Gold broke $380 an ounce today: "Around 4:30 p.m. ET, gold traded at $379.90 per ounce, up $8.30, beating last week's peak of $375. The last time gold closed this high was November 1996, when traders fixed an afternoon price of $377.00. Gold is up almost 9 percent in 2003, boosted by fears the United States is bent on going to war to disarm Iraq and also by a tumbling dollar, rising oil prices and a shaky stock market. The safe-haven metal was one of the best-performing assets in 2002."

A Nation of Voyeurs: "How the Internet search engine Google is changing what we can find out about one another - and raising questions about whether we should."

Beam Me Out Of This Death Trap, Scotty: "April 1980 Washington Monthly cover story on the problems and progress of NASA's space shuttle program was written one year before Columbia's first launch in 1981."

Preparing for the worst: "On the other hand, the Gulf war taught Saddam Hussein important lessons. The devastating results of trying to fight America and its allies as if they were Iran or Kuwait-in open terrain, where Iraqi forces were crushed by air power and artillery-will encourage Mr Hussein to try to lure the invaders into Iraq's cities. And America's conventional strength will encourage him to use other, unconventional methods. In 1991, Iraq did not use chemical or biological weapons. This time, the fact that the war will be explicitly directed towards removing his regime could also remove any inhibitions Mr Hussein has about using them. Before the Gulf war, he also refrained from pre-emptively attacking allied troops or other countries, which might have made the war much messier. This time, he may not."

The Space Shuttle Must Be Stopped: "Unfortunately, the core problem that lay at the heart of the Challenger tragedy applies to the Columbia tragedy as well. That core problem is the space shuttle itself. For 20 years, the American space program has been wedded to a space-shuttle system that is too expensive, too risky, too big for most of the ways it is used, with budgets that suck up funds that could be invested in a modern system that would make space flight cheaper and safer. The space shuttle is impressive in technical terms, but in financial terms and safety terms no project has done more harm to space exploration. With hundreds of launches to date, the American and Russian manned space programs have suffered just three fatal losses in flight-and two were space-shuttle calamities. This simply must be the end of the program."

Columbia shuttle breaks up over Texas: "The space shuttle Columbia, with seven astronauts aboard, broke up as it descended over central Texas Saturday toward a planned landing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida."

Congressman Ron Paul on Democracy and the death of the Republic:

The vast majority of the American people have come to accept democracy as a favorable system and are pleased with our efforts to pursue Wilson's dream of making the world safe for democracy. But the goals of pure democracy and that of a constitutional republic are incompatible. A clear understanding of the difference is paramount, if we are to remain a free and prosperous nation.

There are certain wonderful benefits in recognizing the guidance that majority opinion offers. It takes a consensus or prevailing attitude to endorse the principles of liberty and a Constitution to protect them. This is a requirement for the rule of law to succeed. Without a consensus, the rule of law fails. This does not mean that the majority or public opinion measured by polls, court rulings, or legislative bodies should be able to alter the constitutional restraints on the government's abuse of life, liberty, and property. But in a democracy, that happens. And we know that today it is happening in this country on a routine basis.

In a free society with totally free markets, the votes by consumers through their purchases, or refusals to purchase, determine which businesses survive and which fail. This is free-choice democracy and it is a powerful force in producing and bringing about economic efficiency. In today's democracy by decree, government laws dictate who receives the benefits and who gets shortchanged. Conditions of employment and sales are taxed and regulated at varying rates, and success or failure is too often dependent on government action than by consumers' voting in the marketplace by their spending habits. Individual consumers by their decisions should be in charge, not governments armed with mandates from the majority.

Even a system of free-market money (a redeemable gold-coin standard) functions through the principle of consumers always voting or withholding support for that currency. A gold standard can only work when freely converted into gold coins, giving every citizen a right to vote on a daily basis for or against the government money.

Clerk says, 'I Saw Missing California Woman Last Month': "Police plan to begin reviewing surveillance tapes from a Longview grocery store where a clerk came forward late last week to say she believes she saw a missing, pregnant California woman sometime in December. According to a report in The Daily News of Longview on Thursday, the clerk told police that a pregnant woman came into the Market Place and said: 'This is serious. I was kidnapped. Call the authorities when I leave.' The 45-year-old clerk said she intended to call police but became distracted and forgot, according to a police report. Late last week, the clerk was watching TV and saw a story about Laci Peterson, 27, who vanished from Modesto, Calif., on Christmas Eve."

Babies' Mental Delay Tied to Moms' Vegan Diet: "The breast-fed infants of two mothers who did not eat any animal products, including milk and eggs, developed brain abnormalities as a result of a vitamin-B12 deficiency, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported Thursday."

Military Faces Bandwidth Crunch: "The typical American soldier stationed overseas has access to hundreds of times as much network bandwidth as the average grunt in the first Gulf War. But despite all the extra capacity, U.S. troops face a bandwidth shortage that dictates where ships are sent, when drones can fly and what kind of messages sailors and soldiers can receive. "