Congress recently turned down a chance to require all states to honor concealed-carry permits from other states -- effectively overriding all local gun laws. The defeat turned back, at least for the moment, a chance for the states with the weakest gun laws to make a killing by bringing more gun...

For two decades, Dippin' Dots has been the "ice cream of the future." Like jetpacks and flying cars, it seemed like the future would never quite arrive for the little ice-cream balls that microbiologist Curt Jones invented in 1988. For years, they were an exotic, hard-to-find treat. But recently...

Would you spend $60 for a hair brush for your dog? No, you say? Well, that's probably because you've never seen the FURminator. The groundbreaking undercoat-removing device with the bright yellow handle is a must-have for pet owners. Really. I was skeptical at first. Sixty bucks for a dog brush! My...

Like many animal caretakers, Rosemary Greenway puts on a little music to calm her horses. Music has powers to calm the savage beast, and all that. But now the Performing Rights Society says that playing the music at the Malthouse Equestrian Centre constitutes a public performance and she must pay a...

Last fall companies in Europe got this pitch: Save Your Logo, or, more specificially, save the threatened animal that's made your logo so catchy over the years. Lacoste just became the first company to jump on board. René Lacoste, a famous tennis player in the twenties, was nicknamed "the...

Some animal owners may be turning their sick or disabled dogs and cats in to shelters because they feel they can't afford them during the recession. The Pittsburgh Post found recently that their local shelters are seeing lots of cats with broken legs or asthma. The editor wrote in to Al's Morning...

The hopes for creating the world's largest wild horse sanctuary have dwindled in the last month. Last fall, Madeleine Pickens, wife of oilman T. Boone Pickens, proposed buying or leasing a million acres of land out West to save the 30,000 some wild horses that the Bureau of Land Management is...

The U.S. Mint rolled out a new Lincoln-themed penny over a month ago. But I still have not seen any. At first I was asking clerks in stores "Got any of the new pennies?" I quickly discovered that nobody had any idea that the Mint was rolling out four new designs for the penny this year and gave up...

This week President Obama brought science back into the Endangered Species Act, effectively overturning a wild diversion of the law by the Bush administration last summer. Bush decided that federal officials didn't have to bother to consult with scientists when they decided whether logging or...

We used 10% more coupons in the fourth quarter of 2008 than we did during the same time last year, according to Inman, a company that processes promotions. For the whole year we collectively reached into our wallet and pulled out 2.6 billion pieces of ratty paper. But that's nothing compared to the...