Free Republic

The Trump administration is poised to withdraw federal protections for countless waterways and wetlands across the country, making good on President Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to weaken landmark water rules long resented by some developers, farmers and oil, gas and mining executives. Environmental groups said the Trump administration proposal would have a sweeping impact on how the country safeguards the nation’s waterways, scaling back not just a 2015 Obama administration interpretation of federal jurisdiction over the nation’s waters, but also how federal agencies enforce the 1972 Clean Water Act. […] The changes would affect what waterways and wetlands fall under...

Recently-unionized writers and editors at Slate have reportedly voted almost unanimously to strike over concerns about the company's diversity policies and a rule mandating that union fees be optional for Slate employees. Bloomberg News reports that Slate employees voted 52 to 1 in favor of a strike and have begun considering when workers will walk out. A spokesman for the union told Bloomberg that the rules mandating optional union fees at the left-leaning blog seemed to be a "betrayal" of the site's values. “We just feel that it’s a total and absolute betrayal of Slate’s most fundamental values,” Slate writer...

JACKSON, MS (WLBT) - Owners of hybrid and electric vehicles in Mississippi received a notice from the state Department of Revenue informing them of the new annual tax on their vehicles. The new tax, which took effect on October 1, will tax $75 for hybrid vehicles and $150 for total electric vehicles annually. The tax is in addition to regular tag fees and must be paid at vehicle registration or renewal. Cathy Waterbury, The associate commissioner of the Department of Revenue and she said the revenue attained from the tax will go towards the state’s highway fund, infrastructure and the...

Two years ago 16 track inspectors and five supervisors for the Washington, DC Metro Rail system were fired for repeatedly filing false reports on track conditions. The Metro and Amalgamated Transit Union appealed these firings. An arbitrator hired to hear the appeal ordered all the fired individuals to be reinstated. The basis for the reinstatement decision was the arbitrator’s finding that “filing false reports was the normal practice in the track inspection program. Each inspection report was essentially an exact copy of the previous report filed for that section of track. No new measurements of deteriorated conditions were ever noted....

GREENSBORO, N.C. — After weeks of riveting and often salacious testimony about an extramarital affair and the elaborate lies that once kept it hidden, testimony in the John Edwards trial turned Monday to a more prosaic topic: campaign finance law. As Edwards' legal team opened his defense, the finance director for his failed 2008 presidential run testified that more than $900,000 from two wealthy benefactors was not reported as campaign contributions because it represented private gifts intended for personal expenditures. Lora Haggard, who supervised reporting to the Federal Election Commission, said the FEC told the Edwards campaign it was not...

Why Did the Second Person of the Trinity, Rather Than the Father or the Holy Spirit, Become Incarnate? Msgr. Charles Pope • December 10, 2018 • Trinity Dome. Credit: J. Lippelmann, Catholic StandardAs we await the approaching Feast of Holy Christmas, we have been pondering some of St. Thomas Aquinas’ teachings on the Incarnation. Today we will consider why it was the Son, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, who became incarnate.Most people have never even thought of this question let alone sought to answer it. God could have chosen many different ways to save us; He chose...

President Donald Trump sought Tuesday to pressure Democratic congressional leaders into supporting his demand for billions of dollars to build his promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, threatening to have the military build it “if Democrats do not give us the votes to secure our Country.” Trump tweeted the threat hours before Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi were to meet with Trump at the White House in an effort to avert a partial government shutdown on Dec. 21, when funding for some agencies is scheduled to expire. In a series of tweets Tuesday, Trump...

A pair of California nuns allegedly embezzled $500,000 from tuition and other school funds and used it to pay for gambling trips to Las Vegas, church officials said Monday. The duo allegedly kept their scam going for about a decade, pilfering from Saint James Catholic School in Torrance, located 26 miles south of Los Angeles, Archdiocese of Los Angeles media relations director Adrian Alarcon said. School officials told parents the women stole $500,000, according to the Long Beach Press-Telegram.Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper was the school’s principal and Sister Lana Chang taught eighth-grade students. Both retired earlier this year and neither...

After John Edwards was indicted, Federal Election Commission auditors determined that the hush money he received from wealthy donors to cover up a torrid affair did not need to be reported in the campaign's financial disclosure reports, his campaign's chief financial officer testified today. After three weeks of salacious testimony about Edwards' affair with mistress Rielle Hunter and the nearly $1 million collected to keep it quiet, Edwards' lawyers kicked off their defense focusing on the much less steamy intricacies of campaign finance law. After reviewing the campaign's financials for four years, the FEC determined last month that money Edwards'...

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 49% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Forty-nine percent (49%) disapprove. The latest figures include 36% who Strongly Approve of the way Trump is performing and 39% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -3. (see trends).

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, pundits offered a variety of reasons for its failure: economic, political, military. Few thought to add a fourth, more elusive cause: the regime’s total loss of credibility. This hard-to-measure process had started in 1956, when Premier Nikita Khrushchev gave his so-called secret speech to party leaders, in which he denounced Josef Stalin’s purges and officially revealed the existence of the gulag prison system. Not long afterward, Boris Pasternak allowed his suppressed novel “Doctor Zhivago” to be published in the West, tearing another hole in the Iron Curtain. Then, in 1962, the literary magazine...

A recent study confirms a disturbing trend: American college students are abandoning the study of history. Since 2008, the number of students majoring in history in U.S. universities has dropped 30 percent, and history now accounts for a smaller share of all U.S. bachelor’s degrees than at any time since 1950. Although all humanities disciplines have suffered declining enrollments since 2008, none has fallen as far as history. And this decline in majors has been even steeper at elite, private universities — the very institutions that act as standard bearers and gate-keepers for the discipline. The study of history, it...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem The Acts of the Apostles 
 (New Testament) Acts 17 In Athens 16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. 18 A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.”...

Limpeachment. A description of when you get impeachment from the Democrats based on incredibly LAME possible FEC violations. Civil, not criminal, violations if true which are wildly exceeded by Obama campaign violations which were merely fined. Also involving a charge which the FEC failed to pursue against John Edwards. #Limpeachment

The pro-western group 'The Proud Boys' have been caught up in controversy since members of its New York chapter clashed with leftists outside one of its meetings. One America's Neil W. McCabe has more with the new chairman of the group from Washington.

YOUNGSTOWN -- There is a house I see every so often in my travels. It is perched where the alabaster 33-mile marker stands along the long-defunct Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad line, by an old stone foundation that has likely stood for over a century. Every year, ivy and wild vines suffocate its simple charm, climbing up and over its slanted gingerbread slate roof on its right side, the one that faces Cedar Street. And every year, it loses one more shingle and sheds more luster from its ancient apricot-colored paint. In the back of its sloped property, a smaller...

Moscow has unveiled a new statue dedicated to the Russian novelist and Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn on what would have been his 100th birthday. Designed by sculptor Andrey Kovalchuk, the monument was installed in Moscow’s Tagansky District on the street that bears Solzhenitsyn’s name. President Vladimir Putin attended the opening ceremony.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Tuesday that he will bring up a bipartisan criminal justice bill up for a vote, marking a significant win for supporters including President Trump. "At the request of the president and following improvements to the legislation that has been secured by several members, the Senate will take up the recently revised criminal justice bill," McConnell said from the Senate floor. Backers and advocates have been publicly and privately lobbying McConnell for months to bring the bill to the floor, arguing that they have at least 70 votes in support of the legislation....

We are NOT biased against conservatives and we DO care about privacy, says Google's CEO, as he prepares to be quizzed by Congress for first time ever Google CEO Sundar Pichai will testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday in his first formal appearance before lawmakers It comes after he was criticized for skipping a September hearing that featured top executives from Facebook and Twitter He is expected to be questioned on Google's handling and protection of user data, privacy practices, disinformation campaigns, and its plans for China Republicans are expected to ask about concerns that conservative voices are...

Boston, MA – When Suffolk County’s district attorney-elect Rachel Rollins takes over the prosecutor’s office in January, criminals will no longer need to worry about being held accountable for many offenses – including resisting arrest. “It’s a recipe for disaster,” veteran Boston defense attorney, Robert Griffin, told the Boston Globe. “The problem is the message that you’re sending,” Griffin stressed. “You’re encouraging bad behavior. You’re telling people that we’re not going to do anything about this.” Rollins, 47, has been widely hailed – and widely criticized – for her well-publicized “Charges to be Declined” list, which she has featured on...