Free Republic

America's Municipal Debt Racket State and local borrowing as a percentage of U.S. GDP has risen to an all-time high of 22% in 2010. By STEVEN MALANGA New Jersey officials recently celebrated the selection of the new stadium in the Meadowlands sports complex as the site of the 2014 Super Bowl. Absent from the festivities was any sense of the burden the complex has become for taxpayers. Nearly 40 years ago the Garden State borrowed $302 million to begin constructing the Meadowlands. The goal was to pay off the bonds in 25 years. Although the project initially went according to...

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) -- The city of Tucson has joined a lawsuit by one of its police officers to block Arizona's immigration enforcement law. The suit was filed in late April in U.S. District Court in Tucson on behalf of Tucson police officer Martin Escobar.

I'm not asking for much. I just don't want to be sick in my mouth. I don't want to leave the cinema feeling like I've paid £7.50 to be mocked, patronised and kicked in the face. I don't want to be filled with despair at Hollywood's increasing inability to conceive of women in comedic films as anything other than self-obsessed babies with breasts. And I don't, most of all, want to spend two hours watching dreams and memories from my youth being trampled into humiliating self-parody. Is that too much to ask?

What happens when a former US Marine becomes a Franciscan friar and then goes on to found a monastery in the toughest district of Ireland’s toughest city? In 2007, Father Sylvester and a small group of American friars from the Bronx, N.Y., did just that when they arrived in Limerick, Ireland. They left behind their former lives as a teacher, a soldier, a punk-rock singer, and a rapper to transform lives through prayer. The urban district they live in, Moyross – a sea of burned-down and boarded-up houses – is always in the news for the wrong reasons: drugs, shootings,...

“City in a Garden“ (Revelation 22:1-6, 12-20)The official motto of the town where I come from, Chicago--the motto of the city is, in Latin, “Urbs in horto,” which means, “City in a garden.” The hope and vision of the founders of the city way back in 1837 was to establish a city that would have, besides the bustle of a city, the beauty of a garden. “Urbs in horto, City in a garden.” Decades later, in 1909, the famed architect Daniel Burnham develop a master plan for Chicago that would ensure that that vision would become a reality. The Burnham...

I'd love to be able to tell you in precise detail what it is that I so thoroughly loathe about Sex And The City. But to do that, I'd have to sit down and watch it - and frankly I'd rather be dipped in honey, dangled upside-down from a tree and eaten alive by fire ants.

SNIPPET - quote: Standoff in NH city after bus bomb threat By KATHY McCORMACK (AP) – 45 minutes ago PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Authorities remained in a standoff with a man on a Maine-to-New York Greyhound bus Thursday, hours after a passenger called 911 to report an explosive device on board. The other 16 passengers and the driver safely got off the bus, which was parked in downtown Portsmouth, surrounded by a bomb squad and sharpshooters, including one in an armored vehicle.

Rarely are currency exchange rates as good for the American dollar as that of Asian countries. In Asia, the American dollar carries a lot of clout and with the recent devaluation of the USD; it is a good thing that these countries offer an excellent trip for so little cost to Americans.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced today a moratorium on official city travel to Arizona after the state enacted a controversial new immigration law that directs local police to arrest those suspected of being in the country illegally. The ban on city employee travel to Arizona takes effect immediately, although there are some exceptions, including for law enforcement officials investigating a crime, officials said. It's unclear how many planned trips by city workers will be curtailed.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — Gunmen stormed into a bar, dragged out eight people and killed them in the parking lot, the first of several shootings in this violent border city Wednesday that left 16 dead, including a man in a wheelchair. In one incident, a car chase and shootout killed three people in front of an elementary school, creating a panic among students, teachers and parents. Battles between rival drug gangs have made Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, one of the world's deadliest cities. More than 800 people have been killed this year in the city...

There's trouble ahead in Sex and the City 2 - and her name is Penelope Cruz. The Spanish actress appears in the new trailer for the highly anticipated film as a sultry temptress who catches the eye of Mr Big, played by Chris Noth. Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie Bradshaw catches her husband flirting with Cruz at a bar, prompting her to question her two-year marriage.

With only 11 weeks to go before the eagerly-awaited Sex And The City 2 movie, fans have been given a sneak peek of what to expect, The upcoming sequel is set two years after we last saw Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and her friends and brings the girls out of their beloved New York on a trip of Morocco. Little has been given away about the plotline, but the film will definitely include a wedding and perhaps a baby for an unlikely mother. Apparently happily married to husband Mr Big (Chris Noth), it is not known why Carrie decides...

Since the dawn of the modern age, the notion of a pre-historic world, hidden deep in the jungle and untouched by the passage of time, has captivated our imaginations. Before "Jurassic Park," before "King Kong," there was "The Lost World." Written in 1912 by Sherlock Holmes' creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Lost World" was in turn largely inspired by the real-life adventures of one remarkable man: Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett. David Grann, a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, says in his time Fawcett was a larger-than-life figure: "Oh, he really was. I mean, he was the last...

Cleveland leads a slew of Midwestern towns on our annual list, but thanks to high taxes New York and Chicago make it too. The city of Cleveland has had a colorful history. The Cuyahoga River, which runs through the city, famously caught fire in 1969 thanks to rampant pollution, and it wasn't the first time. In 1978 it became the first U.S. city to default on its debts since the Great Depression. Cleveland sports fans have had to endure more anguish than those in any other city. The city has been dubbed with a less than endearing nickname: the Mistake...

If you've been watching the daily scandals destroy the credibility of the U.N. IPCC, then you might not realize that Cambridge, Massachusetts is in a state of climate emergency. This is not hyperbole, but an official policy order, passed by the City Council in May 2009, "recogniz[ing] that there is a climate emergency" and requesting the City Manager "to direct the appropriate city departments to increase the City's responses to a scale proportionate to the emergency."

Colorado Springs, second biggest city in the state, has decided that enough is enough. Confronted by a $38 million budget shortfall, and opposed to a proposal to triple property taxes to make up the gap, residents are instead bracing for spending cuts that make "draconian" sound tame. According to the Denver Post: More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled. The parks...

Beatty is, evidently, less of a town than a state of mind. When locals tried in recent years to find the original borders of this 1,000-person desert dot, they discovered an unsettling fact: Beatty was apparently never officially formed with official boundaries and therefore might not really exist -- officially, at least. Ever since, Nye County leaders have been flummoxed over what to do with the maybe-town about 120 miles northwest of Las Vegas: Adopt the borders of one of Beatty's tax districts? Draw town limits from scratch? "When we went to the county," said Harold "Bert" Bertram, the town...

NEWBURGH – City officials say Newburgh will participate in Orange County’s latest gun buyback program on January 16 from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. The buyback program is part of a countywide effort to get guns off the streets and keep them out of dangerous hands. In exchange for the weapons being turned in, no questions asked, the person turning the gun in will receive Shoprite gift cards. They range from $25 to $150 depending upon the condition and type of weapon turned in. Since this program began in the county, over 100 weapons have been recovered. Mayor Nicholas Valentine...

Members of the El Paso City Council appear to favor the purchase of over 1,000 assault rifles for the police department, which says it needs them to protect the city from increasingly better armed criminals. The council will be asked on Tuesday to approve the purchase of 1,145 assault rifles at a cost of $772,646. That would supply all patrol officers with the civilian version of the M-4 military rifle. The lowest bid is from recommended bidder GT Distributors Inc. of Austin. The money would come from a federal grant of up to $899,287, funds targeted at stimulating the economy....

For women, looks may matter more if they live in the city than in rural areas, a new study finds. The results, which are based on body shape rather than overall beauty, showed that in cities the most attractive gals had higher social and psychological well-being. That same link wasn't found for country residents. The researchers suggest with higher population densities, cities offer more potential friends and sexual partners, allowing city folks to be choosier and so theoretically able to select the cream of the crop to associate with. Though the study is based on women, the researchers suspect similar...