Free Republic

In what could be the most bizarre development in the ongoing debate over the Washington Redskins nickname, TMZ reports that a neighbor of team owner Dan Snyder, Aris Mardirossian, has trademarked the name "Washington Bravehearts." The report states that the trademark application filed by Mardirossian says that he plans to use the name for "entertainment in the nature of football games." Mardirossian, who reportedly lives on the same block as Snyder in Potomac, Md., is an affluent patent investor who developed a relationship with Snyder a few years ago when the two men battled the county in an effort to...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) asked why reporters were making an issue out of the additional spending that was added to the continuing resolution that re-opened the federal government and increased the debt limit. “What difference does it make? Why are we talking about this? We’re talking about a bill that as I said last night, I’m not asking anybody to vote for this bill on the merits,” Pelosi said. …

It's been two days since 34-year-old dental hygienist Miriam Carey was killed after she rammed her car into a barricade in front of the White House and led security forces on a chase toward the U.S. Capitol, and some are asking whether the use of deadly force against her was truly necessary. While the first accounts of Carey's death said she exited her black Infiniti before she was shot, investigators now say she was still in the vehicle when officers fired the fatal bullets. Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Terrance W. Gainer told reporters that Carey "was trying to make a U-turn [toward...

NEW YORK -- Coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks, their aftermath and the war on terrorism won eight of the 14 Pulitzer Prizes on Monday to become the most dominant single news story in the awards' history. The New York Times won seven of the prizes -- six of them related to the tragedy -- to set a record for a single year. Newsroom celebrations, particularly in New York and Washington, were tempered by the memory of one of the worst tragedies in the nation's history. At The Wall Street Journal, staffers remembered reporter Daniel Pearl, who was slain in...

WASHINGTON - A Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic for The Washington Post has apologized for sending an angry e-mail in which he called District of Columbia Council member Marion Barry a "crack addict." Tim Page wrote to Barry's aide last week after receiving a press release about the former mayor's views on the financially troubled Greater Southeast Community Hospital. "Must we hear about it every time this crack addict attempts to rehabilitate himself with some new — and typically half-witted — political grandstanding?" the e-mail said. "I'd be grateful if you would take me off your mailing list. I cannot think...

NEW YORK Managing Editor Paul Steiger of The Wall Street Journal and Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. of The Washington Post were both asked to be part of last weekend's unique joint Op-Ed piece by the editors of The New York Times and Los Angeles Times, which defended the publication of stories about the secret SWIFT bank monitoring program, E&P has learned. But each declined. "We had talked about doing something together," Steiger said. "But when I looked at it and thought about it, our position was so different from theirs -- that nobody asked us not to publish [our...

In less than two weeks, thousands of truckers will descend on Washington, D.C., driving their big-rigs and calling for the restoration of a constitutional republic – but now their plan has taken a new twist: Their friends and families will simultaneously join other Americans rallying on overpasses across the nation for Obama’s impeachment. The Truckers’ Ride for the Constitution movement has a new ally in their protest against what organizers say is corruption in government and a trashing of the Constitution. The group is teaming up with Overpasses for Obama’s Impeachment to line the routes into Washington with flags during...

Via William Jacobson, NBC's affiliate in Washington, D.C. reports that police ordered tourists and Vietnam war veterans who were visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall to leave the memorial at one point on Friday. After one group of veterans went around the barricade, "the park ranger told them the wall was closed," NBC's Mark Seagraves reported. "Later another group of vets showed up and moved the barricades. At that point, the memorial filled with vets and tourists. That's when police came and moved everyone out." The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall is a black granite outdoor wall on which the names...

Unbelievable! Barack Obama brought out the German Sheperds today to threaten US veterans at the Vietnam Memorial. He’s using attack dogs against our veterans! Vietnam Wall entrance is open to all. Guard dog and guards are solely for intimidation. Go in. God Bless 'em pic.twitter.com/O7XSjOzbtj — Steve King (@SteveKingIA) October 5, 2013

When I first saw this story, I assumed that it almost had to be a hoax. After the previous incidents with veterans and the added expenditures involved in closing open spaces to keep veterans from paying their respects to the Honored Dead one would assume that even a novice politician would move to staunch the bleeding. But instead, it seems that the White House is doubling down, as reported at The Weekly Standard. Via William Jacobson, NBC’s affiliate in Washington, D.C. reports that police ordered tourists and Vietnam war veterans who were visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall to leave...

Normally I take this time to point out some odious person (usually a progressive liberal) who seems hell-bent on destroying this great country to be our Jerk of the Week. However, some events transpired this week that brought a smile to my face, so I decided to recognize those responsible to be our Hero of the Week. While it is very easy to point out things that are going wrong, it behooves us to remember that there are things that show us the way and give us hope, and these items need to be acknowledged. For standing up against Obama,...

Outrage mounted against U.S. Rep. Randy Neugebauer on the heels of his confrontation with a National Park Service ranger this week at the World War II Memorial.

A group of Texas congressmen armed with wire cutters made their way to the World War II Memorial in Washington after they learned the National Park Service had reinforced the barriers blocking the site with wire. “This is Chicago thuggery,” Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) told me. “The president is trying to inflict the most amount of pain and suffering. This is not some bureaucratic mistake. This is Chicago thuggery. You try to make people hurt so they don’t resist what you tell them to do in the future.”

Another open-air memorial in the Washington area is closed and barricaded off: the Iwo Jima Memorial, just across the bridge from D.C. in Rosslyn, Virginia. A source sends along this picture of the barricade set-up at the memorial, which is also called the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial: "I took the picture yesterday afternoon. Those barricades had been there at least a day. People can still walk into the Memorial area, but for many elderly and disabled vets, it is important they be driven and park right next to the statue," the person who took this picture emails. "There has...

EW YORK (AP) — The sisters of a woman who was fatally shot in Washington after trying to ram her car through a White House barrier say she was not a criminal and police should not have shot her. "We're still very confused as a family why she's not still alive," Amy Carey-Jones said late Friday, speaking of her 34-year-old sister, Miriam Carey. "I really feel like it's not justified, not justified." Another sister, retired New York City police officer Valarie Carey, said there was "no need for a gun to be used when there was no gunfire coming from...

A new rally is forming, “Million Vet March On The Memorials” that will be held 9am October 13, 2013 at the war memorials in Washington D.C. The group is fed up with veterans being used as political pawns and are calling all patriots to attend, via their facebook page: We are all military brats, current and former military spouses and some veterans. We cannot express how utterly disappointed we were that our Greatest Generation were being used as political pawns in the ongoing government shutdown and budget crisis. This should never be the case. We do not care what political...

HOUSTON — Thanks to Texas' new senator, Dale Huls is out of a job - at least for now. Yet Huls has never been prouder that he voted for him. "Without Ted Cruz this doesn't happen," said Huls, a NASA systems engineer who was among roughly 3,000 federal employees furloughed from Houston's Johnson Space Center after tea party Republicans triggered the partial government shutdown. "This is something Americans have to get used to," said Huls. "Even if it affects your livelihood, you've got to stand up." Perhaps more than anywhere else, Texas embodies the factors behind the shutdown: big government...

**SNIP** Of course, lots of folks in the U.S. Senate feel deeply threatened by my legislation. Majority Leader Harry Reid has taken to name-calling, saying I’m an “anarchist” and “mean-spirited.” He and Senate Democrats want so badly to protect their illegal Obamacare exemption that they’re trying to bribe members of Congress by threatening to take away the subsidy for folks who support my amendment while preserving it for those who oppose the amendment. It’s clear that they’re nervous about the idea of actually having to live under all of the Obamacare provisions themselves. If Democrats in Washington are going to...

WASHINGTON – A federal judge has tossed a lawsuit filed earlier this year that sought to remove the motto ‘In God We Trust’ from American currency.As previously reported, well-known atheist Michael Newdow, who has filed numerous suits challenging the mixture of God and government, submitted a complaint in the Southern District of New York this past March, asserting that the motto violates the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution as it serves to proselytize unbelievers.“[T]he American dollar travels all over the world, into every country of the world, and frequently gets behind the Iron Curtain, and if it...

Wal-Mart said it will go forward with plans to open stores in Washington D.C. now that the capital's mayor has vetoed legislation that would require large retailers to pay higher wages. Mayor Vincent Gray on Thursday overturned a new law, which would have required big box stores like Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500) to pay no less than $12.50 an hour in combined wages and benefits. The city's current minimum wage is $8.25.