Free Republic

A mini-controversy appears to be brewing after Fox cameras caught Royals catcher Salvador Perez with some kind of brown substance on his shinguards. Perez didn’t speak to reporters after the game and manager Ned Yost correctly pointed out that there is nothing wrong with the catcher — or any position player — having the substance, believed to be pine tar, there. “It’s not illegal,” Yost said. “I don’t know what it was. It was brown. It’s not illegal for a catcher to have it on his shinguard. It’s illegal for a pitcher.”

Labor Secretary Thomas Perez is moving ahead with issuing a final regulatory proposal for financial advisers despite growing concerns from moderate Democrats and Republicans that it would hurt low-income Americans. Perez responded to Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.) in a letter earlier this week after she and other lawmakers called on Department of Labor (DOL) officials and the administration to re-propose the controversial so-called "fiduciary standards," which would increase disclosure requirements for financial advisers. The business community is vehemently lobbying against the proposal, which failed in 2010, arguing it would raise consumer costs for Americans who need financial advice the most....

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The nation's top labor official flew Monday to California in an attempt to resolve a damaging contract dispute between West Coast dockworkers and their employers. U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez headed for San Francisco, where months-long negotiations between the dockworkers union and a maritime association of companies have come to a halt. So, too, has the movement of billions of dollars of cargo that is supposed to pass through 29 seaports from Southern California to Seattle. The ports are a critical trade link with Asia and the gateway not just for imports such as electronics,...

The State of the Union address this year falls one day after the federal Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. So it's quite fitting that Speaker John Boehner have as his honored guest a black human-rights activist. But alas, said human-rights activist is also a Cuban dissident, a former political prisoner of the Castro regime and a critic of resident Obama's push to normalize relations with Cuba without any concomitant political and economic reforms on the island to empower the impoverished, oppressed people there. We will watch to see what mention, if any, is given by network journalists tonight to Jorge...

Isn’t it extraordinary how something long in existence can be suddenly re-proposed as a brilliant new idea? Politicians and educators, hoping we have memory problems, often do this to fool us into thinking they are working hard to improve a situation. Another audacious example of this strategy was recently provided by the Holy See’s support of a proposal for a “United Religions”. The proposal came from former Israeli President and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Shimon Peres. At a private audience with Pope Francis this September 4th, Peres “proposed the founding of a United Religions organization — modelled after the United Nations...

A federal judge overturned the Obama administration’s “desperation” move to try to find more ways to prove discrimination in housing in a decision Monday that also delivered a searing rebuke to Thomas Perez, a Cabinet official whom liberals are pushing to be the next attorney general. Judge Richard J. Leon ruled that the administration cannot rely on “disparate impact” to judge discrimination, dealing a blow to civil rights groups that said the analytical tool gave them more room to file discrimination cases. Potentially just as important for President Obama’s postelection moves was the rebuke Judge Leon delivered to Mr. Perez,...

Holder lays out timetable "so that by early February we'd have a new attorney general," while Earnest defends lame-duck nods. WASHINGTON — It’s been more than a month since Attorney General Eric Holder announced his resignation, vowing to stay in office until his successor is confirmed. That nominee hasn’t been named. But days before critical midterm elections for the president’s party, a lobbying bloc in Congress has made clear its pick for the job. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus has had President Obama’s ear to an extent, meeting every few months with the commander in chief behind closed doors to strategize...

President’s postelection agenda is both secret and obviousBefore Americans vote next week they deserve to know what President Obama has in store for them. The administration’s near-term plans on health care, the environment, immigration, nominees for high office and other issues are shrouded in mystery. It doesn’t take much of a crystal ball to guess what lies just ahead, but the people should hear it from the source. Mr. Obama isn’t talking. He says his policies are on the ballot, and he knows that the less the voters know, the better for Democratic candidates. The White House wants no repeat...

Leadership: Just when you thought the president couldn't pick anyone more radical than Eric Holder as attorney general, he's poised to name ultraradical race-baiter Thomas Perez. Holder's activism is no secret. But Perez is even more extreme. Worse, he's a liar and possible perjurer. Yet he's reportedly President Obama's pick to replace Holder as America's top cop enforcing the nation's laws. The Beltway media are reporting that Perez, now serving as labor secretary, is the front-runner for the key post — and he didn't deny it when reporters asked him about it at a recent speech. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus...

Numerous publications close to the White House have reported that Labor Secretary Tom Perez has emerged as the leading candidate to replace Attorney General Eric Holder. That Perez has a documented and repeating history of dishonesty, racialism, and radicalism shows that this administration feels unrestrained by conventional political wisdom. That the White House is dropping his name before an election should demonstrate to every Republican that Obama is fundamentally transforming politics in corrosive ways that the GOP seems ill-equipped to contain. So who is Tom Perez? Perez ran for Maryland attorney general in 2006. But his campaign ended when he...

I hope you took advantage of yesterday’s West Wing #BigBlockOfCheeseDay. Everyone around here sure did. Cheesehead Czars and staff hard at work answering Twitter questions on #BigBlockOfCheeseDay We got lots of good questions tweeted to us: So I guess if you pay a guy$10.10/hr to drop fries at McDonalds he’ll make those fries cook faster. Yep, those look golden, brown and delicious to me! Serve ‘em up Jose! How funny is it that? Secretary Foxx  is working on paths for wolves to cross the road? There’s a fox-in-the-hen-house joke in there somewhere. Or at least a quip about “sheep in...

CAMPO - A U.S. Border Patrol agent was fatally shot in Campo near the border with Baja California Thursday night. The shooting was reported about 9:15 p.m. near the border on Shockey Truck Trail southeast of the San Diego Sheriff Department's Campo substation. Four engines, paramedics, and a medical helicopter were dispatched to the area, but the agent was declared dead at the scene, according to Cal Fire Battalion Chief Nick Schuler. Police report that the victim was shot in the head.

In one of the more outrageous moves by the Justice Department’s bloated civil rights division, a private college was strong armed into a legal settlement in which it agreed that food allergies are a disability under federal law. The story got little coverage as the Department of Justice (DOJ) quietly persuaded the Massachusetts College, Lesley University, to change its campus menu and serve certain foods to accommodate students with allergies. The preposterous case was brought to Judicial Watch’s attention by Robert Popper, who at the time was a Deputy Chief at the DOJ’s Voting Section. Popper, an esteemed attorney, currently...

For more than a year, Assembly Speaker John Pérez dated a Hollywood funeral director who faces fraud allegations in one of the biggest financial scandals to rock the U.S. funeral industry. During their relationship, Pérez, a Los Angeles Democrat, mixed political business with his personal life in ways that showed poor judgment, ethics experts say. A Pérez spokesman said the lawmaker conducted himself appropriately during a casual dating relationship. Tyler Cassity, proprietor of a boutique cemetery called Hollywood Forever as well as a Mill Valley cemetery, and defendant in a $600 million fraud lawsuit in his native Missouri, accompanied Pérez...

After a contentious fight over some of President Obama’s nominees, the Senate confirmed five members to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). On Tuesday, the Senate voted to clear all five nominees — Harry Johnson III, Philip Miscimarra, Nancy Schiffer, Kent Hirozawa and Mark Pearce. Republicans agreed to hold up-or-down votes on the NLRB nominees as part of a deal to avoid Senate rule changes limiting the minority's right to filibuster executive branch nominations. Two of the NLRB nominees confirmed were GOP picks — Johnson and Miscimarra — and Schiffer, Hirozawa and Pearce were Obama's nominees. As part of the...

Roughly 200 so-called "worker centers" across the country are representing employees who work in everything from the fast-food industry to the taxi business. But some key Republican lawmakers are asking if those centers are actually acting more like labor unions. The concern is that the rise of these groups has become a way around the rules that govern bona-fide unions -- like requirements to submit financial filings to the feds every year. House education committee Chairman John Kline, R-Minn., and Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., sent a letter this week to newly confirmed Labor Secretary Thomas Perez requesting that he clarify...

Voters in four counties will be going back to the polls Tuesday to finally settle the contentious and closely watched 16th Senate District special election battle. They're choosing between Republican farmer Andy Vidak and Democrat Leticia Perez, a Kern County supervisor, to replace former state Sen. Michael Rubio, who resigned in February to take a job with Chevron. Print Only 115 votes kept Vidak from winning the seat outright in the May primary election. In fact, Perez conceded the race the day after Election Day.

Absolutely beyond belief. They have nothing to work with after a year of the FBI digging in an effort to find something with which they can work to bring a civil rights case against George Zimmerman, so… On Monday afternoon, the US Department of Justice appealed to civil rights groups and the general public across the country for “tips” on George Zimmerman in their pursuit of potential federal civil rights charges against the just-acquitted defendant in the Trayvon Martin killing. The DOJ actually went so far as to set up an e-mail address to allow such tips: Sanford.florida@usdoj.gov. The email...

NOTE The following text is a quote: www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/jl2002.aspx Treasury Targets Major Money Laundering Network Operating Out of Colombia 7/9/2013 Trade Based Money Laundering Network Supported Narcotics Traffickers Ayman Joumaa and Evaristo Linares Castillo WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Treasury today announced the designation of Colombian nationals Isaac Perez Guberek Ravinovicz and his son, Henry Guberek Grimberg, as well as 29 other individuals and entities, including companies located in Colombia, Panama, and Israel, as Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers (SDNTs). These 31 individuals and entities together form a money laundering network responsible for laundering hundreds of millions of dollars in...

Right now, hanging on the door of a federal employee’s office in the Department of Justice Voting Section is a sign expressing racial solidarity with Trayvon Martin. What this has to do with the Department of Justice is perhaps a mystery, but not to me. One might ponder why the Justice Department Civil Rights Division rushed to Florida in the first place and took sides once the racial furnace was sufficiently stoked. When Eric Holder’s old pal from D.C. (and a Philadelphia court case), New Black Panther chieftain Malik Zulu Shabazz, called for a 10,000 strong black-male mob to seize...