Free Republic

SACRAMENTO — When my family moved from northwest Ohio to pricey Southern California, we could afford an entry level house but couldn’t also spring for private-school tuition for the kids. So we scoured the test-score databases, looking for those neighborhoods where home values were reasonable and public schools were tops. Given the focus on schools, it will surprise no one that we settled in a city with a majority Asian-American population.

A national gay rights organization has taken issue with a Roman Catholic Archdiocese's recently implemented "morals clause" added to their private school teacher contracts. "As support for LGBT equality continues to grow, particularly among Catholics, the Cincinnati Archdiocese is enacting draconian restrictions on Catholic school employees," Paul Guequierre of the Human Rights Campaign wrote in an entry on the group's website Tuesday that calls for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati to reconsider its new rule. "HRC is calling on Diocese leaders to model Christian values and not discriminate against LGBT teachers or straight allies in their employment practices." Guequierre argued that...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was caught Thursday on a live microphone offering to help the Obama administration pressure Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) into supporting the Senate’s aid legislation for Ukraine. According to multiple reports, Graham, who is facing a tough reelection race this year, was caught on a live microphone after a hearing telling Secretary of State John Kerry, “Let me know what I can do to help you with Boehner.”

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A bill featuring a "stand your ground" provision has been in a Senate committee since early last month, and opponents are calling for legislative leaders to not let it get any further.A coalition of legislators and activists gathered at the offices of liberal advocacy group ProgressOhio on Thursday to push for a moratorium on House Bill 203. The event centered on a speech from Lucia McBath, the mother of 17-year-old Jordan Davis, who was shot and killed at a Florida gas station in Nov. 2012 over an argument about loud music. McBath is also a spokeswoman for...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was caught on a hot mic Thursday telling Secretary of State John Kerry to let him know how he could “help” with House Speaker John Boehner. Screengrab via NBC News Screengrab via NBC News Kerry had just testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee on the need to provide Ukraine with economic assistance amid its turbulent transition following the ouster of former President Viktor Yanukovich. Both House and Senate Republicans have expressed opposition to the proposed bill, mainly over a provision that would give unused U.S. Military money to the International Monetary Fund (I.M.F.). Graham was offering...

A group of five U.S. senators have joined the growing chorus of influential voices, telling the Kellogg Co. to end its nearly five-month lockout of more than 220 workers at its Memphis, Tenn., cereal production facility.The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) Local 252G members who make Frosted Flakes®, Froot Loops® and other breakfast favorites were locked out as part of the drive by the company to replace steady, middle-class, full-time jobs with casual part-time employees who would make significantly lower wages and substandard benefits.In a letter to Kellogg’s CEO John Bryant, Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Robert Casey Jr....

Darrell Issa seen plowing ahead with IRS probe amid new evidence By JOHN BRESNAHAN and LAUREN FRENCH | 3/7/14 2:00 PM EST Updated: 3/7/14 3:53 PM EST Not even a trove of new evidence will stop Darrell Issa from going after Lois Lerner’s testimony. The House Oversight Committee Chairman is plowing forward with plans to hold the former IRS official in contempt of Congress - possibly as early as next week - despite word from the tax agency that it plans to hand over a broad set of documents spanning Lerner’s entire career at the IRS. Republicans have long sought...

VIDEO: 4 minutes - Rep. Marcia Fudge's oral presentation of the privileged resolution on House floor. The chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus is calling House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) to be stripped of his gavel for his behavior at a contentious IRS hearing on Wednesday. Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) told Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Thursday that Issa’s conduct in the hearing — which included cutting off the microphone of Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), the ranking Democrat — amounted to “an affront to the expectations of the American people.” Fudge also said Issa should apologize on the House...

A Columbus principal suspended a student for three days last week after the child pointed a "lookalike firearm” at another student in class and pretended to shoot. The boy’s age? 10. The “level 2 lookalike firearm” cited in his suspension letter? His finger. “I was just playing around,” said Nathan Entingh, a fifth-grader at Devonshire Alternative Elementary School in a far northern section of the district. “People play around like this a lot at my school.” Other kids have been caught playing pretend gun games on the playground at Devonshire and weren’t suspended, Nathan said. Devonshire Principal Patricia Price has...

Like most 8-year-olds, Myles Eckert was already dreaming up ways he could spend a $20 bill he had just discovered laying in a Cracker Barrel parking lot earlier this month. “I kind of wanted to get a video game, but then I decided not to,” the child recounted to CBS News. That’s because Eckert saw Lt. Col. Frank Dailey enter the restaurant. The man in uniform changed his mind. Why? “Because he was a soldier, and soldiers remind me of my dad,” Eckert explained to CBS. So, instead of purchasing something for himself, Eckert did something very different on Feb....

Like most 8-year-olds, Myles Eckert was already dreaming up ways he could spend a $20 bill he had just discovered laying in a Cracker Barrel parking lot earlier this month. “I kind of wanted to get a video game, but then I decided not to,” the child recounted to CBS News. That’s because Eckert saw Lt. Col. Frank Dailey enter the restaurant. The man in uniform changed his mind. Why? “Because he was a soldier, and soldiers remind me of my dad,” Eckert explained to CBS.

DAYTON, Ohio — Shooter and victim were just a pair of pixels, dark specks on a gray streetscape. Hair color, bullet wounds, even the weapon were not visible in the series of pictures taken from an airplane flying two miles above. But what the images revealed — to a degree impossible just a few years ago — was location, mapped over time. Second by second, they showed a gang assembling, blocking off access points, sending the shooter to meet his target and taking flight after the body hit the pavement. When the report reached police, it included a picture of...

It happened at a Cracker Barrel, of all places. As the security camera shows, Dailey entered the restaurant on Feb. 7 for an early lunch. At about the same time, 8-year-old Myles Eckert came in with his family. Myles was very excited. He'd just found a $20 bill in the parking lot. He'd started thinking of what he could spend it on. "I kind of wanted to get a video game, but then I decided not to," Myles says. He changed his mind when he saw the guy in uniform.

A regulation requiring abortion clinics to maintain transfer agreements with local hospitals is paying off in Ohio, with at least three major abortion clinics unable to arrange such agreements, including a Planned Parenthood. Those clinics have each applied for variances, which would allow them to continue operating even though they cannot meet the requirements of the law. The notorious late-term abortionist, Martin Haskell, is the owner of two of the embattled clinics in Dayton and in the Cincinnati suburb of Sharonville. No hospital will extend privileges to Haskell. In January, his Women’s Med Center in Sharonville was ordered closed after...

REP. GOHMERT: Boehner Will Be Gone as Speaker by January To paraphrase Michael Ledeen, "faster, please!" One of the tea-party leaders in Congress believes the days of Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, as speaker of the House of Representatives are numbered... Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, ... predicts Boehner will no longer be speaker “by next January,” regardless of the outcome of the midterm election in November. The Texan doesn’t think it will take a coup to remove Boehner, believing the tide is already moving in that direction, and saying, “I think people are ready for a change.” And Gohmert would see...

Rickey Wagoner of Trotwood, Ohio, was assaulted by three men while he stood beside his bus in the early hours of Monday morning The two bullets aimed at his chest were stopped by a New Testament Bible that he kept in his chest pocket The shooting may have been a gang initiation after Wagoner told cops that one of the suspects said 'we need to shot a polar bear to get in a club' Polar bear hunting is gang slang for a random attack on an unsuspecting victim. A bus driver in Trotwood, Ohio, is recovering in hospital after remarkably...

HOUSTON, TX – The nation’s leading labor union will plan to spend $300 million in 2014 trying to unseat Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and four other Republican Governors. More: AFL-CIO to Target Walker, Other Governors People’s World reported that the AFL-CIO announced on Thursday morning during a press conference in Houston that they would spend money trying to unseat Governor Walker. Other Governors that the labor organization is targeting are John Kasich (R-Ohio), Tom Corbett (R-Pennsylvania), Rick Snyder (R-Michigan), and Rick Scott (R-Florida). The American Federation of Teachers backed the AFL-CIO’s plan. President Randi Weingarten said: “In many ways it...

WASHINGTON, February 21, 2014 – Hang around Republican circles long enough and you will hear, “We have got to stop these circular firing squads.” The logic is simple; Republicans are killing themselves with internecine wars instead of going out and defeating liberals. It is a great theory. Perhaps the best word for it is theory. As conservatives are discovering, though, what Republicans who complain about the circular firing squad really want is a semi-circular firing squad. These voices in the Republican Party want conservatives to stop shooting at them, while they try to take out insurgent conservatives. Texas Senator...

A bill that would allow businesses to refuse service to customers based on personal, religious beliefs is now on the desk of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, as protests continue. The state legislature passed the bill late Thursday, but not without a fiery debate. "This is simply protecting religious freedom that is recognized and defended and supported in the First Amendment that the founders wanted, nothing else," said Republican Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, who sponsored the bill. "There's only type of equality," said House Minority Leader Chad Campbell, a Democrat. "And it's equal." Brewer, a Republican, vetoed a similar bill last year...

A plan by President Obama and fellow Democrats to increase the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would cost roughly 500,000 jobsbut increase wages for roughly 16.5 million Americans, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday. The report was immediately met with sharp Republican criticism for the wake hike plan. “While helping some, mandating higher wages has real costs, including fewer people working,” said a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. “With unemployment Americans' top concern, our focus should be creating -- not destroying -- jobs for those who need them most.” ...Republicans argued the report puts authoritative weight...