Free Republic

What Bush fails to see at the border By Ronald F. Maxwell Published April 6, 2006 Dear President Bush, Perhaps you know me from my work. I wrote and directed the movies "Gettysburg" and "Gods and Generals." Walking Civil War battlefields, soaking up the letters and diaries of that generation, re-creating the world of our ancestors -- all this has given me a deep appreciation for our country. My dad was with the Army Air Corps in North Africa while your dad was in the Pacific. My French mother was liberated in Tunisia and became a lawful immigrant to the...

3/29/2006 - SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFPN) -- An armed F-16 Fighting Falcon is “watching” the road below for the convoys rolling through a dangerous land. The concept of using fighter aircraft equipped with targeting pods to monitor the battlespace is known as non-traditional intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or NTISR. Air Force NTISR operations began only four years ago and are the result of increased demand for complete battlespace awareness. With the production and development of traditional ISR capabilities struggling to keep pace, leveraging fighters, bombers, and air mobility aircraft in a similar role is helping ensure information dominance. “Before NTISR, we...

What Christians should do regarding illegal immigration has been an ongoing debate for a long time. Recently, Christianity was entered into the debate over immigration bills being worked on in the US Congress by Senator Hillary Clinton. Hillary basically advanced the argument that opposing illegal immigration is "un-Christian" and claimed that such enforcement would be the same as making the Good Samaritan and Jesus criminals. Missing from Hillary's comments were quotes from the Bible. While immigration from Mexico is of course not mentioned, there are issues that illegal immigration bring up that are mentioned in the Bible. 1. Taxes Matthew...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Drought that has shriveled crops and sparked fires in bone-dry forests will persist and could even worsen across the Southwest and central and southern Plains through at least June, U.S. government forecasters said Thursday. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in its spring weather forecast that these regions, which have already seen thousands of acres go up in flames, should brace for a "significant" wildfire season in 2006 as conditions become more severe. "We need to monitor this drought situation very closely," said David Johnson, director of NOAA's National Weather Service division. The return of La...

2/14/2006 - SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFPN) -- A high-flying prototype “Airman” is heading home after being deployed more than four years and flying 4,245 hours supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom and the Combined Task Force-Horn of Africa. Global Hawk Air Vehicle No. 3 began its journey back home at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., Feb. 10, and is expected to land there Feb. 16. This unmanned aerial vehicle, AV-3, first deployed as a prototype during the build-up for Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2002. It returned to Edwards for a couple of months and then was recalled by U.S. Central...

Which would be the most effective way to address the illegal immigration crisis in the United States? *Enforce existing laws *Build a border fence *Pass Bush�s guest worker amnesty program *Hand the Southwest over to Mexico

"A jury on Friday said Southwest Airlines did not racially discriminate against an overweight passenger when she was asked to buy a second seat on her flight." "The jury deliberated for a little over an hour before finding against Nadine Thompson, who sued Southwest in federal court. She claimed that she was singled out because she is black and that the airline’s "customer of size" policy was unfairly applied to her after she boarded a flight at Manchester Airport in June 2003." " Southwest’s policy states that a "customer of size" is someone who can’t sit in a seat without...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The National Transportation Safety Board is urging that commercial airplane pilots change the way they calculate stopping distances on slippery runways to avoid a crash, such as the one in Chicago that killed a child.

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Eighty percent of the respondents to a Dallas Business Journal online poll about the Wright Amendment said the amendment should remain in place with 19 percent saying it should be repealed. The remainder of respondents were undecided. More than 9,400 people responded to the unscientific poll, which ran on the DBJ Web site, dallas.bizjournals.com, from Dec. 5 to Dec. 18. The Wright Amendment, passed in 1979, is a federal law that limits long-haul flights from Dallas Love Field, home of discount carrier Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV - News), which is trying to get the law repealed. Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport...

Expert says Midway plane crash was avoidable By Jon Hilkevitch Originally published December 15, 2005 CHIAGO // The city of Chicago and Southwest Airlines have "carelessly ignored" for years the risks of short runways and insufficient over-run areas at Midway Airport, an expert on transportation disasters said yesterday in a report on last week's fatal accident. The crash was avoidable, and the outcome would have been much worse if fuel tanks on the plane ruptured and caught fire, said Gunnar Kuepper, chief of operations at Emergency & Disaster Management Inc., a Los Angeles-based company that advises government agencies and private...

Southwest pilot violated braking policy December 14, 2005 BY MARK J. KONKOL Transportation Reporter The Southwest Airlines pilot at the helm during Thursday's snowy crash at Midway Airport told federal investigators he used the Boeing 737's "autobrakes," a device airline officials say their pilots are told not to activate. National Transportation Safety Board investigators said they found the autobrake switch in the "maximum" position on the flight panel. The system is designed to activate when the landing gear hits the runway.

<p>There were no immediate reports of injuries on the plane, which had flown from Baltimore. One person was initially reported as injured in a car that collided with the plane. The plane's nose was resting on the ground.</p> <p>Ambulances and fire trucks rushed to the scene, in the northwest corner of the airport, which is surrounded by roads and a residential area.</p>

HOUSTON, Oct. 28 - When she was growing up in a small town in southern Colorado, an area where her ancestors settled centuries ago when it was on the fringes of the northern frontier of New Spain, Bernadette Gonzalez always thought some of the stories about her family were unusual, if not bizarre. Her grandmother, for instance, refused to travel on Saturday and would use a specific porcelain basin to drain blood out of meat before she cooked it. In one tale that particularly puzzled Ms. Gonzalez, 52, her grandfather called for a Jewish doctor to circumcise him while he...

American Airlines and Southwest Airlines have used advertising campaigns, catchy slogans and dueling consultant studies to settle a dispute over air service in North Texas, and now their eye-gouging fight has spilled over to an online encyclopedia. Someone using an Internet service provider registered to American edited online encyclopedia Wikipedia last week to describe Southwest Airlines Co. as "a notoriously litigious company constantly seeking to change laws to gain an advantage." For a time, the site also said Dallas-based Southwest is "known for its PR machine and litigious nature." Wikipedia's volunteer monitors deleted the phrases within hours and traced them...

Southwest boots woman for shirt Lorrie Heasley to sue for being asked to leave a flight because of her politically charged T-shirt. NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Southwest Airlines kicked a woman off one of its flights over a political message on her T-shirt, the airline confirmed Thursday, and published reports say the passenger will sue. Lorrie Heasley, of Woodland, Wash., was asked to leave her flight from Los Angeles to Portland, Ore., Tuesday for wearing a T-shirt with pictures of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a phrase similar to the popular film...

A Portland woman's flight home was stopped short in Reno, all because the message on the T-shirt she was wearing. Lorrie Heasley claims it's a freedom of speech privilege, but airline officials say the message brings safety concerns. Heasley boarded her flight Tuesday morning in Los Angeles, headed for Portland, Oregon with a stopover in Reno. But when Southwest Airlines employees asked her to cover her shirt, her stop over became a stop off her flight. "I was told that basically that I had to cover my shirt, or I was told if I cover the shirt I can basically...

Source: University Of Arizona Date: 2005-09-07 Mystery Surrounds 'Porcelain Of The Southwest' Caitlin O’Grady hopes to crack a mystery that has puzzled archaeologists and potters for more than 100 years. Caitlin O'Grady, a Ph.D. student in Materials Science and Engineering, works on several pots in UA's Arizona State Museum. She's unraveling the secrets of the technology used to create prehistoric Sikyatki pottery. (Arizona State Museum Photo) It surrounds small pieces of broken Hopi pottery, some of which are now in O’Grady’s lab in the Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) department at The University of Arizona. O’Grady, an MSE Ph.D. student,...

When their names are called, 98 percent of all undocumented aliens ordered to appear at Harlingen Immigration Court do not answer. They are weeks into their new lives in all corners of the United States. Nationwide, the number of non-Mexicans who are entering the country illegally is skyrocketing, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Through Aug. 9, for the first 10 months of fiscal 2005, a total of 135,097 non-Mexicans had been apprehended out of 1.02 million undocumented immigrants arrested overall. In all of fiscal 2004, the number of non-Mexicans apprehended was 75,392; in fiscal 2003, the figure was...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 8, 2005 – Through partnerships with most major U.S. carriers, the Fisher House Foundation is making it possible for Americans to donate unused airline miles to troops wounded in the war on terror and their families. The program, "Operation Hero Miles," was created in 2004, when nearly 500 soldiers per day were returning to the U.S. from Iraq for rest and recuperation. "At that time, the military would only fly service personnel to a gateway city," said Pamela Lea-Maida, administrator of Operation Hero Miles at the Fisher House Foundation. "From there, personnel had to pay the rest of...