Free Republic

Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate; now what's going to happen to us, with both a Senate and a House?" — Will Rogers Most Marylanders are wondering the same thing. This year, the liberal majority in the Senate and House launched a fiscal attack on Gov. Larry Hogan's efforts to balance the budget, reduce the deficit and cut taxes. Their goal: to handcuff Hogan and prevent him from doing the job we elected him to do. Fencing and mandated spending are the manacles Senate President Mike Miller and House Speaker Mike Busch are using. Here's how they work....

America’s uranium industry has been absolutely devastated by Department of Energy decisions and political maneuvering by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and individuals closely tied to her. ... in 1976, the uranium extraction industry employed 35,000 people. Today .. fewer than 500 people in this country are involved in it .. 20 percent of our electrical power is dependent on those 500 people, that’s every fifth light-bulb. We’re now producing enough uranium to power 4 or 5 of our nuclear reactors, that’s 94 dependent on foreign uranium. ... Since 2011, DOE has sold off roughly $1 billion of publicly-owned uranium...

SILVER SPRING, Md. -- A federal security officer suspected in three fatal shootings outside a high school, a mall and a supermarket in the Washington, D.C., area was arrested Friday, police said. Three people were also wounded in the shootings. Eulalio Tordil, an employee of the Federal Protective Service, which provides security at federal properties, was taken into custody without incident near the supermarket, the scene of the last shooting, authorities said. The brief manhunt and seemingly indiscriminate shootings rekindled fears of the D.C. sniper in 2002, which paralyzed the nation's capital and its suburbs.

Police in Montgomery County arrested a man Friday afternoon who is a suspect in the fatal shootings of a man at a mall in Bethesda and a woman at a grocery store in Aspen Hill, and is believed to have killed his estranged wife outside a Prince George’s County school on Thursday. The arrest of Eulalio Tordil, 62, a federal police officer, ended a manhunt that began Thursday and forced authorities to put Montgomery County schools, government buildings and retail establishments on lockdown. Three other people were wounded in the attacks. Police said Tordil was arrested after a brief pursuit...

Police asking for help in search for man connected to Prince George's high school shooting Thursday; MCPS schools locked down............. UPDATE - 1:15 p.m. - Three people were shot at Westfield Montgomery Mall Friday morning and police are searching for the suspect involved. County schools and recreation centers have been locked down. A woman who was shot in a second shooting in Aspen Hill after the mall incident has died.

BELTSVILLE, Md. – A man fatally shot his estranged wife while she was waiting to pick up their children outside a suburban Washington high school Thursday afternoon and wounded a man who tried to intervene, police said.

Baltimore police are recommending motorists lock their (car) doors and call 911 during minor fender benders in the city after a string of incidents in which bumps from behind turned into armed carjackings. - snip - "The criminals are still committing these crimes even after we have made several arrests," Worley wrote, advising residents to "call 911 immediately, lock your doors and remain in your vehicle" if they are bumped from behind.

A deli in Brandywine, Md. is offering a potentially controversial lunch special. The New York Italian Deli has a sign offering a lunch special called "Hillary," featuring "two small breasts with two large thighs."

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) has received more than $7,000 worth of gifts since he took office in January 2015, mostly modest trinkets and items from well-wishers after the governor made his cancer diagnosis public. The gifts range from a $1 Livestrong bracelet to a $500 membership at Baltimore’s posh members-only Center Club, according to a filing with the State Ethics Commission. Hogan even reported two rosaries blessed at the Vatican, given to him and his wife by Pope Francis in Washington. The disclosure also shows the outpouring of support for the governor after he announced in June that he...

On April 8, 2016, military historian and author Patrick K. O’Donnell spoke at the Heritage Foundation to discuss his book “Washington’s Immortals,” a book about the forgotten people and battles in the revolutionary war. The author discusses facts of the war that many schools fail to recognize; these include details of the colonists’ struggles with the loyalists, the soldiers’ shortages of clothing and food, and the sacrifices of many wealthy colonists. The stories in this book of the band of brotherhood and the sacrifices of the colonists are beneficial for students in order for them to fully understand American values....

A man has pleaded guilty to setting a liquor store on fire during riots that rocked Baltimore last year in the wake of Freddie Gray’s death after he was injured in police custody. The U.S. attorney’s office says in a news release that 22-year-old Darius Stewart of Baltimore pleaded guilty Monday to malicious destruction of property by fire in federal court in Baltimore. …

On the front of Sunday’s Metro section of The Washington Post came this headline: “Gruesome images test jury during trial in Md.” Post reporter Dan Morse reported on a trial in suburban Montgomery County surrounding the murder of 36-year-old Oscar Navarro: “prosecutors were allowed to show jurors eight of the most disturbing photos -- a key to their obtaining a first-degree murder conviction Friday against Mauricio Morales-Caceres, 24.” It was only in paragraphs 29 and 30 that the Post acknowledged what they clearly felt was the least relevant news detail in this court case: The convicted murder is an illegal...

Bernie Sanders says conditions in Baltimore no better than North Korea, West Bank By Linda Qiu on Thursday, April 28th, 2016 at 5:06 p.m. Residents of some Baltimore neighborhoods are no better off than people living in impoverished North Korea and the violent West Bank, Bernie Sanders said during a campaign rally in Maryland ahead of that state’s primary. "Poverty in Baltimore, and around this country — poverty is a death sentence," Sanders said April 24. He then laid out some rather unflattering and harsh comparisons: "Fifteen neighborhoods in Baltimore have lower life expectancies than North Korea. Two of them...

Much of Baltimore's unrest a year ago was rooted in socioeconomic conditions of the city. The Justice Policy Institute examined some of those issues in a 2015 report called "The Right Investment? Corrections Spending in Baltimore City." The report listed indicators of lost opportunities for the communities surveyed: unemployment and commute time, income and public assistance, educational attainment, public safety, housing, physical health and addiction. The report finds that the same neighborhood had the highest rate of emergency narcotic calls to 911 with nearly one narcotic call made for every two people, compared to other neighborhoods in Baltimore. Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park...

- Drawing showed stick figure being hanged along with a racial slur and the hashtag 'whitepower,' the Salisbury University student newspaper reported - The drawing circulated on social media and caused controversy at school - Officials said culprits were identified as two African-American students Officials at a Maryland university say black students are behind a drawing of a hanging stick figure with a racial slur found on a library whiteboard. News outlets quote Salisbury University spokesman Richard Culver as saying the students are black. He declined to identify them, citing privacy rules.

A Baltimore TV station has been evacuated following a bomb threat. Police said they were investigating reports a man dressed as a panda was inside the Fox 45 offices on the city's TV Hill, claiming to have an explosive strapped to his chest. Pictures taken from the outside show the individual wearing a white onesie and black ears.

The building housing Baltimore's Fox and CW affiliates was evacuated Thursday afternoon for a suspicious person. ... The security guard, a man identified as Jourel Apostolidies, said the man handed him a flash drive. On the drive were videos of the man talking to the camera about what he believed were government conspiracies. ... The man was wearing a hedgehog onesie, light vest and combat boots. After he issued a request for staff to evacuate, he said he sat down and talked with the man.

Donald Trump’s extraordinary Tuesday evening in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware got me thinking: if this GOP presidential process were a prizefight, the referee would have stopped it last night. The announcer would have exclaimed, “ Donald Trump, winner by knockout.” The impressiveness of Donald Trump’s clean sweep of the “Acela Primary States” on Tuesday isn’t in the victories themselves. Everyone knew that Trump would do well on Tuesday in the more moderate northeast. It’s the margin that’s notable. This was a shellacking. The knock on Trump was that he had a ceiling or that when other candidates...

Democrats are increasingly optimistic they will take back control of the Senate in November, buoyed by establishment wins in Maryland and the key battleground state of Pennsylvania. Former government official Katie McGinty easily dispatched Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania’s Senate Democratic primary on Tuesday, benefiting from an infusion of cash from national Democratic groups and last-minute backing from Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama. Democrats now have the candidate they want to take on GOP Sen. Pat Toomey, one of the most endangered Senate Republicans as Democrats aim to net the four or five seats they will need to...

Three major cities accounted for more than half of the rise in the national murder rate between 2014 and 2015, a new report shows. Though overall crime rates were stagnant in America’s 30 largest cities the murder rate rose 13.3 percent, according to a report from the Brennan Center for Justice. The violent crime rate also rose by 3.1% in those major cities, lead by increases in Los Angeles, Baltimore, and Charlotte.