Free Republic

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The following is about infrastructure. Don't nod off just yet. To be specific, it's about pavement — basic, boring road surface. In the six decades since Interstate 70 began to creep across Missouri, how we view pavement hasn't changed much. Now meet Tim Sylvester, 33. He sees pavement as an electronic tablet with a concrete touch screen, The Kansas City Star (http://bit.ly/1MWYIxn) reports.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I want to go to Indiana and discuss this supposedly controversial Indiana religious freedom law. It's made to order for the modern-day Drive-By Media. On Saturday and Sunday, ABC, CBS, NBC -- virtually every mainstream media organization -- condemned a new law in Indiana that would protect private businesses from government infringement on their religious freedom. What this means is that the Obama administration wants to do away -- and the media is assisting -- with the whole notion of free markets, the Constitution, and the freedom of religion clause. The administration wants the power to mandate...

RUSH: A 20-year-old guy has been charged with shooting a couple of officers, the two police officers in Ferguson, Missouri, and the claim is he wasn't aiming at the cops. It just happened. If you read the AP story on this, you have to go to the end of the story to find out his race. They do not make that prominent, but he is African-American. The shooter, the two cops in Ferguson, is indeed African-American. Get this. "A Ferguson convenience store that was looted and burned after the fatal shooting of [the Gentle Giant] will be rebuilt as a...

RUSH: An economist at the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics -- this is an Obama administration official -- is undergoing a review after she apparently sent out a tweet claiming that Christians vote for Nazis. Economist Elizabeth Ashack's Twitter account, sometime over the weekend, appeared to tweet out, "People in the red states vote for Nazis to govern and then call themselves Christian. It will not end well for them." And then she includes the hashtag #BoycottIndiana. They captured the screen shot of the tweet. It was captured by somebody called SooperMexican.com, S-o-o-p-e-r. Now, the tweet obviously is a...

There is a pro-Ferguson rally happening in front of the Police Station. Franklin Graham Ministries, which has parked their van where the protesters had been, watched a peaceful pro-Ferguson rally last night.

A top Missouri Republican spokesman killed himself over the weekend just four weeks after his boss, the frontrunner to nab the GOP nomination for governor, also committed suicide. Spence Jackson served as media director for state auditor Tom Schweich, who shot himself on Feb. 26 at his Clayton, Mo., home. Jackson, 44, took a sick day Friday and was found dead Sunday at his Jefferson City apartment, sources told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. It’s unclear how he died.

When one man sat down next to a second man in a St. Louis light rail car and asked him his opinion on the shooting of Michael Brown, it was not the beginning of a discussion. It was the start of an assault, police said. The second man, who was white, didn't want to answer the question. Then the first man, who was black, boxed him in the face. Two more African-American men joined in the beating, according to a police report about Monday's incident. It was caught on surveillance cameras on the MetroLink train and a passenger recorded it...

During a heated debate over an Indiana “religious freedom” bill, a Democratic representative took the opportunity to accuse the child of one of her colleagues of racism. The child is an 18-month-old toddler. “I told Jud McMillin I love his son, but he’s scared of me because of my color and that’s horrible,” Summers said, to groans. “It’s true,” she insisted. She urged McMillin to “introduce your child to some people of color so that he won’t live his life as a prejudiced person.”

WARNING: THIS VIDEO CONTAINS IMAGES AND LANGUAGE THAT MAY OFFEND SOME VIEWERS. When one man sat down next to a second man in a St. Louis light rail car late Monday and asked him his opinion on the shooting of Michael Brown, it was not the beginning of a discussion. It was the start of an assault, police said. The second man, who was white, didn’t want to answer the question. Then the first man, who was black, boxed him in the face. Two more African-American men joined in the beating, according to a police report.

Kylee Moss, a 7-year-old-girl from Belton, Missouri, was sent home from school with a note to her mother saying that the 54-pound child’s Body Mass Index (BMI) was too high. Aside from the idiocy of using a discredited measurement for body fat, what are these administrators thinking? Obviously, they’re not. If they had two working brain cells, they would take one look at this kid and realize the stupidity of believing their “measurements.”

A MetroLink beating captured on video is now lighting up social media in St. Louis.  Viewers sent the video to FOX 2 on Twitter and Facebook pages looking for answers.  Police say the beating happened on Monday evening at 9:54pm.  The victim, a 43-year-old white male,  tells investigators that a question about Mike Brown sparked the incident. -snip He told investigators that he was seated on the train when he was approached from behind.  The man in the red hat and shirt asked for his cell phone.  The victim refused. The suspect in the red hat then asked the seated man what he thought...

Former Cardinals outfielder Curt Ford said Thursday he may move away from the St. Louis area in disgust after being punched in an allegedly unprovoked, race-related attack at a gas station. “I’m going to let the authorities handle this situation, but I’ve had enough of St. Louis,” Ford said in a phone interview Thursday. “You hear about this kind of stuff happening, and I always knew it existed because of my previous experience working here in St. Louis, but you try to keep away from it, and there is just no way you can do that unless you stay inside...

What were Talent’s first impressions?“I found him to be exactly what he appears to be: He’s very down to earth, he has an air of confidence about him but there’s no arrogance with it. I like that. He’s just a regular guy.”Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has added one of Washington’s leading advocates of military readiness to the ranks of advisers helping prepare him for a likely campaign for president. Jim Talent, who represented Missouri in both the House and Senate before becoming a fellow at The Heritage Foundation, confirmed Thursday that he has joined Walker’s budding national security and foreign...

Kansas House just passed Senate Bill 45 "authorizing the carrying of concealed handguns without a license under the personal and family protection act." Several Republicans voted against it. Here they are. John Barker Email:johnbarker2012@yahoo.com Barbara Bollier Email:barbarabollier@gmail.com Stephanie Clayton Email:stephaniesawyerclayton@gmail.com Diana Dierks Email:dierks@salinahomes.com Linda Gallagher Email:LJGallagher@kc.rr.com Don Hill Email:donhill70@hotmail.com Mike Kiegerl Email:jus4smk@aol.com Marvin Kleeb Email:marvin@marvinkleeb.com Peggy Mast - Speaker Pro Tem Email:pmast@me.com Tom Moxley Email:tmoxley@tctelco.net Tom Phillips Email:tphillips3@cox.net Melissa Rooker melissa@melissarooker.com Don Schroeder dnjschroeder@gmail.com Tom Sloan Email:glsloan_ks@yahoo.com Charles Smith Email:chuck.smith@house.ks.gov Susie Swanson svswan@twinvalley.net Let's hope Brownback signs it.

The interim Ferguson Police chief Tuesday said he was fed up with the way his officers, especially his African-American cops are being treated by protesters. He said black officers in Ferguson, as well as others who helped in the community in recent months, have been targeted for attack by protesters more that white cops are.

Livestock thefts happen on occasion in Boone County, but the latest incident has branched into uncharted territory for sheriff’s investigators: Detectives are working to figure out who stole two double-hump camels Monday along with two Black Angus cows. Boone County sheriff’s Detective Tom O’Sullivan said....While cattle theft is not unheard of ... the department is working to figure out why someone would steal two 9-foot-tall camels and where they would possibly take them.

When Deanna Sporleder's 17 year-old son announced he was spending the night at his 16 year-old girlfriend's house, her home life turned upside down, and part of it was subsidized by federal grants to the local school.Deanna and her husband were against their son leaving home and moving in with his teen girlfriend, but the girl's parents consented and the local law enforcement, both county and city, told Deanna that at seventeen, her son could move out and they had no power to stop him. A few months later, she while signing her other children up for school, she asked...

Universities are still trying to make a teachable moment out of the tragedy which occurred in Ferguson, Missouri last summer but considerably less so of the death of sidewalk vendor Eric Garner at the hands of the NYPD that also occurred last year. “Catholic University law professor Clifford Fishman is using the cases to teach the pros and cons of grand juries,” Lisa Grace Lednicer reported in The Washington Post magazine on February 22, 2015.” Last semester, he argued in class that the grand jury perhaps was right to not indict the officer who killed [Michael] Brown, but wrong to...

A confidential informant wearing a hidden video camera recorded accused gunman Jeffrey L. Williams admitting that he fired the shots that seriously wounded two police officers during a recent demonstration in Ferguson, Mo., according to search warrants obtained by Yahoo News. Williams was arrested March 15 and charged with two counts of first-degree assault, one count of firing a weapon from a vehicle and three counts of armed criminal action. An officer from the St. Louis County Police Department was struck in the shoulder. A member of the nearby Webster Groves Police Department was hit below his right eye. Both...

I took the time over the weekend to read the entirety of the 102-page Department of Justice report on the Ferguson PD ("FPD"). I cannot recommend highly enough that you do the same. During the course of this reading, I intentionally read it with as jaundiced of an eye towards the Department of Justice as possible. I intentionally disregarded all commentary regarding what the DOJ investigators reported that they saw, and also all of their reported interviews of the citizens of Ferguson and FPD officers. I decided to say to myself, let's assume that everything DOJ says is a lie,...