Free Republic

Have a tattoo? If the answer is “yes,” it’s more likely you’re unemployed or completely out of the labor force. On average, your income is lower. You’re more probably a smoker, use illegal drugs, engage in risky sexual behavior, have been a victim of crime, and have been incarcerated for committing crime yourself.

“The losses incurred by carriers since the beginning of the Affordable Care Act are unsustainable, and premium increases that are the result of that are also unsustainable...it’s critical that folks in D.C. put aside their political differences and fix this thing. Otherwise, it will implode.” Maryland's insurance commissioner

As the alt-left, supported by members of the Democratic Party, look to tear down more and more monuments across America, the New York Times is warning that the increasing scope of the left’s iconoclasm may be alienating centrists and mobilizing the right. In an article Friday about the movement to rip down monuments and images in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, this month, the Times says the disputes have proliferated with “dizzying speed” and suggests that the left’s fervor has started to produce questionable results: The article goes on to say that as the campaign moves past...

Is this a scam? Two previous times over the last couple months I was called by someone (Indian accent) telling me that I was due a refund from a transaction I had with their company last year. I vaguely recalled the transaction and they knew the date and exact amount. I just needed to access my computer and checking account so they could give me the money. (red flags all over the place so...) I told them to just send me a check and we'll call it even then hung up.Well yesterday another call, this time they had enough details...

Let's call the GOPe and many others in the Congress what they really are: RepubliCAN'TS Under the "leadership?" of Ditch Mitch McConnell and Paul Lyin Ryan we deplorables have suffered through way too many false starts and missed shots to "Make America Great Again". After 200+ days of total control of the House, Senate and Executive, the President's 60+ million supporters are thoroughly dissatisfied with the progress. Our President is exerting at least 125 percent effort (AT NO CHARGE, for heavens sake!) to fulfill our electorial expectations. God Bless Him for that. Think of the greatest quarterback of all time...

Aiming to help thousands of students who get sidetracked in developmental courses that don’t count toward their degrees, California State University will do away next year with traditional remedial education. In an executive order issued Wednesday night, Chancellor Timothy White directed the 23-campus system to overhaul by fall 2018 its curriculum for students found to be unprepared for college-level English and math. About 39 percent of CSU’s incoming freshmen, or 25,000 students, are required to take remedial classes for no credit before they can begin their general education. University officials argue this is no longer the right approach in an...

This is a story in two parts, without a happy ending, or indeed an ending of any sort. I thought it only fair to warn you. If you remember, the summer of 2015 brought almost daily horror stories of refugees being drowned at sea or suffocating in lorries while seeking asylum in Europe. The climax was the picture of a dead Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, washed up on a Turkish beach, though for some reason I was more haunted by a photograph of a Syrian mother trying to hold her baby above the waves. She was my personal tipping point,...

A new minimum wage study suggests Seattle's quest for a $15 minimum wage may not be completely painless. Not all is rosy in Seattle as the city gradually pushes to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour, according to a new study that suggests hiring and the number of hours worked among lower-wage employees took a hit last year as minimum pay rose. The National Bureau of Economic Research unveiled a working paper on Monday that found the number of hours worked in low-skill professions dropped more than 9 percent in Seattle during the first three quarters of last...

Ousted FBI Director James Comey said Thursday that he suspected former Attorney General Loretta Lynch was in cahoots with the Hillary Clinton campaign last summer. Lynch, he said, told him not to refer to the probe into Clinton’s private email server as an “investigation.” She said just call it a matter. … That concerned me because that language tracked how the campaign was talking about the FBI’s work,” he said. Former President Bill Clinton’s surprise meeting with Lynch at an Arizona airport also prompted him to go public with results of the FBI probe into the email server. “That was...

Liberals might yawn at the prospect of yet another study showing overwhelming media bias against a Republican president but this report does not come from a right-wing think tank. Instead, it comes from one of their favorite think tanks. Harvard University's Shorestein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy released a report last week that indicated there is anti-Trump liberal media bias. They analyzed the news media coverage in the U.S. and in Europe, and found that the U.S. liberal media did not publish positive coverage of President Trump by a large margin. How large? Eighty percent of news coverage...

The left loves embracing the idea of "tolerance," yet the rest of us have long observed that all the Left ever seems tolerant of is itself. A new survey from Dartmouth College provides yet more evidence that the volatile political divide in this country is being caused by the intolerant left: In the campus-wide field survey, students of all political stripes were asked how comfortable they would be about living with a roommate who holds opposing political views. Of the 432 students surveyed, only 39 percent of students who identified as Democrats said they would feel comfortable living with a...

It's a story that reads like a "Seinfeld" episode. The state attorney general has indicted a man for allegedly pretending to be an architect, an investigation Eric Schneiderman dubbed "Operation Vandelay Industries." Schneiderman says the man - whose name is, coincidentally, Paul Newman - allegedly drafted renderings for more than 100 buildings in three upstate New York counties. The state attorney general also accuses Newman of issuing false documents and falsely certifying on those documents that he was a licensed architect, when he was not. The name of the investigation was a reference to a fake company that George Costanza...

Marvel’s vice president of sales has blamed declining comic-book sales on the studio’s efforts to increase diversity and female characters, saying that readers “were turning their noses up” at diversity and “didn’t want female characters out there”. Over recent years, Marvel has made efforts to include more diverse and more female characters, introducing new iterations of fan favourites including a female Thor; Riri Williams, a black teenager who took over the Iron Man storyline as Ironheart; Miles Morales, a biracial Spider-Man and Kamala Khan, a Muslim teenage girl who is the current Ms Marvel.

Transgenders dominate in weightlifting, track, wrestling, football, basketball, mixed martial arts. You’ve heard the expression, “Boys will be boys.” But what happens when a brawny boy wants to be one of the girls – fiercely competing with females in weightlifting, brutally tackling girls on the football field or even dealing powerful knockout punches to ladies in a mixed martial-arts cage? It’s now happening across America and around the world. Biological males are joining women’s teams, smashing records and dominating in sports such as weightlifting, softball, cycling, track, wrestling, football, volleyball, dodgeball, handball, cricket, golf, basketball and mixed martial arts. The movement for “equality” has apparently inspired transgender athletes...

Would the concept St. Jude Hospital uses for their funding work for the entire country? They are funded 75% by private donations (see link). There are around 6,000 hospitals (google search) in the U.S. Is it possible they could be funded through private donations (super rich people along with average Joes)? I am not good with financial realities (except my own checkbook), so I'm throwing this idea out here to see if possible. FReepers are smart people. There are some free clinics already in the U.S. which are functioning through donations. Maybe the entire healthcare system could exist through private...

Fox News just showed Jodie Foster speaking to a group of actors and telling them NOT to give THANK YOU SPEECHES but instead to Give POLITICAL SPEECHES at the Academy Awards. LETS BOYCOTT THE ACADEMY AWARDS!!!! LETS BOYCOTT THE ACADEMY AWARDS

A THR and National Research Group survey reveals how Clinton voters and Trump voters view the Oscars differently. And you thought Obamacare was a hot-button issue. According to a new THR poll, Americans are nearly as divided about the Oscars as they are about health care. The survey — conducted by the National Research Group, which in early February canvassed 800 people (half Hillary Clinton voters, half Donald Trump voters) for their opinions about movies, award shows and politics — reveals that two-thirds of Trumpsters have turned off their TV sets because of an actor giving a political speech at...

Stupid people need jobs too Fox News Channel appears to have instituted an affirmative action hiring program among on-air contributors. Incompetent low-IQ Obama administration spokesthingies are now in demand, or so the hiring of former State Department goofer upper Marie Harf suggests.

A recent (and first of its kind) study verifies again what many Christians have long warned about the homosexual lifestyle. Published in August of 2016 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the study—"Sexual Identity, Sex of Sexual Contacts, and Health Related Behaviors Among Students in Grades 9-12"—looked at a wide variety of risky behaviors among U.S. high school students. .. In almost every instance, the risky behavior measured—especially behaviors that are often linked to a moral decision—was much more prevalent among teenagers engaging in homosexual activity. In addition, and unsurprisingly, those students with the healthiest outcomes...

"We should tell China that we don't want the drone they stole back.- let them keep it!"