TAMPA - A batch of bogus bucks is being passed in the Tampa Bay area, counterfeit $100 and $50 bills that can pass the pen test cashiers frequently use to detect fakes. ...more

July 15, 2008

Premium cable channel HBO has a reputation for its bold programming that features a lot of profanity, nudity and violence. It's the main reason a lot of families with children don't subscribe to it. ...more

July 13, 2008

Someone forgot to tell the U.S. Supreme Court that we're at war. ...more

June 24, 2008

"Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America," by Walter R. Borneman (Random House, $30). ...more

June 15, 2008

Meet George W. Bush, time traveler. He's in Poland in 1939 as Nazi tanks advance on Warsaw, then flying with his Navy-pilot father to battle imperial Japan. He's alongside Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, William McKinley on his deathbed and Franklin D. Roosevelt on D-Day. He lingers with Harry S. Truman, another U.S. president deeply unpopular in his time. ...more

June 13, 2008

Speaking at the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1913, President Woodrow Wilson told the aged veterans of the Blue and Gray that the Civil War had become "a quarrel forgotten." ...more

June 8, 2008

La comunidad negra local se ha movilizado, pero cada vez resulta más aparente que el Condado de Hillsborough será conocido pronto como el sitial de una de las mayores banderas confederadas de la nación. ...more

June 5, 2008

Demirela Teljiyovic's parents risked their lives to come to America. "My mother had to live in a tree for two months," the 9-year-old said. "My parents have told me what Bosnia was like, and I've read books about it at school. ...more

June 1, 2008

Even Hillary Clinton critics are feeling a bit sorry for her these days. Barack Obama has moved on, and so has the campaign for the presidency. Recall a year ago when most people thought it would be the Republicans who would still be struggling to find a candidate and Hillary would be standing tall, waiting for her next foe. Things change a lot in a year. Obama has all but won, even if he technically hasn't wrapped up the Democratic nomination. He will, and there's little hope for Clinton. Where did it all go wrong? Most people agree that Clinton got waylaid by an Illinois twister. Few times in United States history has a political dynamo entered the scene. It happened when Abraham Lincoln ran for office, and again when John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert ran for the presidency. Since then, it's been fairly quiet. ...more

May 22, 2008

No other country puts as much emphasis on "freedom" as the United States. Patrick Henry demanded "liberty or death." The national anthem calls America "the land of the free." Great reformers from Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King have urged America to live up to its ideal of "freedom." When a group of French Americanophiles wanted to flatter the United States, they sent the Statue of Liberty. ...more

May 18, 2008