Free Republic

"...Brian Buescher, who took an anti-abortion stance during an unsuccessful 2014 bid for Nebraska attorney general, was approved 51 to 40 on a party-line vote to the U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska..." "...The Senate on Wednesday also confirmed Wendy Williams Berger 54 to 37 to a judgeship on the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. Three Democrats—Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Doug Jones of Alabama, and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona—voted in her favor..."

Drywall is going up on new homes in Gothenburg, Nebraska, and it can’t happen fast enough. The small community (pop. 3,448) doesn’t have enough housing to offer workers who are considering moving in. It sounds paradoxical for a region with abundant land, but parts of rural America are facing a housing shortage. It spans the spectrum from low-income families to midlevel professionals. The good news: Washington as well as state governments are focused on the problem. “We were seeing our local businesses lose out on all of the candidates that wanted to come to work in our community but just...

It's time for Congress to step up, reclaim its constitutional authority and exercise its duty to place country over party or president or political gain, former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said Monday. "I think the Congress has forfeited its powers in many ways, allowing the president to be the dominant branch of government," Nebraska's former two-term Republican senator said in a telephone interview from suburban Washington. And that's even more dangerous when "this president, probably more than any we've ever had, is less informed, more arrogant, bullying people, really ignorant about our government and the consequences of his actions,"...

Muslims in the U.S. Marine Corps…what could possibly go wrong? A heavily armed off-duty Muslim Marine was recently arrested for trying to enter Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. Pfc. Ali Al-Kazahg, 22, of Milford, was arrested on May 31 after he tried to enter the base with two semi-automatic rifles, a pistol, a silencer, a bump stock, a vest with body armor and a case of ammunition. Omaha World-Herald (h/t Mike F) According to reports, Al-Kazahg was on a watch list after he made “suspicious statements” and had previously been reported for “suspicious activity.” He told a fellow Marine...

Former Obama administration Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said on Thursday that economic warfare is one of his biggest worries as the global economy becomes more interconnected... Hagel said President Trump Opens a New Window. is advancing the trade war Opens a New Window. with higher tariffs on China and Mexico that will result in the reduction of economic efficiency and living standards. “When you start down the path of tariffs and trade wars, there will be consequences, definitely, but there’ll also be unintended consequences that will have a devastating effect on our economy, on the economies of the world,” he...

For some reason, Democrats love to ask President Trump's judicial nominees about their religious backgrounds. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) was worried that U.S. district judge Peter Phipps, nominated to serve on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, would be no exception. So, he launched a preemptive strike at Wednesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing and asked Phipps about his membership in the Knights of Columbus (KoC), a Catholic fraternal organization, and whether it has anything to do with his nomination. After all, Democrats have obsessed over the group in recent years. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) admitted to being puzzled such line...

NEW YORK - Every hour that one of The Advance Group’s trucks is stuck in highway or bridge traffic, it costs the moving company around $200. And with 40 trucks trying to get into Manhattan daily and contending with the New York metro area’s deteriorating infrastructure, the price of lost time runs up quickly. “Getting to and from a job site is not really billable to a client,” says Anthony Parziale, president of The Advance Group, based in the suburb of Farmingdale.

What's it like to be inside a tornado as it's forming? Few people, if any, have experienced such a sensation, but Reed Timmer is now one who has -- and lived to talk about it after an extraordinary up-close encounter with a tornado on Friday evening.

These Senate offices include Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX), who is up for re-election in Texas in 2020; Tom Cotton (R-AR), Susan Collins (R-ME), Ben Sasse (R-NE), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Jim Risch (R-ID). Not one of those senators would publicly stand by Burr on Wednesday evening, when asked where they stand both on the subpoena and on whether Burr should remain chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Not only has the entire Senate Intelligence Committee GOP membership basically abandoned defending Burr publicly, it appears no Republicans anywhere have his back on this. What’s more, while Burr himself...

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said in a recent appearance that he does not think religious beliefs interfere with a judge’s job, and criticized attempts by Democrats to impose “religious tests” on judicial nominees. Thomas, in remarks last week that were first reported by The Daily Caller, was asked about the 2017 confirmation hearing of Amy Coney Barrett where Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told the Catholic: “The dogma lives loudly within you and that’s a concern.” He was asked if religious convictions should be taken into consideration when lawmakers were considering a judicial pick. “I thought we got away from...

(WASHINGTON, D.C. – April 8, 2019) Tomorrow the House Oversight Committee, led by Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-MD), will conduct hearings on the interconnected challenges of solving climate change and protecting national security. With the Trump administration ignoring longstanding warnings from the military about the impact of a changing climate on defense infrastructure and the dangers of increased instability, it is a critically important area for investigation for the Congress. The hearing follows a letter by fifty-eight senior national security officials warning about the dangers of climate change. "For more than a decade, the Department of Defense has warned presidents from...

PLEASANTON, Neb. (KHGI) - Battered by life’s storms, ranchers find relief. Ohioans bring hay to Nebraska shows that in rural America, even those 800 miles away can be neighbors. It’s been a rough season for young cattle producers. “It's just, it's hard. It's hard to come back from this,” said Bailey Dittmar, a high school senior from Amherst who raises cattle with her family. Experienced ranchers like Ken Huryta of Ravenna have never seen flooding like this, that required him to wade out and save calves, while using a horse to coax cattle to jump a ditch to get to...

Kathy Gonzalez knows that many people across the cornfields and cattle ranches of eastern Nebraska believe she is a murderer. It doesn’t change the fact that they owe her millions of dollars. Ms. Gonzalez was one of six innocent people who collectively spent 77 years in prison for the murder of a 68-year-old woman named Helen Wilson, whose death haunted this rural county for decades. Now, years after DNA evidence exonerated the defendants, they are about to collect a $28 million civil rights judgment against Gage County, which prosecuted them based on false confessions. But because the county has limited...

It would be no surprise that as a birth photographer, you’d be used to being a part of highly emotional moments in people’s lives. But the birth of little Uma Louise Dougherty-Eledge left one seasoned photographer an absolute mess — and the incredible images and the story behind them have since gone viral around the globe. “Being a part of this incredible journey has been one of the most magical experiences,” photographer Ariel Panowicz told Yahoo. Uma Louise was born Monday morning at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha to proud dads Matthew Eledge and Elliot Dougherty, who are married....

A 61-year-old grandmother gave birth to her own granddaughter in Nebraska on Monday, after volunteering to be a surrogate for her son and his husband’s child. When Matthew Eledge, 32, and Elliot Dougherty, 29, began considering IVF as an option for conceiving a child two years ago, the couple say they were amused by Eledge’s 61-year-old mother’s offer that she’d happily be their surrogate. Having last given birth more than 30 years ago, Cecile Eledge, who went through menopause 10 years ago, assured the couple that she ‘loved being pregnant’, and, if she could, she’d ‘do it again in a...

Kaya Jones, a former member of the Pussycat Dolls, claimed in a March 1 tweet that “every single Democrat that voted against the born alive bill received money from Planned Parenthood.” Verdict: True Of the 44 senators who voted against ending debate and proceeding to a vote on the Born Alive bill, 42 were Democrats – all of whom received funding from Planned Parenthood during their latest election cycle. Fact Check: The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act was introduced to the Senate on Jan. 31 by Republican Sen. Ben Sasse. The legislation came after a Virginia delegate faced backlash for...

As floodwaters continued to devastate parts of the state on Friday, communities north and northwest of the Omaha metro area have braced for more damage. Flooding has already been blamed for at least one death and two people are believed to be missing as of Friday afternoon. About a dozen injuries have been reported, including to first responders. Homes are underwater and roads impassable. People displaced by the waters have taken shelter in hospitals, schools and other community buildings. Residents across the region are being evacuated as levees break or rivers overflow their banks. Rita Argintean was one of many...

A federal prosecutor laid out for a judge this week a plot where agricultural corporations and Juan Pablo Delgado -- the man at the defense table -- profited from a plot to supply them with a cheap, illegal labor force, leaving hundreds of migrant workers caught in the middle. Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Woods said, in some cases, employees who couldn't legally work in the country were made to work in the dark as punishment for not working fast enough, were threatened with deportation and were forced to do cramped, painful work while Delgado made millions. Woods said he conspired...

Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Kamala Harris (Calif.) have doubled down on their extreme stance on abortion, and Warren in particular has outright defended her vote against the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which was defeated in the Senate on Monday in a 53-44 vote. The bill, sponsored by Senator Ben Sasse (R., Neb.), needed 60 votes to pass. “I think it’s up to a woman to make that decision, and I will always stand by that,” Harris told the Daily Caller on Wednesday, when asked if she believes abortion is immoral. “I think she needs to make that...

Former vice president Joe Biden was in Omaha at the Forum in Global Leadership at the University of Nebraska-Omaha yesterday when he said a kind word about our devout Christian Vice President Mike Pence. Daily Caller: Former Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday described current Vice President Mike Pence as “a decent guy,” but then quickly backtracked following criticism from actress Cynthia Nixon. Biden made the comment while speaking at an event in Omaha, Nebraska. The remark provoked a quick backlash online from left-wingers. Nixon addressed Biden in a tweet, writing “you’ve just called America’s most anti-LGBT elected leader ‘a decent guy.’ Please consider...