Free Republic

The state Supreme Court has voted to prohibit judges in California from belonging to the Boy Scouts because the 2.7 million-member youth organization bars gays and lesbians from becoming troop leaders.

<p>Multiple sources within Bakersfield, North Carolina, & on Capitol Hill tell Gotnews.com that Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Renee Ellmers (R-NC) have been carrying on a long-running affair since 2011.</p> <p>The affair is something of an open secret in Washington, D.C. Reporters at other publications, lobbyists, congressional staffers of both parties all know about it. One staffer for a congressman describes it as the “biggest open secret” in D.C. A lobbyist describes Ellmers as a “social climber who has ingratiated herself” with McCarthy.</p>

Medi-Cal applicants who have been waiting for more than 45 days can receive temporary health benefits while officials determine eligibility for the public insurance program, a state Superior Court judge ruled this week. The suit, which was filed in Alameda County Superior Court by a coalition of health advocates and legal services groups, cited delays in enrolling pregnant women, children and adults with life-threatening conditions. Advocates said many either had to postpone treatment or pay cash to see doctors. Medi-Cal is California’s version of Medicaid, the publicly funded insurance program for poor and disabled residents. Prompted by the Affordable Care...

A new procedure can quickly and efficiently increase the length of human telomeres, the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes that are linked to aging and disease, according to scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Treated cells behave as if they are much younger than untreated cells, multiplying with abandon in the laboratory dish rather than stagnating or dying. The procedure, which involves the use of a modified type of RNA, will improve the ability of researchers to generate large numbers of cells for study or drug development, the scientists say. Skin cells with telomeres lengthened by...

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — A health warning. The extremely contagious measles virus is back. An outbreak that started at Disneyland is starting to sweep the country.Christie Ileto has the push for children to get vaccinated.Measles was thought to have been eliminated in the U.S. 15 years ago. Now its back, targeting those who haven’t been immunized.The outbreak that started in California’s Disneyland is expanding. At least 75 cases of measles span six states.“It’s scary to think the happiest place on Earth is infected with measles,” one Disney employee said.For this Disney employee, knowing co-workers are infected is cause for concern. Measles...

OAKLAND -- Supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement packed a BART board of directors meeting Thursday, demanding the transit agency drop charges and possible fines against 14 protesters arrested after shutting down the West Oakland station in November. Thursday's show of support was the latest public action targeting BART's handling of the Nov. 28 protest, and follows a petition calling for BART to drop criminal charges against protesters. On Nov. 28, the group now known as the "Black Friday 14" chained themselves to a train on the West Oakland station platform, delaying transbay service for about three hours. --SNIP--...

Two students at the University of California, Berkeley are calling for students to “Occupy the syllabus,” or consider dropping a course if it only includes the works of white men as class material. Students Rodrigo Kazuo and Margaret “Meg” Perret wrote an op-ed in The Daily Californian, the independent student newspaper, titled “Occupy the syllabus” where they called for a student-wide occupation of all social science and humanities classes after they found their upper-division course on classical social theory lacked the works of women, trans people, and people of color. “The course syllabus employed a standardized canon of theory that...

Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) surprise invitation to have Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu address Congress was "inappropriate," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi charged Thursday The California Democrat said that, not only did Boehner break congressional protocol by not consulting with Democratic leaders about the invitation, but the timing of the speech — coming just a few weeks ahead of Israel's contentious national elections — hints that politics are at play. "It's out of the ordinary that the Speaker would decide that he would be inviting people to a joint session without any bipartisan consultation," Pelosi said Thursday during her weekly...

<p>President Barack Obama will not meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he travels to Washington in March, the White House said Thursday, one day after being caught off-guard by Republicans' invitation for the Israeli leader to address a joint session of Congress.</p>

Efforts by several California counties to provide health insurance to undocumented immigrants could serve as a model for other states. As a state, California has taken several steps to provide health coverage to undocumented residents. Immigrants in the state who qualified for Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival initiative are eligible for Medi-Cal coverage. Medi-Cal is California's Medicaid program. In addition, under an executive action by President Obama last year, Medi-Cal coverage could be extended to up to 500,000 undocumented immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for at least five years and who have no record of felony offenses...

A handful of “pro-life” lawmakers have sabotaged a vote House Republican leaders planned for today to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy based on scientific evidence showing unborn babies feel pain in abortions. As LifeNews reported yesterday, Rep. Renee Ellmers of North Carolina along with Reps. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania and Jackie Walorski of Indiana — each of whom have pro-life voting records — objected to a vote on the bill on the grounds that the language in the bill did not do enough to allow women who have been victimized by rape to have abortions. Together, they reportedly...

With only weeks gone but years left in California's Senate race, national Democrats appear eager to anoint state Attorney General Kamala Harris as the 2016 successor to Sen. Barbara Boxer's seat. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee weighed in lauding Harris' candidacy after she announced her decision last week, and high-profile sitting senators including Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Cory Booker also feted the new front-runner. But outside the Beltway, another group of Democratic power players and donors is coalescing behind the goal of electing California's first Latino senator, and they already have their candidate in mind: former Los Angeles Mayor...

Flanked by the family of a brain cancer patient who left California to end her own life, state lawmakers Wednesday introduced a bill to allow doctors to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs to terminally ill people who want to die.

A Malaysian pilot recruited by al-Qaeda to fly a hijacked airliner into the tallest building on the US West Coast pulled out of the plot when he realised it was a suicide mission, security officials in South-East Asia said today. Further details emerged of the plan to target the iconic 73-storey US Bank Building in Los Angeles, revealed by President Bush yesterday in an address to rally support for the War on Terror. Terrorism experts in Malaysia said that Zaini Zakaria, an engineer, was among three men being trained to launch the planned second-wave of Osama bin Laden's assault on...

“Investigators recovered sufficient evidence to eliminate all known potential accidental causes and determine the fire was intentionally set,” the Los Angeles Fire Department said in a written statement in December. The massive fire caused between $25 million to $30 million in damage. Authorities have released video of two people they are calling “potential witnesses.” “We know the case and we know the accelerant used. Obviously, I can’t go into those details but it’s a very active investigation. We’re running down some promising leads. We asking the public for their assistance,” ATF Special Agent Carlos Canino said.

Mitt Romney’s opening pitch for a third shot at the White House left many Republicans scratching their heads, in part because his plans to fight poverty and tyranny seemed to borrow the lexicon of liberals like FDR, LBJ and Woodrow Wilson. With a full house of Republican National Committee members listening aboard the USS Midway in San Diego, Mr. Romney implored his party last week “to lift people out of poverty” and “to make the world safe.” The first phrase is a favorite of liberals who gush over Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs...

Oh oh! The Santa Barbara News-Press wrote an article where they dared to call illegal immigrants “illegal immigrants,” and that's got people mad, and even worse,  they hurt some peoples' feelings! The News-Press ran the headline "Illegals Line Up for Driver's Licenses" on Jan. 3, prompting protests and a message painted in red on the wall of the newspaper's offices. The paper used the term again last Friday in another front page story: "Driving Legal Opens Door to Illegals' Past." News-Press officials have stuck by their choice of language, saying that describing someone living in the country illegally as...

The move is part of an effort to slow the measles outbreak that began at Disneyland in December. Orange County has 16 confirmed cases of the viral infection, six of which are not connected to the Disneyland outbreak. Measles is highly contagious and can spread easily through the air. California state laws require children to be vaccinated with the MMR vaccine prior to enrolling in school. Some parents believe the shots are linked to Autism and other medical conditions and have signed medical exemption forms.

Passengers on board two Delta flights at Kennedy Airport were taken off each of the aircrafts Monday night as authorities investigated a bomb threat that turned out to be unfounded, officials say. An anonymous phone call was placed to Delta headquarters just after 6 p.m. suggesting a pipe bomb was on Delta Flight 468, according to Port Authority spokesman Joe Pentangelo. There are two Delta flights with the number 468: one has a Boeing 757 plane landing at JFK from San Francisco at 8 p.m., with 171 passengers on board, according to Delta Airlines. The other flight has a Boeing...

Two high school teachers in Southern California have been arrested on suspicion of having sexual relations with students on an overnight beach camping trip. South Hills High School teacher Melody Lippert allegedly met a group of male students in November at the beach in San Clemente, where she gave them alcohol and "engaged in a sexual relationship with one of them," according to the Orange County Sheriff's Department.