Free Republic

While the Seattle Storm’s players warmed up inside a quiet KeyArena, the area surrounding the building was crowded with members of the community who supported the team’s partnership with Planned Parenthood, and a few who opposed the rally. The Storm’s WNBA game against the Chicago Sky on Tuesday night featured an ownership-led initiative in support of the nonprofit that provides reproductive health care. This marks the first time a sports franchise has partnered with Planned Parenthood, according to a spokesperson from the organization. In addition to an online auction, the Storm pledged to give $5 from each ticket sold to...

SEATTLE - The Seattle City Council voted 8 to 0 to prohibit landlords from using criminal records to screen prospective tenants. The only exception to the new ordinance are sex offenders. City leaders and supporters of the measure; 'Fair Chance Housing Ordinance' insist its goal is to reduce housing discrimination and barriers. Inside Seattle Council Chambers there was overwhelming support for a measure. In short, it will restrict how landlords can use arrest and conviction records to exclude prospective renters. Seattle landlords will no longer be able to ask about criminal records, pending charges, juvenile records or any arrest record...

Several players plan protests following violence in Charlottesville Colin Kaepernick still without a team after protest last season Bennett says protest is not a sign of disrespect for military The day after Oakland Raiders running back Marshawn Lynch sat out the national anthem, his former team-mate Michael Bennett has followed his lead. The Seattle Seahawks defensive end, who is known for his strong views, sat with a towel draped over his head during the anthem before Sunday’s game against the Los Chargers. Bennett said he plans to continue the protest for the rest of the season, and his stance was...

SEATTLE - If you think living in the Pacific Northwest looks good now, consider the next 100 years. Atmospherics scientist Cliff Mass of the University of Washington said that as global warming takes hold, we'll be better off than the rest of the lower 48 states. According to Mass, global warming will affect different parts of the US in different ways. “The Southwest United States is emphatically going to get drier,” he said. “The models are really all on board about that, and they start off with a water resource problem right now. I mean they have too many people...

The First Amendment gets in the way of many “progressive” goals and you often hear them say, “Sure I’m in favor of free speech, but…..” There are so many possible “buts” to complete that sentence that the First Amendment would by now just be lifeless words on parchment if it weren’t for vigilant defenders. One of those “progressive” goals is to make politics more fair by taking out private funding as much as possible. Recently the city of Seattle, fresh from curing poverty with its $15 per hour minimum wage, decided to clean up politics with what it terms its...

Seattle, Washington, with its highest-in-the-nation minimum wage, has discovered how high is too high. In January 2016, Seattle’s minimum wage jumped to $13 an hour from $11 for large companies. New research released in late June by a team of economists at the University of Washington points to the wage hike having come at a significant cost to low wage employees: The increase led to steep declines in employment for low-wage workers and a drop in hours for those who kept their jobs. The slashing of jobs and hours resulted in, on average, $125 less per month because of the...

An illegal alien protected and given temporary amnesty by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program is now accused of raping a woman in a Seattle suburb with a sanctuary city policy. Salvador Diaz-Garcia, 23, is facing second-degree assault and rape charges for an alleged brutal attack on a 19-year-old woman in Burien, Washington. According to court documents obtained by Fox News, the woman was on a treadmill at her local gym when Garcia allegedly stood behind her and asked her questions. The woman said she asked Garcia to move. Garcia allegedly attacked the woman, breaking her jaw, nose,...

SEATTLE – A 23-year-old DREAMer in Washington state is accused of brutally raping a 19-year-old woman in her apartment complex's gym and leaving her with severe facial injuries -- including a broken jaw and dangling ear. The woman ended up stumbling home with missing teeth, a bloody head and wearing only a black tank top, according to court documents obtained by Fox News. She was working out in the gym in Burien, a Seattle suburb, before the June 25 assault and did not know her attacker, police said. Salvador Diaz-Garcia, an illegal immigrant who is a recipient of Deferred Action...

Gary Brose, the 65-year-old Republican candidate for Seattle mayor laughs at the recent Fox News host assertion that Seattle is a socialist hellhole. “They’re trying for ratings there, I think.” But the small businessman who runs four courier services knows what he’s up against. Seattle hasn’t had a Republican mayor in 47 years. There’s a Socialist Alternative Party member on the City Council, but no Republicans. “I've always wanted to do something virtually impossible,” he says. “This is pretty close.” Seattle elections are officially non-partisan, but Gary Brose openly identifies himself a moderate Republican. He says it wasn't until three...

The Seattle Mayor’s office coordinated with a Cal Berkeley economist to manipulate a study on the effects of a $15 minimum wage for maximum political benefit, according to emails obtained by the Employment Policies Institute (EPI). A staffer for Democratic Mayor Ed Murray reached out to the Cal Berkeley economics department asking them to rush the release of a study, released in June, that cast a positive light on Seattle’s increased minimum wage ordinance. The Berkeley study’s findings contradicted those of a then forthcoming University of Washington (UW) study, which found that Seattle’s increased minimum wage had cost low-skill workers $179 per month and hurt employment numbers. Murray’s...

By unanimous vote, the Seattle City Council has now enacted an Income Tax ordinance imposing a tax on "high income residents," i.e, those whose annual incomes exceed $250,000 ($500,000 for joint filers). The new legislation is largely the work of Councilwoman Kshama Sawant, an unabashed leftist and redistributionist who was elected on the Socialist Alternative party ticket, and who was a moving force behind Seattle's ill-advised $15 per hour minimum wage. [Kshama immigrated from India to the United States, ostensibly to improve her economic situation. She went on to further her education, submitting her PhD dissertation in 2009. It is...

SEATTLE—The posters on display at the entrance to her Capitol Hill store say it all: “You are safe here.” “Black Lives Matter.” “Resist Trump: keep America great.” “I was raised on the most progressive politics,” says Jon (pronounced “Joan”) Milazzo, who co-owns Retrofit Home, a furniture shop on a busy corner of downtown Seattle. A native Vermonter who moved west about 30 years ago, Ms. Milazzo is all for the idea that employees – especially those at the bottom of the pay scale – receive a fair wage for their work. But she is straining to reconcile her principles with...

Seattle leaders are displaying shocking bias by turning over a study on their minimum wage increase to Michael Reich, a left-leaning economics professor at the University of California Berkeley, after their initial sanctioned study with the University of Washington (UW) proved their decision to raise the wage was having adverse effects. Seattle’s 2014 legislation called for a gradual increase of the city’s minimum wage until it reaches $15 an hour. Following the vote, commissioners recruited a team of UW researchers to find the effects of the steady rising minimum wage. Not to the surprise of fiscal conservatives, the study found...

In May, as noted at NewsBusters, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray ended his run for reelection in the wake of "mounting allegations that he sexually abused underage boys in the 1980s." On Sunday, the Seattle Times reported that records previously thought destroyed revealed that "An Oregon child-welfare investigator concluded" that" Murray "sexually abused his foster son in the early 1980s." The Times, as well as related wire reports from the Associated Press and Reuters, have only told readers that Murray is a Democrat in very late paragraphs. Specifically, a newly surfaced May 20, 1984 Multnomah County, Oregon social services document assessing...

It’s now considered racist, at least in liberal loonville of Seattle to remove human feces from the sidewalk. In the socialist-communist utopia like Seattle, human feces on the sidewalks is an all too common occurrence. Black racist Democrat Councilman Larry Gossett is “concerned” that power-washing the feces and urine off the sidewalk would bring back images of the civil-rights era when black civil rights activists were hosed by local authorities. This is yet another fine example of why liberalism is a mental disorder. Now considered racist: removing human feces from sidewalk Now considered racist: removing human feces from sidewalk A...

A Seattle, Wash., councilman implied that a new effort to clean excrement off the side walk outside the local courthouse could be racist Tuesday. The crime and smell of urine and excrement have gotten so bad outside a King County courthouse that two judges are scrambling to find ways to fix the situation, reports the Seattle Times. King County councilmember Larry Gossett isn’t a fan of one solution to power wash the feces from the sidewalks to tamp down on the smell. Power washing the sidewalks is too reminiscent of civil rights activists being hosed down, he said. The area...

Truth should be a slam-dunk. Yet activists that support and defend Planned Parenthood just keep blocking the facts. The WNBA’s Seattle Storm co-owner, Dawn Trudeau, is taking pride in being the first sports team to partner with the nation’s leading abortion business. The team is donating $5 from every ticket sold for their upcoming July 18th game. Oh, the irony of female players and owners celebrating an organization from which they were spared.Trudeau claims that “the league leadership is very socially conscious”. Sadly, that doesn’t translate into being informationally conscious. Trudeau told Politico recently: “It is pretty clear that people...

Inside the newly refurbished facility in the Little Saigon neighborhood are sleeping cots with blue cushions that couples can push together... Unlike more restrictive shelters, clients will be able to store their belongings, bring along their pets and partners, and come and go when they like. While discouraged, drug and alcohol use inside the facility will be allowed unless it disturbs other clients or the surrounding community.

The Seattle City Council unanimously approved a pioneering new income tax on wealthy residents Monday. A a legal challenge is widely anticipated. The measure applies a 2.25 percent tax on total income above $250,000 for individuals and above $500,000 for married couples filing their taxes together. The city has estimated the tax will raise about $125 million a year and cost $10 million to $13 million to set up, plus $5 million to $6 million per year to run and enforce. The council’s finance committee cleared the tax last week, increasing the rate from 2 percent to 2.25 percent.

Murder charge filed after Seattle woman, 29, fatally shot riding home from a wedding All Jennifer Morrison Espitia wanted was to Uber home safely. Instead, King County prosecutors say, she was shot dead by her husband during a drunken, nonsensical argument. Charged Thursday with second-degree murder, Cameron Espitia, 31, is alleged to have shot Jennifer in the back of the head on Sunday while both were riding in an Uber. Prosecutors say Espitia was drunk and irate after attending a wedding with Jennifer. “Despite the fact that he was armed with a loaded firearm, he consumed numerous alcoholic drinks and...