Tiny Kosovo - poor, mostly Muslim but feverishly pro-Western - braced itself Saturday for a historic declaration of independence from Serbia, a decade after a war that killed 10,000 people followed by years of limbo under U.N. rule. ...more

February 17, 2008

Serbia's newly re-elected president Boris Tadic pledged at his inauguration Friday that he would never stop fighting against independence for Kosovo. ...more

February 16, 2008

Serbia's foreign minister on Thursday urged the U.N. Security Council to oppose Kosovo's expected declaration of independence and called on the secretary-general to order that any proclamation be declared null and void. ...more

February 15, 2008

Mike Huckabee appealed to his evangelical base Saturday, telling an overflow crowd at a Baptist school it will take victories in Alabama and other conservative states to win the Republican presidential nomination. ...more

January 27, 2008

Jesus Lopez Bravo found a special penny when he was 7, a tiny thing of beauty that seemed minted just for him. ...more

January 10, 2008

In the U.S. Navy I was a radarman. We supplanted those men who used to stand on the wings of the bridge, or in the crow's nest, scanning the horizon, looking for reefs or icebergs or other things, which might endanger the ship. To some extent, I still see myself as performing that function, being alert to those things which might endanger our country and to report those things when they are observed. On occasion I am challenged by people who say "prove to me that you know what a reef or an iceberg looks like. I haven't been looking but you must prove it to me nevertheless." ...more

January 2, 2008

William F. Youngman's lament that God has been expelled from the public schools reinforces the misconception that our government should adopt Christianity as the official state religion. I have even been informed by friends that our Constitution mandates that this is a Christian nation. Had they read the Constitution, they would not have embarrassed themselves with that statement. Christianity not only is not mentioned in the Constitution but neither is it in the Declaration of Independence. The mistake comes from thinking the word God, or Deity is exclusive to one's particular denominational interpretation of God. What the 1st Amendment to the Constitution does say is this: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." I certainly value and believe in the spiritually inspired message of the Holy Bible, and practice my Christianity with zeal and reverence. I do not, however, think the Jewish or Christian Bible should be used as a religious indoctrination in government-supported institutions like the public schools. ...more

November 30, 2007

Ian Smith, 88, the last white minority leader of Rhodesia, who vowed that blacks would not rule his country "in a thousand years," died Tuesday in a clinic outside Cape Town, after recently suffering a stroke. ...more

November 21, 2007

Alan R Waishkey of Port Richey says freedom is under attack. ...more

October 24, 2007

The generosity of Pasco County businesses and residents as outlined in your editorial Monday ('Residents, Businesses Take County Under Wing') should come as no surprise. Why? Because we are residents of the most generous nation in the world. ...more

October 10, 2007