I seriously hope that Jay Nixon is not our next governor.

In that episode, a state trooper stopped a sport-utility vehicle about 1:20 a.m. on Interstate 90 in Bellevue after he noticed the vehicle drifting across traffic lanes. When the trooper approached the couple inside, he found they both were naked and trying to stash an empty wine bottle.

King County District Court Judge Linda Jacke ordered 24 months of probation; a 90-day jail term, which was suspended; attendance at a DUI victims’ panel; and fines that totaled $1,718.

His family presented documentation showing that his SUV has been donated to a charity.

And, Jacke was told, the young man’s girlfriend has left him.

“The price he paid at home was far greater than what he paid in court,” said the judge.

WASHINGTON (CNN)—President Bush on Friday proposed a temporary, broad-based tax relief package aimed at spurring the nation’s slowing economy.

Right now, President Bush is said to want an income tax rebate that would be generated by eliminating the 10 percent tax bracket, which applies to roughly the first $8,000 of income for single filers and the first $16,000 of income for married couples filing jointly.

Democrats could get on board with an income tax rebate if it’s fully refundable, meaning that everyone with earned income would get the full rebate, even if they didn’t make enough money to owe income tax, said Furman.

As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.

It’s been easy to understand why Poland, Romania, and other Eastern European countries have been such great allies of the US for the last 15 years - they value their freedom because they still remember what it’s like not to have any.

Mounting political panic over carbon emissions has encouraged politicians in European and America to raise targets for the biofuel content in a litre of petrol.

2. World increases ethanol production in response.

“There is a new demand component,” Shayle Shagam, a livestock analyst at USDA, said. “Livestock producers have to bid against the ethanol industry to get supplies of corn.”

3. Food prices rise.

The USDA predicts that food prices will rise by up to 3.5 per cent this year as farmers rein in output in response to feedstock costs.

heh.
Dash for green fuel pushes up price of meat in US

I guess I’ll have to eat more deer this year…

As the government’s crackdown on illegal immigrant workers has intensified in recent months, so have the consequences for a large group of U.S. citizens: American-born children of illegal immigrants.

At least the author was realistic:

“Kids often pay for the bad decisions of their parents. If you do something wrong that sends you to jail, well, your kids suffer for that. If you are careless with your mortgage and lose your house, your kids suffer along with you,” he said. The parents “knew what they were doing when they had kids here, knowing that they were still illegal immigrants.”

I think that the media and lawmakers need to keep in mind who these people are:  criminals and scofflaws.

I’m in favor of encouraging legal immigration and I think that we need to improve the process and increase the numbers of immigrants taken into the US each year, but I also think that we need to treat those who ignore our laws as the criminals they are.

The [Western MO] office could have been a prosecution model for two who were fired, Justice Department report shows.

At least two of the former U.S. attorneys fired last winter were criticized for their inattention to gun prosecutions, according to documents released recently as part of Congress’ investigation.

A performance review of former U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden of Nevada noted that his staff lawyers “failed to consistently follow (Department of Justice) policies with regard to firearms prosecutions.”

For Carol Lam, former U.S. attorney in Southern California, the criticism was more pointed.

“The president has made clear he expects gun crime to be a significant effort, but (the Southern District of California) has only brought a fraction of the cases of other extra-large districts,” the evaluation read. “Despite its size and population it ranks 91 out of 93 districts in terms of average numbers of firearms cases since (fiscal year) 2000, doing only an average of 18 cases.”

Lam also was criticized for the “modest” quantity of crimes-against-children cases filed in Southern California.

According to U.S. attorney caseload statistics released recently, her district filed four child pornography and abuse cases in 2005, while prosecutors in western Missouri filed 47, the sixth-most out of 93 districts.

GAAKH!  Now humans are polluting the neighborhood.  This never would have happened if Algore had been elected.

“The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars,” he said.

Abdussamatov’s work, however, has not been well received by other climate scientists…

“His views are completely at odds with the mainstream scientific opinion,” said Colin Wilson, a planetary physicist at England’s Oxford University.

“And they contradict the extensive evidence presented in the most recent IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report.” (Related: “Global Warming ‘Very Likely’ Caused by Humans, World Climate Experts Say” [February 2, 2007].)

why do these lunatics continue to unquestioningly refer to the same politically motivated studies?

Amato Evan, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, added that “the idea just isn’t supported by the theory or by the observations.”

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that most bumpers on midsize cars do little to prevent costly damage to vehicles ... only three midsize vehicles ... sustained less than $1,500 in repairs from each of the four crash tests.

In one test of the front-end at 6 mph, four vehicles ... had damages of more than $4,000.

By comparison, the Institute conducted similar tests on a 1981 Ford Escort and found the front-end test only caused $86 in damages.

What they don’t mention is that the $86 repair cost makes the Escort a total loss.