Free Republic

When it was announced that the parents of Kathryn Steinle, were going to appear on Bill O’Reilly’s national news show, it was hard to imagine what they were going to say. And it didn’t go the way anyone expected. Jim Steinle and Liz Sullivan are understandably lost in grief. But the Pleasanton couple didn’t say we need to tighten the borders or crack down on undocumented immigrants. They slipped into Fox News-speak a couple of times, saying “illegal aliens,” a jarring term that has long passed, like “colored people,” into the realm of pejorative. And I suppose it is also...

After Trayvon Martin was killed, President Obama spoke emotionally about his death, declaring "this could have been my son." After Michael Brown was killed, Obama promised to ensure that "justice is done". He even sent administration officials to attend Brown's funeral. After Freddie Gray was killed, Obama walked out to the Rose Garden and declared: "We have some soul-searching to do." But after Kathryn Steinle was killed July 1, allegedly by an undocumented immigrant with seven felony convictions, Obama said ... nothing. No promises of "justice." No calls for "soul-searching." His silence has been deafening. Why has Obama been so...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday said he does not have a timeline for using reconciliation to repeal ObamaCare, but indicated that Republicans would look to roll back as much of the law as they can. “I don't have a time to give you, but we're certainly going to consider using budget reconciliation for repealing as much of ObamaCare as is reconcilable,” McConnell told reporters. “There're certain rules that have to be applied to what is reconcilable and that's an active consideration, as you can imagine.” Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, later on Tuesday...

illary Clinton gave a big economics speech here on Monday, and the snap reaction among Wall Street investors, economists and ardent financial reformers who thrill to the soak-the-rich rhetoric of Bernie Sanders was a collective: “Meh. What’s next?” “She appears to have taken a page out of the Elizabeth Warren book,” said Jack Ablin, chief investment office at BMO Private bank. “I’m sure a lot of polling went into that. But in terms of inequality and profit-sharing and general economic redistribution, she was a lot longer on problems than she was on solutions.” Many conservatives breathed a sigh of relief...

It wasn’t long ago that hedge funds were preparing for one of the biggest openings into China in years. In November, foreign investors were for the first time able to buy and sell shares listed in the Shanghai market directly. It was a chance to ride the great China bull run. How times have changed. Over the last month, trillions of dollars of value were wiped from the domestic market as stocks plunged by more than a third. The Chinese government has stepped in, issuing a series of increasingly aggressive moves to prop up the market. Hedge funds are now...

The Associated Press, based on incorrect information from Publishers Weekly, reported erroneously the chart positions of some best-sellers books. A corrected version of the story is below: HARDCOVER NONFICTION 1. "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying up" by Marie Kondo (Ten Speed) 2. "The Wright Brothers" by David McCullough (Simon & Schuster) 3. "A Time for Truth" by Ted Cruz (HarperCollins/Broadside)

The projected Social Security shortfall is likely to hit younger workers hardest. Social Security has two trust funds: the Old-Age and Survivors (OAS) fund, and its smaller sibling, the Disability Insurance (DI) fund. Last year’s report said the combined reserves of both funds would be exhausted in the year 2033, at which time it could pay only 77¢ on the dollar of its benefit obligations. The DI fund, however, faces a more immediate crisis. It will run out of money in 2016—as in next year—and its 0.9% payroll tax levy will then collect only enough to pay 81% of its benefit obligations....

An older couple walking on Sawyer Avenue in the Little Village neighborhood slowed as they approached the red police tape, and their eyes met those of two young officers standing inside the crime scene. "Pasale, pasale," the officers said to the couple. "Pass." They ducked under the tape and stayed on the sidewalk, away from a cluster of shell casings and shattered glass. A 21-year-old man had been gunned down there. He was the 32nd person shot -- and the sixth killed -- over the weekend. In all, 10 were shot between Sunday afternoon and early Monday morning, nine more...

California legislators are considering a measure to allow farmworkers living in the country illegally to get work permits. The LA Times reported Monday that a similar measure died in the statehouse three years ago, opposed by labor unions and immigrants' rights groups who wanted a nationwide immigration overhaul. But with Congress failing to pass immigration reform, California lawmakers took it up again. The measure moved quickly through the Assembly last month but faces uncertain prospects in the Senate. "Here we are three years later, and we can't wait any longer," Assemblyman Luis Alejo, D-Watsonville, the bill's author, told the Times....

Iraqi troops supported by Iranian-backed Shiite militias have launched a military operation to recapture the country's biggest province, Anbar, from Isis, the military announced on state television. In a statement also read out on state TV, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said that the terror group is facing "defeats after defeats" against Baghdad's forces. "We will punish the criminals of Isis in the battlefields," he said. A joint spring offensive between Iraqi forces, Iranian-backed Shiite militiamen and US-led coalition aircraft to retake Mosul, the country's second city, has been delayed until 2016.

It was a deadly weekend on the streets of Baltimore City, with police investigating four homicides and ten shootings. Police say two people died of shootings Saturday: a 40-year-old found suffering from gunshot wounds in the 1800 block of N. Durham Street and an 18-year-old found in the 4300 block of East Wabash Avenue. Police say two more people died Sunday. There were five shootings on Saturday. Baltimore City Police also say two men shot on Friday have died.

The threat of climate change needs to be assessed in the same comprehensive way as nuclear weapons proliferation, according to a UK foreign minister. Baroness Joyce Anelay, minister of state at the Commonwealth and Foreign Office, said the indirect impacts of global warming, such as deteriorating international security, could be far greater than the direct effects, such as flooding. The report, commissioned by the Foreign Office, and written by experts from the UK, US, China and India, is stark in its assessment of the wide-ranging dangers posed by unchecked global warming, including: - very large risks to global food security,...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry does not agree with the Marine Corps general nominated to be America's next top uniformed commander that Russia poses an existential threat to the United States, a spokesman said. U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Kerry did not share the assessment, even though Russia's actions in Ukraine posed regional security challenges. "The secretary doesn't agree with the assessment that Russia is an existential threat to the United States, nor China, quite frankly," Toner told a regular news briefing. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Thursday that the administration was mindful of Russia's...

The new owners of a 21-unit, low-rent apartment complex in Healdsburg are evicting all the mostly Latino tenants with plans to fix it up and in some cases more than double the rents, prompting a community outcry as well as highlighting the challenge of providing affordable housing in a hot real estate market. “This town is built on the backs of those people, and those people who trusted me for 30 years to teach their children,” said Judy Sanderson, a retired teacher and self-described “privileged white woman” who said it feels like the new owners are “targeting Hispanic families.” Laura...

Citing significant new costs to the state and a negative effect on businesses, the Brown administration’s Finance Department is opposing a bill that would raise California's $9 minimum wage to $11 an hour on Jan. 1 and boost it again to $13 in 2017. “The Department of Finance is opposed to this bill because it results in significant, unbudgeted costs to the General Fund,” the report says. “Further, Finance notes the net impact of an increased minimum wage on California’s economy and state budget is likely to be negative.” “For the economy, losses from higher production costs to businesses would...

Rising sea levels have been mostly measured in inches in the past decades, but scientists said they could increase more than 20 feet in the future as global warming continues to melt ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. The dire projections are based on a look back at the climate record, with scientists finding that increases of 20 feet have happened at least twice over the past 3 million years when temperatures were very similar to what they are today. Peter Clark, an Oregon State paleoclimatologist and another co-author of the study, said that because current carbon dioxide levels are...

They are either championed as brave voices willing to speak out against the scientific majority or dismissed as cranks who lack the evidence to support their arguments. Now deniers of global warming have been dealt a stinging blow by psychologists who found skeptics of man-made climate change tend to believe in conspiracy theories. They say the conspiracist outlook taken by many climate change skeptics is harming the public debate over global warming. Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, an experimental psychologist at the University of Bristol who led the work, said: 'These results add to a growing body of research on the nature...

As leading health insurers scramble for market share through a series of multibillion-dollar mergers, consumers are no doubt wondering if their premiums are bound to skyrocket. Short answer: Probably. Ironically, Obamacare had anticipated the negative effects of runaway capitalism with a safeguard that critics branded as socialism — the so-called public option, a government-run insurance plan offered alongside private plans. Thanks to business and ideological interests triumphing over economic considerations, a public option fell by the wayside. Some experts say that, with fewer private insurers and rising rates, we're going to regret not having a public option as part of...

The Supreme Court could not have been clearer when it ruled late last month that states may not refuse to marry same-sex couples. But in several states where the resistance to marriage equality has been most entrenched, government officials whose job it is to license or perform marriages continue to misunderstand, stall or flatly defy the court. However they justify these tactics, their conduct is illegal and they must stop. These public employees seem to forget that taxpayers pay them to do their job. If doing that job violates his or her religious beliefs, the best solution is to find...

Latinos outnumber non-Hispanic whites in California, according to the most recent figures released by the Census Bureau showing that in July 2014 there were 15 million Hispanics in the state compared with 14.9 million non-Hispanic whites. Roberto Suro, the director of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at USC, said that the most recent figures represent "the official acknowledgement" of a process that has been under way for almost a generation. The number of Latinos in the United States currently stands at about 55.4 million and California and Los Angeles County have the largest percentages of Hispanics of any state or...