Free Republic

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — Should students get half credit for an assignment they didn’t even turn in? A former St. Lucie County teacher doesn’t think so. That’s why she wrote a goodbye message to her eighth graders on a white board saying, "Bye Kids, Mrs. Tirado loves you and wishes you the best in life! I have been fired for refusing to give you a 50% for not handing anything in. 💓 Mrs. Tirado" Diane Tirado has been a teacher for years, but she started at West Gate K-8 School in Port St. Lucie in August as an eighth...

“Every four years, celebrities and movie stars look earnestly into the camera and tell the country to ‘get out and vote.’ They tell us it’s our ‘most important civic duty,’ and they speak as if the very act of casting a ballot is more important than the outcome of the election. This strikes me as somewhat hysterical. Does anyone actually believe that Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen DeGeneres, and Ed Norton would encourage the ‘masses’ to vote, if they believed the ‘masses’ would elect Donald Trump?”

CAMPOBASSO, Italy — Pope Francis says abandoning the traditionally Christian practice of not working on Sundays isn’t such a good change. Francis on Saturday traveled to Molise, an agricultural region in the heart of southern Italy where unemployment is chronically high. While he said poor people need employment to have dignity, he disagreed with opening stores and other businesses on Sundays as a way to create jobs.m

WASHINGTON — On Dec. 31, just hours before a New Year's Eve celebration, President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. Section 1245 of the law contains language providing authority to impose economic sanctions on Iran in order to deter the ayatollahs from acquiring nuclear weapons. White House efforts to have the sanctions provision stripped from the bill failed, and the measure became law with a quiet flourish of the presidential pen. Ever since, Washington and Tehran have been waging a war of words. None of this works to the advantage of the American...

Every president needs to escape what former President Harry Truman called the "great white jail" and what former President Andrew Jackson referred to as "dignified slavery." But for President Obama and some of his more recent predecessors, getting out of the White House has come at a cost. The on-going BP oil spill and unemployment numbers that are still at 9.5%, have made Obama and his vacations a target. The crisis in the Gulf has dogged Mr. Obama during two long weekend trips away from Washington - one to Asheville, N.C., and another back to his Chicago home for Memorial...

Reporting from near the home turf of embattled Green Jobs Czar Van Jones, Joe Garofoli of the San Francisco Chronicle says it's clearly a bad sign when White House flak Robert Gibbs is asked if Jones still enjoys the confidence of the President and merely replies that Jones "continues to work in this administration." But the White House has to know that, if Jones goes, the questions won't end. Who appointed him? Who looked into his background? Who knew what and when? Gibbs knows that the Jones controversy undermines confidence in the President, who bears ultimate responsibility for the appointment....

Boss Finds Worker's Journal About Avoiding Work Woman's Unemployment Benefit Claim DeniedPOSTED: 7:40 am EST January 21, 2007 DES MOINES, Iowa -- No work, no pay. Unemployment benefits are being denied to an Iowa hotel worker who was fired for using her employer's computer to keep a journal of her efforts to avoid work. A supervisor found the journal late last year and fired Emmalee Bauer, 25, for misuse of company time. Bauer wrote a 300-page single-spaced pages, describing her efforts to avoid work. "This typing thing seems to be doing the trick," she wrote. "It just looks like I...

Yesterday, Tulsa saw temperatures drop from 70 degrees F to 45 degrees F within one minute's time. Tornado watches were issued ahead of the front with spotty reports of hail. As the storm progressed through Tulsa, thunderstorms pummeled the region with heavy rain and dangerous lightning (one strike hit a Catoosa home and burned it to the ground). The rain continued unabated throughout the evening giving some parts of drought-striken Oklahoma three to four inches of rain with the remaining counties receiving at least two inches of precipitation. Temperatures continued to drop in the overnight. The rain became ice and...

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. - A powerful southern New Jersey politician was paid for a no-work job at a scandal-ridden state university while helping the school garner millions of dollars in new state funding, according to a report released Monday. The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey paid state Sen. Wayne Bryant, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, $35,000 a year "to lobby himself in his capacity of state senator," according to the report of a federal monitor who had investigated the school's finances. The report said all Bryant appeared to do at the university's School of Osteopathic Medicine...

England, the Welfare Country!