Free Republic

West Coast docks are paralyzed as employers and longshoremen continued to spat about contracts and congestion problems. There are plenty of losers. Exporters, like farmers and ranchers, can't get their perishables to Asian markets during the Lunar New Year when demand for fruit and meat is particularly high. And importers large and small are beginning to report shipment delays and inventory shortages. Are there winners? Kind of … Air Freight. Some importers, like electronics dealers and luxury retailers, can afford to put their cargo on planes, despite at least a ten-fold increase in shipping costs. ... East Coast/Gulf Coast ports....

At least one economist gets off campus frequently enough to see what the real economy looks like and, naturally, he’s a free market type. Perhaps he should take his colleagues on a field trip. “American businesses spend almost $2 trillion per year (or roughly another 10 percent of GDP [Gross Domestic Product]) complying with regulations, including the 79,311 pages of the 2013 Federal Register,” Nikolai G. Wenzel, a visiting assistant professor of economics at Florida Gulf Coast University, said at a Fund for American Studies conference last November. “Think for a moment that the Declaration of Independence adds up to...

President Obama’s pick to serve as the next attorney general is having a hard time finding Republican supporters. To be confirmed by the Senate, Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch only needs four Republicans to support her nomination. But it is unclear where those votes will come from. Sen. Orrin Hatch (Utah) is the only Republican so far who has signaled his intention to vote for Lynch, though several others have spoken favorably about her. But many Republicans are expressing concerns about Lynch's stance on immigration and what they suggest is a lack of “independence" from the White House. Lynch’s confirmation...

ACTION: Contact your Senators and urge them to cosponsor S. 477, the Firearms Manufacturers and Dealers Protection Act of 2015. Operation Choke Point a Threat to the Second Amendment About a year ago, the Second Amendment community was rocked by news that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) had teamed up with Attorney General Eric Holder to utterly destroy firearms manufacturers and dealers by cutting off all credit and banking relationships with them.For its part, the FDIC categorized gun and ammunition sales as a "high-risk business," lumping it in with drug dealers, pornographers, and Ponzi scheme operators -- all of...

Gov. Bobby Jindal's name is not first on most people's list of candidates for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, but maybe we should at least start paying attention to him. If one's political enemies are any indication of potential strength, Jindal of Louisiana may be a more formidable force than some people realize. During a visit to Washington Monday, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank couldn't wait to attack Jindal and his record. Why bother with someone he and others consider a lightweight from a small Southern state, unless there is more there than the elites think? In an interview...

Charter school growth has exploded over the last two decades and so have the waiting lists to get in them. “Today there are charter school laws in 42 states and the District of Columbia,” Nina Rees, president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools said Monday in a conference on Capitol Hill. “Close to 50 percent of D. C. public schools are charter schools.” Rees spoke at a forum assembled by the American Federation of Children (AFC) and hosted by Senator Tim Scott, R-South Carolina. “In Louisiana we’ve doubled the number of charter schools and 90 percent of New...

A pair of GOP senators implored House Republicans Thursday to soften their stance in the intra-party dispute over funding the Department of Homeland Security. Sens. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who both formerly served in the lower chamber, stressed to the House GOP conference behind closed doors that the Senate can’t get the 60 votes it needs to advance the House-passed DHS funding bill that includes language to reverse President Obama's executive actions on immigration. "They lamented the frustration they're having getting up to 60 votes. But apparently that is the strategy now with the Democrat minority...

<p>BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - Planned Parenthood is appealing a state health department rejection of its application seeking to perform abortion services in New Orleans.</p> <p>The organization said Wednesday it filed a notice of appeal with the state Division of Administrative Law, rather than file a lawsuit challenging the rejection.</p>

Year after year, Louisiana didn't have enough money to cover its expenses, yet Gov. Bobby Jindal refused to roll back income tax cuts or ever-increasing corporate tax breaks. Instead, he raided reserve funds and sold off state property. ...The governor has successfully trimmed some spending by cutting more than 30,000 full-time state employees. He's reduced the state's vehicle fleet, privatized much of the Medicaid program, turned over the state's charity hospitals to outside managers and looked for ways to make state government more efficient. That hasn't closed all the gaps, however, and Jindal's short-term solutions leave a string of debts...

The former general manager of the Ritz-Carlton New Orleans, where embattled "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams reportedly roomed during Hurricane Katrina, said Sunday (Feb. 8) that neither mass flooding nor floating human remains were near the hotel after the levees broke. Her statement raises questions about Williams' stated Katrina experiences and could add to a pool of public skepticism regarding his tale. Williams recounted his time reporting on Katrina in a 2006 interview with Disney CEO Michael Eisner. "When you look out of your hotel room window in the French Quarter and watch a man float by face down,...

Two members of the House Republicans’ elite vote-counting operation have quit. Reps. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Jeff Duncan of South Carolina both gave notice that they no longer wanted to be part of the leadership operation, according to more than a half-dozen GOP sources. Their departures come as Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 3 House Republican, told members of the whip team that they would be kicked off if they voted against procedural motions. The move was designed to solidify control of the Republican conference. DeSantis and Duncan told Scalise that they were leaving the team...

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana speaking at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. Louisiana Governor and potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate Bobby Jindal is continuing to voice his growing outrage over the Common Core state education standards, which the federal government played an influential role in encouraging most states to adopt. Speaking at a Thursday luncheon at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. hosted by the American Principles Project, a conservative organization rallying opposition to Common Core, Jindal argued that the Common Core standards stand against American values and causes local communities to lose...

We’ve had a lot of fun at Obama’s expense following his juvenile and historically illiterate speech at the National Prayer Breakfast. We’ll let this bit of trolling by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal serve as our last word on the subject.

Bobby Jindal on Friday released a statement responding to the president’s remarks on Thursday at the National Prayer Breakfast in which he cautioned Americans from getting on a “high horse” when taking a stance against radical Islam because people have committed “terrible deeds” in the name of Christianity, too. “It was nice of the President to give us a history lesson at the Prayer breakfast,” Jindal said. “Today, however, the issue right in front of his nose, in the here and now, is the terrorism of Radical Islam, the assassination of journalists, the beheading and burning alive of captives. We will...

I knew I was attracted to the same sex when I was seven — in some capacity, anyway. I don't think it's physiologically possible to truly feel sexual attraction at such a young age. But I knew there was a drawing in me toward the same gender – and drawing that was more than what some would say is "natural" or "normal." As I grew up in a rural Louisiana town and teenage hormones began to surge throughout my body, my drawing toward the same gender intensified — sexually and emotionally. While I was definitely not engulfed in the life...

Obama's Budget Includes Windfall For L.A. Transportation By NOAH BIERMAN AND W.J. HENNIGAN President Obama's budget earmarks $1 billion for transit in California, including $330 million for L.A. The budget proposal unveiled by President Obama on Monday earmarks more than $1 billion for California transportation and construction projects, including $330 million that Los Angeles officials called crucial to extending the Purple Line from the Mid-City area to Century City. Overall, Obama would spend more than $800 million on transit throughout the state — including $165 million to expand the Bay Area Rapid Transit system to San Jose and $150 million...

NOPD said the 30-year-old victim, who Irish media have identified as Hanrahan, was approached by a gunman in the 2200 block of New Orleans Street. The gunman demanded money, and the victim refused.

Conservative lawmakers are officially rolling out a new group aimed at advancing a conservative agenda in the House of Representatives after they expressed discontent with the direction of the Republican Study Committee.“Our main hope is that we can represent the voids and valleys for our constituents back home,” Rep. Raúl Labrador of Idaho told The Daily Signal today. “With a small group that is nimble and able to work on issues that are of importance to our constituents, we can make a difference in Congress.”Called the House Freedom Caucus, the group serves as a conservative alternative to the Republican Study...

The photo above, via Cosmopolitan on January 23, shows progress on building an 8,000 sq. ft Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in New Orleans has obviously stalled. Compare it to the photo taken by Louisiana Coalition for Life in August 2014 (click all photos to enlarge)…. It appears only the grass has been cut in the past five months. Before that, Fox8 reported in January 2014 “the lot sits untouched” eight months after Planned Parenthood’s big ceremonial ground-breaking (in a church, no less – photo, right), this apparently because it had trouble finding anyone to build. This means the facility’s estimated...

<p>NEW ORLEANS — In three months it will no longer be legal to smoke in bars and while gambling in the Big Easy.</p> <p>On Friday, Mayor Mitch Landrieu signed into law a new ordinance that does away with smoking inside bars, gambling halls, stadiums and hotels in what will be a big change for a city known for its libertine ways.</p>