Honeybees Vanish

By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

David Bradshaw has endured countless stings during his life as a beekeeper, but he got the shock of his career when he opened his boxes last month and found half of his 100 million bees missing.
In 24 states throughout the country, beekeepers have gone through similar shocks as their bees have been disappearing inexplicably at an alarming rate, threatening not only their livelihoods but also the production of numerous crops, including California almonds, one of the nation’s most profitable.
“I have never seen anything like it,” Mr. Bradshaw, 50, said from an almond orchard here beginning to bloom. “Box after box after box are just empty. There’s nobody home.” LINK

Targeted By Tehran?

March 5, 2007 issue - Increasing tensions between Washington and Tehran have revived New York Police Department concerns that Iranian agents may already have targeted the city for terror attacks. Such attacks could be aimed at bridges and tunnels, Jewish organizations and Wall Street, NYPD briefers told security execs last fall, according to a person with access to the briefing materials who asked for anonymity because of the sensitive subject matter. LINK

Mexican wives seek ouster of husbands from U.S.

By Stephen Dinan

The women of Tecalpulco, Mexico, want the U.S. government to enforce its immigration laws because they want to force their husbands to come back home from working illegally in the United States. They have created an English-language Web page where they identify themselves as the "wetback wives" and broadcast their pleas, both to their men and to the U.S. government. LINK

Link to the Web Page

Lake Havasu may require business vow against hiring illegal migrants

LAKE HAVASU CITY - The City Council will consider a proposal Tuesday to require businesses doing work for the city to sign affidavits saying they don't hire illegal immigrants.Mayor Mark Nexsen said the purpose of the proposal is to try to make sure contractors or subcontractors with the city have gone through the correct channels to ensure their workers can legally work in this country.A similar step was taken in late 2005 by Gov. Janet Napolitano, who signed an executive order saying state contractors had to guarantee their employees aren't illegal immigrants. LINK

The Choice on Iraq

BY JOSEPH LIEBERMAN

"I appeal to my colleagues in Congress to step back and think carefully about what to do next." LINK Two months into the 110th Congress, Washington has never been more bitterly divided over our mission in Iraq. The Senate and House of Representatives are bracing for parliamentary trench warfare--

Report: Israel Asks U.S. for Iraqi Airspace Corridor for Iran Strike

The Daily Telegraph newspaper quoted an unnamed Israeli defense official as saying the talks were aimed at planning for all scenarios, including any future decision to target Iran's nuclear program.
Israeli bombers would need a corridor through U.S.-administered airspace in Iraq to carry out any strikes, the official was quoted as saying by the newspaper. LINK

Terrorists say Tehran providing instructions in case U.S., Israel strike atomic facilities

By Aaron Klein

JERUSALEM – Iran is anticipating a U.S. or Israeli military strike on its nuclear facilities and has been providing Palestinian terrorists and other regional allies with contingency plans for attacks against the Jewish state and American regional interests in the event of war, according to Palestinian terrorist leaders. LINK

Immigrants who wire money get help from the Fed

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske

Dubbed Directo a Mexico, the Federal Reserve-sponsored service allows customers without Social Security numbers to wire money through the Fed system to Mexico's central bank at little cost. In September, the Fed expanded the remittance program by allowing immigrants, legal or not, to open accounts at participating banks and credit unions in the U.S. or Mexico. LINK

Inequality Doesn't Measure Up

By David Hogberg

Income inequality has been an issue of considerable contention among intellectuals as of late. Unfortunately, there are few areas where the relevant statistics are fraught with so many shortcomings. Thus, people who are intellectually honest may unintentionally mislead because the numbers they use do not show what they think such numbers do. For example, a blog post by the American Prospect's Ezra Klein shows why statistics on income inequality can make inequality look worse than it really is: LINK

Tomb of Jesus doc uproar

MARSHALL THOMPSON

“The Lost Tomb of Christ,” which the Discovery Channel will run on March 4, argues that 10 ancient ossuaries — small caskets used to store bones — discovered in a suburb of Jerusalem in 1980 may have contained the bones of Jesus and his family, according to a press release issued by the Discovery Channel. LINK

ReLated Story

Mexican anger over US 'trespass'

Mexico's Congress has condemned what it says is a border violation by US workers building a controversial barrier between the two countries. LINK

Mexican legislators said they had photographs and video, taken on Monday, of the workers and heavy-duty construction equipment that showed them about 10 metres inside Mexico near the border city of Agua Prieta and the town of Douglas, Arizona.

Rulon Gardner survives plane crash at Lake Powell

Olympic gold medalist Rulon Gardner was in a plane that crashed into Lake Powell on Saturday. He has had his brushes with death before; a motorcycle crash in 2004 and surviving a night in Wyoming's back country during a snowmobile outing. He lost a toe to frost bite in that ordeal but it pales in comparison to his latest story of survival. LINK

50 funniest Homer Simpson Quotes

Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand.
I'm normally not a praying man, but if you're up there, please save me Superman.
Son, if you really want something in this life, you have to work for it. Now quiet! They're about to announce the lottery numbers. MORE

US deficit is shrinking, for now

By Mark Trumbull

Tax revenues are rising much faster than spending, according to Treasury Department numbers released last week. The recent trend is strong enough that, were it to continue, the budget could move into surplus in barely a year, one economist calculates.
Already, the federal deficit is shrinking toward about half the size that it has averaged since 1970, when analyzed as a percentage of gross domestic product. LINK

10 Ways Dick Cheney can kill you

English as a national language

BY ED FEULNER

Executive Order 13166, issued by Bill Clinton in the summer before he left office, mandates that any group that receives any federal funding must provide its services in any foreign language that may be spoken by someone likely to receive those services. So instead of having one official language, in practice we have dozens. Enough. It's time for a new approach, one that unites all Americans instead of dividing them. LINK

Osama targets Prince Harry

LONDON – Osama bin Laden personally has targeted Iraq-bound Prince Harry, saying he is wanted "dead or alive," says an exclusive breaking report today in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.
Code-breakers for MI6, Britain's external intelligence agency, have cracked al-Qaida's secret communications system and discovered Prince Harry is named as a prime target for the terror network when he goes on active service to Iraq. LINK

Iran defies nuclear ultimatum

By George Jahn

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a report to the Security Council and its 35-nation board that Tehran also has continued to build a heavy water reactor and related facilities which, along with enrichment, could help it develop nuclear arms. LINK

More Americans killed by illegal aliens than Iraq war

Jim Brown

Illegal aliens are killing more Americans than the Iraq war, says a new report from Family Security Matters that estimates some 2,158 murders are committed every year by illegal aliens in the U.S. The group says that number is more than 15 percent of all the murders reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the U.S. and about three times the representation of illegal aliens in the general population LINK

U.S. Tourist in Costa Rica Kills Mugger

By MARIANELA JIMENEZ

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) -- A tour bus of U.S. senior citizens defended themselves against a group of alleged muggers, sending two of them fleeing and killing a third in the Atlantic coast city of Limon, police said on Thursday.
One of the tourists _ a retired member of the U.S. military aged about 70 _ put assailant Warner Segura in a head lock and broke his clavicle after the 20-year-old and two other men armed with a knife and gun held up their tour bus Wednesday, said Luis Hernandez, the police chief of Limon, 80 miles east of San Jose. LINK

Democrats want to take back authority for war

By David Espo

WASHINGTON - Four years ago, Congress passed legislation authorizing President Bush to go to war in Iraq. Now Senate Democrats want to take it back.Key lawmakers, backed by party leaders, are drafting legislation that would effectively revoke the broad authority granted to the president in the days Saddam Hussein was in power, and leave U.S. troops with a limited mission as they prepare to withdraw. LINK

Powder-sized smart tag

By YURI KAGEYAMA

Tiny computer chips used for tracking food, tickets and other items are getting even smaller. Hitachi Ltd., a Japanese electronics maker, recently showed off radio frequency identification, or RFID, chips that are just 0.002 inches by 0.002 inches and look like bits of powder. They're thin enough to be embedded in a piece of paper, company spokesman Masayuki Takeuchi said Thursday. LINK

Plastic Gonads

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) - Fake bull testicles and other anatomically explicit vehicle decorations would be banned from Maryland roads under a bill pending in the state legislature.
The measure was filed in the General Assembly Monday by Delegate LeRoy E. Myers Jr., R-Washingon, who says children shouldn't be exposed to giant plastic gonads dangling from pickup truck trailer hitches. The bill also would ban depictions of naked human breasts, buttocks or genitals, with offenses punishable by fines of up to $500.
"It's time to take a stand," Myers told The (Hagerstown) Herald-Mail. LINK

As Went the Dodo so Will Kyoto

By Marc Sheppard

February has been a tough month for Global Warming doomsayers. First, their cataclysmic worst-case scenarios were debunked by the IPCC, which cut its own 2001 projections for temperature increase by a third and sea level rise completely in half. Then, just five days later, they learned that the environmentally irresponsible U.S was actually doing a better job of cutting CO2 emissions... LINKS

China, India Smile as West Overpays for Climate

By Andy Mukherjee

Feb. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Governments in rich nations are spending billions of dollars to buy a clearer conscience over climate change. Are they getting their money's worth?
Enlightened individuals, those who stay awake at nights wondering what they can do to prevent the polar caps from melting, at least have a growing menu of choices.
Sydney-based Easy Being Green says it will mitigate your cat's flatulent contribution to global warming for A$8 ($6). The same company could also make your granny ``carbon-neutral'' at A$10 a year, according to a report in the Australian newspaper last weekend. LINK

The Corn Threat

By Dave Juday

Indeed, this is a critical balance of food versus fuel, not only for U.S. livestock farmers and food consumers, but for a larger global economic order. The U.S. heartland is to corn as the Saudi Arabian desert is to petroleum. The U.S. produces 40 percent of the world’s corn and is the largest global supplier. Newly affluent and emerging middle classes in developing countries — who in turn bring more political stability to the developing world — have for the past two decades demanded better diets in terms of protein, i.e., meat, milk, and eggs. That demand has been met in no small part because of U.S. corn. LINK

Making martial law easier

A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night. So it was with a provision quietly tucked into the enormous defense budget bill at the Bush administration's behest that makes it easier for a president to override local control of law enforcement and declare martial law. LINK

Generic drugs law plans threaten makers

Big pharmaceutical companies are facing a barrage of legislative proposals that could have a dramatic impact on the industry's future earnings power and open doors to one of its biggest threats: generic drug manufacturers. LINK

Jefferson advocated 'gate' between church and state

By Bob Unruh

Thomas Jefferson, credited with penning the famous "wall of separation between Church and State" on which many secular organization have rested their hopes of eliminating Christianity from the public square, actually believed in a "gate" allowing free passage between the two, LINK

Nonsense Ideas

By Walter E. Williams

Does offering a worker a wage higher than what he could earn elsewhere make him worse off or better off? If you answered better off, is the term exploitation an appropriate characterization for an act that makes another better off? If pressure at home forces a U.S. company to cease its Cambodian operations, would that worker be worse off or better off? LINK

Berger Case Still Roils Archives, Justice Dept.

By R. Jeffrey Smith

Under debate during the Nov. 23, 2004, meeting was Brachfeld's contention that President Clinton's former national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger could have stolen original, uncatalogued, highly classified terrorism documents 14 months earlier by wrapping them around his socks and beneath his pants, as National Archives staff member John Laster reported witnessing. LINK

Bush Camp Supports Romney

Ronald Kessler

When former Bush White House aides ask Karl Rove for guidance on where to throw their support in the next presidential election, he tells them President Bush is neutral about the candidates. But Bush family members, friends, and key supporters are solidly behind Mitt Romney.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has quietly given his blessing to key staffers to migrate to the Romney camp, Sally Bradshaw, who was Jeb's staff director and is now working for Romney LINK

Heating up over nothing

Nobody denies that the climate is changing. It has been changing ever since Earth came into being. That is why there are no longer dinosaurs, mastodons, and other life forms that used to roam the planet. But over the past 100 years, the average temperature has gone up seven tenths of a degree Celsius, or about a degree Fahrenheit, most of that before 1940. LINK

Sandy's Secrets: The TWA 800 Cover-up and 9/11 -

By Jack Cashill

On July 6, 2006, Stonebridge International, a global strategy firm, announced that it had added a new member to its high-profile, five-member advisory board—former Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton. LINK Hamilton, who had served as Vice-Chairman of the 9/11 Commission, had just joined a firm headed by the man who had criminally undermined that very Commission, Stonebridge chairman and founder, Samuel "Sandy" Berger.

Climate change, Gore and Hitler

By Alex Robson

MOST Americans believe in God, miracles, the literal truth of the Old Testament, creationism, ghosts, UFOs and angels. Therefore, these things must exist.That's the kind of fallacious argument that politicians have made on human-induced global warming – that scientific consensus implies it is a reality. It is a recipe for intellectual laziness and ugly distortions. LINK

Man mistakes porn DVD as woman's cries for help

By DAVID DOEGE

Instincts took over, James Van Iveren says, when he rushed out his door to the sound of a woman being raped in an apartment above. "It was a woman screaming," he recalled Tuesday. "She was screaming for help."
Sword in hand, he bounded up the stairs, kicked in the door and confronted a man who turned out to be alone - watching a pornographic movie. LINK

Hillary-Obama War of Words

"While Senator Obama was denouncing slash and burn politics yesterday, his campaign's finance chair was viciously and personally attacking Senator Clinton and her husband. LINK “We aren’t going to get in the middle of a disagreement between the Clintons and someone who was once one of their biggest supporters. It is ironic that the Clintons had no problem with David Geffen when was raising them $18 million and sleeping at their invitation in the Lincoln bedroom. "Everybody in politics lies, but they [the Clintons] do it with such ease, it’s troubling,” Geffen had said.

Household credit card debt

The average amount of household credit card debt and interest rates by state. This data is being retrieved from actual credit card owners using TrackCards. Please keep in mind that this data is from a small number of users and should not (yet) be a representation of American credit card debt as a whole. LINK

Idaho $5,999.85

Canada's Worst Air Disaster

Two seater 826 bodies???

Grocery Industry Prepares for Bird Flu Pandemic

Unlike other critical infrastructure sectors like water, energy and health care, the food industry isn't getting much help from state and federal governments when it comes to disaster planning. That puts the burden on individual supermarket chains and wholesalers to deal with a potentially large number of sick workers that could affect store operations and disrupt the food supply. LINK

Ear-hair powered space-suits

NASA is investigating the use of a protein found in human ear-hair as a means of powering space suits. The protein converts motion into electrical energy -- and if it's augmented with an electricity-conducting microbe, it could form self-healing, semi-living "skins" that convert Martian wind and even the jogging and walking of astronauts into juice. LINK

US 'Iran attack plans' revealed

US contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country's military infrastructure, the BBC has learned.
It is understood that any such attack - if ordered - would target Iranian air bases, naval bases, missile facilities and command-and-control centres. LINK

Ramos attorney calls for mistrial

Jerome R. Corsi

"The document couldn't be more important," Stillinger emphasized. "DHS Special Agent Christopher Sanchez makes the defense argument in that report. He points out that none of the seven Border Patrol agents or 2 supervisors on the field reported the shooting, not just Ramos and Compean. Moreover, Vasquez picked up the shells and threw them away, again without the supervisors objecting or filing a report that evidence was being destroyed." LINK

Professor predicts continued spending spree

By Allison Linn

In the last three months of 2006, the overall index hit an all-time high of 74.9, on a scale of 100, up nearly 2 percent from the same time last year. That is also the highest score the scale has hit since it was first measured in 1994, the university said in results released Tuesday. LINK

Court rules against Guantanamo detainees

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-1 that civilian courts no longer have the authority to consider whether the military is illegally holding foreigners.
Barring prisoners from the U.S. court system was a key provision in the Military Commissions Act, which Bush pushed through Congress last year ...LINK

Priceless Politics

By Thomas Sowell

Among the many rationales used to defend the welfare state, the most powerful is that it is necessary, in order to take care of the poor and the downtrodden. But the amount of money required to bring every poor person in the country above the official poverty line is a fraction of what is spent by government on the welfare state. LINK

‘American Idol’

By BILL CARTER

Last year at this time, five weeks into its season, “American Idol” was roaring along as television’s most-watched show, with an average of 31.7 million viewers (up substantially from its fourth season, when it averaged 28.3 million viewers over the same five weeks).
Improbably, this season the show has done even better, averaging 33.5 million viewers over its first five weeks. For perspective, at this point “Idol” could lose half its audience and still rank among the top 10 shows on television. And no one dares predict when this phenomenon will fade. LINK

Love's 40th anniversary

By Jim Harrington

For everything, there is a season.
And for love, it was the summer of 1967. Or, at least, that's what folks were told -- and that's what many believed. That's why thousands of young men and women, known to the world as hippies or flower children, descended on San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury .... LINK

Ted Kennedy / Jimmy Carter KGB connections

Wes Vernon

There is now evidence that in a later era, a former president and a sitting United States senator may have collaborated or attempted to collaborate with our Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union. LINK

Sidestep Electoral College?

Sen. Jamie Raskin, D-Montgomery, has sponsored a bill giving Maryland's 10 electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, not the candidate who wins Maryland. He hopes the proposal would encourage other states to abandon the Electoral College and move to a national popular vote. LINK