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WASHINGTON – A GOP senator from the nation's leading coal-producing state contends Democrats will increase energy costs and make the U.S. more dependent on foreign oil if they focus solely on alternative energy. In the party's weekly radio and Internet address Saturday, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said Republicans support a more comprehensive energy plan that would increase funding for energy research, develop U.S. oil and gas resources and promote clean coal and nuclear power. ... .. Barrasso said wind and solar only account for about 1 percent of U.S. electricity, far below what is needed to meet the nation's energy...

It took the greatest drop in state revenues since the Great Depression to crack it open, but California's dysfunctional budget process finally has been laid bare. Now the question is, how can we fix it permanently? That consideration should frame the way voters analyze the initiatives being offered on the May ballot. Time and again, California has committed to spending hikes during good times that it can't afford when the bad times eventually come. This cycle needs to be broken. If we had kept spending at the level of Gov. Gray Davis' first budget in 1999 (adjusted for inflation and...

Reporting from Arlington, Va. -- Wind turbines off U.S. coastlines could potentially supply more than enough electricity to meet the nation's current demand, the Interior Department reported Thursday. Simply harnessing the wind in relatively shallow waters -- the most accessible and technically feasible sites for offshore turbines -- could produce at least 20% of the power demand for most coastal states, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said, unveiling a report by the Minerals Management Service that details the potential for oil, gas and renewable development on the outer continental shelf.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 20, 2008 – More than 1,900 wounded servicemen and women have benefited from their enrollment in a specialized health program to meet their unique needs during their rehabilitative process. “As we began seeing more wounded servicemembers returning to our region, we identified some unique needs that they faced as they went on about the business of healing,” Thomas Carrato, program officer for Health Net Federal Services, said in a Nov. 18 “Dot Mil Docs” interview on BlogTalkRadio.com. This specialized care program was created in early 2007 when officials at Tricare, the Defense Department’s health care program, recognized...

I just got back from an invitation only event with Governor Palin in Pittsburgh, PA this morning. She was announcing the McCain Palin pollicy regarding special needs kids. They will fully fund the federal mandates of IDEA and work to improve programs for special needs kids. I got to meet her and shake her hand. I also got to see her in action... she was incredible with these special needs kids. She took time to talk to them, not just pose for a quick pic and move on. I laft after about 45 minutes after she ended her speech and...

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BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, Feb. 11, 2008 – Soldiers from the Afghan National Army’s 201st Kandak, assisted by coalition forces, visited elders in the village of Tangay, in the Tarin Kowt district of Afghanistan’s Oruzgan province Feb. 7. Village elders from Tangay, in the Tarin Kowt district of Afghanistan’s Oruzgan province, talk with soldiers from the Afghan National Army’s 201st Kandak and coalition forces during a visit Feb. 7, 2008. The soldiers were conducting a security patrol through the Tiri Rud River Valley when they stopped to meet with village elders to determine the needs of its residents. U.S....

FAHAMA, Iraq, Jan. 30, 2008 – As the teal dump truck made its way down the muddy street, local citizens appeared from behind the gates guarding their houses. They walked to the truck, their hands full of an empty burden. Army 1st Lt. Nick Piergallini (center) and Army Capt. Enardo Collazo (right), talk with Sheik Emad Abdul-Settar Muhammad, the senior sheik for the village of Fahama, Iraq, Jan. 27, 2008. Soldiers escorted a truck filled with empty propane tanks from the villages of Fahama and Gumayrah to Boob Al Sham to exchange them for full tanks. Photo by Pfc....

Hanover, PA, October 11, 2007 – At noon on October 13, more than 2,500 public rosary rallies will take place across America to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Marian apparitions of Our Lady at Fatima in Portugal. The American TFP and its America Needs Fatima campaign are coordinating the event and expect it to be the largest network of public rosary rallies ever held. “October 13 is the day the Miracle of the Sun occurred before 70,000 witnesses in Fatima in 1917,” said Robert Ritchie, director of America Needs Fatima. “The date also marks the last apparition of the...

The American TFP’s America Needs Fatima campaign (ANF) is offering a special privilege to all those planning to lead public square rosaries on October 13.  It will send a rose to Our Lady’s Fatima shrine in the name of each one on October 13.. America Needs Fatima offers this as a token of gratitude for the work these “rosary captains” are doing.  “Our rosary captains are struggling to publicly honor Our Lady on October 13,” said ANF director Robert Ritchie, “so, I wanted to give them a present that would glorify Our Lady and grant them graces.”The roses will be...

Without funding, lab space will be lostThe Seattle scientist who wants to test a controversial prediction from quantum theory that says light particles can go backward in time is, himself, running out of time. It's not a wormhole or warp in the space-time continuum. The problem is more mundane -- a black hole in the time-and-money continuum spawned by today's increasingly risk-averse, "performance-based" approach to funding research. "I guess you could say we're now living on borrowed time," wryly joked John Cramer, a physicist at the University of Washington. "All we need to keep going is maybe $20,000, but nobody...

NEW YORK - Has Barbara Walters lost it? Some of her co-hosts on “The View” may think so after her claim today about her Havanese dog Cha-Cha. Walters says when she told Cha-Cha she loved her, Cha-Cha said “I love you” back.

Young Iraqi Girl Needs Life Saving Surgery A young Iraqi girl who befriended U.S. Marines and sailors is in desperate need of life-saving surgery in order to save her life. By Cpl. Antonio Rosas1st Marine Division CAMP AL QA'IM, Iraq, Aug. 31, 2006 -- After befriending Marines and sailors serving in this region of Iraq, a 12-year-old Iraqi girl who is in need of a kidney and liver transplant is now in a life-or-death struggle. Hadael Hamade, a young Iraqi girl from Karabilah, a city of about 30,000 near the Iraq-Syria border, desperately needs life-saving surgery in order to...

Everyone is scientific circles is abuzz with the big news: there's proof that dark matter exists! The paper from the scientists who made the discovered is here; and a Sean Carroll (no relation) has a very good explanation on his blog, Cosmic Variance. This discovery happens to work as a great example of just why good science needs good math. As I always say, one of the ways to recognize a crackpot theory in physics is by the lack of math. For an example, you can look at the electric universe folks. They have a theory, and they make predictions:...

SANTA FE, N.M. - America needs a "new realism" in its foreign policy and a concerted push for energy independence to safeguard national security, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a former U.N. ambassador, said Saturday. "What the Bush administration has failed to understand is that while diplomacy without power is weak, power without diplomacy is blind," Richardson said in the Democrats' weekly radio address. Richardson pointed to fighting between Israel and Hezbollah militants, escalating violence in Iraq, the stalemate with North Korea over its missile and nuclear programs and rising oil prices as evidence that "the world around us in...

This might not be a world war, but it still needs a sense of urgency By Niall Ferguson (Filed: 23/07/2006) This is not the first time that world leaders have had their summers ruined by "a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing". In the summer of 1938, the quarrel between Germans and Czechs over the Sudetenland - which inspired Neville Chamberlain's notorious phrase - brought Europe to the brink of war. Chamberlain's shuttle diplomacy, which saw him fly three times to see Hitler in Germany, was inspired by memories of an earlier quarrel over...

WASHINGTON, June 16, 2006 – About three-quarters of the $94 billion emergency funding bill President Bush signed yesterday is allocated for fighting the war on global terrorism, including more than $40 billion for ongoing operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Total military allocations for combating terror contained in H.R. 4939 amount to $70.4 billion. This includes $43.5 billion for Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Another $15.6 billion is set aside for replacing worn or destroyed equipment, military reorganization, and upgrading combat capabilities such as improved night-vision equipment, countermortar and rocket systems, and new vehicle armor. Another $2 billion is...

WASHINGTON, May 19, 2006 – The United States is depending on every one of its Defense Department employees, military and civilian alike, to contribute their talents to winning the war on terror, the defense secretary and top-ranking U.S. military officer said today at a Pentagon town hall meeting. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reminded the Pentagon town hall audience May 19 that the U.S. has to pressure the terrorists. "We can't just play defense," he said. "We have to play offense. ... We have to go after them and put pressure on them and make everything they do more difficult."...