Free Republic

Nearly 20 years after the death of his wife, former U.S. Sen. Harris Wofford, D-Pennsylvania, penned a moving New York Times editorial Sunday, announcing his intention to marry a man 50 years his junior.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A week before her high school graduation, Saira Blair was barely old enough to vote when she unseated a West Virginia lawmaker almost four times her age. After Tuesday's GOP primary, the 17-year-old is one election away from becoming the youngest state lawmaker in West Virginia history. Larry Swan, sworn in as a 20-year-old delegate in 1972, set the current record. Blair's birthday is in July, so she would just meet the 18-year-old minimum age for West Virginia House of Delegates members. Seventeen-year-olds who will turn 18 by the November election can vote in West Virginia's...

I just wanted to request some prayers for my dad who is dying of cancer. He is expected to pass this week. He's in his 60s and has been fighting this for about a year. It's hard to see him in these last moments, struggling to breathe and communicate. I also feel so bad for my mom who is working hard to make him comfortable. Fortunately, there isn't much physical pain but I kind of wish he didn't know he's dying. I want this situation to be over, yet I don't want to see him go. Not like this. Anyway,...

<p>ORLANDO, Fla. -- Attorneys for the Florida man charged in the shooting of Trayvon Martin say his defense fund has raised $12,000 in one day.</p> <p>George Zimmerman's defense team posted the figure on their website on Thursday, just a day after announcing the fund had less than $5,000 remaining.</p>

Despite objections from banks across the United States, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is preparing to monitor how millions of Americans apply for mortgages, use credit cards, and overdraw their checking accounts. To further this mission, the consumer finance watchdog is requiring banks to submit their records. It has even bought anonymous information about at least 10 million consumers from credit-monitoring companies, including Experian, which was paid $8.4 million.

The ongoing surge in gold and silver prices has a lot of people looking at precious metals as a way to preserve wealth and earn a return. Preppers like gold and silver for two good reasons. First – gold and silver love bad economic news. When times get tough, people flock to precious metals. If you’re prepping, you’re doing it because you think times are or will be tough. Second – the value is in the metal itself. Compare that to a paper dollar bill where the value is in what it represents, not in the paper itself. Silver or...

Well, that was fast. Just two days after President Barack Obama won a second term, boosted by more than 70 percent of the Latino vote, some Republicans are striking a new tone on illegal immigration. Conservative Fox News and radio host Sean Hannity said Thursday that his views on immigration have "evolved."

O'BRIEN, Ore. (AP) — There's no room in the county jail for burglars and thieves. And the sheriff's department in a vast, rural corner of southwest Oregon has been reduced by budget cuts to three deputies on patrol eight hours a day, five days a week. But people in this traditionally self-reliant section of timber country aren't about to raise taxes to put more officers on the road. Instead, some folks in Josephine County, larger than the state of Rhode Island, are taking matters into their own hands — mounting flashing lights on their trucks and strapping pistols to their...

At 68, Barbara Miller Elegbede is living proof that flower children need not grow up. A self-described hippie, she attended a San Francisco college at psychedelia's height and remembers friends constantly crashing on the couch of her apartment, just a block away from Janis Joplin's pad in the hip Castro neighborhood. Now retired from teaching and secretarial work, Elegbede, 68, has become a full-time "couchsurfer" herself, living in other people's guest quarters all over the world. (She has a temporary apartment in Tempe, Arizona.) "I've lived in Africa. I know how to take a bath from a bucket ... I've...

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi could soon become the only state without an abortion clinic because of a new law taking effect this weekend. Critics say the law would force women to drive hours across the state line to obtain a constitutionally protected procedure, or could even force some to carry unwanted pregnancies to term.

Asians have surpassed Hispanics as the largest group of new immigrants to the United States, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center. The study, called "The Rise of Asian-Americans" and released on Tuesday, reveals that Asian-Americans also have the highest income, are the best-educated and are the fastest-growing racial group in America. About 430,000 Asians--or 36 percent of all new immigrants--arrived in the United States in 2010, according to U.S. census data. About 370,000, or 31 percent, were Hispanic.

A woman who was bullied mercilessly in high school 25 years ago has gotten some closure from a class reunion page on Facebook. Lynda Frederick, a graduate of Orange Glen High in Escondido, Calif., in 1987, posted a heartbreaking poem about her experience on her school's 25th class reunion page.

Mexico City – The number of Mexican emigrants who opted to return to their homeland from the United States increased sharply over the past five years to almost 1 million, according to census data. The deputy secretary of Population, Migration and Religious Affairs, Rene Zenteno Quintero, told a press conference that that figure was 2.7 times higher than the amount registered in Mexico's 2000 census. The exodus of Mexicans to the United States has likewise been reduced, "seen in a net zero balance between emigrants and immigrants who return to Mexico, meaning we're experiencing a historic moment," he said. The...

MOULTONBOROUGH, N.H (Reuters) - Republican White House hopeful Michele Bachmann, beset by falling poll numbers, staff departures and reports of fundraising troubles, on Sunday vowed to continue her campaign through the New Hampshire primary, which is likely to be in early January. Stumping in the early primary state for the first time since making her candidacy official in June, Bachmann kept up her attacks on President Barack Obama and urged Republicans not to compromise with a moderate nominee to oppose him.

Barbara Bush, one of former President George W. Bush's twin daughters, is appearing in a new video voicing her support for same sex marriage. "I'm Barbara Bush, and I'm a New Yorker for marriage equality," she says in a 22-second video released Monday by the Human Rights Campaign, a group that lobbies for equal treatment for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders. "New York is about fairness and equality," she says in the video. "And everyone should have the right to marry the person that they love."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A majority of Americans reject the view that heated political rhetoric was a factor in the weekend shootings in Arizona which killed six and critically wounded a congresswoman, a CBS News said on Tuesday.

"...If the Prop 8 backers can't convince them that they have standing to appeal Walker's decision, the ruling striking down Prop 8 will stand - and marriages between gay couples will resume."

TAMPA, Fla. – Republican businessman Rick Scott will be Florida's next governor after Democrat Alex Sink conceded Wednesday in what had been an extremely tight race. With 99 percent of Tuesday's votes counted, Scott had 49 percent to Sink's 48 percent of the vote. Scott's campaign called a win by Democrat Alex Sink "a mathematical impossibility."

Forget the Dow and the GDP. Here's the latest economic indicator: The U.S. birth rate has fallen to its lowest level in at least a century as many people apparently decided they couldn't afford more mouths to feed. The birth rate dropped for the second year in a row since the recession began in 2007. Births fell 2.6 percent last year even as the population grew, numbers released Friday by the National Center for Health Statistics show. "It's a good-sized decline for one year. Every month is showing a decline from the year before," said Stephanie Ventura, the demographer who...

A Japanese woman's role in society is to give birth, and "all we can do is ask them to do their best per head," said Hakuo Yanagisawa, Japan's former health minister. His remark, as reported by Bloomberg in 2007, drew criticism for being sexist, but it touches on one of Japan's most pressing issues: its rapidly aging and shrinking population. Japan is expected to see its population contract by one-fourth to 95.2 million by 2050, according to the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington-based research group, making it the fastest-shrinking country in the world.Former Eastern Bloc nations Ukraine and Georgia came...