Free Republic

Full headline: Blackout: Power Goes Off During House Climate Hearing with Obama Science Czar John Holdren — Lights blink on and off and stay off for almost a minute Washington D.C.- A total blackout of a House Science committee occurred during a House Hearing on Climate Change and the EPA’s power plans. The lights went out and the room was plunged into total darkness at 10:23 AM in the Rayburn House Office Building. The hearing was titled: Full Committee Hearing – “The Administration’s Climate Plan: Failure by Design” - 2318 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515 | Sep 17,...

After forgiving millions of dollars in medical debt, Occupy Wall Street is tackling a new beast: student loans. Marking the third anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the group's Strike Debt initiative announced Wednesday it has abolished $3.8 million worth of private student loan debt since January. It said it has been buying the debts for pennies on the dollar from debt collectors, and then simply forgiving that money rather than trying to collect it. In total, the group spent a little more than $100,000 to purchase the $3.8 million in debt. While the group is unable to purchase...

An incredible thing happened in the recent reply-comment period regarding the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposal to regulate the Internet like old-fashioned monopoly telephone service: the side telling the agency not to regulate carried the day. The radical left, demanding federal regulatory control of the building blocks of Internet, brought all the usual hype and hoopla and had free-spending corporate backers in Google and Netflix, who want regulators to force you to pay the costs of their downstream bandwidth. This campaign by liberal special interests like MoveOn and the Sierra Club converted forty thousand websites into campaign advertisements urging visitors...

MADISON – Voters in the State of Wisconsin will see a referendum on whether the transportation fund should be protected in the State Constitution. However, most voter are not aware on how the referendum qualified for the November ballot. Under Wisconsin State law, a binding statewide referendum can be qualified if it’s approved by the Wisconsin Legislature by both houses for two consecutive Legislative sessions. According to Ballotpedia, Wisconsin is one of 12 states that uses the two Legislative session method to qualify statewide ballot measures. Extra: Learn More About the Transportation Fund Referendum The Transportation Fund referendum will ask...

The Middle Seat The Trouble With Keeping Commercial Flights Clean With the Ebola Crisis in the Background, Standards for Disinfecting Planes Vary Based on Time, Class Just how clean are airplanes? Do they really get scrubbed down after each flight? WSJ's Scott McCartney joins Tanya Rivero on Lunch Break with the answers. By Scott McCartney Updated Sept. 17, 2014 The Ebola crisis and heightened concerns about the risk of spreading disease during air travel have focused concern on what airlines do to keep planes clean. It's a murky area without clear regulatory standards. The Federal Aviation Administration says it doesn't...

The number of people who filed for unemployment assistance in the U.S. last week fell to the lowest level since mid-July, fuelling optimism over the strength of the labor market, official data showed on Thursday. In a report, the U.S. Department of Labor said the number of individuals filing for initial jobless benefits in the week ending September 13 decreased by 36,000 to a seasonally adjusted 280,000 from the previous week’s revised total of 316,000. Analysts had expected jobless claims to fall by 11,000 to 305,000 last week. Continuing jobless claims in the week ended September 6 fell to 2.429...

Gov. Jerry Brown signed historic groundwater legislation Tuesday, imposing new rules in the Golden State that could limit how much water commercial and residential users are allowed to pump from underground aquifers — a move decades in the works, spurred this year by California’s drought. The new laws, which take effect in January, will require local government officials to ensure use of groundwater basins is sustainable, protecting underground reserves and averting other environmental damage. The regulations could have a ripple effect on thousands of farmers and ranchers across the North Coast.

Ahead of the People’s Climate March, activists say Obama must address fracking if he wants to leave a meaningful legacy.Later this month, hundreds of delegates will gather inside the U.N. to talk about climate change. President Barack Obama plans to attend the climate summit and reportedly wants work on a deal with other world leaders to “name and shame” countries that aren’t actively pursuing serious climate action. But outside the U.N., thousands of activists will be protesting with one message: Whatever Obama accomplishes at the U.N., it won’t be enough to save his climate legacy. The Obama administration has been...

Chinese footwear firm Ultrasonic has announced the disappearance of its chief executive and chief operating officer, along with most of its cash. The firm, which is listed in Germany, said that both the men, Qingyong Wu and Minghong Wu, had "apparently left their homes and are not traceable". At the same time, its cash reserves in China and Hong Kong had been transferred and were "no longer in the company's range of influence". Ultrasonic shares immediately fell 79%. The Cologne-based firm said its German holding company still had a "relevant six-figure amount" of money under its control, so it was...

The idea that the Obama administration has the budget deficit under control is a complete and total lie. According to the U.S. Treasury, the federal government has officially run a deficit of 589 billion dollars for the first 11 months of fiscal year 2014. But this number is just for public consumption and it relies on accounting tricks which massively understate how much debt is actually being accumulated. If you want to know what the real budget deficit is, all you have to do is go to a U.S. Treasury website which calculates the U.S. national debt to the penny....

Second No Confidence Vote in Six Months In spite of the fact the Socialist party holds a majority of just 1 in the 577-seat lower house, French prime minister Manual Valls hopes to stabilize things with a Second No Confidence Vote in Six Months. Mr Valls could see a narrowing of his majority compared with the vote when he was first appointed prime minister at the end of March after a big socialist loss in local elections. Then he won by a margin of 306 votes to 239 against, with 26 abstentions. “Valls is politically and economically archaic. He is...

A Milwaukee teen charged in a string of armed robberies last week told police he was trying to do as many crimes as he could before he turned 18 on Sept. 11. Rocarldo Chalmers is one of five suspects charged Wednesday in a dizzying spree of armed stick-ups and car jackings that only ended after a high speed chase. Chalmers faces 10 felonies, including armed robbery, car theft and fleeing. Isiah Deshawn Thomas, 18, is charged with five counts, Anthony Griffis, 17, with two. Two juveniles have been charged in Children's Court. As many as three other suspects remain at...

Economy In Crisis: A new study by the Illinois Policy Institute shows in the past four years, the number of new food-stamp recipients in the state has outpaced new jobs nearly 2-to-1. Illinois Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, locked in a tight re-election battle with self-made billionaire Republican Bruce Rauner, has been arguing that Illinois, arguably the bluest of blue states, has turned the fiscal corner and is on its way back. The recovery may be slower than Quinn wants it to be — but, he says, it is real. It is an odd recovery, though, that makes more people dependent...

Investors have bought billions of euros in German treasury notes that pay negative interest—meaning the purchasers agreed to pay a small fee for the privilege of lending the German government their money. […] Germany auctioned €3.34 billion ($4.3 billion) Wednesday in two-year notes at an average yield of minus 0.07 percent. Rates are very low all over, and German debt is considered ultra-safe, so security-minded investors are paying for safety. Expectation the European Central Bank will buy bonds has also driven down yields, which move opposite to prices. And the small negative yield on the notes is still a better...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Federal Reserve signaled Wednesday that it plans to keep a key interest rate at a record low for a considerable period because a broad range of U.S. economic measures remain subpar. The Fed said it planned to keep its benchmark rate near zero as long as inflation remains under control, until it sees consistent gains in wage growth, long-term unemployment and other gauges of the job market. The central bank retained language signaling its plans to keep short-term rates low "for a considerable time" after it ends its monthly bond purchases after its next meeting in...

Although the overall Consumer Price Index dropped by 0.2 percent in August, the price index for food rose 0.2 percent, with the average price for a pound of ground beef rising to $4.013 per pound--the first time it has ever topped $4 per pound. In July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average price for a pound of ground beef had been $3.884 per pound—which was the record price up to that point. From July to August, the average price jumped 12.9 cents, an increase of 3.3 percent in one month.

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. – New federal school food regulations promoted by First Lady Michelle Obama are becoming a massive headache for many schools that participate in the National School Lunch Program. And many, like Missouri’s Notre Dame Regional and Saxony Lutheran high schools, are taking matters into their own hands. Those schools and numerous others across the country are ditching the federal regulations and the funding that comes with them to save their cafeteria programs, which have experienced a nose-dive in sales and skyrocketing waste since the new rules were implemented in 2012. At Notre Dame, school officials turned to...

On Friday, the California State Assembly outdid itself. You can always count on the leftist leaders of what is supposed to be the “people’s house” never lets a crisis go to waste. With the passage of AB 1739 (Dickinson-D), SB 1168 (Pavley-D), and SB 1319 (Pavley-D), 100 years of history was reversed. The authors painted a grim picture of California’s groundwater future. Most of what they said is true. The only problem they didn’t bother to tell you two key truths: 1.It was these same so-called leaders who give up our seat—the property owner and the farmer’s place at the...

Odile will unload tremendous rainfall over a large part of the Southwest United States that will run off the mountains and into the desert valleys and plains through the end of the week. While the rain will continue to ease the long-term drought in the region, too much rain will fall too quickly for the landscape to absorb.

There are many sharks in the water – so many, in fact, that even public exposure in courts of law doesn’t guarantee that the most predatory of attacks will necessarily garner public attention. Well, here’s one that should, assuming two related court actions by the bankrupt oil drilling equipment holding company Gulfco Holding Corp. against Prospect Capital Corp has real merit. It’s a dilly, a true watermark of an intrinsically tainted business culture. In Gulfco Holding Corp. v. Prospect Capital Corp. (U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware) – and in a separate lawsuit filed May, 2014 in Jefferson...