Free Republic

When headstones on the graves of fallen servicemen crack or fade with age, they're hauled away to be honorably destroyed. Then the Department of Veterans Affairs replaces them. But at veterans' cemetery in Rhode Island, an employee who was supposed to be taking care of the graves pillaged more than 150 granite headstones, many of them still inscribed with the names of the veterans. Then he took the markers home to build a floor for his carport. When investigators arrived at Kevin Maynard's house in Charlestown, R.I., this spring, they came upon an eerie scene, according to a federal affadavit:...

Hillary Clinton’s favorable rating has sunk to a new low as that of her 2016 rival Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) has doubled since March. A Gallup poll released Friday demonstrates that the share of Americans with a favorable view of Clinton has declined from 48 percent in April when she first announced her presidential campaign to 43 percent today. Meanwhile, Sanders is enjoying an incredible surge; the Vermont senator’s favorable rating has doubled since Gallup tested it in March, jumping from 12 to 24 percent. Unfortunately for Clinton, her unfavorable rating has been rising. The share of Americans holding...

For the first time in national history, a Rhode Island native son is running for President: Lincoln Chafee. “Stumbling” is more accurate, since shortly after declaring an exploratory committee, he fumbled into making himself a full-fledged candidate, and all the campaign finance hoopla which accompanies it. A one-term Republican US Senator, then one-term Independent Governor, Chafee entered the 2016 Presidential Election as a Democrat. Confused? Cable news program Common Sense openly derided his ambitions: “Are you kidding me?” MSNBC took his campaign seriously enough, asked him serious questions, and Chafee already looked like a deer in headlights. Joining the repeal...

Narragansett police on Tuesday released a 911 call made after an explosion on Salty Brine State Beach. A Waterbury, Connecticut, woman was injured in the blast. A family member said she was thrown about 10 feet. The caller tells the 911 operator she doesn't know exactly what happened, but that the injured woman needs help. Caller: "Hi, I'm at Salty Brine Beach ... The rock, like, fell on her." Operator: "The rock fell on her? At Salty Brine? Do you know if they're pinned under the rock?" Caller: "I heard a bang. People are saying that the rocks exploded." Operator:...

Education remains separate and unequal nearly everywhere in the United States, but Confederate-flag-waving Southerners aren’t responsible for the most racially divided schools. That title goes to New York, where 64 percent of black students attend schools with few, if any, white students, according to a recent report by the Civil Rights Project. In fact, the Northeast is the only region where the percentage of black students in extremely segregated schools — those where at least 90 percent of students are minorities — is higher than it was in the 1960s. Schools in the South, on the other hand, saw the...

PHOENIX—Bernie Sanders is unaccustomed to being heckled by protesters. The self-identified democratic socialist was caught off guard here Saturday when African-American and Latino activists jeered him at Netroots Nation. Sanders’ inability to control the audience – he tried to shut them up and then he tried to yell over them – underscores his broader struggle to expand his appeal and highlights why his summer surge is unlikely to last. The huge crowds Sanders draws are overwhelmingly white, and polling consistently shows that virtually all of his support comes from whites. After Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two contests on...

It’s time to draft Al Gore: If Democrats want to win, it’s clear neither Hillary nor Sanders is the way The presidential election is still sixteen months away, but this much is clear: Hillary Clinton is a vulnerable candidate. Since announcing her candidacy in April, Clinton’s stature has steadily slipped. Things got even worse this week. We learned, first, that Bernie Sanders eclipsed Clinton in small, individual donations, which is an indicator of popular support among likely voters. Second, and more problematic, the newest AP poll revealed significant weaknesses among Democrats on a host of issues, including trust, character, and...

<p>When headstones on the graves of fallen servicemen crack or fade with age, they're hauled away to be honorably destroyed. Then the Department of Veterans Affairs replaces them.</p> <p>But at veterans' cemetery in Rhode Island, an employee who was supposed to be taking care of the graves pillaged more than 150 granite headstones, many of them still inscribed with the names of the veterans. Then he took the markers home to build a floor for his carport.</p>

Donors have given just $30,000 to Lincoln Chafee’s Democratic run for president, leading him to acknowledge that Democratic competitor Bernie Sanders is filling the role he hoped to play in the 2016 contest. Chafee lent his campaign $364,000, according to federal campaign finance filings. The former Rhode Island governor trails by a wide margin in fundraising. The campaign for Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton said it raised $45 million since mid-April, while Sanders, a Vermont senator, has raised $15 million since he joined the race in late April. “I always thought that there was fundraising potential for an honest progressive...

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. (WPRI) -Police and firefighters have responded to Salty Brine Beach for a report of an explosion. The Department of Environmental Management confirms that they received reports of an explosion on the beach and a person injured at about 11:15 Saturday morning.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse is not a fan of anyone who disagrees with him about man-made global warming. And at an event hosted by environmentalists, he made it clear just how much he doesn’t like skeptics. “But, this vast denial apparatus that propagates the false doubt, that props up the phony science, that gets these yahoos who can’t survive … peer-reviewed scrutiny onto Fox News, onto the cable shows, saying that their scientists, they create an artificial conflict about this and that’s why I think there’s doubt,” the Rhode Island Democrat told attendees at a League of Conservation Voters event in...

<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tensions are building inside and outside the white marble facade of the U.S. Supreme Court building as the nine justices prepare to issue major rulings on gay marriage and President Barack Obama's healthcare law by the end of the month.</p>

Republican senators criticized the Bush administration Wednesday over its policies in Iraq, Iran and the Palestinian territories, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's first testimony on Capitol Hill in months exposed her to a tough grilling from some members of her own party. "I don't see, Madame Secretary, how things are getting better. I think they're getting worse in Iraq, they're getting worse in Iran," Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., told Rice as she appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Rice also had a tense exchange with moderate Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., over the pace of progress toward Israeli-Palestinian...

The Republican field is crowded, which implies that primary voters have little information about where some of the candidates stand. That is particularly the case this season, with a few relatively unknown contenders who lack legislative experience or a long history of campaign contributions that would allow researchers to precisely identify where they stand on the liberal-to-conservative political dimension.However, one characteristic all candidates share is that they have active and popular Twitter accounts. And as I showed in an article published earlier this year in the journal Political Analysis — now freely available online as an Editors’ Choice article —...

Greg Nash Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) has proposed a bill to automatically register Americans to vote, fresh off of similar calls by Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton. “Today, too many politicians are trying to make it harder than ever for citizens to make their voices heard at the ballot box,” Cicilline said in a statement on Wednesday. “The Automatic Voter Registration Act will protect the right to vote and expand access for eligible voters across the United States. I thank my colleagues who have co-sponsored this important legislation that helps to expand one of our most essential rights as...

Earlier today, the New York Times clucked its tongue over Marco Rubio’s “penchant for luxury,” embodied primarily in the purchase of an $80,000 “speedboat.” One man’s luxury is another man’s … fishing boat. The Rubio team sent Dylan Byers a link to the model of the boat Rubio bought, which ain’t exactly a yacht: But while Rubio did indeed spend $80,000 on a boat, the vessel in question is not the glamorous “luxury speedboat” the Times article portrayed. It is, in fact, an offshore fishing boat.On Tuesday, Rubio spokesperson Alex Conant sent POLITICO a link to a website showing...

So Linc Chafee is in the race. This brings the number of contenders up to four. You have an embittered, kleptocratic and entitled Social Security recipient; you have a sex-obsessed, corrupt septuagenarian Socialist; you have a big city machine Progressive; and you have the Wonder-Bread-and-Velveeta pragmatist. Of this crew, the only one that is a real contender is Martin O’Malley. But the real reason this bunch of northeastern Progressive white guys are in the race is to give the illusion that Hillary is not cruising to a coronation. There is undoubtedly some hope, too, that inevitable debates with one or...

Well, this is a new one.While announcing his candidacy for the highest office in the land, newly minted Democratic presidential candidate and former Rhode Island senator and governor Lincoln Chafee made the bold case for … the U.S. to switch to the metric system?Bloomberg's Dave Weigel was there: Chafee, a Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat, gave a brief and chipper address that called for America to re-engage with "international community" with diplomacy and "symbolic" moves. That meant everything from barring campaign donors from becoming diplomats, to allowing Edward Snowden to come home without punishment, to bringing America into the Metric system."It doesn't take long...

This Providence Journal report doesn’t say so, but the jihadis’ beheading target was Pamela Geller. “Court complaint: 2 Mass. terror suspects met on R.I. beach to plot beheading,” by Amanda Milkovits, Providence Journal, June 3, 2015: WARWICK, R.I. — Two Massachusetts men under surveillance by terrorism investigators met with an unidentified third person on a Rhode Island beach in Sunday’s rain to discuss a plot to behead people in another state, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court Wednesday.The plan that Usaamah Abdullah Rahim and David Wright shared with the third person changed early Tuesday morning, when Rahim...

An armed man in his 20s being surveilled by the FBI counterterrorism unit was shot and killed by an FBI agent and a Boston police officer in Roslindale this morning, according to Boston Police Commissioner William Evans. Evans said the suspect was wielding a large military-style black knife. FBI Special Agent in Charge Vincent B. Lisi is at the scene, and Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh is expected as well, FBI spokeswoman Kristin Setera told the Herald. Dozens of police officers have swarmed the small shopping plaza and officers are seeking surveillance video from a nearby Dunkin' Donuts, employees said....