The fourth annual pet adoption & education fair will be held Saturday, December 8 and Sunday, December 9, in the downstairs conference rooms in the Deschutes Services Center, 1300 NW Wall St. in Bend (located off the Parkway at the Lafayette exit). “Furry Friends in Need – A Home for the Holidays” is jointly sponsored by most local animal rescue and shelter organizations.  The Deschutes Services Center location provides the public with a comfortable setting to ... [full story]

Pull up a chair. Open the wine and turn on the music. Gloster Furniture has recently launched a new line, Symphony.   SYMPHONY - With its rich, chestnut all-weather wicker intertwined with plantation teak, the Symphony collection brings a touch of elegance to your home. CNS Photo courtesy of Gloster Furniture.    THE NEST - Gloster Furniture's Scoop Collection includes this inviting oversized Nest lounger. CNS Photo courtesy of Gloster Furniture.    KINCAID - Spice up your life with this ... [full story]

Radical feminists have devised a scheme to cash in on the flow of taxpayer money in a big way. Their good buddy, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., has just introduced Senate Bill 2279, called the International Violence Against Women Act. The act earmarks at least 10 percent of its program funds to be granted to a certain type of women's organizations. Biden's press release identifies the favored groups: NOW's Legal Momentum, Family Violence Prevention Fund, Women's ... [full story]

The United States and Mexico are doing something historic in the struggle against Mexico's drug cartels, responsible for 90 percent of all illicit narcotics on America's streets. To a greater extent than ever before, they are joining forces, thereby advancing the only strategy with a hope of success. The Bush administration calls it the Merida Initiative, a $1.4 billion, multiyear security partnership linking the United States, Mexico and Central America in a new regional counternarcotics ... [full story]

One of Ronald Reagan's most remembered comments in his first debate with Jimmy Carter was, "There you go again." People remember little or nothing about the serious debate issues, but they do recall that phrase. If Reagan were still alive and looking at the topsy-turvy political events we read about daily in our newspapers, he might well say to the American people, "There you go again." We seem to invent new oddities daily as we ... [full story]

Both political parties in Congress are fundamentally anti-military. The was clearly demonstrated on Nov. 8 by an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote of 400 to 15 in the House of Representatives and an unopposed unanimous voice vote in the Senate on a new Department of Defense Appropriations Act to fund peacetime Pentagon programs for the current fiscal year. President Bush joined the anti-defense throng on Nov. 13 when he signed this legislative monstrosity into law. Anti-military monstrosity? ... [full story]

All may be fair in love and war, but not in politics. Presidential campaigns not only help us choose the leader of our country. They also help define who we are and what kind of country we want to be. So it is vitally important that, as much as possible, these campaigns be conducted on a high moral plane. To put it mildly, that hasn't always been true in American political history. As the man ... [full story]

Events are pushing the Bush administration toward a fateful decision on Pakistan: Is President Pervez Musharraf still the best bet to keep nuclear-armed Pakistan safe, stable, pro-Western and a vital ally in the war against terrorism? President Bush thinks so, even as he disapproves of Musharraf's declaration of a state of emergency, suspension of Pakistan's constitution and crackdown on political opponents. But others in the Bush administration, and many in Congress, are clearly wondering if ... [full story]

Even fans and players who blindly stood behind Barry Bonds must now concede the damage has been done. If Bonds is convicted of federal charges of perjury and obstruction of justice for his testimony four years ago to a grand jury investigating the use of steroids, he will have forever tainted one of the greatest achievements in baseball and forced the sport to address the matter in its record books. And a conviction will prove ... [full story]

Why would Russian President Vladimir Putin bestow his country's highest award on a Cold War spy, the American-born George Koval, who betrayed secrets of the Manhattan Project to Stalin's Soviet Union? Two answers spring readily to mind, neither of which is reassuring about where Putin's Russia is heading. First, Putin had to know that honoring Koval, who was made a "Hero of the Russian Federation," half a century after his treason to the United States ... [full story]