Free Republic

Doctors’ house calls are considered a thing of the past, but not in the appointment book of Dr. Carrol Frazier Landrum, an 88-year-old physician from Edwards, Mississippi. The good doctor will see you no matter who you are, where you are, or how much money you have — as long his 2007 Toyota Camry can deliver him to your location. But now his state’s medical board wants to see him gone. Dr. Landrum, a WWII veteran, was forced to make a change after crime drove him from his Edwards, Mississippi, office two years ago, and he couldn’t find another space...

Drivers trying to calculate whether it's practical to own an electric car are facing a new math. U.S. gas prices have fallen more than $1 per gallon over the last 12 months, to a national average of $2.06, according to AAA. That makes electric cars — with their higher prices tags — a tougher sell. "Fuel savings are not top of mind to many consumers right now," says John Krafcik, president of the car shopping site TrueCar.com. Automakers have responded by slashing thousands of dollars off the sticker price of electrics. Incentives averaged $4,159 per electric car last year, up...

With its ratings at an all-time low and its journalistic ethics almost constantly under fire, left-wing CNN is once again conceding it can no longer compete as a serious news organization with the revelation Wednesday that the production of a game show is under way. Rumors surfaced in December that CNN chief Jeff Zucker might go this way. TV Newser confirmed the humiliating news today. ... 2014 might have been the worst year for CNN of any news outlet in recent memory. We’re only 21 days into the new year, but 2015 is already shaping up to be worse.

The United States is preparing to open the border to Mexican long-haul truckers, allowing those who qualify for permits to make direct deliveries from Mexico to U.S. destinations — a measure stipulated more than two decades ago under the North American Free Trade Agreement. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is expected to publish a formal announcement this week inviting Mexican companies to apply. Supporters in United States and Mexico are praising the move as an important step toward the economic integration of the two countries and Canada that was envisioned at NAFTA’s signing in 1994.

“Since 2010, America has put more people back to work than Europe, Japan, and all advanced economies combined,” President Obama said during his State of the Union Address on Tuesday. “Our manufacturers have added almost 800,000 new jobs. Some of our bedrock sectors, like our auto industry, are booming. But there are also millions of Americans who work in jobs that didn’t even exist 10 or 20 years ago — jobs at companies like Google, and eBay, and Tesla.” While Politico pointed out that most of the companies Obama touted are big, left-leaning D.C. spenders, his choice of mentioning eBay...

DUBAI - A Saudi journalist and a member of the royal family denied rumors on Thursday that King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, in hospital since December suffering from pneumonia, had died, according to messages on social media. "All that is being reported about King Abdullah's death is far from the truth," Ibrahem al-Rawsa, identified as a journalist at state-run Saudi Press Agency, wrote on his Twitter account. A member of the royal family wrote: "I give you good news. The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques is fine and there is no truth to the rumors going around." He was referring...

Seven months after federal officials fired CGI Federal for its botched work on Obamacare website Healthcare.gov, the IRS awarded the same company a $4.5 million IT contract for its new Obamacare tax program. CGI is a $10.5 billion Montreal-based company that has forever been etched into the public’s mind as the company behind the bungled Obamacare main website. After facing a year of embarrassing failures, federal officials finally pulled the plug on the company and terminated CGI’s contract in January 2014. Yet on Aug. 11, seven months later, IRS officials signed a new contract with CGI to provide “critical functions”...

A top EU official wants internet and telecommunication companies to hand over encryption keys to police and spy agencies as part of a wider crackdown on terrorism. The EU’s counter-terrorism coordinator, Gilles de Kerchove, in a document leaked by London-based civil liberties group Statewatch, says the European Commission should come up with rules that require the firms to help national governments snoop on possible suspects. “Since the Snowden revelations, internet and telecommunications companies have started to use often decentralized encryption, which increasingly makes lawful interception by the relevant national authorities technically difficult or even impossible,” notes de Kerchove in the...

The European Central Bank will plough €1.1 trillion into the eurozone economy in a last-ditch attempt to breathe life into the European economy. At its monthly governing council on Thursday (January 22), the bank’s governing council agreed to start buying up to €60 billion of government bonds from March in an unprecedented quantitative easing program. The program is open-ended, and will run until September 2016 at the earliest. Speaking at a press conference following the governing council meeting, ECB president Mario Draghi said that the bond-buying program would remain in place “until we see a sustained adjustment in the path...

"In January 2013, Lake Michigan hit its lowest water mark ever. Just two years later, the big lake has seen what some are calling an unparalleled turnaround. “We’re up almost two feet from there. Last fall, we had an unprecedented event where lake levels continued to rise through the fall. It has not rebounded this quickly I think in any recorded history that we have,” said Chris Schropp of the U.S Army Corps of Engineers."

U.S. Steel says it will lay off more than 350 workers in East Chicago, Indiana, as it plans to temporarily close its tin mill. Company spokeswoman Sarah Cassella tells The Times in Munster that layoffs will begin in mid-March. She declined to comment on how long the plant will be closed for. Cassella says low-priced tin product imports have hurt domestic business. …

America’s national character will have to be changed if progressives are going to implement their agenda. So, changing social norms is the progressive agenda. To understand how far this has advanced, and how difficult it will be to reverse the inculcation of dependency, consider the data Nicholas Eberstadt deploys in National Affairs quarterly: America’s welfare state transfers more than 14 percent of gross domestic product to recipients, with more than a third of Americans taking “need-based” payments. In our wealthy society, the government officially treats an unprecedented portion of the population as “needy.” Transfers of benefits to individuals through social...

In naming an emergency manager for Atlantic City on Thursday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie left the door open for the seaside gambling resort to file for bankruptcy if it can’t get its finances under control. The Republican governor and likely presidential candidate appointed a corporate turnaround specialist as the city’s emergency manager, and tabbed the man who led Detroit through its municipal bankruptcy as his assistant. Corporate finance consultant Kevin Lavin will have broad powers over Atlantic City’s finances and operations. Kevyn Orr, who helped lead Detroit through a financial crisis, will serve as special counsel to Lavin. Christie...

Members of the National Right to Work Foundation believe two German labor groups have failed to completely disclose their full level of involvement in the United Auto Workers’ attempts to set up shop in Chattanooga. As previously reported, the UAW wants to formally establish itself at Chattanooga’s Volkswagen plant. The UAW’s attempts have so far been unsuccessful. VW workers, by a tally of 712-626, for instance, voted in February not to join the UAW. Members of the NRTW represent an unspecified number of VW workers who oppose the union. They say that VW’s Global Works Council and IG Metall, a...

Former U.S. postal worker who says he got ‘lazy’ sentenced It’s long been said that mail carriers deliver through snow, rain, heat and gloom of night. Maybe that’s because if they fail to do the job right, they could end up charged with a federal crime. A now-former U.S. Postal Service worker from ­Eugene learned that the hard way after police recovered nearly 1,000 pieces of undelivered mail from two bins on his front porch in July. The bins contained primarily merchant advertisements (or “junk” mail), but included 27 voter ballots from May’s primary election and more than 200 items...

President Obama on Thursday detailed a new $80 billion proposal intended to help more families afford child care as part of a post-State of the Union policy push the White House hopes can win over Republicans and independents. The president called for the federal government to dramatically expand the Child Care and Development Fund, a federal program that provides states grants for childcare assistance programs to help low- and middle-income families. "In today's economy, when having both parents in the workforce is an economic necessity for many families, affordable, high-quality child care and early childhood education — these aren't just...

The proposed changes to the CFAA and related laws, posted online by the White House early last week, would broaden the definition of computer crime and stiffen penalties for existing crimes, including doubling the maximum penalty for many violations from 10 years to 20 years. "Hanging out in an IRC chat room giving advice to people now makes you a member of a ‘criminal enterprise,’ allowing the FBI to sweep in and confiscate all your assets without charging you with a crime.”

BlackBerry's CEO John Chen wants companies to stop "discriminatory practices" against BlackBerry by not allowing them to use certain apps. Chen called out Apple and Netflix in a blog post about net neutrality and what he called a "two-tiered wireless broadband ecosystem" where developers create apps only for iOS and Android devices. "Unlike BlackBerry, which allows iPhone users to download and use our BBM service, Apple does not allow BlackBerry or Android users to download Apple's iMessage messaging service," he wrote. Apple's iMessage service is only available to customers using the company's ecosystem of devices. Calling out Netflix, Chen said...

Watching politicians give speeches, such as Obama’s State of the Union address, is an occupational hazard when you work at a think tank.Which is why, in the past, I’ve heartily recommended the State-of-the-Union Bingo game developed by Americans for Tax Reform.But I was in New York City for a television program about the President’s address, so I had to pretend I was an adult and pay attention to the speech.That being said, the silver lining to that dark cloud is that the folks at U.S. News and World Report gave me an opportunity to add my two cents to an...

Protesters and Looters Burn Business District to the Ground— And the National Guard was nowhere in sight. Now we know why… And top state Democratic leaders all knew about this. Governor Jay Nixon (D-MO) ordered the National Guard out of Ferguson before the verdict was announced. And….. TOP MISSOURI DEMOCRATIC LEADERS including Claire McCaskill, Lacy Clay, Chris Koster, Mayor Francis Slay and St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley all knew about this order.