Free Republic

**SNIP** More broadly, it has inserted a level of rhetorical uncertainty into one of the core principles defining the responsibilities of members of Congress: whether they serve on behalf of the people from their home state, or whether, once elected, they represent much broader interests. The prosecution, citing Black’s Law Dictionary, argued in a brief filed on Tuesday that “the straightforward answer is that Senator Menendez’s constituents are the New Jerseyans that he was elected to represent in the United States Senate.” But the defense, in a brief that was also filed Tuesday, claimed that the term was significantly amorphous...

UPDATE: While Murphy initially said his tuition-free plan would cost as much as $400 million, a Murphy spokesman later clarified that the most it would cost would be $200 million. TRENTON -- Democratic nominee for governor Phil Murphy on Monday formally announced a plan to offer tuition-free community college to all New Jerseyans. "We simply do not have the workforce that we need," said Murphy, standing on the sidewalk of the Trenton Junior College & School of Industrial Arts and flanked by U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J. "We can and we must open the doors of opportunity, wide, for all...

A brawl was captured on video of two couples fighting in a New Jersey Walmart on Saturday while their young children look on in horror and try to stop the fight. The two sides appear to be a woman and man both wearing black tops versus another couple in red and burnt yellow shirts. As they beat on each other, two little girls can be seen trying to stop the chaos and hit on one of the women to stop while crying. A woman in a pink jacket steps in the middle of the brawl and screams at the parents...

The majority of New Jerseyans consider the state to be “off on the wrong track,” but also have no opinion or don’t know either of the governor candidates, according to a Rutgers-Eagleton Poll released on Thursday. Across many topics, New Jerseyans are dissatisfied with the current state of affairs. Gov. Chris Christie’s job approval rating sits at 16 percent, the lowest in recent history, with 79 percent disapproving of his job so far.

A group of New Jersey religious leaders is calling for change at a public community college in Newark that is teetering on the brink of losing its accreditation after years of mismanagement and turmoil. The religious leaders, outraged by the disorder at the school, Essex County College, plan to hold a news conference and rally before a board of trustees meeting Thursday night calling for an end to what they say is political interference by entrenched officials at the school that has undermined efforts to save it.

.................. The irreconcilable facts of Robert E. Lee's biography – patriot, traitor; compassionate patriarch who lead a record of young men to their deaths – emerge from the chaotic, multidimensional, whirling fan of real life. Liberals demand that we view the South and indeed America only through the lens of condemnation. Real life shatters their command. Life's complexity emerges in shards that we must rearrange as our compassion and depth allows. I don't know, but I do guess, that many Southerners who cherish Robert E. Lee's statues do so for the following reasons. Their conquerors continue to depict them as...

You may remember the story of a New Jersey high school that came under fire after President Trump's campaign logo and slogan were digitally removed from two students' yearbook photos and another student's quote from the president was also excluded. The students complained about Wall Township High School's censorship, which led to an outpouring of support - including from the president himself - and the eventual suspension of the school's yearbook club adviser. 200 copies of the yearbook were reissued with the photos and quote intact, at a cost of $10,000. Now, it's been revealed that the father of one...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie signed legislation Friday requiring the state to give guidance to public schools about policies for transgender students, including blocking the schools from forcing the students from using bathrooms that conflict with their gender identities.

NEW BRUNSWICK-- Undergraduate students at Rutgers University's New Brunswick campus will see a 1.85 percent increase in tuition and fees this fall, or an extra $266 on their annual bill. The average in-state undergraduate on the New Brunswick campus will pay $14,638 in annual tuition and fees in the 2017-2018 under a plan approved by the school's Board of Governors. Rutgers is also hiking the cost of room and board by 1.5 percent. Including housing, the total bill for the average New Brunswick undergraduate from New Jersey will be $27,090, a 1.7 percent increase from the previous year.

TRENTON -- The latest poll in the race to succeed Chris Christie as New Jersey's governor shows Democratic nominee Phil Murphy with a commanding 27-point lead over Republican nominee Kim Guadagno -- though a majority of voters continue to say they don't know much about either candidate. The Monmouth University Poll, released Wednesday, found 53 percent of Garden State voters would choose Murphy, a former U.S. ambassador to Germany, while 26 percent would pick Guadagno, the state's lieutenant governor.

TRENTON, N.J. -- The budget stalemate between Republican Gov. Chris Christie and the Democrat-controlled Legislature smoldered on Monday with the state government shut down and state parks closed to the public - but not to Christie and his family - as the Fourth of July approaches. Christie, who spent part of Sunday lounging with his family at a beach in a state park he had ordered closed, said he would sign any budget lawmakers sent to him and blamed the shutdown of nonessential services, including motor vehicle offices, on Democratic Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto. "I'm a little frustrated, quite frankly,...

BERKELEY TOWNSHIP -- People hoping to visit Island Beach State Park this holiday weekend were not allowed in because of the state government shutdown Gov. Chris Christie ordered amid the state budget standoff in Trenton.  But there was one family there: Christie's. They are using the summer beach house provided by the state for a weekend down the Shore.

Welcome to Independence Day weekend, New Jersey. It's a time to cast aside all the aspersions brought on by the Turnpike's industrial corridor and celebrate our proud Revolutionary War history. Simply put, New Jersey, more than any other state, was the place where the battle was fought, nearly lost, and ultimately won. With a four-day holiday weekend, it's a chance to make a historic scavenger hunt to put New Jersey's legacy in perspective. That is, if the state lawmakers can play nice on the budget impasse and get the parks they're supposed to run reopen. Here are some stops along...

TRENTON -- State parks could close ahead of the July 4 holiday because of budget gridlock at the Statehouse, Gov. Chris Christie warned Thursday evening. In a hastily called news conference, the governor mentioned that many families are planning to go to state parks this weekend as he railed against Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto, who he accused of reneging on a bipartisan budget agreement. The impasse threatens to shut down the government for the first time since 2006 unless a budget is signed by midnight on Friday. "If Speaker Prieto wants to close the government, this is going to be...

Did you ever see the beginning of “Saving Private Ryan“? Cory Booker and those who fight against the proposed defunding of Planned Parenthood apparently know just how those soldiers must have felt. On Tuesday, Senate Democrats held a “People’s Filibuster” against the GOP’s proposed repeal of ObamaCare, livestreaming the event on Facebook. The rally included representatives from Planned Parenthood, the Center for American Progress, the American Federation of Teachers as well as elected officials like Senators Chris Van Hollen, Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders and Jeff Merkley.

The seven wealthy New Jersey couples, including a rabbi and his wife, who allegedly gamed the system to collect about $2 million in unmerited welfare benefits may just be the tip of the iceberg. “There will be more individuals served charges. We will not be speaking to the timing of those arrests at this time,” a spokesperson for the Ocean County, New Jersey Prosecutor’s Office told FOX Business Thursday.

Allison and Michael Busam recently took their three daughters, ages 11, 9 and 7, to a school fair near their home in Summit, N.J., where they found a teacher they knew sitting on the bench in a dunking booth. He was promptly dunked three times. The soggy teacher told the Busams he was attending his reunion at Summit High School that night. Since moving to Summit from Hoboken 10 years ago, the Busams hear stories like that all the time. “I know a million people here who grew up here,” Ms. Busam said. Summit, a city of around 21,000 with...

If you live in New York City and are at a stage in your life when you're contemplating a move to the suburbs (or your friends have begun to leave the city en masse), you've probably heard of at least one of these towns in Essex County: Montclair, Maplewood, and Glen Ridge. That's because these three spots, all accessible via New Jersey Transit trains, are eternally popular among NYC expats looking for more space and a little more greenspace for their green. "We have a lot of people coming from Manhattan, Brooklyn, Jersey City and Hoboken," says Stacie Levy of...

EDGEWATER -- The bed is on an elevated bunk. Below the bed is a desk, dressed with items from college: clothes, books and accessories. The floor is barely visible beneath a slew of still-stuffed bags of clothes. In 2016, Dina Bardakh, 23, uprooted her life from Hunter College, along with the degree in political science she received, and plopped down inside the 273-square-foot room of her mother's two-bedroom modest apartment alongside the Hudson River. A year later Bardakh is still there, in the room she shares with her two teenage sisters.

HACKETTSTOWN, N.J. — The Republican candidate for governor of New Jersey sat on a plush beige couch in the Republican mayor’s condo, surrounded by Republican county officials and politicians, and offered up her plan to stem what is perhaps the state’s most daunting challenge — its deepening property tax crisis. She adopted it, she said, from an unexpected source. “This is a page out of the Democratic playbook, it really is,” Kim Guadagno, the lieutenant governor said, noting that the plan came from a proposal in deep-blue Illinois. With Republicans controlling the White House, both chambers of Congress and having...