A group of homeless people and housing activists broke into and occupied a privately owned duplex in the Mission District of San Francisco on Easter Sunday “in what served as the climax of a protest designed to promote use of San Francisco’s vacant buildings as shelters for the needy,” reports James Temple of the San [...]
Pfizer, Inc., announced this week that the company will be closing its former research and development headquarters in New London, Conn. — the project for which the city of New London infamously used its power of eminent domain to seize and ultimately bulldoze the homes of Susette Kelo and her neighbors, after that seizure was [...]
The Charleston Antique Mall is one of those seven-day-a-week outfits that rents out space to 45 or so independent antique vendors. Think Victorian furniture, Depression glass, Coca-Cola collectibles, old Elvis records. Proprietor Cal Tully says the mall is doing fine, despite the current economic squeeze — maybe because of it. (Full disclosure: The brunette sells [...]
Proponents were full of assurances as they took their dog-and-wheelchair show around the country back in the late 1980s: The proposed Americans with Disabilities Act wouldn’t impose undue costs or hardships on businesses. It would simply require a few “reasonable accommodations.” Widen a doorway here, provide a wheelchair ramp there — there weren’t even likely [...]
For decades now, the green extreme has argued the industries that develop the nation’s natural resources for commercial use ought to be forced off the West’s “public” lands. And they didn’t seem to much care which tactic did the job. If threatening huge “permit processing fees” or massive levies for “environmental cleanup” could shut down [...]
By altering procedures and policies over the past several years, Bush administration officials have made it substantially more difficult to designate domestic animals and plants for protection under the Endangered Species Act. President Bush’s appointees have “rejected or moved slowly on petitions to list imperiled plants and animals under the 35-year-old law,” The Washington Post [...]
Word that ailing Cuban dictator, “president” Fidel Castro, has decided to step aside and turn over the reins of power to his younger brother (how democratic!) appears to be evoking some predictable nostalgia from America’s political left, which holds that Cuba is an economic basket case only because the United States viciously allows the island [...]
Howard Hawks’ “Red River” isn’t just any Western. It was the last movie playing in the small-town Texas theater in the Peter Bogdanovich/Sybil Shepherd film (from the Larry McMurtry novel) “The Last Picture Show.” It was Montgomery Clift’s first – and many say John Wayne’s best – film. And how does novelist Borden Chase’s quintessential [...]
John Tyson, chief state investigator in the shooting deaths of a herd of 31 horses near the town of Sparks in Northern Nevada on Dec. 27, says “I think these were random acts of killing due to people target shooting.” Anything’s possible. There will always be drunks and morons who kill out of boredom — [...]
Vin’s Blog at the RJ
