Free Republic

In the span of four months, at least 94 children in 33 U.S. states have developed a devastating form of paralysis with symptoms similar to polio. Some require a ventilator to breathe. And some of the greatest government health minds in the country say they have no idea what’s causing it. At the same time, during the past four months, at least 12 children have died after falling ill with a respiratory virus called Enterovirus D-68 (EV-D68). Again, federal health officials are at a loss to explain the origin of the epidemic. Are the mysterious outbreaks linked? The Centers for...

Late on Thanksgiving eve, with no one paying attention, the Obama administration released its regulatory road map of thousands of regulations for 2015. Within the bundle of more than 3,000 regulations lies a rule on ozone that President Obama himself in 2011 “put on ice” in effort to reduce “regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover.” Regarding the 2011 decision that shocked environmental groups, the New York Times recently stated: “At the time, Mr. Obama said the regulation would impose too severe a burden on industry and local governments at a time of economic distress.”...

District Attorney Kari Brandenburg denied allegations of bribery and witness intimidation during a Monday morning press conference held at the the offices of Albuquerque attorney Peter Schoenburg, whom Brandenburg described as a friend. “I never at any time violated the law,” Brandenburg said. The allegations, which were reported in a Journal story Sunday, involve an Albuquerque Police Department investigation into Brandenburg’s role in contacting victims in two burglaries and a larceny in which her son, Justin Koch, was a suspect. The cases involve thousands of dollars in property, including a 9mm Smith & Wesson. Bradenburg said she has yet to...

Albuquerque Police detectives believe they have probable cause to file felony charges against District Attorney Kari Brandenburg for violating the state law prohibiting bribery and intimidation of a witness in connection with burglary cases involving her 26-year-old son, Justin Koch. For the last year, detectives have been investigating Brandenburg for her role in contacting victims in two burglaries and a larceny in which her son was a suspect – cases that involve thousands of dollars in property, including a 9mm Smith & Wesson. In late November, APD forwarded its lengthy case file to the state Attorney General’s Office for review...

Fear of being arrested and deported, family separation, and poverty just some of the daily anxieties faced by an estimated 11 million undocumented people living in the U.S. The stress can also take a toll on mental health. New Mexico State University Family & Child Science professor Kourtney Vaillancourt says the psychological impact of living undocumented goes even further...and can adversely affect mental health. "There is those additional stressors of being seperated from family, there is the stressors of kind of living in an ambigious state where you are not exactly sure what is going to happen. You may not...

Sales of leases on 8.1 million acres of federal oil and gas parcels — an area larger than Massachusetts and Rhode Island combined — are on hold because of worries that drilling could harm greater sage grouse... the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s delay on the parcels underscores just how much is at stake for an industry that finds its future inextricably intertwined with a bird once known primarily for its elaborate mating display. The grouse’s huge range, covering portions of 11 states and an area more than four times as big as New England, includes vast oil, gas and...

Transfer of Public Lands Act’ demands Washington relinquish 31.2 million acres by Dec. 31. In three weeks, Utah intends to seize control of 31.2 million acres of its own land now under the control of the federal government. At least, that’s the plan. In an unprecedented challenge to federal dominance of Western state lands, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert in 2012 signed the “Transfer of Public Lands Act,” which demands that Washington relinquish its hold on the land, which represents more than half of the state’s 54.3 million acres, by Dec. 31. ... With the 2012 law, Utah placed itself on...

Letters from the IRS to tea party-related organizations in Oklahoma City and Albuquerque, New Mexico show that IRS headquarters in Washington, D.C., and two satellite offices in California, were directly involved with sending harassing letters to conservative organizations that sought tax-exempt status. The IRS has acknowledged only the involvement of its Exempt Organizations office in Cincinnati, Ohio, which typically makes most decisions about granting or denying tax-exempt status to non-profit organizations. And Wednesday afternoon, CNN cited a congressional source in reporting that the acting IRS Commissioner – whom President Obama fired later in the day – had identified two 'rogue'...

How might you feel if you had performed, with your bosses’ permission and direction, a project that they later blamed on you and publicly denounced as a rogue operation? That’s the situation in which some employees of the Cincinnati’s IRS office find themselves. The IRS and the Obama administration have repeatedly said that low-level, “rogue” employees in Cincinnati were to blame for the agency’s inappropriate targeting of conservative groups, despite an array of evidence to the contrary. As a result, those Cincinnati employees are understandably miffed. Several IRS employees in the Cincinnati field office acknowledge in recent interviews with the...

TITLE:Documents: IRS letters harassing conservative groups came from Washington, DC headquarters and from California offices, despite Inspector General's focus on Cincinnati employees Tax agency has admitted targeting tea party groups and other conservative organizations for special, politically motivated scrutiny IRS inspector general focused on wrongdoing in Cincinnati, Ohio office and ignored abusive letters coming from other cities MailOnline found letters from IRS's Washington, D.C. headquarters, and from IRS offices in two southern California cities The American Center on Law and Justice is threatening to sue the IRS if 27 tea party groups aren't granted tax-exempt statuses by Friday Letters from...

Thursday on Newmax TV's "America's Forum," Artesia, NM Mayor Phillip Burch said since the cases from his town's detention center have been handed over from Virginia judges to judges in Colorado they are now simply housing, feeding, providing clothing and schooling to illegal immigrants until 95 percent are being handed bus or plane tickets to locations within the Untied States of their choosing. The mayor said when he was visited by Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson he was told there would be "a rapid detention process," but now the mayor is happy the detention center in his town is being...

When it came time for the US Senate to vote on the Keystone XL Pipeline, Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-LA) “clout” did not have much of an impact on fellow Democrat senators. In fact, 35 of the senators who voted against the project were given campaign cash by Landrieu since the 2008 election cycle. Take a look here at the list of senators who don’t seem to acknowledge Landrieu’s “clout.” Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) $10,000 Sen. Richard Blumenthal (R-CT) $5,000 Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) $10,000 Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) $7,000 Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) $10,000 Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) $3,500 Sen....

Almost all of the illegal immigrant families traveling from Central America to the U.S. are being released from the special facility meant to hold them in New Mexico, according to the mayor of the town where the special facility is located. Mayor Phillip S. Burch told KSVP radio in Artesia, New Mexico, last week that the releases defy Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson’s own pledge in July to make sure those who ended up at the facility were quickly deported from the U.S. Instead, of 82 illegal immigrants released in one week earlier this month, 77 were let go into...

There is no Second Amendment right to own guns. So intended the founders!

For decades, the black vote in the United States almost uniformly has gone to Democrats. How’s that working out? Black unemployment is twice the national average, poverty rates are higher than before Democrats offered “help,” and the education system fails a disproportionate number of black children. That’s what 50-plus years of blind voting loyalty to Democrats has earned. And, thanks to those same Democrats and the nation’s first black president, it’s about to get a lot worse. President Obama is set to legalize upwards of 5 million illegal aliens, with the dream of granting amnesty and citizenship to 6 million...

SANTA FE, N.M. — The city attorney of Las Cruces says increasingly broad interpretations of civil forfeiture laws could be “a gold mine” for authorities across the country to seize things such as expensive cars and even people’s homes. But his remarks during a seminar filled with local government and law enforcement officials — made with an amiable bemusement that bordered on glee — were caught on tape and have turned into a gold mine for critics who say the laws turn the justice system on its head and encourage authorities to see the personal property of private citizens as...

Managers at one of the nation’s premier federal laboratories improperly used taxpayer funds to influence members of Congress and other officials as part of an effort to extend the lab’s $2.4 billion management contract, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General said in a report Wednesday. A review of documents determined that Sandia National Laboratories formed a team and worked with consultants beginning in 2009 to develop a plan for securing a contract extension without having to go through a competitive process. That plan called for lobbying Congress, trying to influence key advisers to then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu...

Federal wildlife officials have granted protection to the Gunnison sage grouse, a move that could to bring restrictions on oil and gas drilling and other land uses to preserve the bird's habitat in Colorado and Utah. ... They're related to the greater sage grouse, which is at the center of a separate and larger debate over federal protection across 11 Western states.

The San Miguel County Commission on Wednesday will vote on whether to adopt an oil and gas drilling ordinance that imposes some of the strictest requirements on hydrocarbon exploration in the country. The Commission meeting begins at 1:30 p.m. at the County Commission chambers, on the second floor of the old courthouse building. ... Commissioners held a four-hour hearing on the proposed ordinance and Comprehensive Plan changes last Monday, taking public comment from more than three dozen people. Among those present at last Monday’s hearing was Robert Freilich, the Los Angeles planning and zoning attorney hired by the county to...

LAS CRUCES, N.M.—Rep. Steve Pearce is the rarest of Republican Party officeholders, a very conservative Anglo who keeps winning elections from a predominantly Latino electorate. As the national GOP seeks to improve its dismal standing with Hispanic voters, the 65-year-old former oil man has some advice. "You just have to show up, all the time, everywhere," he said, during a recent barnstorm tour of his district, which sprawls across the southern half of this border state. "Most Republicans don't bother. I do. I bother." Republicans must spend time in Latino neighborhoods with the respectful attentiveness of a small-town mayor. "We...