Free Republic

One of Obama's preferred golf courses, the course on Andrews Airforce Base remains open during the government shutdown. The grocery stores on the base, where troops get discounted groceries for their families are, however, closed. They will shop "at local stores that cost about 30 percent more, Lieutenant General Raymond Mason, the service’s deputy chief of staff for logistics, said yesterday at a House hearing."

RENO, Nev. -- A former sheriff's deputy who admitted accepting bribes to give preferential treatment to "Girls Gone Wild" founder Joe Francis while jailed in Reno avoided prison time after U.S. prosecutors argued for leniency due to his cooperation in the case. Ex-Washoe County deputy Ralph Hawkins was sentenced Friday to three years probation and fined $4,000 for accepting $3,200 in cash and tickets to Oakland Raiders football games from a Francis associate.

LONDON (Reuters) – A milkman who admitted he delivered cannabis as well as pints to elderly customers to ease their aches and pains, was spared jail Friday. Robert Holding, 72, from Burnley, told police he supplied the drug to 17 customers after detectives raided his home and found nearly 6oz (167g) of cannabis in an egg crate in the van he used for deliveries. "He said he sold the cannabis to existing customers because they were old and had aches and pains," said prosecutor Sarah Statham. ... Holding, who admitted supplying and possession of the drug at a previous hearing,...

A military jury on Friday spared a Marine of prison time for kidnapping and conspiring to murder an Iraqi man who was killed as troops hunted in vain for a suspected insurgent. Cpl. Trent Thomas was sentenced to a bad-conduct discharge and reduced pay. A military jury of three officers and six enlisted Marines deliberated for less than an hour before returning their decision. Thomas, a 25-year-old father of two, faced a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole. He was convicted Wednesday of kidnapping and conspiracy to murder an Iraqi man after a botched attempt to capture a...

The pay of a former staffer of Inland Rep. Jerry Lewis was cut less than a year before she took a job with a Washington lobbying firm, enabling her to avoid a rule prohibiting high-ranking congressional staff members from lobbying their old bosses or committees for one year, House records show. Letitia White worked as an assistant to Lewis, R-Redlands, on the House Appropriations Committee before leaving to take a job as lobbyist in 2003 with the firm then known as Copeland, Lowery, Jacquez, Denton & Shockey. Congressional staff members who earn 75 percent of a House member's salary are...

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - Two powerful defendants, two courtrooms, two similar outcomes: Charges are dropped in high-profile cases that moved even a magistrate to wonder aloud at the state of justice in this former British colony. In one, a court dropped murder charges against the grandson of one of Kenya's first white settlers who was accused of killing an African game warden and member of the tribe that says its lands were taken by the settler family a century earlier. In the other, Attorney General Amos Wako said neither police nor prosecutors had had time to investigate whether Kenya's first...

An Islamic court in northern Nigeria has discharged and acquitted a pregnant teenager of her conviction for adultery, for which she had been sentenced to be stoned to death. Presiding judge Muhammad Mustapha Umar of the Upper Sharia court said on Wednesday that the lower Sharia (Islamic law) court was wrong in sentencing Hajara Ibrahim, 18, to death by stoning last October. "This court observes the following faults in the lower court judgement. Firstly, the judge was wrong in sentencing Hajara to 100 lashes and death by stoning, all at the same time," he said.

Source: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Date: 2003-01-22 Earth Likely Spared From One Form Of Cosmic Doom We have one less thing to worry about. While the cosmic debris from a nearby massive star explosion, called a supernova, could destroy the Earth's protective ozone layer and cause mass extinction, such an explosion would have to be much closer than previously thought, new calculations show. Scientists at NASA and Kansas University have determined that the supernova would need to be within 26 light years from Earth to significantly damage the ozone layer and allow cancer-causing ultraviolet radiation to saturate the Earth's...

People emerge from fire with stories By Tim Velder, Northern Hills Bureau DEADWOOD - Trapper and Cookie Lance moved to the Black Hills for its natural beauty. If their home is still there, smoking black sticks surround it. The Lances evacuated their Two-Bit Gulch home Saturday evening as fire burned over the ridge above them. Two-Bit Gulch is at the northeast edge of Deadwood near the entrance to Boulder Canyon. A neighbor had said a few days before the fire that people in that area should get all their valuables in one place. "I told him to pray it doesn't...