Free Republic

FULL TITLE: Marine vet who was arrested for throwing coffee on Westboro protesters at Beau Biden funeral insists: 'I would do it again in a minute' A Vietnam veteran who was arrested after throwing warm coffee on Westboro Baptist Church protesters picketing the funeral of Beau Biden has spoken out. Richard Pierce, 64, of Wilmington, Delaware said while he would not suggest anyone do what he did calling his actions 'childish', he said he would 'do it again in a minute', according to the New York Daily News. He was taken into custody after he hurled the drink at three...

Barack Obama next week will unveil plans to improve cyber security and protect consumers from identity theft, as the administration continues to grapple with the hacking of documents, personal data and emails at Sony Pictures. As part of that effort, the president will meet Congressional leaders, host an event at the Federal Trade Commission and discuss legislation and executive actions that will be highlighted in his State of the Union address to Congress later this month.

DES MOINES, Iowa — A former state lawmaker accused of accepting payments to change his support to a different presidential candidate in the 2012 election cycle has pleaded guilty to two federal charges. The Department of Justice says Kent Sorenson, a former Republican state senator, admitted to receiving “under-the-table” payments from Ron Paul’s campaign committee in return for switching his support and services from candidate Michele Bachmann. The payments totaled about $73,000 and were made monthly in the amount of around $8,000. They were concealed by first sending the money to a film production company, then through another company —...

The state's highest court on Thursday struck Gov. Tom Corbett's only Republican challenger from the May 20 primary election ballot, leaving Corbett unchallenged for the GOP nomination he was favored to win anyway. In a 5-2 decision, the state Supreme Court reversed a Commonwealth Court ruling on grounds that conservative activist Bob Guzzardi's failure to file his statement of financial interests on time with the State Ethics Commission doomed his candidacy. "The untimely filing of the statement constitutes a fatal defect that precludes a candidate's appearance on the ballot," the majority wrote. Challengers backed by state Republican Party had raised...

Sales growth during the fourth quarter is shaping up to be the weakest since 2008, according to predictions from Morgan Stanley. Same-store sales, a key metric that measures sales at store locations open at least a year, are expected to grow a mere 1.6% from a year ago during the fourth quarter, Morgan Stanley estimates. Last year's holiday sales were up 3.5% from the fourth quarter of 2011. The 1.6% figure excludes sales at troubled J.C. Penney (JCP, Fortune 500). That's because J.C. Penney is expected to offer deep discounts to try and get back on track after a disastrous...

DUBLIN, March 25, 2013 (LifeSiteNews) – An Irish sex-education group’s state funding is being called into question after lawmakers became aware of an article on the website SpunOut.ie offering advice about sexual threesomes to their teenage audience. The Sunday Independent called attention to the article over the weekend, reprinting quotes from the piece that suggested threesomes were a way for teens to “inject serious passion into their bedroom shenanigans.” According to the Independent, the group warned readers not to pick anyone for whom they have real feelings. “If you are in a relationship, but secretly have a thing for someone...

While the White House says sequestration has eliminated funds for children touring the White House, President Obama has no problem spending $350 million federal tax dollars for sexual indoctrination programs starting in kindergarten for those same children. This is not your grandmother’s sex education about how things work and what can go “wrong.” In fact, the exact opposite is the essence of the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP): Obamacare funnels $75 million annually into PREP, which must be used exclusively for Planned Parenthood-style “comprehensive” sex ed programs where no type of sex is wrong and the only sexual behavior PP...

Via the Tampa Bay Times, former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist - widely seen as a potential future candidate for the job, only as a Democrat - is backing Sen. Bill Nelson in his Florida Senate race. Crist will attend a fundraiser with Bill Clinton - who famously tried to get Kendrick Meek to bow out of the three-way U.S. Senate race in 2010 so Crist could win, and caucus with Democrats. It's not exactly hard to see Crist making it formal at some point, if he does run

There are lies, damn lies, statistics—and official EU car fuel consumption figures. I and others have been banging on about this for years; the figures quoted by manufacturers in their ads usually (but, interestingly not always) bears absolutely no relation whatsoever to what happens in the real world. … To get those “official” figures, new cars are subjected to something called the “New European Driving Cycle”, a series of short runs on a “rolling road” where the car is accelerated, put on a short cruise and decelerated under laboratory conditions. All the car makers have to put their cars through...

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) - A panel of three federal judges late on Friday approved a plan to delay the Texas primary elections from March 6 to April 3, a move that could be a blow to Republican Governor Rick Perry's presidential hopes. A likely victory in Texas on March 6 would have given Perry a surge of momentum on Super Tuesday, when 10 other states are holding primaries or caucuses. Now, Texas's primary will be toward the end of the calendar. Related U.S. Republican Presidential candidate and Texas Governor Rick Perry steps off his bus on his way to a...

NY-26 special election may not be in the forefront of conservative minds, but the race has serious national implications: "A win by the Democrat in this Republican district -- even if created by a phony Tea Party candidate siphoning off votes from the Republican-- will be spun as a major victory for Obama.  You will hear nothing but how it signals Obama's turnaround, how it reflects Obama's new found popularity after the bin Laden kill, and how it signals unhappiness with Republicans.  You will not hear a word in the MSM about the fact that Davis is not a real...

An elderly priest was arrested after a pursuit involving the New York State Police. It happened Monday in eastern New York. Police say Father Francis G. McCloskey, 71, of Cairo was in a stolen car and didn't stop when a trooper tried to pull him over. The car was apparently an Enterprise Rent-A-Car that had never been returned. Trooper Matthew Colwell was responding to a 911 report of a stolen vehicle. He came up on the car and attempted to stop it. Colwell reported that McCloskey took off but was eventually stopped in the town of Livingston. The chase took...

I watched the Kennedys' miniseries first installment last night with the girlfriend last night. Not too bad. GF is clueless about how the Kennedys have operated all these years. She knows a little about the obvious ones(Ted the Swimmer, Willie Smith). I threw a nugget about how Ted put Rose as a FLA resident at her death even though she hadn't been there in 15 years to avoid MA death taxes. How about everyone post some of the shenanigans so I don't have to look up all of them. I thank everyone in advance. Recommendations for books on the subject...

Here's what Wisconsin Republicans accomplished tonight: In a situation where they had repeated opportunities to resolve this standoff and plausibly declare victory for themselves, they have now ensured that this battle is only going to escalate. This evening, Wisconsin Repubicans took the drastic step of breaking up the budget repair bill and passing only a measure rolling back the collective bargaining rights of public employees. A committee removed some parts of the bill, allowing Republicans to pass it by a simple majority, without missing Dems, and it's expected to pass the Assembly tomorrow.

The mayoral-race mystery of where candidate Rahm Emanuel stored boxes of personal items has been solved. Attorneys for Emanuel visited the house he owns in Ravenswood at 1:30 p.m. Thursday, located the much-discussed “crawl space,” looked inside and found the valuable items Emanuel had maintained he had stored there. They have argued the fact they left the items there while Emanuel went to Washington D.C. to work as President Obama’s chief of staff shows he always planned to return to Chicago — and therefore should be eligible to run for mayor.

Does anyone remember (whether from living through it, or from the pages of a history book) those old World War I posters admonishing quiet? You know the theme: the walls have ears, Nazi spies are everywhere, and you never know what one piece of YOUR gossip is the missing puzzle piece which was needed to discover all of our secret plans and defeat us. The artwork was very intense. A couple of classics are below(*): Now, it seems all too easy to dust off these aging warning posters, give them a polish, and apply them to the War on Terror...

A caller to the Chris Baker show on 100.3 FM KTLK in Minneapolis, reported that he was the first voter on site at a Precinct in Golden Valley, MN (suburb immediately to the West of Minneapolis, and home to the broadcast studios of TV station KARE-11). Minnesota's voting system utilizes pieces of paper where the voter completes an arrow next to the name of their selected candidates with a black marker. The paper is fed through a scanner. So, the FIRST voter at this polling place reported that "the scanner was broken" and the election officials were collecting the ballots...

Faced with multiple reports of early-voting irregularities and election shenanigans across the country, left-wing groups are playing dumb, deaf and blind. More cunningly, these organizations are seeking to marginalize complaints about election integrity by casting citizen-watchdog efforts as racist "scare tactics." Echoing President Obama's message to the Democratic faithful on the campaign trail, they are accusing political opponents of suppressing the votes of minorities and the poor. Yesterday, The New York Times quoted a liberal voting-rights advocate, Wendy R. Weiser, wringing her hands over individual Americans taking clean elections seriously: "Private efforts to police the polls create a real risk...

We’ve often said that the media “protects” President Obama but this video from WIND radio host and Big Blogs contributor William Kelly shows this allegation literally. Kelly, a Chicagoan, was there when Rahm Emmanuel was pressing the flesh, kissing babies, and greeting reporters. Emmanuel didn’t account for unassuming Kelly to fire off serious journalistic questions more pressing than the requisite “how’s it feel to be back?” Kelly didn’t account for was the manner in which Chicago reporters behaved. Are these reporters or palace guards? In the video you see them physically move to shield Emmanuel from Kelly’s questioning, as though...