Free Republic

Weeks after the New England Patriots’ Super Bowl victory the DeflateGate scandal continues to rumble on in the background. According to ESPN’s Outside the Lines, a Patriots locker room attendant attempted to introduce an unapproved special teams ball into the AFC Championship game. The attendant, identified by ESPN as Jim McNally, is said to have been in charge of the officials’ locker room at Gilette Stadium since 2008. He is alleged to have handed a ball, which wasn’t officially approved for kick-offs, field goals and punts to an official during the first-half of the Patriots’ 45-7 victory over the Colts.

Sound Off Connecticut is a popular conservative/libertarian call in talk show hosted by Jim Vicevich weekday mornings from 9 a.m. to noon ET. Although based in Connecticut, the show welcomes callers from all over the United States! This is your chance to sound off America! Call into the show toll free (800) 966-9842! Listen to the LIVE AUDIO STREAM at http://wtic.com - it's free and NO registration is required! If you're in southern New England listen over the air to WTIC 1080 AM, the 50,000 watt Connecticut powerhouse! Are you outside of Connecticut? Start your day off listening to Jim...

Michael Bloomberg representatives have asked the Aspen Institute not to distribute footage of his recent appearance in Aspen, where the three-term New York City mayor made pointed comments concerning minorities and gun control. Appearing before nearly 400 people in Aspen on Feb. 5, the billionaire founder of Bloomberg L.P. argued that in order to save lives, police should seize guns from male minorities between ages 15 and 25.

Yale anti-fossil fuel campaigners have indefinitely postponed a protest that was set for this weekend due to “unfavorable weather conditions and other logistical issues.”

A special commission set up by Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy after the Sandy Hook shooting may include a number of recommendations in its final report from registering all firearms, to tracking ammo, and screening owners.

More than two years after Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 schoolchildren and six faculty members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., as well as killing his mother and himself, a state commission released a draft report of a wide-ranging set of recommendations on Thursday with the goal of preventing such killings.

Charter school growth has exploded over the last two decades and so have the waiting lists to get in them. “Today there are charter school laws in 42 states and the District of Columbia,” Nina Rees, president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools said Monday in a conference on Capitol Hill. “Close to 50 percent of D. C. public schools are charter schools.” Rees spoke at a forum assembled by the American Federation of Children (AFC) and hosted by Senator Tim Scott, R-South Carolina. “In Louisiana we’ve doubled the number of charter schools and 90 percent of New...

A convicted killer has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the state of Connecticut, saying he's not allowed to practice his religion in prison. . . . . Kevin Harris is serving a life sentence for a 1993 murder in Bristol. He is a member of the Nation of Gods and Earths, an offshoot of the Nation of Islam more commonly known as the Five Percenters, which was founded in New York in the 1960s. The group promotes black empowerment and teaches that black men are Gods.

If you’re a billionaire living in Connecticut, chances are the tax department is keeping an eye on you. In a state home to some of the richest Americans, tax officials go to some lengths to keep them—or, more accurately, keep the billions of dollars in revenue their income taxes generate. Connecticut tax officials track quarterly estimated payments of 100 high net-worth taxpayers and can tell when payments are down. Of that number, about a half-dozen taxpayers have an effect on revenue that’s noticed in the legislature and Department of Revenue Services. […] Two years ago, tax officials were alarmed that...

Listen Live: Sound Off Connecticut with Jim Vicevich 9 a.m. to noon ET (Daily Thread)Sound Off Connecticut is a popular conservative/libertarian call in talk show hosted by Jim Vicevich weekday mornings from 9 a.m. to noon ET. Although based in Connecticut, the show welcomes callers from all over the United States! This is your chance to sound off America! Call into the show toll free (800) 966-9842! Listen to the LIVE AUDIO STREAM at http://wtic.com - it's free and NO registration is required! If you're in southern New England listen over the air to WTIC 1080 AM, the 50,000 watt...

Can those who call themselves "pro-life" or "pro-choice" in what some call the "abortion wars," find some common ground? We'll see. Rep. Alfred C. Adinolfi, R-Cheshire, has introduced a bill, titled "Prevent Coerced Abortions" (H.B. 6193), which has been referred to the legislature's Judiciary Committee. When the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973, thus making abortion more available, it not only allowed women to choose to have an abortion, it also made it easier to force a pregnant woman to have an abortion which she did not want and did not choose. A study by David Reardon, Ph.D., of...

Listen Live: Sound Off Connecticut with Jim Vicevich 9 a.m. to noon ET (Daily Thread)Sound Off Connecticut is a popular conservative/libertarian call in talk show hosted by Jim Vicevich weekday mornings from 9 a.m. to noon ET. Although based in Connecticut, the show welcomes callers from all over the United States! This is your chance to sound off America! Call into the show toll free (800) 966-9842! Listen to the LIVE AUDIO STREAM at http://wtic.com - it's free and NO registration is required! If you're in southern New England listen over the air to WTIC 1080 AM, the 50,000 watt...

WASHINGTON — When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint session of Congress in March, it is unclear whether everybody invited will actually show up. Democrats have criticized House Speaker John Boehner for circumventing the administration when he invited Netanyahu to speak, and the White House has already said Obama will not meet with him when he’s here. BuzzFeed News asked several Senate Democrats whether they planned on skipping the speech or not. Most said they either hadn’t thought about it or they hadn’t decided. But there were no hard answers in the negative. Only one senator definitively said...

Menendez: Obama Admin Statements on Iran 'Sound like Talking Points Straight out of Tehran'

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A heated exchanged between President Barack Obama and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey) broke out Thursday over whether the U.S. should reimpose sanctions on Iran amid ongoing negotiations over the country's nuclear program, according to two senators who were in the room. Menendez, the leading Democrat pushing for additional sanctions against Iran, forcefully pressed Obama on the need for additional sanctions during a meeting in which Obama urged Menendez and other senators to drop their efforts to pass sanctions legislation. Additional sanctions, Obama argued, could torpedo ongoing negotiations over Iran's nuclear program. The unusually sharp exchange, between...

Everyone involved seems to be trying to put the best face on it, but Barack Obama went so far as to suggest senior Democrats like Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), who take a hard line on Iran, are doing so purely to appease their donors. Obama said that as a former senator himself, he understood how outside forces — like special interests and donors — can influence senators to act, one of the senators recounted.

U.N. gives mixed signals on Tehran cooperation as nuclear talks intensifySenate Democrats on Tuesday backed away from a bipartisan push for immediate new sanctions on Iran, bowing to President Obama’s call not to undercut international talks to get Tehran to curb its nuclear programs in the coming weeks. The shift, announced Tuesday by Sen. Robert Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat and one of the party’s outspoken hawks on Iran, came amid a series of mixed signals from the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency over the question of whether Tehran was honoring promises to put its suspect nuclear programs on hold as...

Ten Senate Democrats warned the White House in a letter Tuesday that they will support legislation imposing new sanctions on Iran if a framework to roll back the country’s nuclear program isn’t reached within two months. "In acknowledgement of your concern regarding congressional action on legislation at this moment, we will not vote for this legislation on the Senate floor before March 24," said the letter, led by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who is the co-author of Iran sanctions legislation. "After March 24, we will only vote for this legislation on the Senate floor if Iran fails to reach agreement...

Unless there is any doubt, the vast majority of Democrats value partisan support for a failed president over support for our own national security and for that of Israel. Hence, they want to delay once again a vote on the Menendez-Kirk bill imposing sanctions on Iran unless it agrees to an acceptable final deal. The bill was introduced more than a year ago. The timing just isn’t right, you see. Will it ever be? A letter by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) signed onto by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.),...

Bridgeport, CT Mayor Bill Finch (D) thanked MSNBC anchor Al Sharpton for “fighting the good fight on climate change” during a report on Winter Storm Juno on Monday’s “PoliticsNation.”