Free Republic

While backers of billionaire-funded Initiative 594 are planning one more rally this Saturday – using the Marysville-Pilchuck school shooting as something of a campaign prop – another county sheriff has joined 26 of his colleagues to oppose the measure, making the count more than two-thirds of the elected sheriffs against the measure. Reports from several readers to Examiner late yesterday indicated that many, if not all, of these lawmen have apparently been targeted by "robo-calls" from I-594 supporters, claiming the sheriffs are out of touch with their constituents, and have been co-opted by the "gun lobby." Perhaps they've read the...

Would you vote for a law that makes criminals of many neighbors, relatives and friends? Initiative 594 would do exactly that. #In their zeal to impose “universal background checks,” the creators of I-594 have written a law that would require nearly all “transfers” of firearms to be conducted at the premises of a Federal Firearms License dealer.

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire — A new high-powered ad spot—and hefty buy behind it—aims to finish off incumbent Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and help former Sen. Scott Brown across the finish line. The ad comes from Ending Spending Action Fund, which is spending approximately $1.25 million in the final days pushing this message via television, radio, Internet, forthcoming print advertisements, and direct mail. That’s in addition to an existing $601,000 buy the group is already running in local television markets, meaning the group is up with more than $1.85 million backing Brown in the final week. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaAteJWDNI4 The television ad,...

Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL.) is thinking seriously about running for president in 2016, according to his son, George P. Bush. According to Commentary magazine, Jeb Bush had an impressive record as governor, including tax reductions totaling $20 billion. Given that performance, why is Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, upset? Politico, and many others, assert it’s because of an answer Bush gave in 2012 to a hypothetical question posed by a member of the House Budget Committee, which resurfaced now as he contemplates running for president. Bush was asked if he could accept tax increases of $1 dollar...

For-profit colleges with graduates unable to pay back their student loans could soon face scrutiny by the federal government. Schools with career-oriented programs that fail to comply with the new rule announced Thursday by the Obama administration stand to lose access to federal student-aid programs. To meet these "gainful employment" standards, a program will have to show that the estimated annual loan payment of a typical graduate does not exceed 20 percent of his or her discretionary income or 8 percent of total earnings. The Education Department estimates that about 1,400 programs serving 840,000 students won't pass. Ninety-nine percent of...

... The president's comments sparked immediate criticism online, including from military spouses who said soldiers were also "volunteers" whose time away from family and loved ones was not any less valuable than for civilian volunteers. "The President's comments on the differences between the quarantine policies for members of the military and civilian volunteers seemed to dismiss the fact that every member of military has, indeed, volunteered to serve," said Rebekah Gleaves Sanderlin, Army wife and board member for the Military Family Advisory Network. "In pointing out that the civilian volunteers would be sacrificing time away from their families, the President...

With projections of a GOP win growing daily, nervousness in Senate committee offices has turned to panic as an army of Democratic staffers braces to be fired, replaced by a Republican majority and their aides. The spoils of political war? Estimates are that 300-600 Democratic committee and personal staff jobs would be on the chopping block if the Republicans pull off the expected victory. “There will be a mass exodus of Senate Democrat staff from committees,” said one insider. And Republicans will get to hire hundreds more aides. A loss on Tuesday that keeps the Democrats in charge of the...

James O'Keefe does it again! A stunning undercover video exposes a reckless disregard of election law in North Carolina. Multiple campaign operatives and workers, both democrats and republicans, encourage felony voter fraud.

An election integrity watchdog group is suing the state of Maryland, alleging that it has discovered massive and ongoing fraudulent voting by non-U.S. citizens in one county. But because of the way that the non-citizens are able to cast votes in elections, the fraud is likely happening in every single county and subdivision across the state. The group believes that the illegal voting has been happening for years. The group, Virginia Voters Alliance, says that it compared how voters in Frederick County filled out jury duty statements compared with their voting records. The group’s investigation found that thousands of people...

The nation is fed up with the phony "war on women" that Democrats are endlessly accusing Republicans of waging, says Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard. "We have a lot of data which suggests that people are tiring of the slogans and the gestures. Women, as well as men," Fiorina saud Wednesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.

A forensic pathologist quoted in a St. Louis Post-Dispatch story about the shooting death of Michael Brown said some of her statements concerning the autopsy were taken out of context. ... Melinek said she did not assert that a gunshot wound on Brown's hand showed that he was reaching for Wilson's gun during a struggle while the officer was in a police SUV and Brown was standing at the driver's window, as the Post-Dispatch reported. Melinek told the Washington Post that the autopsy facts could be viewed differently. "Bullet trajectory analysis is complex, ad you cannot interpret autopsy reports in...

Early voting has begun for midterm 2014 elections, and reports of Democrat voter fraud have come in from Arizona, Maryland and Illinois. The Arizona incident featured a liberal activist caught on video stuffing hundreds of ballots into a ballot box. In Maryland and Illinois, voting machines were switching votes from Republican to Democrat, raising suspicions of fraud being the root of the so-called malfunction. In a related report by The Inquisitr, Greenpeace terminated the contract of a Colorado-based worker who was caught on video seemingly condoning fraud in the state’s new vote-by-mail process. The undercover video was taken by James...

If you can’t cover it up anymore, turn it into a joke. President Obama poked fun at the checkered political history of his hometown Chicago on Tuesday, reminding voters in Wisconsin to vote early — but not often.“You can only vote once — this isn’t Chicago, now,” Obama said at a rally in Milwaukee for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke.Obama was brought in to fire up the Democratic base, traveling to a ward in which he carried 99 percent of the vote in the 2012 presidential contest against Republican Mitt Romney. At least it’s not one of those places where...

Could non-citizen voting be a problem in next week’s elections, and perhaps even swing some very close elections? A new study by two Old Dominion University professors, based on survey data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, indicated that 6.4 percent of all non-citizens voted illegally in the 2008 presidential election, and 2.2 percent in the 2010 midterms. Given that 80 percent of non-citizens lean Democratic, they cite Al Franken ’s 312-vote win in the 2008 Minnesota U.S. Senate race as one likely tipped by non-citizen voting. As a senator, Franken cast the 60th vote needed to make Obamacare law.

Not that the timing makes it any more egregious, but six days after being named the 17th richest member of Congress, it’s being reported that U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson‘s estranged wife has been issued an EBT card to help feed his children. Lolita Grayson was approved for public assistance by the state of Florida, and their four minor children — they have five children altogether — are also enrolled in the free lunch program in Orange County schools, according to ABC affiliate WFTV. The stay-at-home mom was asked if she ever thought she’d be on food stamps. “No,” Lolita responded....

It takes a while to get to this data in the CBS News report, as the Washington Examiner and Twitchy point out, but it’s real — and perhaps spectacular. One has to read to the ninth paragraph for CBS to get to the point of its latest and last national midterm poll, which takes burying the lede to a new and amusing level. What other data would a national media outlet survey five days before the midterms? The headline reads, “What Americans think of Congress and the President,” which is as generic a headline for a national political poll...

LAKE CHARLES, LA (KPLC) - The former Lake Charles woman accused of severely abusing her 2-year-old foster child will not serve any time in prison. Judge Ron Ware gave Lan Huyhl Le, who was found guilty of second-degree cruelty to a juvenile in May, a five-year suspended sentence and three years supervised probation. Le, who is now living in Florida, must pay a monthly supervision fee as well as a $500 fine.

The state of Colorado has embarked on a far-reaching experiment this campaign season: Its 2014 election, featuring a high-profile contest between incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Udall and Republican challenger Rep. Cory Gardner, is being conducted exclusively with mail-in ballots. Every voter in the state has received a ballot; if a person wants to vote on Election Day, he or she will have to take that ballot to what is called a voter service center, present it to officials and then vote. It's expected most will opt to mail their ballots. And each day, as the ballots arrive, the Colorado secretary...

Numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), and the FBI, show that Americans are roughly 159 times more likely to be struck by a car and killed than shot and killed in a mass shooting.

Jeb Bush is throwing cold water on his son’s statement that the former Florida governor will more than likely run for the 2016 presidential nomination. In an interview that aired Thursday on MSNBC, Bush — backstage at a campaign event in Colorado on Wednesday for Republican Senate candidate Cory Gardner and gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez — said that his son’s opinions didn’t necessarily reflect his own. “He’s got an opinion. He didn’t talk to me,” the former Republican governor said, when asked about George P. Bush’s statement last Sunday that it’s a better than 50-50 chance his father will run...