Free Republic

Emphasizing the need for congressional action, farm groups renewed their call for reform of Clean Water Act enforcement, following release of a report documenting how federal agencies overreach their authority to regulate farmland. The report, issued last week by the majority staff of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, describes numerous incidents in which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency have tried to expand their authority to regulate what crops farmers grow and how they grow them, based on the agencies' interpretation of the act.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc has been sued by a New York bicycle courier company over an alleged illegal scheme to cheat employers buying workers' compensation policies. The complaint, filed late Friday by Breakaway Courier Systems, came as Berkshire's Applied Underwriters unit faces scrutiny over its workers' compensation policies, including some that have been banned by California, Vermont and Wisconsin. Breakaway, with about 300 employees, accused Berkshire and Applied of "siphoning" premiums through a web of illegal shell companies, with diverted premiums going to unlicensed out-of-state insurers. The plan amounted to a "reverse Ponzi scheme" where unsuspecting employers expecting to buy affordable...

Calling the University of Nebraska Lincoln a place that "values acceptance," the institution kicked off the fall semester with its newly installed chancellor essentially telling new students they should not say or do things that might be offensive or cause people to feel disrespected, calling the stance "nonnegotiable." "We insist on a culture of respect, and we recognize that words and actions really matter," Chancellor Ronnie Green said during a speech at the new student convocation on Aug. 19. While suggesting the university values free speech and freedom of expression, Green – who took the helm of UNL this summer...

The number of active TB cases in the eight county Idaho public health district that includes Twin Falls jumped 500 percent between 2011 and 2012. One case of active TB was diagnosed in the South Central Public Health District that includes Twin Falls in 2011, and six active TB cases were diagnosed there in 2012, the year Chobani opened the world’s largest yogurt factory in the small southern Idaho city with the help of $54 million in federal, state, and local financial assistance. That same year, 2012, the percentage of active TB cases in Idaho that were foreign-born spiked to...

OMAHA, NE (WCMH) – A dad in Nebraska learned to watch what he eats after ingesting four marijuana brownies and having to call paramedics. The Omaha World-Herald reports that the 53-year-old man was unloading groceries Tuesday and apparently found some brownies in the back of the car, which his adult children had used earlier in the day. He ate four of them. The man’s wife told police that he started having “bad anxiety” while they were watching television. She tried to call her children to ask, but couldn’t reach them. Police showed up at the house, followed by one of...

For miles and miles Omaha stretches on, one tidy, suburban-style neighborhood after another filled with modern low-slung houses set on spacious lawns with towering oaks and elms. It's a model of comfortable mid-American living, with one unusual exception: thanks to a quirk in how Omaha developed, about 300 miles of streets in these nice neighborhoods are pitted with potholes almost big enough to swallow an SUV. The bad roads have been both an anomaly and a source of complaints for years. But recently, they've become the center of a mini-crisis after local officials began dispatching crews to tear up the...

Hillary Clinton called for raising taxes on the “middle class” while campaigning on Monday in Omaha, NE. Joined by left-wing Democrat billionaire Warren Buffett, she received applause from those in attendance. “Because while Warren is standing up for a fairer tax code, Trump wants to cut taxes for the super-rich,” said Clinton. “Well, we’re not going there, my friends. I’m telling you, right now - we’re going to write fairer rules for the middle class and we are going to raise taxes on the middle class!”

Hillary Clinton held a rally today at North High School in Omaha. The gym was half empty when the rally started. She packed the high school gym with high school kids who are too young to vote.

"I’m gonna be doing selfies, whatever it takes," Buffett said, before introducing Hillary Clinton at a rally in Omaha, Nebraska Buffett pledged to "take at least 10 people to the polls who otherwise would have had difficulty getting there" on November 8, challenging his congressional district to "give America a civics lesson."

OMAHA, Neb. -- Democratic presidential nominee nomination Hillary Clinton is scheduled to make a campaign stop in Omaha Monday afternoon. The event will be held in the gymnasium of Omaha North High School near North 36th Street and Ames Avenue from 4:30-6 p.m. Doors open at 2:45 p.m. The gym holds 500 people and they'll have overflow seating for 500 more in Viking Hall, a cafeteria area. Tickets are available through her campaign website, which indicates Mrs. Clinton will discuss her commitment to building an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top. Patty Zieg, Democratic National...

LINCOLN — A state senator from Papillion is accused of having a sexually explicit video of himself on his state computer. State Sen. Bill Kintner did not immediately respond Friday to requests for comment. State Sen. Bob Krist, who chairs the Legislature’s Executive Committee, said he alerted Gov. Pete Ricketts’ chief of staff Matt Miltenberger last year about a sexual video involving Kintner.

Donald Trump’s private meeting Thursday with Senate Republicans — designed to foster greater party unity ahead of the national convention in Cleveland — grew combative as the presumptive presidential nominee admonished three senators who have been critical of his candidacy and predicted they would lose their reelection bids, according to two Republican officials with direct knowledge of the exchanges. Trump’s most tense exchange was with Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who has been vocal in his concerns about the business mogul’s candidacy, especially his rhetoric and policies on immigration that the senator argues alienate many Latino voters and others in Arizona....

In a nine-word per curiam decision, eight justices of the United States Supreme Court have revealed they are deadlocked in a 4 to 4 divide on the new immigration procedures of the Obama administration, with its executive decision to not deport the immigrant parents of children born in the United States (thus citizens) and give them legal status but less than citizenship in the process. The State of Texas, joined by 25 others states, filed a lawsuit to block this executive action, which affects between 4 and 5 million immigrants in the United States. The case was before the Supreme...

Ben Sasse, the loudest, most persistent, highest-ranking detractor of Donald Trump left in the GOP, insists, “There’s nothing I’ve done with Mr. Trump that has anything to do with political posturing.” A growing number of Republicans would beg to differ.

Colby Coash can point to the moment his evolution in thinking about the death penalty began. It was Sept. 3, 1994, and Coash — now a conservative senator in the Nebraska legislature but then a freshman at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln — decided to go with some friends to the state penitentiary. Willie Otey, convicted of first-degree murder, was set to be executed at midnight, and people were gathering in the parking lot outside. Coash can still remember the scene: the live band, the grilling meat, the revelers popping cans of beer and chanting, “Fry him!” “You wouldn’t have been...

OMAHA — Deuel County Deputy Mike Hutchinson, who continues to recover from four gunshot wounds suffered during a December ambush while serving an arrest warrant, has lost his family health insurance because he’s not working at least 30 hours a week. Hutchinson hopes that officials in the small western Nebraska county can find about $1,500 a month to temporarily continue his group health coverage — under a law known as COBRA — until he can return to work. “I didn’t ask to be shot,’’ Hutchinson said Wednesday. “I was wounded on the job. ... I’m not asking for anything special....

"Billionaires, tech CEOs and top members of the Republican establishment flew to a private island resort off the coast of Georgia this weekend for the American Enterprise Institute's annual World Forum, according to sources familiar with the secretive gathering. The main topic at the closed-to-the-press confab? How to stop Republican front-runner Donald Trump. Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google co-founder Larry Page, Napster creator and Facebook investor Sean Parker, and Tesla Motors and SpaceX honcho Elon Musk all attended. So did Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), political guru Karl Rove, House Speaker Paul Ryan, GOP Sens. Tom Cotton (Ark.), Cory...

Mitt Romney may be the #NeverTrump movement’s last chance for a third party bid. Anti-Trump conservatives have so far been unsuccessful in recruiting a candidate to mount a third party run against Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Gen. James Mattis said no thanks. Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse said he is too busy raising his children to run for president. Former Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn said he is not interested.

Mitt Romney ends recruiting efforts for an independent candidate By Eric Bradner and Jim Acosta, CNN Updated 3:01 PM ET, Wed May 18, 2016 Washington (CNN)Mitt Romney won't launch a third-party presidential campaign of his own and has stopped trying to recruit somebody else to do it. The 2012 Republican nominee had attempted to recruit a challenger to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. But prospects like Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse said no, and Romney is now dropping his efforts, a source familiar with Romney's thinking told CNN. The news was first reported by Yahoo News.

Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., threw her support Thursday behind Donald Trump as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Fischer was one of a dozen GOP senators who met with the New York businessman on Capitol Hill.