Free Republic

A solemn group stood in the shadow of the statehouse in Columbus, Ohio, forming a circle on the snow-caked sidewalk. MarShawn McCarrel, 23, a well-known Black Lives Matter activist, had taken his own life on the statehouse steps. Now his friends had come together in his memory. As evening turned to night last week, protest organizer Rashida Davison, 25, recounted the personal toll of two years of activism: Trouble sleeping. Bouts of anxiety. Feelings of despair. “This is really getting to us,” Davison said. “And if MarShawn’s death does not show that… I don’t know what else we need to...

Bloat and corruption brought U.S. unions to near a 100-year low. Here on the holiday the movement gave us, it’s time to ask: Can labor win back Americans’ hearts? It’s all right that Labor Day has become about sales and sailing, about the end of summertime white and the start of whatever fall fashion nonsense trendsetters impose on us. Without being so distracted by the vacation that was and the school year that will be, we might consider this holiday’s true meaning. And, today, the labor movement is about as popular as a sudden thunderstorm during a Labor Day picnic....

A federal judge has ordered the IRS to reveal all requests the White House made for private taxpayer data. It is a potentially explosive line of inquiry, and the IRS fought the court ruling hard. But now, the IRS must hand them over. It could mean another bombshell in the long simmering IRS scandal that has dogged the Obama administration for over two years. Recently, the IRS revealed–two years late–that firebrand Lois Lerner had a secret email account under her dog’s name for IRS business. There have been multiple federal investigations for several years, and Ms. Lerner has refused to...

Legendary TV producer Norman Lear stopped by the Televisison Critics Association’s press tour in Beverly Hills to promote an upcoming PBS documentary covering his carreer that’s set to debut next year. But what seemed to most impress reporters was the 93-year-old’s opinionated tangents, covering politics, TV, America and mindfullness. Below are seven highlights from a press conference with the creator of hits like All in the Family, The Jeffersons and One Day at a Time: — On politics: “Everybody knows me to be a progressive or a liberal or lefty or whatever. I think of myself as a bleeding heart...

Even a company that named its top beer after a hero of the American Revolution may eventually forsake its home country. Boston Beer Co., the maker of Samuel Adams beer and Angry Orchard hard cider, would be worth more to a foreign owner unburdened by the US tax structure, founder Jim Koch told a Senate committee on Thursday. Because of that, Koch says he regularly gets pitches from investment bankers looking to strike a sale. He’s been turning them down — for now. “We don’t mind paying our taxes here in the US in gratitude for the opportunities that exist...

LONDON — More than 4,500 vehicles are stuck along one of Britain’s main highways, caught in the chaos over efforts by desperate migrants to make their way through the Channel Tunnel from the French port city of Calais, 31 miles away. Another 4,500 cars and trucks are stuck on the other side of the English Channel. Food is rotting, drivers are exasperated and commerce is delayed. Would-be vacationers bound for the Continent are furious, and the British news media is on a rampage, with The Daily Mail wondering how migrants could invade Britain when Hitler could not and calling for...

A PATTERN of cutting corners, a patina of entitlement and inevitability, has led to this. Destroying digital messages and thwarting official investigations while acting all innocent about wiping out sensitive material. Avoiding reporters after giving disingenuous explanations at uncomfortable news conferences. Claiming egregious transgressions are a private matter and faux controversy while sending out high-power lawyers and spin doctors to deflect and minimize. Two controlling superstars with mutable hair and militant fans, married to two magnetic superstars who can make a gazillion an hour for flashing their faces and who have been known to stir up trouble. A pair of...

A federal judge has ordered the State Department to ask Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to certify under penalty of perjury that she has turned over some of the work-related emails she kept on a private server during the four years she served as secretary of state. U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan issued the order Friday in connection with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit the conservative group Judicial Watch filed in 2013 seeking records about the employment status of Clinton aide Huma Abedin, who worked as Clinton's deputy chief of staff but later transferred to a part-time job...

There are times when Dan Price feels as if he stumbled into the middle of the street with a flag and found himself at the head of a parade. Three months ago, Mr. Price, 31, announced he was setting a new minimum salary of $70,000 at his Seattle credit card processing firm, Gravity Payments, and slashing his own million-dollar pay package to do it. He wasn’t thinking about the current political clamor over low wages or the growing gap between rich and poor, he said. He was just thinking of the 120 people who worked for him and, let’s be...

State Department investigators concluded this year that Huma Abedin, one of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s closest aides, was overpaid by nearly $10,000 because of violations of rules governing vacation and sick leave during her tenure as an official in the department. The finding — which Abedin has formally contested — emerged publicly Friday after Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) sent letters to Secretary of State John F. Kerry and others seeking more information about an investigation into possible “criminal” conduct by Abedin concerning her pay. The letters also sought the status of an inquiry into whether Abedin had violated conflict-of-interest laws...

A preliminary hearing began Monday morning for four men charged in the attempted robbery and killing of a Shawnee gun store co-owner earlier this year. Soon after it started, Deanthony A. Wiley, 20, waived his right to a preliminary hearing and indicated he would plead guilty later. The hearing continued for the other three defendants. Jon Bieker was fatally shot during an attempted robbery and shootout that also wounded three of the defendants Jan. 9 at She’s A Pistol, the gun store owned by Bieker and his wife, Becky Bieker. The defendants — Wiley, Londro E. Patterson III and Nicquan...

A new PBS documentary tries to excuse a murderous and totalitarian cult. When his captors uncinched the noose around his neck and shoved him into a wooden chair, Alex Rackley might have assumed his ordeal was over. He had already endured a flurry of kicks and punches, the repeated crack of a wooden truncheon, ritual humiliation, and a mock lynching. But it wasn’t over. It was about to get much, much worse.Rackley, a slight, 19-year-old black kid from Florida, was tough (he had a black belt in karate), but hardly in a position to resist his psychopathic interrogators. During a...

More bad news for Chicago (and Illinois) taxpayers arrived Friday morning in a 35-page, double-sided packet. On one of the last pages: "The entire Act is void." Cook County Circuit Court Judge Rita Novak tossed out Chicago's pension reform law. City Hall had negotiated the pension changes for municipal and labor employees with many of the city's unions on board. But Novak, using the Illinois Supreme Court's May pension opinion as her sword, ruled that the city's plan violates the Illinois Constitution: A public worker's pension is a contract that cannot be "diminished or impaired." lRelated Revenge of the pension...

FERGUSON • Tiahesia Palmer was checking out some of the free services, but her son wanted a haircut. So the Ferguson resident signed up Isiah, 7, to get his head shaved at the haircut tent at Saturday’s “Day of Hope.” He took off his ballcap and sat silently while a woman with the Elaine Steven Beauty College cleaned up around his ears. Palmer smiled. Wearing an “I-heart-FERG” T-shirt, she was happy that her community had attracted the event. Hundreds attended the festivities at Forestwood Park in Ferguson to receive free goods and services. The city and about 40 local churches,...

SUBOTICA, Serbia. — They call it “the jungle,” but it’s really just a tangle of dirt paths through stunted trees near an abandoned brick factory. Between 150 and 200 people — mostly men, with a smattering of young families — cluster in discrete groups in scattered campsites, most resting on dusty blankets, the earth blackened here and there by the remains of the previous night’s fires. “We have people from Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Somalia, Morocco,” said Mohamd, 42, a former truck driver for a factory near Aleppo, Syria, who hopes to reach the Netherlands. “Am I forgetting anyone?”...

Sharon and Richard Moreno were awakened by a phone call from a police negotiator around 2:30 a.m. one night last May. He told them to get out of their home immediately and leave their adult son behind. Officers with rifles greeted the couple on their front lawn in Sterling, Va., and tackled their son William on the porch. They had been drawn by a chilling post attributed to William on a popular local Web forum: “I JUST SHOT MY PARENTS NOW I WILL KILL MY SISTER.” The Morenos say in a lawsuit that the post was a hoax, part of...

On Wednesday, the Army is scheduled to begin two months of training exercises across the American Southwest. If the past is a reasonable guide, some on the outer reaches of the far right are bound to recycle warnings that martial law is at hand. Conspiracy theorists were singularly imaginative after these war games, code-named Jade Helm 15, were announced. Among the dire predictions: Citizens’ guns will be confiscated. Political opponents of President Obama will be rounded up and herded into detention centers. Mr. Obama will suspend the Constitution and cling to office indefinitely. All this is part of a plan...

A swiftly moving brush fire in Southern California forced the closing of all lanes of a crowded freeway, stranded some motorists and spurred others to abandon their vehicles as flames engulfed roughly a dozen cars and trucks. Live video broadcast by a local CBS affiliate showed firefighters moving between empty vehicles on Interstate 15 in Cajon Pass, Calif., as motorists filed down the shoulder of the freeway in San Bernardino County. A black pillar of smoke rose into the sky as cars, pickup trucks, a tractor-trailer and a car carrier loaded with empty vehicles burned. The fire information line, to...

Hillary Clinton’s Brooklyn campaign headquarters is finally ready for its close-up. On Thursday, the campaign ended a three-month period during which its HQ was considered “off the record” to visitors and allowed POLITICO to tour and photograph the space. “It has great views,” said communications director Jennifer Palmieri, who on Wednesday posted online that “tweeting, photos, visits now welcome!” Her proclamation came after New York Times Magazine writer Mark Leibovich dinged the campaign for trying to keep its actual, physical workspace “off the record.” After POLITICO asked for a tour, the campaign delivered on its promise the following morning, part...

SEVEN YEARS AGO, Berkeley Breathed, trim and grinning, sat in the D.C. offices of his then-syndicate, the Washington Post Writers Group, and shared old stories and well-remembered personal anecdotes. I listened to him speak with a kinetic quickness; he was charismatic, a bit rushed and more than a bit restless. He recounted a nautical accident, and I couldn’t help but think: This sounds like a man ready to tack toward a new direction. Within months that year, Breathed announced he was ending his comic strip “Opus.” The beloved penguin of three decades would apparently flap his flightless wings no more....