Free Republic

This week's mass shooting in San Bernandino, which killed 14 innocents and wounded another 21, seems sadly routine. We've had so many of these incidents in recent years that they flow together. And yet, as Max Ehrenfreund notes at the Washington Post, we've actually had a "massive decline" in gun violence over the last two decades. (snip) Regardless, the difference between perception and reality here is stark. Mass shootings of strangers are, quite naturally, scarier and more attention-grabbing than ordinary homicides involving people known to the shooter. They make national news and spark debates over the state of our society...

For Stephen Colbert, the late-night honeymoon appears to be over. The dose of reality comes upon tracking the last three weeks available on the ratings front. But first, a quick review of where we were and how we got here on the late-night competition front: outside of Colbert's opening week, NBC's Jimmy Fallon and The Tonight Show have beaten his CBS competition every week with plenty of room to spare. No surprise there, as even CBS execs concede they had no illusions of beating Fallon as Colbert and The Late Show find their groove. But that's not to say Colbert...

Many years ago I interviewed for a reporting job covering government waste, fraud and mismanagement. The interview went well and my future employers mentioned that they’d had trouble keeping the position filled as many reporters had trouble coming up with story ideas. They wondered if that would be a problem. I thought they were joking, so I chuckled. But they were entirely serious. I thought of that when looking at media coverage of the Planned Parenthood scandal. The media seem to be really struggling to come up with any story ideas for how to cover this story. (snip) Using Nexis,...

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — NASA scientists and planet lovers everywhere are cheering the Pluto space probe, which is now sending images of the dwarf planet back to Earth. The cost of the 10-year voyage is raising eyebrows, but not for the reasons you might think. (snip) The edge-of-the-solar-system breakthrough cost $720 million. That’s less than the cost of the $1 billion Vikings stadium. And less than half the $1.7 billion price tag of the Southwest Rail Project.

The FBI and the Internal Revenue Service are investigating Community Action of Minneapolis, a defunct nonprofit organization whose leaders allegedly misspent hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money.The investigations were disclosed for the first time Thursday in a new court filing by the organization’s court-appointed receiver, Michael Knight. He was hired by the state to assess the full scope of the organization’s finances after a state audit revealed the agency’s board and its chief executive, Bill Davis, used taxpayer money for a celebrity cruise, tropical vacations, a personal car loan and other questionable expenses.The new documents, first obtained by...

WASHINGTON -- Mere weeks into his first term as a U.S. congressman, Republican Rep. Tom Emmer is challenging the right flank of his party. Just after midnight Saturday, Emmer issued a statement calling out Republican House colleagues who don't support fully funding the Department of Homeland Security because of President Barack Obama's executive action on immigration. (snip) "I am disappointed that many of my colleagues chose to put the security of Americans at stake and waste time playing politics," said Emmer, who replaced Rep. Michele Bachmann in January. "Congress has a solemn responsibility. As a body, we should never hold...

EVELETH, Minn. – Workers in a call center on Minnesota’s Iron Range don headsets each day knowing their employer’s core business: Get Democrats elected. For years, prominent Democratic candidates and political groups have used the obscure center tucked among hills and pines to canvass and raise money from small donors. DFL organizations, state and national, have paid the phone bank’s current and former owners about $80 million over the last decade, campaign records show. The call center relocated to Eveleth in 2006 thanks in part to a $625,000 loan from a unique state agency called the Iron Range Resources and...

President Obama’s golf game on Sunday forced a pair of Army captains to move their nuptials to a different location, Bloomberg reports. Edward Mallue Jr. and Natalie Heimel had planned to tie the knot on the 16th tee at Kaneohe Klipper golf course when management informed them that they would have to wait a day so the president could hit the links. Kaneohe Klipper is an 18-hole championship course on the military base that offers views of the Ko’olau Mountains and Pacific coastline. The episode is the second time the president’s golf game has caused a commotion since he began...

The Hennepin County attorney’s office is investigating whether a private mailbox center in Minneapolis’ Cedar-Riverside neighborhood has been improperly used as an address for more than 140 voters. State records show that 419 Cedar Avenue S. has been used by some of the voters as far back as 2008. No one lives at the address, which is a Somali-dominated commercial building housing several small businesses and a popular mail center. Several dozen apartments upstairs use a different building number. Records also show that more than 90 of the registrants at that address have voted in previous elections, although it’s unclear...

Boasts about sexual conquests on a now-deleted Web page could trigger felony charges against a popular Rogers High School student athlete and others, the latest twist in a swirl of accusations, comments and protest involving social media.The furor in the Elk River Area School District on Tuesday transcended the dispute over a controversial tweet by the student and exposed the sexually explicit and often vicious exchanges that fill popular online pages created by students at many Minnesota schools. The anonymous posts include bragging messages, accusations and insults directed at students, teachers and others.Rogers Police Chief Jeff Beahen said the “Rogers...

As you probably know by now, former Vikings punter Chris Kluwe went full-frontal on the Vikings last week -- accusing special teams coach Mike Priefer of being a "bigot" and implicating Leslie Frazier and Rick Spielman by association. He charged that Priefer made anti-gay slurs in the locker room, and in his initial post at Deadspin, Kluwe wrote: "If there's one thing I hope to achieve from sharing this story, it's to make sure that Mike Priefer never holds a coaching position again in the NFL, and ideally never coaches at any level." ... Interestingly, in a Tuesday appearance on...

The Supreme Court has put gay marriage on hold in Utah. The high court on Monday granted the state a stay in their same-sex marriage challenge. The decision comes after a federal judge last month ruled in favor of gay marriage.

Among the distressing things to come out of Chris Kluwe’s blistering attack on three of his former bosses is this: Somebody is a liar. Kluwe wrote a scathing piece Thursday for Deadspin.com in which he called Vikings general manager Rick Spielman and former head coach Leslie Frazier “cowards” and skewered special teams coordinator Mike Priefer, describing him as “a bigot.” Kluwe is convinced he lost his punting job with the Vikings because he was outspoken in his support of gay marriage, and his vitriol toward Spielman, Frazier and Priefer come from that. He really unloaded on Priefer, saying that “if...

It was a catchy political pitch and a chance to calm nerves about his dramatic and complicated plan to bring historic change to America’s health insurance system. "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it," President Barack Obama said -- many times -- of his landmark new law. But the promise was impossible to keep. So this fall, as cancellation letters were going out to approximately 4 million Americans, the public realized Obama’s breezy assurances were wrong.

Last month, while Minnesota's new health insurance exchange site was scrambling to fix glitches and under fire from critics, its director was on vacation. MNsure director April Todd-Malmlov took a two-week vacation to Costa Rica around Thanksgiving. Gov. Mark Dayton defended her right to take a pre-scheduled trip, but critics of the fledgling health insurance exchange pounced. The conservative group Watchdog.org put out a press release Thursday, condemning her absence while "thousands of frustrated Minnesotans were notified about glitches and errors in their applications on the state insurance exchange."

It’s now official. The Vikings have cut punter Chris Kluwe. The 31-year-old was given the news Monday morning at Winter Park during a meeting with General Manager Rick Spielman. (snip) Kluwe’s release will not come without some controversy. The veteran punter has raised his profile in recent years by speaking out on political and social issues, most notably taking a firm stance in support of gay marriage and gay rights.

The Minnesota Senate on Tuesday is set to approve salary increases for legislators and the governor, who have had their pay frozen since 1999. The raises, which would start taking effect in 2015, would be hefty. By 2016, legislators’ pay would go to $42,000 from the current $31,000 — an increase of 35 percent. The governor’s salary would rise to $128,000 a year from $120,000 now, although Gov. Mark Dayton has already said he would donate his increase. The move heats up a reliable hot potato. For 15 years, politics have kept lawmakers from approving pay increases for themselves or...

The Wizard of Oz song at the centre of an anti-Margaret Thatcher campaign will not be played in full on the Official Chart Show. Instead a five second clip of the 51-second song will be aired as part of a Newsbeat report, Radio 1 controller Ben Cooper has said. Sales of Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead have soared since the former Prime Minister's death on Monday, aged 87. Mr Cooper called the decision "a difficult compromise". The song is set to take the number three spot in Sunday's countdown, according to the Official Charts Company.

An already bad month is getting worse for NBC. For the first time in sweeps history, the network is projected to finish fifth in the key adults 18-49 demographic. That’s a crushing blow for NBC... snip... From the beginning of the February sweep on January 31 through February 19, NBC has averaged a 1.2 rating among adults 18-49. That’s below the 1.5 that Univision has been averaging so far over the 20 night of the sweep period. In fact, Univision has bested NBC every single night of the sweep so far among adults 18-49 and is poised to overtake NBC...

The electronic pulltab sales slated to help fund the Vikings stadium are nowhere near their projected target, even after the state lowered that target last month, a House committee learned Wednesday. (snip) The sale of electronic pulltabs, run by Minnesota charities, was supposed to generate $348 million in taxes to underwrite the state's share of the cost of a new Vikings stadium. But the electronic pulltab games, introduced in September, have pulled in just $4.2 million in gross receipts -- and $635,000 in net receipts after prizes were paid.