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RICHMOND, Calif. (AP) - A man who made threats and was seen leaving suspicious packages on an Amtrak train was being questioned Wednesday by the FBI as a bomb squad examined the items, police said. The man, described as Middle Eastern and in his mid-30s, was approached by an Amtrak ticket taker and apparently became agitated after being told he had missed his stop, Lt. Mark Gagan said. The man said "the train was going to fall into the sea and the train was going to disappear," according to Gagan. Business and homes in the area were evacuated after an...

David F. Rosen answer the questions about Hollywood concert 10:54 2005-05-25 Hillary Rodham Clinton's former chief fund-raiser took the stand in his own defense here on Tuesday, saying that he never intended to understate the costs of a Hollywood concert and dinner during her 2000 Senate race. Indeed, the fund-raiser, David F. Rosen, 38, described himself as a diligent foot soldier in the campaign who deferred to his superiors and was himself misled about the event's expenses by its organizers. "These costs were hidden from me," he said. "These costs were concealed for whatever reason." But during cross-examination, Peter R....

“Bernie Sanders votes with the Democrats 98 percent of the time.”- Former Vermont Governor and failed Presidential Candidate Howard Dean, now Chairman of the Democratic National Committee Most viewers tuning in at the very moment Howard Dean made this comment to Tim Russert on “Meet the Press,” would have said to themselves, “Yeah…so?” But for those of us who happened to tune in a few minutes earlier to hear Russert ask the question that prompted the reply in the first place, the statement was a stark admission of what the Democratic Party has become. “In your home state of Vermont,”...

For an object lesson on Old Media liberal bias, read the transcript of the May 17 press briefing by White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. The recurrent themes jumping from the condescending reporters' questions were anti: President Bush, American military, U.S. Constitution, Republican Party, and pro: Democrat obstructionism, terrorist-sympathizing and Old Media arrogance, unaccountability and elitism. I can provide but a few examples in a short column, but they're telling. Question: "Scott, the Senate has managed to function -- or not function, as the case may be -- for more than 200 years without a ban on judicial filibusters. Is...

Sen. Hillary Clinton is "abusing the system" -- using New York State voters as a springboard to the presidency, according to a 38-year-old Republican who would like to stop Mrs. Clinton in 2006, well before the 2008 Democratic race for president. "[Clinton] is not even running for U.S. Senate, she is running for president and she clearly has no intention of fulfilling a six-year Senate term if she is re-elected," said likely GOP Senate candidate Adam Brecht in an interview with Cybercast News Service. "Unfortunately, she's abusing the system," Brecht said. "I think putting everyone through the charade of a...

I hope this is the right way to ask this here 1) I've lurking here and rarly post , Normally I can navigate message boards with relative ease, but (at least for me) FR presents one of the more difficulte one to navigate. I mostly look at the latest threads and messages to see what current. How do the pro's here navigate FR? 2) Ok a lot of keywords added I get how some can see it relates :) but someone adds CARY to many unrelated posts, Is there a acronym I'm missing here? 3) When posting, on picking forums,...

You're supposed to be happy at your wedding, even though some people aren't. At the same time, it's still considered selfish and immature to run away and abandon the caterers if you're distraught -- even though lots of people probably want to. Part of the culture says the conventional, social bits of weddings don't matter, and part of the culture says they do. Part of the culture says weddings are about true love, and part of the culture says they're about Cuisinarts. It's been hard, to avoid learning that she and her husband had planned to have 28 attendants and...

SEATTLE - (KRT) - Three years ago, the Ohio Board of Education invited a small but influential Seattle think tank to debate the way evolution is taught in Ohio schools. It was an opportunity for the Discovery Institute to promote its notion of intelligent design, the controversial idea that parts of life are so complex they must have been designed by some intelligent agent. Instead, leaders of the institute's Center for Science and Culture decided on what they consider a compromise. Forget intelligent design, they argued, with its theological implications. Just require teachers to discuss evidence that refutes Charles Darwin's...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - California's public schools, once among the best in the nation, now lag behind almost every other state in student achievement, funding, teacher quality and facilities. The state's urban high schools have become "dropout factories," saddled with some of the lowest graduation rates in the United States. And the pay disparity among California teachers means that the best-paid teachers in 42 of the 50 largest districts work in schools that serve the fewest number of black and Hispanic students. Those are just a few of the findings outlined in several recent reports which together paint a grim...

how i can make my posts look normal...i posted reply in a thread and it posted all bunched together looking like one paragraph... KaraLynn

Congress tried to use supeona power in an effort to save Terri Shiavo's live. They may have supeoned the wrong Shiavo. Michael Shiavo has been given a pass by the legally blind Judge Greer and the main-stream media outlets. If the Supreme Court does not make the effort to answer the many questions pertaining to this case as the previous courts have done, then congress and the President must step in just as they had to during the Slavery issue. I believe Congress must demand that Michael Shiavo be forced to answer at least these questions before he be given...

Some time ago, I read about the handling of "mail flats" here on FR. If you have specific knowledge of this end of postal procedures, I would appreciate it if you would contact me here. ( Use private reply if desired. ) Thanks !

San Diego's pension system has issued a report on how it handles payments once a retiree dies, but some City Council members say it raises more questions than it answers. The report states that since 1996 the pension system inadvertently has paid 36 individuals after they died. Those 36 are among 114 cases in which payments to deceased retirees might have occurred and are under review. The report does not mention the 114 number. "I view that as a material fact that should have been included in the report," Councilman Brian Maienschein said. Maienschein is a member of the council's...

IT MUST BE stressful to be a Democrat. You never know what wars to oppose, what government bureaucracies to support, what lies to tell; everything changes everyday. Also, increasingly, it’s really hard to find friends. One reason for this may be Iraq, the country that was going to be just fine with Saddam, in which containment would do wonders, and in which there were no WMD because George Bush is a big fat stupid liar. All we heard from liberals for years was how risky and precarious and implausible elections were for that country, but now, like magic, the Left...

SACRAMENTO - Buried amid thousands of pages collected by auditors investigating Secretary of State Kevin Shelley is a memo from a state consultant who attended a union-sponsored "Take Back the White House" rally. The consultant wrote that he "was there to represent the SOS office" at the April 3, 2004, event and a state investigator's note on the document indicates that one of Shelley's top deputies asked the consultant to go. Shelley aides have vigorously denied that the Secretary of State's office misused federal voter outreach funds to send consultants hired with the money to partisan political events. Shelley's spokeswoman...

No. 1 No. 2 No. 3 No. 4 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1053631/posts No. 5 ================================================================= Dear Doug from Upland: My mom kept me home from school and made me watch the hearing for Dr. Rice to be confirmed for Sec. of State. She was cheering while Senator Boxer was grilling her like tofu on the barbeque (as she said). She also used some bad language about Dr. Rice and it got a little scary. One of my friends told me that Boxer was being unfair and was just showing off. What is the real deal? PS -- don't tell my mom I...

NEW YORK (AP) - Coming just two days after George W. Bush's inauguration, Saturday's anniversary of the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion is dominated by the hopes of one side - and fears of the other - that the president will try to overturn Roe v. Wade through appointments to fill expected high court vacancies. Anti-abortion activists were among the legions of Bush supporters converging on Washington in the past few days, and most will remain for Monday's annual March for Life. Though Bush is widely admired within the movement, some of its militants still question his commitment to...

NEW YORK - CBS hoped that the release of an independent probe of its ill-fated story on President Bush (news - web sites)'s military service, painful as it was, would at least lift the cloud over its news division. If only it were that simple. The report, and the network's response to it, left some questions unresolved: _ How does CBS News President Andrew Heyward effectively lead when there's widespread surprise — including, undoubtedly, in his own shop — at how he kept his job when four others were fired for their roles in the news organization's worst embarrassment in...

WASHINGTON - Raising the gavel with a grin, Senate Judiciary Committee (news - web sites) Chairman Arlen Specter opened his first hearing Thursday by allowing more criticism of the Bush administration than his predecessor and by questioning some of the Patriot Act's police powers. With his changes, questions and comments, Specter proclaimed his independence and said he expected the same from Alberto Gonzales, President Bush (news - web sites)'s nominee to be attorney general. "While Judge Gonzales is the appointee of the president ... he's representing the people of the United States, a key distinction which I'm pleased to say...

This is sort of a quiet time of year for most people. Most news organizations do that tired old “that was the year that was” review, telling you all the stuff that you went through in the previous twelve months, as if your attention spans had been MTV’d down to around the goldfish level. You’re still sorting through all the wrapping paper you used at Christmas, hoping that your local Earth Liberation Front cell doesn’t get back at you for your blatant destruction of the forests by burning your house down. You’re still recovering from having relatives come and visit...