Free Republic

One of the benefits of Mark Anderson’s home security camera feed was that he could check to see if a package he had been waiting for was delivered while he was at work. It was delivered all right, but just how it was dropped off had the LaGrange, Ga., man flabbergasted. Anderson told TheBlaze Friday he installed the security cameras more to keep an eye on his disabled mother while the family was away during the day, rather than actual security issues (he has four Great Danes that he said good security assurance for that). Once back at his desk...

EW YORK (AP) — The sisters of a woman who was fatally shot in Washington after trying to ram her car through a White House barrier say she was not a criminal and police should not have shot her. "We're still very confused as a family why she's not still alive," Amy Carey-Jones said late Friday, speaking of her 34-year-old sister, Miriam Carey. "I really feel like it's not justified, not justified." Another sister, retired New York City police officer Valarie Carey, said there was "no need for a gun to be used when there was no gunfire coming from...

Not only are some federal employees working without knowing whether we’ll be paid, we’re also doing it without union representation on the job. -.....(The horror) So we find that Congress, besides possibly creating a new class of involuntary servitude for federal employees, has also acted to attempt to bust our union. (Seriously?)

The postmaster general says the Postal Service has no choice but to ask for an emergency rate hike given the agency’s dire finances. … The post office expects to lose $6 billion this year. It wants to raise stamp prices by 3 cents next year. …

Terry O’Sullivan, president of the 600,000-plus-member Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA), often referred to as the Laborers’ Union, said that if Obamacare is not fixed, then “it needs to be repealed.” At a convention in Las Vegas of the AFL-CIO, with which the Laborers’ Union is affiliated, O’Sullivan took to the podium to endorse a proposition and then launched into a criticism of Obamacare, how it is hurting union members’ health coverage, and demanded it be fixed, adding that if it is not fixed, labor will make the issue a “big fricking deal.” … He continued, “We can’t...

Wonder bread is back almost a year after it vanished from shelves. Flowers Foods Inc., which bought Wonder from the now-defunct Hostess Brands, said the bread started returning to supermarket shelves Monday. The company, which also makes Tastykake and Nature’s Own bread, snapped up five bread brands after Hostess went out of business late last year. The $355 million deal included Butternut, Home Pride and Merita, which are all returning to shelves along with Wonder. … Flowers said Wonder bread is being made at that company’s existing plants. The 20 Hostess plants the company acquired as part of the deal...

Scranton's police and fire unions have received a judgment against the city for the overdue $21 million that the city owes the unions from a landmark arbitration ruling. The money was due July 2, but the city has not yet paid and is still seeking borrowing or selling an asset to honor the bill, Mayor Chris Doherty said. But the judgment means the unions now can seize city assets and sell them to collect what is owed, said city solicitor Paul Kelly and the unions' attorney, Thomas Jennings. "Whenever a judgment is granted, you can go to the sheriff and...

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says he hopes the White House will act within a week to address the growing concerns that labor unions have over the new health care law. … Unions want members to be eligible for the same federal subsidies available to low-income workers in the new health exchanges. …

With immigration legislation stalled in Congress, advocates are intensifying pressure on the Obama administration to act unilaterally to stop deportations or grant legal status to some of the 11 million people now living in the U.S. illegally. Activists are stepping up acts of civil disobedience like one last month in Phoenix, where they blocked a bus full of immigrant detainees. And labor leaders plan to press the issue with a top White House official in an upcoming meeting. … “If Congress doesn’t move, the president has a duty to act,” said Ana Avendano, director of immigration and community action at...

Union activists and big labor supporters who were upset that people were gathering in Vancouver, Wash., to talk about worker freedom resorted to violence and intimidation Thursday night, which resulted in a Mackinac Center for Public Policy employee getting spat upon. F. Vincent Vernuccio, labor policy director at the Mackinac Center, was invited by The Freedom Foundation in Washington and the Cascade Policy Institute in Oregon to speak about the benefits of worker freedom. However, he didn't even get out of his car before he was confronted by protesters. A protester with bullhorn disrupts a meeting about the policy implications...

California’s minimum wage would rise to $10 an hour within three years under a bill passed Thursday by the state Legislature, making it one of the highest rates in the nation. Washington state currently has the top minimum wage at $9.19 an hour, an amount that is pegged to rise with inflation. Some cities, including San Francisco, have slightly higher minimum wages. The state Senate approved AB10 on a 26-11 vote and the Assembly followed hours later on a 51-25 vote, both largely along party lines. Gov. Jerry Brown indicated earlier this week that he would sign the bill, calling...

In a long-awaited opinion, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin today rejected yet another attack on Act 10 brought by public sector labor unions. The case, Laborers Local 236, AFL-CIO v. Walker, was filed shortly after WEAC v. Walker was filed in the same court, raising some claims not brought in the WEAC case. In the WEAC case, the court held Act 10 unconstitutional in March of 2012, but was reversed the following January by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld Act 10 against all of the unions’ challenges. We have been awaiting a...

The Service Employees International Union is teaming with the Department of Health and Human Services to encourage health care coverage through a new marketplace. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Tuesday welcomed SEIU's help at a news conference at Allegheny General Hospital. The SEIU will focus on Pennsylvania and 13 other states where there are concentrations of people without health care coverage to get them enrolled starting Oct. 1. SEIU members will help convince the uninsured to enroll in the health care marketplace, called an exchange.

Here’s a bit of Labor Day irony. The man who led the historic 2005 bus and subway strike—which forced millions of commuters to squeeze into packed cabs, pedal bicycles they hadn’t used for years and hike to work like intrepid Boy Scouts—is now a licensed cab driver. Roger Toussaint, the fiery former president of Transport Workers Union Local 100, got his permit in December to drive a taxi in Cobb County, Ga., where he now lives, records show. “Driving a cab is a dignified profession,” Toussaint, 55, said during a telephone interview last week. …

Walmart associates in 15 cities will walk off the job Thursday in the latest in a series of actions against the nonunion retail giant organized by the United Food and Commercial Workers union through the activist group its backs, OUR Walmart.The group claimed that "thousands" would walk out."Walmart workers and their supporters today announced the largest mobilization since Black Friday, set for Thursday, September 5. The announcement comes as Walmart has failed to meet a Labor Day deadline to reinstate illegally fired and disciplined workers, publicly commit to improve jobs and end the company’s aggressive violations of workers’ rights," OUR...

One day before Mayor Bob Filner begins a self-imposed, two-week behavioral rehab, his list of supporters has shrunk to just one major group — organized labor and its allies. Filner was swept into office last year largely thanks to efforts by the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council, which contributed more than $2 million as well as shoe leather, phone banks and related efforts to get the city’s first Democratic mayor in two decades into office.

An increasing number of police officers are forming motorcycle clubs, but gang investigators fear such groups can hurt the credibility of law enforcement.

Educators boogie to 'When it's over you ain't gon need ya vibrator' (WARNING: This story includes a video and rap song lyrics of a sexually explicit nature and may offend some readers.) At its 2013 national convention in Atlanta last week, the National Education Association encouraged teachers to dance to a sexually explicit rap song that featured the “N”-word and declared, “When it’s over you ain’t gon need ya vibrator.” The NEA, a nationwide labor union that represents public school teachers, played the song titled, “Wobble,” by V.I.C. at its “Raise Your Hand” conference – which was publicized as an...

Athens Mayor Giorgos Kaminis was hospitalized on Sunday night after an attack by unknown men, said to be local authority employees, outside the extraordinary conference of the Central Association of Greek Municipalities (KEDE). Kaminis sustained injuries after exiting the building where the conference took place, while outside it there was a rally against the government's mobility scheme for the broader public sector that also concerns local authorities. On his way out he was followed by a number of men, according to reports, who abused him, punched him and inflicted damage on his car. Government spokesman Simos Kedikoglou and Interior Minister...

In a remarkable turn, the growing investigation of a powerful local union is turning up evidence of likely financial abuse by the labor group's top staffers during last year's attempted recall of Gov. Scott Walker. The Amalgamated Transit Union Local 998 — which represents bus drivers in Milwaukee County and elsewhere — is the subject of a sweeping investigation by the parent union and the U.S. Department of Labor. Already, the Washington, D.C.-based ATU ousted Alan Simonis as president of the local and Patrick Clemens as its secretary-treasurer for "financial malfeasance and nonfeasance while in office." The two can appeal...