Free Republic

Though Robert H. Richards IV was convicted of rape, the wealthy heir to the du Pont family fortune was spared prison by a Delaware court in 2009 because he would "not fare well" behind bars, according to court documents CNN obtained Tuesday. Richards is a great-grandson of the chemical magnate Irenee du Pont. He received an eight-year prison sentence in 2009 for raping his toddler daughter, but the sentencing order signed by a Delaware judge said "defendant will not fare well" in prison and the eight years were suspended.

It could take years for Congressional committees to get all the documents demanded about the IRS scandal under mandatory subpoenas, IRS’ new Commissioner John Koskinen testified. The new IRS Commissioner displayed the slippery style of a snake-oil salesman while testifying March 26 before Congressman Darrell Issa’s Committee on Oversight and Government. Koskinen’s excuses were especially surprising because similar demands for documents are imposed upon private companies all the time by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. Your author has worked as a lawyer on teams responding to such massive governmental document requests. Any time there is...

The state's minimum wage will increase to $10.10 per hour by 2017 under a controversial bill approved Wednesday by both the state Senate and the House of Representatives on largely party line votes. The Senate passed the measure by 21 to 14, with all Republicans and one Democrat — Sen. Joan Hartley of Waterbury — voting no. One senator was absent. The House vote was 87 to 54, and all 87 supporters were Democrats. Four House Democrats, including Representatives John Hampton of Simsbury and Joe Diminico of Manchester, joined with Republicans against the measure. The bill would boost the wage...

The danger is this: In the USA’s upcoming 2014 elections, Republican elites assume that everyone all now agrees that conservatives ‘must’ support non-conservative candidates to win more elections. The GOP is operating on the belief that everyone is on board, simply because insiders have officially decreed it to be so. However, the grassroots in the USA remains unconvinced. Worse, the Republican establishment has no plan for truly healing the actual wounds. Elites want to avoid change more fervently than they do want to win elections. Elites violated trust by advancing liberal policies in the U.S. Congress, but they won’t apologize...

Whether Democrat or Republican, do you really want your private tax information leaked with impunity? On March 9, 2010, around 10 a.m., I announced my plans to run for senate representing Delaware. Later that same day, my office received a call from a reporter asking about my taxes. It’s since come out, after a halting and unenthusiastic investigation, that a Delaware Department of Revenue employee named David Smith accessed my records that day at approximately 2 p.m. — out of curiosity, he says. That these records ended up in the hands of the press is just a coincidence, the IRS...

The mayor of Wilmington, Del., knew something was wrong. After one year on the job, this former homicide cop had a hunch his police department had a leak. “The problems that we were having with this city with crime and information that got out too fast, my suspicion was always somebody might be involved in something,” said Mayor Dennis Williams to WDEL radio. But that is all it was, a hunch. And it stayed that way until last month, when city police found one of their own – a 911 dispatcher – allegedly giving her thug boyfriend a heads up...

The facts 1. There are 21 US Senate seats held by Democrats in the 2014 election. 2. There are nine US Senate seats held by Democrats in the 2016 election. This is likely to be 10 due to a special election in HI in 2014. 3. Republicans need to pick up six senate seats to have a majority. The Analysis The failures of ObamaCare and broken promises by Democrat senators create a target rich environment in 2014. This is a year Republicans have to do well. Winning a majority in the senate by only one seat or maintaining the status...

A small group of Amazon.com Inc technicians at a distribution center in Delaware voted on Wednesday not to join a union, marking a victory for the U.S. online retailer which is strongly opposed to any kind of third-party representation for its employees. A group of equipment maintenance and repair technicians voted 21 to 6 not to join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), in results published late on Wednesday. The vote was a symbolic test of Amazon's employee relations policies, but did not affect the vast majority of the 1,500 or so packers and shippers who work...

Lou Dobbs, business anchor, offers a lot of truly excellent and a little really atrocious advice to the Republican Party in his new book Upheaval, released on January 7, which he discussed in his January 6 broadcast "Steps to creating a winning election strategy for the Republican Party." Dobbs' new book is a must-read; overall, the GOP should elect Lou Dobbs as its next party chairman. Though you may need to skip a few chapters. The problem is that Dobbs insists that the Republican Party must abandon social issues. He argues passionately that the Republican Party must not give up...

At 580 hp and a starting price of $55,000, the Chevy Camaro ZL1 ranks as the top dog of the Camaro lineup (at least until the Z/28 hits the track.) For Camaro enthusiasts like John Hooper, author of six books on the history of Camaros, it's a dream car — or at least was a dream car, until an employee at a Chevy dealership totaled his ZL1 on an unauthorized joyride. Nearly a month later, Hooper and the dealership have yet to agree on how much that particular top dog was worth. According to Hooper's posts on the Camaro5 forum,...

DOVER, DE, January 8, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – An abortionist who ran a “meat-market” style Planned Parenthood facility – singing hymns to Jesus while performing abortions with unsterilized equipment on bloody tables – has been fined $1,500 and given a letter of reprimand. The Delaware Board of Medical Licensure and Discipline decided on Tuesday to accept a consent agreement that Dr. Timothy Liveright signed in November.

Most of the attention from Robert Gates’ new memoir has focused on its impact on Barack Obama and the presumed 2016 campaign of Hillary Clinton. The former Secretary of Defense sharply criticizes both for playing politics with the lives of soldiers, even though Gates’ memoir also includes praise for both in other contexts. The one politician who gets no nuance from Gates, though, is Joe Biden. Gates slams the Vice President for having “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades,” which Allahpundit joked yesterday constitutes proof of the book’s accuracy....

Wilmington, Del., has a big problem: Large groups of black people are going crazy. And this collective “mental illness” is causing record levels of crime and gun violence in this mostly black town of 70,000. That is the official diagnosis of the city council, which, by unanimous agreement earlier this month, asked the Centers for Disease Control to investigate a wave of psychological mayhem that has turned this historic and once-charming city into an unrecognizable husk of its former self. Chief diagnostician of this crisis in public health is city council member Hanifa G.N. Shabazz: “There is a well known...

DOVER, Del. (AP) - The state of Delaware is working to set up a task force to help residents with a hoarding problem. As many as 45,000 people in the state are estimated to have problems with hoarding. In advance of the hoarding task force, the state is creating an advisory panel to try to determine stakeholders who may be able to offer input into hoarding issues.

Virginia Republicans may have a strong candidate for the 2014 US Senate seat in Ken Cuccinelli. As reported in the Daily Caller, conservative writer and Congressional candidate Quin Hillyer gives voice to a movement to draft Ken to run against incumbent Democrat U.S. Senator Mark Warner. Yet it would be a problem for the 2013 campaigner Ken Cuccinelli to run for U.S. Senate, from what we saw in Ken's unsuccessful campaign for governor. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Ken Cuccinelli as a potential senator. Yet Ken will fail badly unless he fires his 2013 campaign strategists, consultants, and leaders,...

The state of Delaware spent $4 million in federal grant money on Obamacare enrollment and has only signed up four people in the last month– effectively costing taxpayers $1 million per enrollee.

Delaware has seen only a handful enrollments in its new ObamaCare insurance exchange, which is served by HealthCare.gov, according to an informal survey of community groups. The Associated Press reported that four patients had signed up for coverage as of Wednesday.

“The Establishment Strikes Back.” But this campaign against the tea party will fail, because false assumptions dominate the thinking and plans of America’s Republican establishment. GOP insiders have now declared war on the tea party. They are promising during the 2014 U.S. elections to restore business interests to dominate the GOP, and weaken the tea party influence. “Hopefully we’ll go into eight to 10 races and beat the snot out of them,” said former Rep. Steve LaTourette of Ohio. According to the National Journal, “LaTourette’s new political group, Defending Main Street, aims to raise $8 million to fend off tea-party...

For the student of racial violence, a white riot is the Holy Grail: often talked about, but so rare, some doubt it even exists. This is in contrast to the epidemic of more than 500 cases of recent black mob violence in more than 100 cities – documented in the new book “White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Racial Violence and How the Media Ignore It.” On a recent Jesse Lee Peterson radio show, a caller disputed the idea that black mob violence exists out of proportion. White people are just as guilty, she said. It’s just they...

In his remarks Friday night, Mr. Biden said that tea party Republicans have a fundamentally different view about women and their role in the world. To advance the cause of women’s rights, he added, the U.S. must elect more Democrats. “We can win back the House, and when we do, it’ll be your agenda, because the president and I embrace it completely,” Mr. Biden said.