Free Republic

Al-Qaeda Draws New Recruits Via Internet Al-Qaeda is using the Internet to recruit vulnerable young people to its terrorist network, according to a programme aired on Saudi Arabian TV late on Tuesday. Umm Osama, the founder of al-Qaeda's first women-only website, al-Khansa, joined several others on the programme to discuss how they renounced jihadist ideology. Among those who sought a response to this question was an imam from the Medina mosque, Saleh Ibn Awad al-Mudamsi, and the father of a young al-Qaeda suspect held in an Iraqi prison. Read More Qaeda Targets U.S. Oil Interests in North Africa U.S....

Edward F. Bachner IV spent years prowling dark corners of the Internet, where he sought a hit man to carry out the "permanent retirement" of an unidentified woman, according to a federal complaint filed Tuesday. Bachner, who was accused this week of buying a dangerous pufferfish toxin, suggested in one e-mail that payment for the murder would be an AK-47 assault rifle and $8,000, the complaint alleges. "If we have an agreement, I can send you specific info that will get you within 5 yards of mark on . . . any weekday," Bachner wrote, according to the court record....

Toll-road financing (SB 256): The growing practice of contracting with private entities to build and operate toll roads calls for hefty upfront payments. For example, the State Highway 121 project, under way in Collin and Denton counties, should produce about $2 billion in advance money that local governments can use for other vital improvements that the state can't fund anytime soon. This bill would outlaw up-front payments, thus inhibiting the ability to start separate projects immediately. It would also put up a roadblock to the proposed, privately operated Trans-Texas Corridor, a reliever turnpike for the overburdened I-35. Neither would be...