Free Republic

Sunday, June 16, 2002 The Associated Press State & Local Wire Principal Frances Gupton, Jacksonville, FL, and Kevin Twomey, president of the Jacksonville-based St. Joe Co -- Do business leaders belong in public schools? This principal now says: YES! School-business program aimed at raising grades By Ron Word Principal Frances Gupton stopped celebrating her school's high marks on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Tests to fire off an e-mail to a businessman who helped her inner city school make an academic U-turn. The message was for Kevin Twomey, president of the Jacksonville-based St. Joe Co., who had volunteered as a...

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Thursday morning announced an agreement to advance the $1.7 trillion omnibus bill before Christmas weekend. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Democrats have been working to pass the omnibus bill before a self-imposed deadline of Thursday to avoid a shutdown at midnight on Friday. But negotiations become sticky after Sen. Mike Lee’s (R-UT) Title 42 amendment threw a wrench in the Senate process. As a result, many critics of the deal were hopeful Congress would be forced to pass a short-term spending resolution (CR) to keep the government open, pending a continued standoff between...

Three people were killed during an off-roading tour of Colorado’s San Juan Mountains when their Jeep plunged over a cliff on Monday... Arizona tourists Diana Robles, 28, Ofelia Figueroa-Perez, 60, and hired driver Don Fehd, 72, were all killed when their 2022 Jeep Gladiator drifted off the edge of Ouray County Road 361 and landed hundreds of feet below... The vehicle first fell 100 feet to the bottom of a cliff... It then rolled about 140 feet down a rocky embankment, ejecting Fehd... ... Before the crash, Robles, a Yuma nurse, had reportedly just snapped a picture of the iconic...

Some of fast food’s splashiest plant-based chicken rollouts have seriously impressed us in the past. First, there was the debut of Impossible Chicken Nuggets in 2021, a product that managed to capture the brothy flavor of real cooked poultry and deliver both crunch and chew without tasting springy or spongy. (Burger King tested these nuggets at various locations last fall.) Then, KFC released Beyond Fried Chicken in January 2022; these were essentially nuggets as well, and tasted “pretty spectacular,” according to our taste test. Both of these, however, were small-format chick’n products. The Impossible Original Chick’n Sandwich at Burger King...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gn_alAgOCo

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) predicted Wednesday that both chambers of Congress will pass the $2 trillion expansion of social benefits and climate programs — a massive package at the heart of President Biden's domestic agenda — before Christmas. "We feel very confident about what is in Build Back Better," she told reporters in the Capitol. "We know what some possibilities are, and it would be my hope that we would have this bill done before the Christmas vacation." That same bullish timetable is also being trumpeted across the Capitol by Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is scrambling to...

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said Tuesday he hopes the $1.2 trillion “bipartisan” infrastructure bill will pass the House by the end of this week. “I would like to hope it passes Wednesday evening,” Manchin said, and noted to reporters President Biden needs a win with New Jersey and Virginia holding gubernatorial elections this coming Tuesday. “By the end of the week,” Manchin said as a last resort.

Protests have erupted across Italy with thousands taking to the streets against the mandatory Green Pass which came into force today for all workers. Police were out in force, schools closed early and embassies issued warnings of possible violence after ugly scenes at the protests in Rome over the weekend. Workers blocked ports as they refused to follow the new rules which require them to show proof of vaccination, a recent negative test or of having recovered from Covid-19 in the past six months. Implementation of the new requirement varies. Electronic scanners that can read mobile phone QR codes with...

While speaking with the Riders Alliance on Monday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) discussed the timing of passing the next round of coronavirus relief, the American Relief Act, and said that “we’ll try to get that passed in the next month, month-and-a-half.” Schumer said, [relevant remarks begin around 20:00] “[I]n the new bill, which President Biden has put together with my help, there are lots of other — there’s more money for transit and other things. It’s called the American Relief Act, and we’ll try to get that passed in the next month, month-and-a-half.”

The coronavirus pandemic has spread to the upper echelons of Hollywood and professional sports, with icons Tom Hanks and wife Rita Wilson among those infected by the disease. The virus, COVID-19, has infected more than 180,000 worldwide and has killed more than 7,000, according to recent media reports. In the US, more than 4,400 Americans have contracted the virus and 77 have died.

A woman managed to board a Delta flight from Orlando to Atlanta with no ID or boarding pass, says a passenger who helped uncover the alleged security breach after the woman in question took her seat. Delta and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) were investigating how it happened, Fox 35 reported. According to the passenger who didn't want to be identified, the woman refused to get up from the seat. "I also had a boarding pass for that seat, and she said very bluntly, 'I'm not moving.'" The passenger told WFTV she asked for a flight attendant who came over...

A federal judge on Friday granted CNN's request for a court order that would temporarily reinstate network correspondent Jim Acosta's White House press pass, which had been suspended indefinitely in the wake of a fiery exchange between the reporter and President Donald Trump a week earlier. The ruling from Judge Timothy Kelly, who was appointed by Trump, was a first victory for CNN in the ongoing case. CNN's lawsuit, announced Tuesday, argues that Acosta's constitutional rights had been violated by Trump and five other members of his administration, as well as by the U.S. Secret Service. The other defendants include...

Fox News just reported the WH revoked Jim Acostas hard press pass.

WASHINGTON—Some high-income business owners could face marginal tax rates exceeding 100% under the Senate’s tax bill, far beyond the listed tax rates in the Republican plan. That means a business owner’s next $100 in earnings, under certain circumstances, would require paying more than $100 in additional federal and state taxes. As lawmakers rush to write the final tax bill over the next week, they already are looking at changes to prevent this from happening. Broadly, House and Senate Republicans are trying to reconcile the bills they passed, looking for ways to pay for eliminating the most contentious proposals. The formal...

So, there's a lot of odious stuff in the New York Times‘ hard-hitting piece on film executive Harvey Weinstein's decades of scummy behavior. You should really read the whole article. I don't feel the need to highlight any individual part of it. It's all amazing, especially his fixer Lisa Bloom's remarkable hypocrisy. I do want to note just one thing, however. Here's the conclusion of a statement he provided to the Times: This is grotesquely brazen. Because it's so transparently obvious what Harvey Weinstein is saying here: "Guys, I'm a liberal, I'm going to go after the NRA, I'm going...

Rep. Lamar Smith is pushing ahead in his committee's effort to hold Hillary Clinton accountable for her private e-mail server while she was secretary of state. On Thursday, Smith, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, announced that he is going to hold the Platte River Networks, which set up and maintained Clinton’s server, in contempt of Congress when lawmakers return to Washington following the November election. “Platte River continues to obstruct our committee’s investigation into the possible misuse security of former Secretary Clinton’s private e-mail server,” Smith told a packed press conference on Capitol Hill."

I get that the media has gotten the memo that Donald Trump is the greatest threat to civilization since NBC’s “The Slap,” but the controversy surrounding the Trump v Ted Cruz wife-dissing battle has revealed a stunning bit of tunnel vision, particularly among liberals. While everyone piles on Trump for retweeting an unflattering photo comparison of Heidi Cruz and Melania Trump, they’re giving Cruz and his SuperPAC a complete pass for what amounts to a political sexual assault on Melania Trump. Both attacks were ugly; I would submit that the explicitly sexual nature of the attack on Mrs. Trump is worse,...

The play everyone is freaking out about. Lions 87 should be called for illegal hands to the face mask, Hitchens COULDN'T turn his head.

Oceanside Unified School District officials (San Diego) investigated complaints that a teacher threatened to have a robot shoot and kill students, and the educator was allowed to resign and receive a $92,000 settlement instead of being fired.

She sat across from me, tears streaming down her face. The subject of abortion came up and this woman struggled to discuss it. ‘Emotionally damaging’ was the phrase she used to describe the procedure. She thought about her child. She wondered how old he or she may be. As she reflected on her past she wrestled with feelings of regret. She admitted to choosing abortion without knowing all of the facts. She felt rushed into the decision, wishing now that she would have gathered more information before she decided. This woman’s story is all too common. In the decade I’ve...