Free Republic

It’s that time of year again – when the little juvenile delinquents, future prison inmates, and functionally illiterate junior members of the free shit army pick up their “free” backpacks and “free" school supplies they will never use and shuffle off to the decaying prison like schools in the City of Philadelphia to eat “free” breakfasts and “free” lunches, while being taught government sanctioned pablum by overpaid mediocre union teachers. It’s a repeat of every year for the Phila school district. As the school year approaches they are shocked to report a massive deficit and beg the State of PA...

Vulnerable Democrats casting about desperately for a boost to their campaigns won't be able to use a slightly improving economy as a lifeline, according to several recent polls.The fact is, voters don't care about the raw economic numbers - not when their personal financial situation is still bad. The Hill: But with just a handful of big economic reports left before Election Day, the economic picture is largely in place. And while the outlook is bright, voters continue to hold a dim view of their own financial prospects.  “There are still a lot of families playing catch-up,” said Jared Bernstein...

Lawyers for Detroit will attempt to convince a federal judge at the city’s bankruptcy trial that its plans to wipe out billions of dollars in debt should be approved. After some delays, the start of the trial Tuesday in U.S. District Court comes just over 13 months after Detroit became the largest U.S. city to file for bankruptcy. Detroit expects to cut $12 billion in unsecured debt to about $5 billion, which is “more manageable,” according to Bill Nowling, a spokesman for emergency manager Kevyn Orr. …

For a few months in 1966, the budding romance between film star George Hamilton and Lynda Bird Johnson, daughter of the 36th president, was the talk of Washington....But a previously confidential FBI file - which a Philadelphia judge last week outlined in an opinion and ordered to be released - shows for the first time how far Johnson went to protect his daughter and his presidency

For House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the “war on women” and victimhood are always in style when election season rolls around. According to CNS News.com, on Thursday, Pelosi said on a conference call that American women have been victims throughout the history of the nation. “It was a struggle all the way,” Pelosi said. “Women marched. Women starved. Women were starved. Women were force-fed. Women could barely speak up in their own homes.” She continued: Women left their homes to take the message. And it was successful, and the right to vote, again, so precious, so hard fought. ......

A Friday afternoon dispatch at the Politico from Carrie Budoff Brown and Jennifer Epstein tells us that "The White House is putting the finishing touches on a post-Labor Day schedule that will send the president to states where he’s still popular." The list of states where the Politico pair alleges that's the case is quite short: "Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Illinois and California." That's it. Obama, in a situation resembling that of Richard Nixon in the final months of his presidency, when "Tricky Dick" was mocked for being able to find friendly audiences in just a few Southern states, is apparently...

For years, liberals have pointed to demographic projections with glee.White people seem headed to becoming less than a majority in America. Liberals say this poses a problem for the Republican Party as most white people now vote Republican, providing the party’s base. But the scenes of rioting in Ferguson, Missouri, pose a similar problem for the Democratic Party.In recent years, Republicans have diversified without becoming Democratic Lite. Democrats haven’t. Republicans have three Hispanic senators (Democrats have one) a black senator (Democrats have one), two Hispanic governors (Democrats have none) and two governors whose parents were born in India (Democrats have...

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee would like you to donate. Right now. The campaign organization, hoping to lead Democrats to control of the House come November, has spent the past week sending out a series of strongly-worded, seemingly desperate, fundraising e-mails trying to get supporters to donate. "All hope is lost," reads the subject of one such e-mail. "We're in serious trouble," it continues. "Karl Rove and the Koch Brothers are massively outspending us...If we get blown out right now, we might as well give up hope until 2016." Another e-mail says Democratic campaigners weren't ready for Republican attack ads....

The decision issued in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby did not change the access to free contraceptives; it merely shifted the cost burden. In their majority opinion, the Supreme Court stated that a less restrictive means of providing these services was already in place—an accommodation issued by Health and Human Services (HHS) for non-profit corporations with religious objections. The Court recommended that such a program be implemented for closely held for-profit corporations who object to providing these contraceptives for religious reasons. Instead of a for-profit company’s insurance premiums footing the bill for such access, the cost will be absorbed by the...

Progressives really, really, really wanted to hear from Hillary Clinton on the events in Ferguson, Mo., where an unarmed black teenager was shot and killed by a white police officer on Aug. 9, sparking days of unrest in that small city outside St. Louis and elsewhere. Al Sharpton said he wanted to smoke Clinton out on Ferguson and suggested that if she ran in 2016, he would be a thorn in her side on civil rights issues. MSNBC host Chris Hayes thought it was “bizarre” that Clinton hadn’t at least weighed in with a statement on the incident, even though...

Immediately after the Civil War caused the collapse of the plantation system southern Democrats, who had been slave masters, formed the Klu Klux Klan to force their former Black slaves back onto their plantations. By the end of the first one hundred years of their efforts the KKK was well on its way to success. Democrats were fully in charge of the federal government and could do whatever they wished with their new “slaves.” Today, the Democrats’ efforts to push Blacks back onto their plantations has reached its maximum level of success and what makes the arrangement even better for...

Californians already pay the nation's second highest gas tax at 68 cents a gallon -- and now it will go up again in January to pay for a first-in-the-nation climate change law. ... Estimates of the cost of the tax vary. The California Air Resources Board, the Golden State's premier anti-pollution agency, predicts the new tax will raise gasoline prices from 20 cents to $1.30 per gallon. A prominent state senator who helped author the bill estimated the cost at 40 cents a gallon. Environmental activists downplay the cost, but hail the impact. "We're going to now tackle probably 40...

Extortion: Radical Democrat activist groups stand to collect millions from Attorney General Eric Holder's record $17 billion deal to settle alleged mortgage abuse charges against Bank of America. Buried in the fine print of the deal, which includes $7 billion in soft-dollar consumer relief, are a raft of political payoffs to Obama constituency groups. In effect, the government has ordered the nation's largest bank to create a massive slush fund for Democrat special interests.

Man with ISIS flag on vehicle threatens cops with bomb Updated: Aug 28, 2014 3:17 PM CST CHICAGO (Sun-Times Media Wire) - A man who had an ISIS flag waving from his vehicle is facing several charges after he threatened police with a bomb Wednesday morning when he was pulled over on the Southwest Side. Emad Karakrah, 49, was charged with felony counts of disorderly conduct and aggravated fleeing; and a misdemeanor count of driving on a never-issued license, according to Chicago Police. He was also issued three traffic citations. Someone called police after seeing a “suspicious person” driving a...

Three of the 40 members of the California State Senate have been arrested this year, more than double the statewide arrest rate and higher than the rate in any of California's 25 largest cities. State Senator Ron Calderon was arrested in February for allegedly taking bribes. State Senator Leland Yee was arrested in March for allegedly trafficking in firearms and taking bribes. State Senator Ben Hueso was arrested Friday on suspicion of drunk driving charges. A fourth senator, Roderick Wright, was convicted of perjury and voter fraud charges in January but was arrested prior to this year. [SNIP]

What do the midterm elections have to do with the killing of black 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.? Ask CNN contributor and former Democratic National Committee vice chairwoman Donna Brazile. The politicization of Ferguson in the small world of cable news has been limited to liberals claiming the incident was racially motivated and conservatives leaping to the defense of Darren Wilson, the white officer who shot Brown. That was until Tuesday, when Brazile began encouraging her followers to use Ferguson as inspiration to vote in the November midterm elections. “We have to be passionate about the upcoming election,” Brazile...

A bill allowing family members to ask a judge to order firearms removed from people likely to commit gun violence advanced in California on Wednesday, one of several gun control measures up for votes in the last week of the state's legislative session. The measure was introduced after police near Santa Barbara said they were unable to confiscate weapons from a man who later went on a rampage and killed six people, despite concern from his family that he was in poor mental health and might become violent. The bill passed the senate 23-8. It passed the assembly once, but...

President Obama is expected to announce by mid-September whether he will circumvent a recalcitrant Congress and press ahead with immigration reform on his own terms. "Executive action," as it's come to be known, could be as robust and consequential as providing de-facto earned amnesty for millions of undocumented immigrants now living in the shadows. That decision would reverberate widely. Democrats have usually been afraid that if Obama decided to showcase the apogee of presidential power, the counter-reaction among conservatives and revanchists would cost Democrats an intolerably high political price. Now, though, after all the midterm primaries are done, as the...

In the fourth quarter of its fiscal year 2014, the city of Detroit projected it would bring in $55 million in property taxes. Instead, it collected just $6.7 million, about $48.3 million short of what it expected. The city revealed the shortfall in its most recent filing with the Michigan Department of Treasury by Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr. “It's a combination of many factors,” said Bill Nowling, spokesman for Orr. “Clearly, collections is an issue, but so it is the assessment process itself. In many cases, the city is carrying assessments for properties that are blighted or abandoned and those...

Donations to key lawmakers wine-and-dined by its lobbyists earn commercial spaceflight company millions in subsidies Shortly before a private spaceflight company’s test rocket exploded over southern Texas last weekend, state lawmakers announced millions in subsidies to get the company to continue launching rockets in the Lone Star State. Space Exploration Technologies, commonly known as SpaceX, will receive more than $15 million in public financing to build a launch pad in Cameron County, near the Mexican border. The subsidies came after SpaceX’s founder, billionaire tech mogul and pop technologist Elon Musk, made campaign contributions to key state lawmakers and hired lobbyists...