Free Republic

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Puerto Rico's government said Friday it would not make a $58 million bond payment due on the weekend and warned that the general fund will run out of liquidity by November if no action is taken. Gubernatorial Chief of Staff Victor Suarez said at a news conference that the island's Public Finance Corporation could not meet the payment due Saturday. "We don't have the money," he said, adding that the government still hopes to reach an agreement with creditors on renegotiating its debts. Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla warned several weeks ago that the government...

The number of states announcing investigations or reviews into Planned Parenthood keeps growing, as do the videos released by the Center for Medical Progress showing top Planned Parenthood employees discussing their fetal parts business. Unfortunately though, some state governors, all Democrats, have turned down the call from their legislatures to investigate Planned Parenthood. Governor Terry McAuliffe of Virginia and Governor Mark Dayton of Minnesota, and now Governor Jay Inslee of Washington state have come out against investigating to see if illegal fetal harvesting is taking place at Planned Parenthood affiliates in their state. Inslee also took the requests as an...

Healthy options are coming to Howard County, but some think the carrot is a stick.Four of five Howard County Council members, all Democrats, voted Friday to overturn County Executive Allan Kittleman's veto of a bill that creates nutritional guidelines for the food and drinks sold in government vending machines.Kittleman, the county's first Republican executive since 1998, framed the issue as one of choice for workers and visitors to county buildings, even if that means they choose fluorescent orange doodles chased by a bubbly soda."I trust Howard County residents and employees to make their own decisions about what to eat," Kittleman...

GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) — The United States must acknowledge a "painful, complicated" history of racial discrimination that still affects many minorities, Republican presidential hopeful Marco Rubio said Monday between campaign speeches in South Carolina. Rubio told reporters that "decades and decades of discriminatory practices" have yielded a lack of economic opportunity for many minorities and sour relationships between law enforcement and minority communities, particularly African-Americans. "It's important for us to confront these issues because we can't fulfill our promise as a nation if we have a significant percentage of the population feeling as if the American dream is out of...

Donald Trump charged Wednesday that a sexually 'deviant' former congressman who is married to Hillary Clinton's closest aide has likely seen the contents of classified emails that passed through the former secretary of state's private home-brew server. Huma Abedin, the Pakistani-American chief of staff to Clinton, was wed in 2010 to then-Congressman Anthony Weiner, the Democrat whose star fell to earth amid lewd sexting scandals. Republicans in Washington are furious with Clinton for destroying tens of thousands of emails dating from her time in office, and for including classified information in an unknown number of others. Trump told DailyMail.com during...

I started noticing “Cecil the Lion” trending on Facebook and Twitter at some point yesterday afternoon. By the evening, it was the most popular topic on social media, and stories about the lion were popping up on all of the national news sites. Before I took the time to investigate, I tried to imagine if there could be any valid reason for a wild cat to become the biggest news item in the world. On a day when another undercover video revealed Planned Parenthood dismembering murdered children for profit, I strained to think if there might be some justification for...

Defense Secretary Ash Carter has given his top commanders the green light to allow more troops to carry weapons at U.S. bases, with a focus on recruiting stations, Reserve centers and other softer military targets. Carter’s actions came two weeks after a Kuwaiti-born gunman killed four Marines and a sailor before police slayed him at the Navy reserve center in Chattanooga, Tenn. “The tragic shooting on July 16 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, illustrates the continuing threat to DOD personnel in the U.S. homeland posed by homegrown violent extremists,” Carter wrote in a memo released Thursday by the Pentagon. In the memo,...

Now that Iran has agreed to curb its nuclear program, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif says it’s time for Israel to follow suit and abandon its long-rumored nuclear arsenal. “Iran’s push for a ban on weapons of mass destruction in its regional neighbourhood has been consistent,” Zarif wrote in an editorial for the Guardian. “And while Iran has received the support of some of its Arab friends in this endeavour, Israel — home to the Middle East’s only nuclear weapons programme — has been the holdout.” The nuclear deal signed in Vienna by Iran and the P 5 + 1 countries...

A federal judge late Friday granted a temporary restraining order against the release of recordings made at an annual meeting of abortion providers. The injunction is against the Center for Medical Progress, the group that has unveiled Planned Parenthood’s participation in the sale of organs harvested from aborted children.Judge William H. Orrick, III, granted the injunction just hours after the order was requested by the National Abortion Federation.Orrick was nominated to his position by hardline abortion supporter President Barack Obama. He was also a major donor to and bundler for President Obama’s presidential campaign. He raised at least $200,000 for...

Seventh-graders in all public and private schools in Rhode Island are now required to get the HPV vaccine. Starting this fall, seventh-graders who do not get the vaccine will not be allowed to attend school unless their parents seek an exemption for medical or religious reasons, the Providence Journal reported Tuesday. Tricia Washburn, chief of the office of immunization for the Rhode Island Department of Health, said the Centers for Disease Control found no safety concerns with the vaccine. "The bottom line is that HPV is the most sexually transmitted disease in the U.S." she said. "We are interested in...

Hillary Clinton‘s campaign sent a letter to The New York Times lambasting them for their recent coverage of Clinton’s use of private email while she was Secretary of State. The letter, first obtained by CNN and then posted online by the Clinton campaign, is in direct response to the Times‘ most recent reporting on Clinton. The Times ran a report saying that two government inspectors general recommended the DOJ open a criminal investigation into Clinton’s emails due to classified material on her private account, but it turns out the recommendation was not on criminal grounds, so the Times ended up...

CHARLESTON, SC (WCBD) – It has been a week since Perry Cohen and Austin Stephanos went missing during a fishing trip, their boat was found off the Florida coast. It’s believed the current would have taken them north and that has been how the search has progressed for Blu Stephanos, Austin’s father. “I feel like a drained battery I feel like I have been going as hard as I can, and every time I have someone just say they are going to find them or they are praying for me– or I meet them out here at the airstrip and...

In a lengthy statement and on her campaign website, Clinton detailed that she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, paid more than $43 million in federal taxes from 2007 to 2014, over $13 million in state taxes and donated nearly $15 million to charity over the same period. The couple earned a total of $140.9 million, with an adjusted gross income of $139.1 million, the returns show. (CNN) - Hillary and Bill Clinton earned nearly $141 million over the course of eight years and paid $43 million in federal taxes, according to tax returns her campaign released Friday. Clinton...

Everything I needed to know about why the European Union would fail I learned at a truck stop. It was in 2001 when a bus tour I was on stopped at a truck stop on the German Autobahn. For the American readers, you must understand that European truck stops are much different from what you get in the states. In Europe, the facilities are clean and the food is actually decent. They don’t have the same hot dogs sitting in the cooker for five days. And no, you can’t buy six gallon soda cups. As it were, in this truck...

Thursday on AM 970’s “The John Gambling Show,” Rep. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) said Secretary of State John Kerry came across as “incredibly arrogant” while pitching his nuclear deal with Iran during his appearances on Capitol Hill this week.

Josh Earnest continues to make it clear this week that not only has he not watched the undercover videos of Planned Parenthood, but that in fact he is taking Planned Parenthood's word for it that they reveal noting and are simply fraudulent. In the Digitas video above, you can see clips from both Friday's and Thursdays briefings where Earnest plainly admits the White House is using the organization's talking points. Apparently the alleged criminal sale of baby body parts does not rise to the level of "merits our attention" at Obama's White House. That wasn't the only thing that...

A federal judge on Friday blocked the release of additional recordings captured by the group behind a series of undercover Planned Parenthood videos. The move came hours after after the National Abortion Federation filed a request for an injunction and restraining order against the Center for Medical Progress in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

MADISON, Wis. – A federal judge on Friday tossed out former Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson’s civil rights lawsuit and declared Wisconsin’s constitutional amendment that forced Abrahamson out of her long-standing seat of power does indeed pass “constitutional muster.” U.S. District Court Judge James Peterson said he wasn’t persuaded by Abrahamson’s case. His ruling puts to rest the liberal justice’s claims that the amendment approved by Wisconsin voters in April unfairly led to her ouster as chief justice. “This court has been asked whether the immediate implementation of an amendment to the Wisconsin Constitution concerning the structure of its court system...

Hillary Clinton paid roughly $57 million in federal and state taxes over the last eight years based on a statement just released by the Democratic presidential candidate’s campaign. The statement does not say how much Clinton earned each year. She made roughly $15 million in charitable donations. “We’ve come a long way from my days going door-to-door for the Children’s Defense Fund and earning $16,450 as a young law professor in Arkansas — and we owe it to the opportunities America provides,” Clinton said in the statement.

MADISON, Wis. -- The sale of fetal body parts would be banned in Wisconsin and Planned Parenthood could lose millions of dollars in federal funding under bills proposed by two Republican state representatives. Reps. Andre Jacque and Joel Kleefisch circulated their proposal banning the sale and use of fetal body parts for co-sponsorship Thursday, with a deadline of Aug. 6. They said the bill was in response to videos showing a Planned Parenthood medical director in southern California meeting with people posing as potential buyers of intact fetal specimens. Federal law prohibits the commercial sale of fetal tissue but allows...