Free Republic

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is slated to hold a hearing Thursday morning regarding a standard 32-hour work week. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday introduced a bill to establish a standard four-day workweek in the United States without any reduction in pay. The bill, over a four-year period, would lower the threshold required for overtime pay from 40 hours to 32 hours. It would require overtime pay at a rate of 1.5 times a worker’s regular salary for work days longer than 8 hours, and it would require overtime pay at double a worker’s regular...

The United States' missile strikes on a military airfield in Syria violates international law and represents an act of aggression against a sovereign state under a far-fetched pretext, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday. MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The US launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Syrian military airfield in Ash Sha'irat near Homs late Thursday. US President Donald Trump said the attack was a response to the alleged chemical weapon use in Idlib on Tuesday, which Washington blames on Damascus. President [Vladimir] Putin regards the US attacks on Syria as an aggression against a sovereign state in violation of...

British military chiefs are drawing up plans to help American airstrikes in Iraq, the Times reports. Senior figures are considering sending a spy plane to provide intelligence on ISIS positions, while Royal Air Force aircraft capable of refuelling U.S. fighter jets in mid-air will also be sent. The UK government, which has welcomed American intervention in the fight against ISIS, has also not ruled out conducting its own airstrikes if the humanitarian situation worsens. MPs are also discussing the possibility of using British special forces, who have long experience in the Kurdish region, to offer help in pinpointing targets. Former...

Annapolis Alderman Ross Arnett insists the City Council's decision to take another look at making the mayor's job a more ceremonial role has nothing to do with party politics. But if the Democrat-majority council acts to remove the mayor's power, the timing will coincide with the election of Annapolis' first Republican mayor in nearly two decades, Mike Pantelides, who defeated the incumbent Democrat, Mayor Josh Cohen, last week.

White House communications staffers are investigating using social media sites beyond Facebook and Twitter to broaden the Obama administration's public engagement and, perhaps, to communicate in different ways, a White House aide said Tuesday. That investigation is driven partly by a belief that social media changes so rapidly the government must be willing to experiment with new platforms, and because outside advisers to the administration already are using newer platforms, White House New Media Director Macon Phillips said. Former America Online Chief Executive Officer Steve Case, who serves on President Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, for example, uses Quora.com,...

San Francisco - The first vision was simple and straightforward: To curtail puppy mills and kitten factories, the sale of cats and dogs should be banned in San Francisco, where the loving guardians of animal companions come to regular blows — politically — with the loving parents of children. The ban was put on hold last year after animal advocates broadened it to include anything with fur or feathers. Now it's back, with a new name and a new strategy: More is more. The Humane Pet Acquisition Proposal is on its way to the Board of Supervisors, and it hopes

Alec Baldwin, the US actor, has said he has lost interest in acting and considers his film career a failure. "I consider my entire movie career a complete failure," he told the magazine. "The goal of moviemaking is to star in a film where your performance drives the film, and the film is either a soaring critical or commercial success, and I never had that." Baldwin has expressed interest in politics in the past but did not say in the interview what he intended to do if he quit acting.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is weighing a possible temporary expansion of the US army to ease the strain from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, his press secretary said on Wednesday. Gates was discussing the idea, backed by Senator Joseph Lieberman, with senior officers to add 30,000 troops to the active-duty army, press secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters. The possible expansion from the current strength of 547,400 would be designed "to get them through what is still a stressful period as we draw down in Iraq and continue to plus-up in Afghanistan," Morrell said.

It seemed appropriate that a panel examining ways to overhaul the state's tax structure met Thursday in the academic confines of UC Davis rather than the politically charged Capitol. The discussion focused on the theoretical, from examining the merits of a flat income tax to considering a "split-roll" property tax system that treats commercial businesses differently from homeowners. The daylong meeting occurred largely in a political vacuum, for now ignoring the difficulty of getting such ideas through a divided state Legislature where special interests hold great sway. But Chairman Gerald Parsky said the state's current fiscal woes may allow for...

NEW YORK - Civil rights activist Al Sharpton said Monday he is seriously considering a run for president. "I don't hear any reason not to," Sharpton, 52, said in an interview during an urban affairs conference sponsored by another civil rights leader, the Rev. Jesse Jackson. "If we're talking about the urban agenda, can you tell me anybody else in the field who's representing that right now?" Sharpton asked. "We clearly have a reason to run, and whether we do it or not we'll see over the next couple of months." Sharpton mounted a long-shot bid for the White House...

WASHINGTON - House leaders are creating a bipartisan task force on whether to establish an independent ethics panel to police the House, Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi said Thursday. Pelosi, D-Calif., said Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio has agreed to the idea. The task force has not been set up yet, but it will be expected to report back in March, she said. Pelosi offered no details on what the outside ethics group might look like, saying that would be up to the task force. "There is no question that the ethics process in the last couple of years has lost...

Australia considers test for would-be citizens By Nick Squires in Sydney (Filed: 18/09/2006) Australian immigrants will have to show they are "fair dinkum" — or genuine — by taking a tough citizenship test and waiting longer before applying for a passport, the government said yesterday. The proposal has divided Australians with some welcoming it as a way of blocking potential Islamic extremists and others dismissing it as an act of embarrassing jingoism. The prime minister, John Howard, wants a test to assess applicants' knowledge of Australian history, values and customs. "Most people who come to this country are fair dinkum...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is considering using emergency powers to ease crowding in the nation's largest state prison system, after lawmakers rejected his $6 billion prison building plan this week. That could mean contracting with other states to take as many as 10,000 inmates and opening some buildings that are unused, such as a women's prison in Stockton and a youth detention center in Whittier. Schwarzenegger also could take money from other areas in the state budget to add prison beds at existing prisons. "The administration has not ruled out any solution for the overcrowding problem," his communications director, Adam Mendelsohn,...

A hospital that has faced a series of financial setbacks is considering closing its emergency room, potentially forcing thousands of additional patients onto another emergency unit about 1 1/2 miles away. Centinela Freeman HealthSystem said it will decide within 30 days whether to shut the emergency room at its Memorial campus, leaving only its Centinela unit operating in the working-class city. It would be the ninth emergency room to close in Los Angeles County in recent years and the prospect could be "devastating," said Carol Meyer, director of the county's emergency medical services agency. "This is going to be the...

WASHINGTON - Just in time for the fall elections, government regulators are weighing whether to ease restrictions on when interest groups can run political ads within weeks of the voting. The Federal Election Commission on Thursday began circulating a proposal by Commissioner Hans von Spakovsky that would grant an exemption on airing ads outside a specific timeframe. The commission plans to take up the matter at an Aug. 29 meeting and could vote that day. If the commission approves the change, it could unleash a flood of election ad spending and open a new legal battle over the 2002 campaign...

Blair considers rethink on human rights law (Filed: 13/05/2006) Tony Blair is considering an overhaul of human rights law over fears that public safety is being put at risk, according to a leaked letter from No 10. Tony Blair That could involve new legislation to overrule human rights judgments by the courts. Mr Blair has asked the Home Secretary, John Reid, to "ensure that the law-abiding majority can live without fear". The move comes after a judge ruled that nine Afghan refugees who hijacked a plane to Britain could not be deported, on human rights grounds. And an official inquiry...

NEW ORLEANS - Hurricane-ravaged St. Bernard Parish is considering hiring former FEMA chief Michael Brown to advise its hurricane recovery effort, a move drawing sharp complaints from a state lawmaker. "Do we hire an individual to assist in our recovery efforts who as FEMA director resigned two weeks after Katrina made landfall?" asked Republican state Sen. Walter Boasso. "We were in the middle of the worst natural disaster in our nation's history." Parish officials have called the talks preliminary, and spokesman Steve Cannizaro said Wednesday that they had not yet decided whether to hire Brown. Brown's understanding of the system's...

TOWN AND COUNTRY, Mo. - Behind the turreted brick walls of Christian Brothers College High School is a clean-cut student body of about 1,000 boys in collared shirts and dress pants. Tuition for freshmen at the private school in suburban St. Louis will be $9,500 next year, including the cost of a new laptop computer. There is also the chance all parents will be charged another $60 to help pay for mandatory drug tests for students, a rare program hailed by the White House but disparaged by civil libertarians. "I know a lot of people are worried about privacy concerns,...

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court considered whether police may search a home when one resident says to come in but another objects, in an unusually spirited debate Tuesday that drew out even the usually silent Justice Clarence Thomas. Justices took up a case that arose in a small Georgia town. The wife of a local lawyer invited officers in to search their house after the husband turned them down. The search uncovered evidence of illegal drugs. The Supreme Court has never said whether the Constitution's ban on unreasonable searches covers such a scenario — when one home occupant says enter...

NEW YORK - Arizona Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) is considering a 2008 run for president but says it's unlikely he'd take the No. 2 spot. In an appearance Sunday at a fund-raiser for a local New York candidate, the Republican seemed to humorously rule out ever accepting a vice presidential post. "I spent all those years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, kept in the dark, fed scraps, why the hell would I want to do that all over again?" he said, the New York Daily News reported in Monday editions. McCain, who ran for president in...