Free Republic

...so some people aren't thrilled with the idea of a stand-up airline seat. How about a saddle seat that threatens injury to your private parts? That's what one Italian company has come up with, CNBC reports. It's developed what it calls the SkyRider, a seat with a 23-inch pitch or less. A 23-inch pitch means there's 23 inches of passenger space between the seats. That's at least 8 inches less than what you normally get in economy class, writes Jane Wells. But that's not the worst part. The company, Aviointeriors, says sitting in the seat is similar to riding on...

In trying to pass their radical health care overhaul, President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid now are channeling the tactics of Gene Wilder and Cleavon Little from the movie "Blazing Saddles." Opponents and fence-sitters alike should not fall for their tricks. The Democratic leaders' "Blazing Saddles" hocus-pocus comes via their proposal to use the rare parliamentary maneuver of "reconciliation" to force their health care takeover into law. As currently described, the reconciliation plans are a charade.... To make the reconciliation gambit work, the House has to pass the existing Senate bill as is. ...If the Senate refuses to...

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- Halfway across the continent from where Buffalo Bill roamed and Custer made his last stand, the mayor of this debt-ridden city spent millions in public money on everything from six-shooters to covered wagons for a museum about cowboys, Indians and the Wild West. And he did it without telling the City Council, whose members felt as if they had been hit by the swinging doors of a frontier saloon when they found out from a reporter in 2003. On Saturday, the other dusty cowboy boot will drop when hundreds of the items go on the auction...

MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (March 7, 2006) -- The bags were being loaded and the emotions ran high as the Marines of 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment were getting ready to ride back into Iraq to continue the fight on the Global War on Terrorism as they left here March 6. Many of the Marines in the battalion returned last year in August from a seven-month-long deployment in Fallujah and Karmah, Iraq. The experience and knowledge of what is taking place there is a part of many men’s preparation for what they’ll be getting back into. “The short...

<p>President Bush received several pairs of cowboy boots and other Western gear during his first year in office, courtesy of foreign officials who clearly took into account the president's taste for things Texan.</p> <p>There's a pair of black ostrich-skin boots that President Vicente Fox kicked in, so to speak, when Bush visited Mexico in February 2001. And a fancier pair Fox offered a month later, made of navy blue ostrich skin and stitched with Bush's initials, U.S. and Mexican flags and the year "2001."</p>