Free Republic

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Talk about going from the frying pan into the fire. The Milwaukee Brewers' racing sausages, still hot under their collars - er, casings - after being whacked by the Pirates' bat-wielding Randall Simon last month, will confront their biggest enemy this side of Jimmy Dean again Friday. This time, rather than the sausages vs. Simon, it will be the sausages vs. the Pirates' racing pierogies in a match race during the Brewers-Pirates game. The winner will be awarded the cherished Golden Skillet for mascot-racing excellence. The loser will try to avoid being served as a main course...

This is the captain speaking. Who wants to get off? By Paul Stokes (Filed: 12/08/2003) Fourteen passengers, including a former pilot, refused to rejoin a holiday flight after they were involved in two high-speed test runs to check a faulty warning light. The light came on as flight MYT392, a Boeing 757-200 operated by MyTravel, was preparing to take off from Minorca with 230 passengers bound for Leeds-Bradford airport. It indicated that the aircraft was airborne when it was still on the ground. The captain used the recognised procedure of accelerating along the taxiway, a test area beside the runway,...

Shevaun Pennington seemed to be the same as any normal 12-year-old experiencing growing pains. She listened to loud punk rock, surfed the Net for hours and talked endlessly of "her boyfriends" despite never having been on a proper date. No one could have guessed that the person she referred to as her "American boyfriend" was something other than the figment of an excitable school-girl's imagination. The "boy" in question was in reality Toby Studabaker, a 31-year-old American Marine who, two weeks ago, discharged himself from the US military to meet the child he had befriended in his e-mails. Together, they...

About a year after a high-ranking Republican officeholder in Illinois illegally used state workers to try to keep LP candidates off the ballot, a federal grand jury is investigating the incident. According to a report in the Chicago Tribune, a federal grand jury is looking into charges that Illinois Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka used state employees to challenge a slate of Libertarian candidates before the 2002 election. The employees were on the state clock at the time. Topinka, who was first elected state treasurer in 1994, is currently serving her third term in office. She also serves as the state...

<p>The United Nations expects to pay more than $100 million to shut down Iraq's oil-for-food program, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Monday.</p> <p>The council voted last month to lift all economic sanctions against Iraq and to eliminate the program by Nov. 21.</p>

Man Admits Cutting Dogs' Tails Off; Says He Needed To Be Entertained Dog Tails Found In Freezer Posted: 6:24 p.m. EDT May 29, 2003Updated: 7:06 a.m. EDT May 30, 2003 A 36-year-old Central Florida man admitted Thursday that he chopped the tails off five of his landlord's six dogs and then stored their tails in a freezer because he needed to be entertained, according to Local 6 News. Nelson Rodriguez was arrested after sheriff's deputies found his landlord's missing Akita-mixed dogs mutilated inside the Rodriguez's Pine Castle home. Rodriguez told Local 6 News Thursday that he cut the dog's tails...

BA Concorde twice abandons take off A British Airways Concorde is flying back to the UK after it was twice forced to abandon take-off while carrying showbiz stars. The supersonic jet twice abandoned take-off as it prepared to thunder along the runway in Barbados after a warning light flashed-up in the cockpit. It indicated a problem in one of the jet's four thrusters, which gives the engine extra power for take-off. Captain Derek Woodley eventually abandoned Saturday's scheduled BA Flight 272 and the 73 passengers aboard the £6,800-a-head flight were taken off the aircraft. Some were put onto another BA...

EU fleet is launched to head off immigrants By Isambard Wilkinson in Madrid (Filed: 29/01/2003) The European Union yesterday launched its own "navy" to patrol the southern shores of Europe and head off the pirate flotillas that ship illegal immigrants from North Africa. The scheme, called Operation Ulysses, involves five European nations, including Britain, which will contribute a Customs cutter, Seeke. The flotilla is viewed as the first step towards a common EU border guard. The quasi-military fleet is one of a host of measures being sought by countries such as Spain and Italy, who have complained of bearing the...

Voluntary Alternatives to Taxation Stuart K. Hayashi Most Americans believe paying taxes is a patriotic duty. Yet this very nation was founded upon people evading taxes in 1776. When individuals don’t pay taxes, the government goes after them with guns, even though they haven’t used force on anyone else. Thus, taxation is an initiation of physical force against the individual’s right to life, liberty and property. Because taxation is forcible extortion, it violates your right to property. If you don’t pay taxes, you can be jailed, hence depriving you the right to liberty. And if tax “evaders” fight tax...

RALEIGH — Gov. Mike Easley and the state legislature have approved a revised budget for the current fiscal year that will likely result in hundreds of millions of dollars in new taxes on North Carolina businesses and families, further damaging an already weakened state economy, according to a preliminary analysis by the John Locke Foundation. John Hood, chairman and president of the Raleigh-based think tank, observed that the new budget directly raises the state tax burden by approximately $157 million, largely through changes in business taxes and the elimination of previously scheduled tax cuts that had been designed to help...

    Update About Cuba Underwater Megalithic Research 2002 by Linda Moulton Howe A half mile down in the waters of Cabo de San Antoniooff the western tip of Cuba's Guanahacabibes marked by red X is a 20-kilometersquare area of clean, white sand punctuated by tall, megalithic stones or structures first reported in May 2001 by Paulina Zelitsky, Ocean Engineer, Havana, Cuba. "They (megalithic stones) are very unique structures. They really are not easy to understand and I do not have any easy explanation for them in a natural geological process." ­ Manuel Iturralde-Vinent, Ph.D., Geologist, National Museum of...