using the recent troubles in Iraq for his political gain, as the Democratic presidential candidate continued calling for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld from the campaign trail.</p>

Many North Koreans died a "heroic death" after last week's train explosion by running into burning buildings to rescue portraits of leader Kim Jong-il and his father, the North's official media reported on Wednesday. Portraits of Kim and his late father, national founder Kim Il-sung, are mandatory fixtures in every home, office and factory in the hardline communist state of 23 million. All adults are required to wear lapel pins bearing images of one or both Kims. Last Thursday's blast in the town of Ryongchon, near the Chinese border, killed at least 161 people and injured 1,300, according to international...

White-collar crooks deserve tough treatment. But 24 years for Dynegy's Jamie Olis? Politics has turned financial fraud into a worse crime than running drugs or killing someone. Former Tyco chief executive Dennis Kozlowski is a lucky guy. Not because a stubborn juror landed him a mistrial. He's lucky because even if New York prosecutors retry him, as they've vowed to do, the flamboyant former exec is looking at 15 to 30 years, no more. Were Kozlowski in federal court instead, he could easily be facing what amounts to a life sentence--with no chance of parole--under rigid new sentencing guidelines. While...