Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate has killed an alternative economic stimulus plan by Sen. John McCain that would have cut income and payroll taxes but spent far less than President Obama's plan. The party-line 57-40 vote against McCain's $421 billion plan came Thursday as a group of moderate Democrats and Republicans struggled to cut up to $100 billion from Obama's version.

Nearly a dozen Star Tribune employees who took the company's buyout money learned last night that their five-figure checks will bounce if cashed. Mike Bucsko, executive officer of the newsroom's Newspaper Guild, says company officials told between nine and 11 Stribbers that "their checks were not going to be honored. They're not going to go through." It's a nightmare scenario for workers who gave up their jobs for a lump sum that could now be a lump of coal. Last year, bought-out Tribune Co. workers found promissory notes turned into unsecured bankruptcy claims after the Chicago Tribune parent filed Chapter...

Hamas rocket chief is killed Uzi Mahnaimi Tel Aviv THE mastermind of Hamas’s long-range rocket attacks on Israel was killed yesterday in an airstrike, according to Israeli military sources. Amir Mansi, an engineer who commanded cells responsible for firing Grad rockets supplied by Iran, died after coming under attack from a helicopter. The Israeli army said he had been trying to fire mortar shells at their troops when he was targeted. Mansi headed the Hamas military wing’s Gaza Strip rocket division and “played a big role in Grad rocket attacks on Israeli communities”, a military spokesman said. He was killed...

Hackers on Tuesday hijacked the Web site CheckFree.com, one of the largest online bill payment companies, redirecting an unknown number of visitors to a Web address that tried to install malicious software on visitors' computers, the company said today. The attack, first reported by The Register, a security news Web site, began in the early morning hours of Dec. 2, when Checkfree's home page and the customer login page were redirected to a server in the Ukraine. CheckFree spokeswoman Melanie Tolley said users who visited the sites during the attack would have been redirected to a blank page that tried...

Eliot Spitzer, former governor of New York, has a new calling: online commentator. At 5:59 p.m., Slate, the online magazine, published the first of what it says will be a series of biweekly columns by Mr. Spitzer on financial matters. Mr. Spitzer’s first column argues against using bailouts to prop up giant financial conglomerates, asserting that the money could be better spent elsewhere, whether it’s supporting “basic research and development that could give us true competitive advantage” or restructuring “our bloated health care sector.” The flaw in consolidation, Mr. Spitzer writes, is that it has created mega-banks that are deemed...

December 3, 2008 Charlie Brown concedes to McClintock Ex-Sen. Tom McClintock had already declared victory as northern California's newest congressman, but Democratic opponent Charlie Brown made it official today with a phone call to the Thousand Oaks Republican. Brown shared the news in an e-mail to supporters. "So a short time ago, I called Senator Tom McClintock to congratulate him on a hard fought victory, and to wish him well in Congress," he wrote. To his supporters, Brown said, "I can only offer my deepest gratitude -- for your generosity of time and resources, and your unwavering energy and encouragement....

A husband has been arrested in connection with the death of his wife whose body is believed to have been left hanging in their house for the past eight weeks. Detectives are quizzing the man in his 50s after he called officers to tell them she was dead. It is understood he told police the couple entered into a suicide pact in September but he backed out after she hanged herself from a door frame in an upstairs bedroom.

What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been Looking back on a surreal campaign season By Bill Ayers On the campaign trail, McCain immediately got on message. I became a prop, a cartoon character created to be pummeled. Whew! What was all that mess? I’m still in a daze, sorting it all out, decompressing. Pass the Vitamin C.

Hackers prevented Al Qaeda from releasing a videotape to mark the seventh anniversary of 9/11. Al Qaeda has traditionally issued a video or audiotape by either Osama bin Laden or Ayman al Zawahiri, the terror network’s two leaders, to mark their massive terrorist attack on the US. As-Sahab, Al Qaeda’s media unit, had indicated earlier this week that it would post such a videotape on September 11. As-Sahab had banner images on the internet showing a silhouetted head with a question mark and the words, “Wait 11 September”. The US-based intelligence group IntelCenter had speculated the video would be a...

Video at link.

Can we please have the option of switching off Mod chosen content?

Internet provider's usage cap raises questions Friday August 22, 10:36 am ET By Peter Svensson, AP Technology Writer Company's limit on Internet use upsets customers and portends new era in online service NEW YORK (AP) -- Three months ago, Guy Distaffen switched Internet providers, lured from his cable company to his phone company by a year of free service on a two-year contract. But soon the company quietly updated its policies to say it would limit his Internet activity each month. "We felt that were suckered," said Distaffen, who lives in the small village of Silver Springs in upstate New...

HD Moore has been owned. That's hacker talk, meaning that Moore, the creator of the popular Metasploit hacking toolkit, has become the victim of a computer attack. It happened on Tuesday morning, when Moore's company, BreakingPoint, had some of its Internet traffic redirected to a fake Google page that was being run by a scammer. According to Moore, the hacker was able to do this by launching what's known as a cache poisoning attack on a DNS server on AT&T's network that was serving the Austin, Texas, area. One of BreakingPoint's servers was forwarding DNS traffic to the AT&T server,...

Vanity - anyone else watching Kirsten Powers getting owned on H&C... I think she might be history.

LONDON (Reuters) - It is the one moment every man wants to get right -- and which London floor-fitter Lefkos Hajji could hardly have got more wrong. The luckless 28 year-old's dreams of giving his sweetheart, Leanne, 26, the ultimate proposal have literally vanished into thin air. Hajji, of Hackney, east London, had concealed a $12,000 engagement ring inside a helium balloon. The idea was that she would pop the balloon as he popped the question. But as he left the shop, a gust of wind pulled the balloon from his hand and he watched the ring -- and quite...

ALBANY, New York (CNN) -- Gov. Eliot Spitzer said Wednesday that he will step down from the state's top office and promised to "atone for my private failings" with family members.

U.S. forces found, targeted and killed in a Somali desert city the senior al Qaeda operative who masterminded the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa and had since spent a decade in hiding, The Washington Times has learned. Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, who is one of the FBI's most-wanted terrorists, was the target of a U.S. missile strike on a residence in Dobley, a small town in southern Somalia near the Kenyan border, according to a U.S. military official who spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity because of the nature of the operation.

Bloody Hell!!! Folks, if you're going to say that somebody got "owned" and misspell it in "hackerese" DO IT RIGHT!!! "P" is a substitute for "O". "3" is a substitute for "e". Both substitutions are the result of misplacing one's hands on the keyboard. It's pwn3d. Thank you. That is all.

A TEENAGE couple having sex for the first time were interrupted when candles set fire to the girl's attic bedroom and forced them to flee naked from her parents' house, German daily Bild reported today. The girl had wanted to create a romantic atmosphere for the occasion. But when the room suddenly became engulfed with flames, they had to make a hasty escape. The couple, both 18, were pictured naked in the paper among the burned wreckage of the attic.

BELLEVUE, Neb. — The Bellevue City Council won't let members of a Topeka church protest next week outside the funeral of a sailor killed in Iraq. Print Reply E-mail A Bellevue permit application form filed Monday with the city said a maximum 15 people affiliated with Westboro Baptist Church wanted to hold a "religious demonstration" on Monday morning near the Bellevue Christian Center. A funeral has been scheduled there for Petty Officer 1st Class Jeffrey Chaney, 35, a 1990 graduate of Bellevue West High School. The Defense Department says he and another sailor were killed by a roadside bomb last...