Free Republic

(CNSNews.com) – Less than a week after the Environmental Protection Agency restarted a controversial dredging project on the Hudson River, dredgers operated by the General Electric Company dislodged wooden beams that are the last remnants of one of the largest British forts in the American colonies. The EPA now says that the beams are contaminated with potential carcinogens known as PCBs and therefore must be buried in a landfill. The dredging operation is being conducted to remove sediments containing PCBs from the river about 40 miles north of Albany, N.Y. Fort Edward, where the dredging damage occurred, was one of...

A fast spinning windmill appeared "out of control," and threatened traffic on the highway between Los Angeles County's high desert and the San Joaquin Valley, a CHP dispatcher in Bakersfield said today. The CHP dispatcher said the windmill is spinning too fast and might fly apart, which is why Highway 58 in the Tehachapi Pass was closed down both directions between Mojave and about 45 miles north of Lancaster and Tehachapi. The malfunctioning electric generator is one of thousands of windmills installed along both sides of Highway 58 in Tehachapi Pass. Traffic was being detoured onto parallel county roads. Traffic...

WASHINGTON – The Democratic-controlled House approved $410 billion legislation Wednesday that boosted domestic programs, bristled with earmarks and chipped away at policies left behind by the Bush administration. The vote was 245-178, largely along party lines.

Republican members of the House and Senate yesterday held a rare joint press conference to make a statement of solidarity and to give an update on the state of the “stimulus” spending bill that is being rushed through the Senate as if on roller skates. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) co-hosted the presser with Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), the chairman of the Republican Study Committee. DeMint reamed the Obama administration and Democrat leadership for the hasty process and the bill’s content. “Americans are outraged that the Democrat majority has used our economic troubles in this country as an excuse to pass...

Las Vegas police officers served a search warrant at the Seven Hills home of Emmanuel Dozier on Panorama Ridge Drive in Henderson at about 9:30 last Sunday evening. The officers say they announced themselves, got no response, and opened fire to break the lock off the metal front door. At that point, the suspect, a 32-year-old sheet-metal worker, also opened fire. Three police officers were wounded. Mr. Dozier, who was suspected of cocaine trafficking and is now held in lieu of $3 million bail, says he thought it was a home invasion. "I want you to know something in your...

SACRAMENTO – From a base camp at Fort Hunter Liggett where he plots maps for strike teams battling infernos in the Big Sur wilderness, Cal Fire Capt. Allan Lippe struggles with the fatigue of nonstop 15-hour shifts and the knowledge that firefighters are staring at a 2008 fire year that threatens to grow into one of the most drawn-out and dangerous ever. “When it starts this early, you talk to the wife and warn her that it will be a long summer,” said Lippe, one of more than 300 firefighters from the San Diego region now on fire lines from...

A 15-year-old girl who stopped her out-of-control school bus was hit with a Saturday detention because she was supposed to be in class when the accident happened. Marina High School student Amanda Rouse was on a bus with 40 elementary school students Wednesday morning when the driver fell out of her seat after a turn and hit her head. Rouse jumped up and applied the brakes, bringing the bus to a halt after striking two parked cars. No one was injured. But Rouse said she was punished because she wasn't supposed to be on the bus in the first place....

PHOENIX (AP) — A woman who died in police custody during an airport layover was intoxicated on a potent mix of alcohol and antidepressants and accidentally strangled herself on her shackles, an autopsy released Friday concludes.

Last week, Congress allowed itself to continue overspending by raising the maximum national debt. The new debt limit, $9,815,000,000,000, is $850,000,000,000 larger than it was before. A Heritage chart puts this mind-boggling figure in perspective. Nine trillion dollars in one dollar bills would: Fill the Empire State Building nine times; Cover the entire state of Maine (35,387 square miles, including water); or Stretch 218 times longer than the total length of every road and highway in the U.S. To put it another way, this $9 trillion could buy: A quarter of the nation's 125 million homes at last year's average...

BENTONVILLE -- The father of a 17-year-old girl found his daughter's boyfriend hiding inside her bedroom closet Tuesday, beat him bloody with a pool stick, then left the room to fetch a gun. The daughter and boyfriend blocked the door with a dresser, so the father shot through the closed door, hitting the boyfriend in the back and paralyzing him, police said. George David Reed, 48, posted a $150,000 bond and was freed from jail Wednesday afternoon as Michael Austin Guzman, 19, underwent surgery to treat a bullet lodged in his spinal cord. Three of Guzman's vertebrae are fractured and...

Mark O'Hara clutches his only belongings, his legal papers, as he uses a borrowed cell phone Wednesday in an attempt to get a ride home to Dunedin from the Orient Road Jail in Tampa. [Ken Helle | Times] ADVERTISEMENT Breaking News Video TAMPA - Mark O'Hara left jail without handcuffs Wednesday, two years after he went to prison and one week since an appeals court ordered him a new trial. He was serving a 25-year sentence for having 58 Vicodin pills in his bread truck. Jurors weren't told that it is legal to possess the drug with a prescription, which...

District Attorney Berry told reporter Susan Goldsmith of the Oregonian that his department "aggressively" pursues sex crimes. "These cases are devastating to children," he said. "They are life-altering cases." No, sir. The only one devastating children's lives is you. If you "win," and these "criminals" are convicted, 20, 30 years from now – applying for a job, volunteering for a community program, heading north for a weekend in Vancouver and watching the Customs guard swipe the driver's license through the computer – there'll be a blip, something will come up on the screen, and for the umpteenth time two middle-age...

SAN DIEGO – A La Jolla man who attacked a local television reporter who was investigating his real estate dealings was sentenced Friday to probation and a year in county jail.

MIDI - SING A SONG (scroll down to June) Ha ha ha ha ha...ha ha ha ha ha ha...ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Ha ha ha ha ha...ha ha ha ha ha ha...ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Mike, Mike Nifong, what you did was so wrong Now it's time that you pay...we hope you're put away Mike, Mike Nifong...you did damage that lasts a whole life long Apologies are not good enough...it's meaningless words you say Bye, bye...Mike Nifong Ha ha ha ha ha...ha ha ha ha ha ha...ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...

Britney Spears' hair is now being auctioned off to the highest bidder. Access Hollywood spoke with the owner of Esther's Haircutting Studio in Tarzana, Esther Tognozzi, who said she is planning to sell the singer's hair on eBay. "They will donate a portion of the hair collected from the crop to the Britney Spears Foundation." Seriously, couldn't Britney have just donated it to Locks of Love? C'mon now! Esther told Us that after Brit shaved her hair, "She just looked in the mirror and said with tears in her eyes, 'Oh, my God, I shaved it all off. My mom...

MADRID (Reuters) - Organized crime is running out of control in Mexico, Mexican President Felipe Calderon told the Spanish newspaper El Pais in an interview published on Sunday. "Organized crime is getting out of control and is causing serious worries in some regions of the country, like Michoacan," Calderon said. "Murder rates were exceeding those of Colombia at one point." On Friday Mexico extradited four drug kingpins to the United States, striking a blow against warring cartels that killed 2,000 people last year and have turned large areas into lawless badlands. President Calderon took office in December and has sent...

IXMIQUILPAN, Hidalgo — On a misty, moonless night, the group scurried down the canyon wall, their feet slipping in the an kle-high mud. The sirens grew louder as their guide, clad in a ski mask and known only as Poncho, urged them to run faster. “Hurry up! The Border Pa trol is coming!” A couple in matching de signer tennis outfits loped awkwardly along, the boyfriend clutching a digi tal video camera and strug gling to keep the pop-out screen steady. The 20 or so people flee ing the Border Patrol aren’t undocumented immi grants — they’re tourists about 700...

<p>FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON ON NOT CAPTURING BIN LADEN: 'At least I tried. That's the difference between me and some, including all the right wingers. They ridicule me for trying. They had eight months to try, they did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed'...</p>

"The air force is ready for any operation that will be necessary during the current military campaign against Lebanon," Brig.-Gen. Yohanan Locker, Commander of the IAF's Air Division, told The Jerusalem Post Thursday night. The officer revealed that IAF fighter jets, helicopters, and AWACs had participated in hundreds of airborne operations over Lebanon since two soldiers were kidnapped and eight others killed in a Hizbullah attack along the northern border on Wednesday. He said that the IAF F-15Is, F-16s, Apache helicopters, and other surveillance aircraft were participating in Operation Just Reward against Lebanon. The air force, he said, has struck...

Managua, May 21 (EFE).- One Chinese national died and two others were injured when a boat sank in the Kukra Hill River, in Nicaragua's Caribbean coast, a police spokesman said Sunday. Nine people, all also apparently from China, survived the mishap without being injured on Saturday. Capt. Rolando Coulson, a police spokesman in the Caribbean city of Bluefields, told EFE that the small boat carrying the Asians collided with a cargo ship about 150 meters (some 492 feet) from the port of Kukra Hill. The boat was being operated by a local man, who fled after the incident but has...