Free Republic

San Francisco -- "American Idol" judge Paula Abdul urged California legislators to force nail salons to clean up their act, testifying Monday about her yearlong health ordeal after an unsanitary manicure. Abdul said a trip in April 2004 to a Studio City nail shop that used unclean equipment sent her in and out of the hospital, and made her the butt of late-night talk show jokes. "Being a professional dancer, I'm no stranger to pain, but this time the pain was so excruciating that even my hair touching my thumb caused me to scream,"

Poor President Bush, so hated by "the world" and yet so incredibly popular at home. We all know why he's popular - he's a man of his word, he doesn't bend with political winds, he's willing to take the hard road and he means what he says. There's one other president in our hemisphere who resembles him, a man in the middle of another terror war whose inhumanly vicious enemies have tried to assassinate him two times in the past week, adding to a long string of other efforts. And his response has been like President Bush's - to defy...