Free Republic

The precinct level returns in Hinds County bolster the theory that a surge in black, Democratic turnout allowed Senator Thad Cochran to defeat Chris McDaniel, a Tea Party-backed state senator, in last month’s Republican primary runoff in Mississippi. Mr. Cochran won by 7,667 votes. Nearly half — a net 3,532 votes — came from the most Democratic precincts in Jackson’s Hinds County, where President Obama won a combined 97.8 percent of the vote in 2012, according to figures released Tuesday night by the Mississippi secretary of state. The surge in turnout was clearest in overwhelmingly black precincts; turnout sometimes increased...

Subaru last week announced a second recall for vehicles which are prone to brake line corrosion in "salt belt" states. This latest recall follows a 2013 recall for the same issue, which can cause brake failure from burst brake lines due to rust. As Subaru does the right thing by consumers and motorists regarding the safety concern, General Motors continues to claim that brake line rust is a normal maintenance issue and refuses to recall its vehicles with the same problem. The Subaru recall weakens GM's defense that rusting brake lines do not need to be addressed by manufacturers...

Detroit: General Motors Co., which has recalled about 20 million cars and trucks in North America this year, added 428,111 more US vehicles to that tally, including its redesigned full-sized pickups and large sport-utility vehicles. GM said it needs to recalibrate software that controls the gears to fix the four-wheel drive on 392,459 pickups and SUVs, including the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups from 2014 and 2015 model years and the 2015 Chevy Tahoe and Suburban. The effected models can switch into neutral on their own, the automaker said on Friday in an e-mailed statement. If this occurs while...

House lawmakers told General Motors CEO Mary Barra on Wednesday that they were not satisfied with her company’s own probe into the slow recall of defective, deadly vehicles. "I want to be clear today that our investigation does continue,” Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), said. Barra was returning to Capitol Hill for the first time since releasing an internal review that found GM had a pattern of " incompetence and neglect " that led to its failure to recall more than two million defective cars made from the mid-2000’s until earlier this year. GM fired 15 people...

<p>DETROIT — General Motors says it needs to change or replace the keys for about 3.4 million cars because they could cause the ignition switch to move out of position if they're carrying too much weight.</p> <p>GM said in a statement Monday that the switches can rotate out of "run" if the key has excess weight and the car "experiences some jarring event," such as hitting a pothole or crossing a railroad track.</p>

DETROIT — To the legal department at General Motors, secrecy ruled. Employees were discouraged from taking notes in meetings. Workers’ emails were examined once a year for sensitive information that might be used against the company. G.M. lawyers even kept their knowledge of fatal accidents related to a defective ignition switch from their own boss, the company’s general counsel, Michael P. Millikin. An internal investigation released on Thursday into the company’s failure to recall millions of defective small cars found no evidence of a cover-up. But interviews with victims, their lawyers and current and former G.M. employees, as well as...

Video of press conference at source. General Motors has dismissed 15 employees and disciplined five others in the wake of an internal investigation into the company's handling of defective ignition switches, which lead to at least 13 fatalities. GM CEO Mary Barra says the personnel worked in several areas including engineering, legal and public policy, and that a disproportionate number of them were senior executives or higher. Barra described the conclusions of the investigation as “extremely thorough, brutally tough, and deeply troubling.” Barra says that the report found no conspiracy to cover up facts or trade-off between safety and cost,...

(Reuters) - General Motors on Tuesday apologized to families of accident victims who have been notified to bring in cars for replacement of defective ignition switches. "We are deeply sorry to those families who received a recall notice," said GM spokesman Greg Martin in response to questions from Reuters. GM has recalled 2.6 million of its most popular models to replace a defective switch that it has linked to 13 fatalities. Some families who lost loved ones in fatal crashes have complained that GM should not have sent them notices to bring in cars for repairs. Terri DiBattista, who lost...

GM (GM, Fortune 500) has raised the number of frontal-impact crashes linked to the problem ignitions to 47 from 32, according to company spokesman Greg Martin. Because of the flawed ignition, key rings holding more than one key could cause the ignition to suddenly switch to the off position. That can lead to a loss of power -- locking the steering wheel and interrupting airbags from deploying in an accident. GM says the number of deaths tied to front impact crashes stemming from this defect remains at 13. On Friday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reportedly said the number...

As a result of the latest recalls, GM GM -1.83% expects to take $200 million more in recall-related charges in the second quarter, bringing the period’s total to $400 million. The latest recalled cars include: --1,339,355 Buick Enclave, Chevrolet Traverse, GMC Acadia full-size crossovers. --1,075,102 of the previous generation 4-speed automatic transmission Chevrolet Malibu from the 2004-2008 model years and Pontiac G6. --1,402 Cadillac Escalades and Escalade ESVs .

Over the weekend we titled our summary of GM's unprecedented avalanche of recalls so far in 2014 - the year in which the company's criminal practice of covering up its faulty products became a congressional scandal - as follows: "GM Set To Surpass Total Recall Record This Year." Three days later we are happy to report that while Detroit, we not only have a big recall problem, we also have a new record, after moments ago GM just announced another 4 recalls affecting 2.4 million cars. This brings the total number of vehicle investigations since the start of the year...

DETROIT — As General Motors faces a number of continuing investigations into its handling of a vehicle safety defect linked to 13 deaths, its legal department has become a focus of a broad internal inquiry into how the company handled the issue, according to two people with knowledge of the investigation. Even as G.M. acknowledged that it knew about the defect for more than a decade, it has insisted that work on the ignition problem was limited to a handful of midlevel employees. But a review of internal documents, emails and interviews paint a different picture, showing that high-ranking officials,...

Apple has determined that the sleep/wake button mechanism on a small percentage of iPhone 5 models may stop working or work intermittently. iPhone 5 models manufactured through March 2013 may be affected by this issue. Apple will replace the sleep/wake button mechanism, free of charge, on iPhone 5 models that exhibit this issue and have a qualifying serial number. The sleep/wake button is located on the top of your iPhone 5:

Toyota is recalling more than 6.5milllion cars -including 35,000 in the UK - after it discovered a number of faults. The car manufacturer found in some models airbags can deactivate, seats may move and steering columns could break, the company said today. The models involved are the RAV4, Hilux, Yaris and the Urban Cruiser.

There is a truism in Washington that was confirmed last week in Congress: Even less popular than government regulation is a regulator suspected of not doing its job. Not for the first time, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — or N.H.T.S.A. (pronounced NITZ-ah) — was forced to answer for failing to protect consumers. In this case, the failure involved a defective General Motors ignition switch implicated in 13 deaths. While G.M.’s new chief executive, Mary T. Barra, took most of the heat in two days of House and Senate hearings last week, she shared the grill with the safety...

General Motors' CEO, Mary Barra, testified this week at government hearings on the deadly recall delay that contributed to at least 13 deaths of motorists driving GM vehicles with defective ignition switches. During that testimony Ms. Barra discussed one of GM's ridiculous early "solutions" for problems with ignitions turning to the off position as vehicles were being driven. GM engineers designed an insert to be placed in the keys' holes in an attempt to limit how much key chains dangled. This "fix" saved the company a few dollars in labor costs that would have been charged if they recalled...

Government Motors. Remember that one? That's a huge, overlooked detail in this whole GM recall crisis - the federal government's oversight of a company they bought out of bankruptcy four years ago and, under their nose, that same company is hiding its deadly, dirty laundry. Charlie LeDuff caught up with California Democrat Henry Waxman, who was head of the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform at the time of that purchase.

Almost two weeks after NLPC first requested that General Motors recall vehicles with defective power steering components , the company has agreed to the recall and finally remove the dangerous vehicles from the roads. Over 1.3 million Saturn Ions and related vehicles are included in the recall, bringing the total amount of GM vehicles recalled over the past month or so to over 6 million. The total cost to GM for the recalls will be in the billions of dollars with the latest recall probably accounting for over $1.5 billion on its own. The costs to GM's reputation are...

On Friday, General Motors expanded its recall of vehicles with an ignition switch defect, but Saturn Ions with a dangerous steering loss problem remain unrecalled, even though Chevy Cobalts and other models with the exact same defect were previously recalled. The two Congressional Committees holding hearings this week must directly ask GM CEO Mary Barra why these dangerous vehicles remain on the road. It has now been almost two weeks since we requested that Barra immediately order a recall of Saturn Ions (MY 2004 to 2007) with defective electric power steering systems. GM had previously recalled Chevy Cobalts and Pontiac...