Free Republic

A patient at an Orlando, Florida, hospital who claimed to have a firearm Monday morning was shot and killed by police in the emergency room, officials said.

In 1968, on the eve of the presidential election, Lyndon Johnson found out that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were actively working to stop his administration from concluding a peace deal with the North Vietnamese. Nixon didn’t want that kind of October surprise to shift the election to Johnson’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey. Unfortunately for LBJ, he couldn’t reveal that kind of political hanky-panky because he found out about it by illegally wiretapping the Nixon campaign. In 1980, rumors were rampant that the Reagan campaign had actively worked to ensure that Iran wouldn’t give back the American hostages right before...

America's public education system is failing the citizens of Detroit, where the Detroit Regional Workforce Fund reports that 47% of people in Detroit are illiterate. In nearby suburbs, up to one-third are functionally illiterate. The report, titled "Addressing Detroit's Basic Skills Crisis" makes the problem seem as intractible as the Flint water crisis that is about to hit its third anniversary. Director Karen Tyler-Ruiz described that level of illiteracy to WWJ: "Not able to fill out basic forms, for getting a job — those types of basic everyday (things). Reading a prescription; what’s on the bottle, how many you should...

Fifty years ago this month, Democrats made a historic mistake. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, at the time a federal official, wrote a famous report in March 1965 on family breakdown among African-Americans. He argued presciently and powerfully that the rise of single-parent households would make poverty more intractable. “The fundamental problem,” Moynihan wrote, is family breakdown. In a follow-up, he explained: “From the wild Irish slums of the 19th-century Eastern seaboard, to the riot-torn suburbs of Los Angeles, there is one unmistakable lesson in American history: a community that allows large numbers of young men to grow up in broken families...

Parents across the metro area, in different school districts, have similar stories to tell when it comes to the way their children were treated after reporting they were bullied. “The other kid jumped in and had the boxcutter up and threatened to stab her over and over again,” Tina Williams said. “And he said, ‘I wouldn't stab a girl, but I'd stab a b**** and I'm looking at one right now,’ when he looked at my daughter.” “At lunch I am kind of afraid that they are going to threaten me again,” said Williams' daughter, Kayla. “She's heard jackass, b****,...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Four years into an economic recovery, the number of people living in poverty has finally stopped climbing. Household incomes edged up slightly in 2005, but 37 million people were still living below the poverty line, about the same as the year before, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday. It was the first year without an increase in poverty since 2000, just before President Bush took office. The numbers immediately became political fodder, with a little more than two months to go before midterm congressional elections that will determine whether Republicans continue to control the House and the Senate....

On Feb. 13, the federal government stopped paying hotel bills for roughly 12,000 families nationwide who lost their homes to damage caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Once as high as 85,000, the number of hotel rooms being paid for by FEMA is down to 8,000. By March 6, FEMA says the hotel subsidies will be completely cut off. At the Country Hearth Inn & Suites near Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, people carted their belongings through the lobby and into the cars of family members and friends. Some were headed to new FEMA-subsidized apartments or trailers. But a few lagged behind,...