Free Republic

Albany, NY - Governor David A. Paterson today announced a historic collaboration with George Soros and the Open Society Institute (OSI) that will provide one-time, $200 grants to more than 800,000 children in low-income families across New York State to help purchase school supplies as they prepare to return to class in September. Families who receive public assistance or food stamps can access this one-time Back-To-School Supplement of $200 per school-aged child (ages 3 through 17) starting today. The Governor was joined by Mr. Soros and other elected officials at P.S. 208 in New York City today to make the...

I received an email from Individuals United for Freedom about a "healthcare rally", coordinated between Congressman Tim Bishop of Long Island & the SEUI. (Tim Bishop cancelled his earlier-scheduled townhall meetings out of cowardice.) If anyone on Long Island is interested in countering, the group I cited above is planning to be there to protest. Just be careful - this one sounds like it could get ugly. Here's the details, per the email: What: Tim Bishop Town Hall meeting in Hicksville When: August 13, 2009 1:00 PM Where: SEUI United Healthcare 100 Duffy Avenue Hicksville, NY 11801 "Congressman Tim Bishop...

BLUE MOUNTAIN LAKE—It's Bill Owens. Nearly 12 hours after they first convened at the Minnowbrook Conference Center on the shore of this Adirondack gem, the 11 county party chairs comprising the 23rd Congressional District picked Bill Owens, a Plattsburgh attorney, as the Democratic Party's candidate to replace John McHugh in Congress. He will face Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, the Republican designee, and Doug Hoffman, the pick of the Conservative Party. A special election to replace McHugh has not yet been set, but it is expected to fall on Election Day in November.

Photo Credit: courtesy. The cover of Forbe's Aug. 24 issue features West Point cadets and names the academy as the nation's best college. WEST POINT, N.Y. (Army News Service, Aug. 7, 200) - A report released Wednesday by Forbes magazine ranked the U.S. Military Academy as the top college in the country in their America's Best College review. "Marked by an intense work ethic and drive to succeed on all fronts, the West Point undergraduate experience also allows graduates to leave without a penny of tuition loans to repay," Forbes stated in its release. In the Forbes rating, West...

Two owners and the manager of two Suffolk County bars were arrested last night pursuant to a federal complaint charging them with crimes involving forced prostitution. The complaint charges Antonio Rivera, Jasmin Rivera, and John Whaley with conspiracy, sex trafficking, forced labor, and alien harboring. Simultaneously with the arrests, law enforcement agents executed search warrants at both bars. The defendants are scheduled to make their initial appearances this afternoon before United States Magistrate Judge Michael L. Orenstein at the U.S. Courthouse, in Central Islip, New York. The charges were announced by Benton J. Campbell, United States Attorney for the Eastern...

Fox News tries harder than the other news networks to get it right, but sometimes falls flat on its face. Witness a news report about the mid-air between a Saratoga and a helo over the Hudson River. The newsette doing the report just told the audience that VFR flight over New York City is "described by some pilots as like the Wild West," the intent clearly a slander against VFR general aviation. Please Fox. Find someone who knows the difference between an aileron and an airdale before you embarrass yourselves again and give-put bad gouge.

Hello fellow patriots! Consider attending, feel free to pass the invitation. "Government versus Liberty" Feel a little choked out by big government? Join students of Western and Southern Connecticut in collectively exercising what all hard-working, principled Americans do every day -- personal sovereignty. Please help support Connecticut's students for liberty. A procession will sweep a section of Main Street Danbury on August 29th, handing out fliers and inviting the media; while picking up litter to prevent a Federal Bureaucracy from legislating its way into your lives with a fateful War on Trash. Join us in telling government that Americans can...

Add Congressman Edolphus Towns to the growing list of influential Democratic and Republican VIP's who received loans from Countrywide Financial. That's significant because Towns, a Democrat, heads the committee investigating the mortgage giant's practices. And he personally is blocking the effort to subpoena Countrywide documents. Republican Darrell Issa is behind the subpoena effort. "It's really about what Countrywide sought to do, how vast it was, what they got for their millions of dollars in discounts and how do we make sure it doesn't happen again," Issa said. A Countrywide whistleblower says the company aggressively courted those in position to influence...

SODUS, NY--On any given Sunday in the Wayne County village of Sodus, people stand outside a small Catholic church, attempting to quietly interfere with the work of the U.S. Border Patrol. As these people, most of whom are white, stand watch at the Church of the Epiphany, brown-skinned people gather inside to hear a priest and a nun leading the Spanish-language Mass. Group members standing watch don't carry signs because they don't want people to beep car horns in support or derision — either of which would disturb the church service. The citizens are taking a weekly stand against U.S....

A New York City hot dog vendor has been evicted from his prize spot outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art because he couldn't pay a whopping rent bill of nearly $54,000 a month. Snack cart owner Pasang Sherpa of Queens had a deal with the city's parks department that required him to pay almost $643,000 per year for the vending rights near the museum steps. He says he was $310,000 behind on his payments when he was evicted.

Two sicko siblings with 50 prior arrests were busted Friday in the slaying and robbery of a feisty Holocaust survivor. Aljulah Cutts, 27, was one of two killers inside the upper East Side apartment of Felix Brinkmann when the 90-year-old was asphyxiated during a botched robbery, police sources said. Cutts insisted "he didn't mean to kill Brinkmann, it was an accident," one source said after the arrest outside a Bronx restaurant. His brother, 30-year-old Hasib Cutts, drove the getaway car after the July 29 killing, the sources said. He was arrested in a van near his brother's place.

A small plane collided with a tourist helicopter over the Hudson River Friday on crystal clear summer afternoon, ripping the rotor blades from the helicopter and severing one of the plane's wings, sending both aircraft plunging into the murky water and killing all nine people on board. Witnesses to the crash described how the debris from the two aircraft disappeared within seconds beneath the water's surface, and rescue workers soon determined there were no survivors. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said the plane, which had just left from Teterboro, New Jersey, was carrying a pilot and two passengers, including a child....

DeWitt, NY. -- Over 100 people packed a conference room at DeWitt Community Library to talk about health care reform this morning in an impromptu town hall meeting organized by Rep. Dan Maffei, D-DeWitt. The event was originally planned to be one-on-one by-appointment-only sessions between constituents and Maffei. Because many people did not reserve a spot, the public forum was held after the two-hour block set aside for those who made reservations. Many people expressed concerns about government-run health care, raising questions about whether current employer-provided health care would be lost, how the bill would impact taxpayers and why Congress...

<p>After months of planning, FR's DC Convention is coming together.</p> <p>Help make history, join in Free Republic's return to DC as a national group and help to herald in another wave of conservative activism Free Republic is famous for!</p> <p>“Reagan is good for business” was Andrew’s introduction to politics. “I was real little, but that’s what my dad used to say.” Andrew Wilkow began his radio career at the college radio station. Conservative leaning politics were always his heart and he expressed his views on the air regularly, much to the anger of his co-workers. “I was basically just anti-P.C. at first.” He broke out of music radio in 2002 when he was given a trial/fill-in slot for Mark Levin on his hometown station, WABC in NYC. “That was huge and that’s when I first met Sean Hannity.” Soon after that he earned a weekend slot then a full time job at an upstate station. I basically did a 300 mile roundtrip every weekend for over 3 years to do both shows. Wilkow’s move to SIRIUS brings his new sound of conservative talk radio to a national audience. To quote Andrew, “Now is the time for the new school of conservative voices with a whole new style and passion – moving to SIRIUS lets me take that style and passion nationwide."</p>

At least one helicopter has gone down in the Hudson River near 14th Street....Details remain sketchy, but there are reports that a small plane and a helicopter collided mid-air. There is a flurry of activity with Police, Fire and E.M.S. at the scene with reports that divers are in the water.

Jonestown resident Marlon Coplin lives on the north side of Lake Travis and enjoys his lakefront property. But he is being taken to court by the city of Cedar Park because the city wants eminent domain rights of his property. By September, an intake barge in planned on being built in order to supply water to Cedar Park... "Just the land itself is worth $800,000," said Coplin. "They're offering me $42,000." As it stands now, Coplin feels he's being cheated. "Some day I'd like to sell my property, and now I'm going to have to sell it 50 cents on...

Congressman Eric Massa releases August Town Hall Meeting Schedule Maintaining commitment to being open and available to his constituents, Massa announces public forums PITTSFORD, NY – Beginning the August District Work Period, today Congressman Eric Massa announced his upcoming Town Hall Meeting schedule for the month of August. Four of these public forums are centered on health care. The schedule is as follows: Health Care Town Hall Meetings Thursday, August 6th Mendon Community Center 167 N. Main Street Honeoye Falls, NY 14472 7:30-9:00PM Sunday, August 16th Olean John Ash Community Center 112 N. Barry Street Olean, NY 14760 5:00-7:00PM Wednesday,...

According to the self-help adage, you can’t fix a problem until you first admit that you have it. So it should be of interest to New York policymakers that if you adjust census data for cost of living, Gotham is the poorest big city in America, though Detroit could gain that unwanted distinction when new data become available. And New York State, at least by one reckoning, is the poorest state, substantially worse off than the runner-up, Mississippi. Seriously. Let’s begin with the city. Based on data from C2ER, a company that has been producing cost-of-living estimates for years, someone...

It was never intended to be a cease-fire. The best that the men who run two of the nation's media giants were hoping to achieve was a ratcheting down of the rhetoric between their warring commentators. But Keith Olbermann refused to play along this week... Immelt detailed his grievances. His elderly parents in Cincinnati, he said, watch O'Reilly every night... But the war was just beginning at MSNBC... The day after Olbermann's comments about the Tiller slaying, executives convened a large meeting and talked about Fox and the importance of striking the right on-air tone. Olbermann later expressed a willingness...

Wants to work on healthcare reform, financial systems, energy policyAfter weeks of delaying her Senate campaign announcement, Rep. Carolyn Maloney revealed her political plan today -- but it wasn't the proclamation supporters have been waiting months to hear. Maloney announced this afternoon that she's changed her mind and will not challenge Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in the Democratic primary. "These are unique times with unparalleled challenges and running for the Senate is a full time job," Maloney said in a statement. "Giving up for a critical period of time, the things I do best-passing legislation, working on the issues, serving New...