Free Republic

If you’re looking to enjoy some tailgating at “Hawks Alley” right before this weekend’s Seahawks game, you’re likely going to compete with homeless tents and dilapidated RVs for the space.“We’ve had issues with employees going about their business being threatened,” Erin Goodman, executive director of the SoDo Business Improvement Area, told KOMO’s Kara Kostanich. There’s supposed to be a cleanup in the area, but it’s scheduled for after this weekend’s Seahawks game. KOMO reports the city won’t move the date due to staffing issues. If the homeless are as aggressive during game day as they are during a normal weekday,...

SEATTLE — The solution is cheap and simple: As cities see their homeless populations grow, many are buying one-way bus tickets to send people to a more promising destination, where family or friends can help get them back on their feet. San Francisco’s “Homeward Bound” program, started more than a decade ago when Gov. Gavin Newsom of California was the city’s mayor, transports hundreds of people a year. Smaller cities around the country — Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Medford, Ore., among them — have recently committed funding to the idea. Sign Up For the Morning Briefing Newsletter And in Seattle...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators Mike Enzi and John Barrasso and Congresswoman Liz Cheney, all R-Wyo., applauded the Environmental Protection Agency for announcing final plans to repeal and replace the Obama-era Waters of the United States (WOTUS) regulation. "I am glad the administration is repealing the excessively burdensome Waters of the United States rule, which was a massive regulatory overreach that should have never been allowed in the first place," Enzi said. "This rule gave the federal government power to regulate nearly every creek or pond. States know best how to manage our resources. This announcement is good news for...

n a major win for the Trump administration, the Supreme Court issued an order late Wednesday ending all injunctions that had blocked the White House's ban on asylum for anyone trying to enter the U.S. by traveling through a third country, such as Mexico, without seeking protection there. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals – long a liberal bastion that has been aggressively reshaped into a more moderate court by the Trump administration – handed the White House a partial victory in the case on Monday by ending the nationwide injunction. But the 9th Circuit kept the injunction alive within...

One of two ways that Pacific Northwest farmers get their wheat to export in Portland has been shut down after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers stopped barge traffic on the Columbia River around the Bonneville Dam after a crack was found on a critical part of one of its massive locks. With the navigation lock inoperable, barges can’t push upstream from Bonneville Dam, which is about 40 miles upstream from Portland. The broken lock is also preventing barges hauling wheat, logs and other freight from Idaho, Oregon and Washington from reaching port. The crack was discovered late last week,...

A door blew off a Boeing 777X as the new plane was undergoing what was supposed to be its final structural inspection by federal regulators. The test is meant to push the plane beyond its limits. Engineers had the plane pressurized and on the ground. They loaded it up well beyond capacity and bent its wings in an extreme manner, in a way almost certain to never happen in the real world. As the ground test was underway and as engineers and FAA inspectors watched, a door blew off the plane. Sources tell KOMO there was a stunned silence after...

The Seattle Times reports that Seattle's city council is considering legislation which would ban all new homes and buildings within city limits from using natural gas, and mandating that these edifices must use electric heating and cooking. Councilmember Mike O’Brien will likely introduce the legislation next week. If passed, it is expected that the regulations will go in effect next summer. "We know that some people rely on natural gas at home and on the natural-gas industry for jobs, so we want to be thoughtful about how we transition," O'Brien said. "But in the meantime, let’s not continue to make...

Seattle City Council will soon weigh a complete ban on natural gas in newly-built homes and buildings.Legislation for the ban will be introduced by Seattle City Councilmember Mike O’Brien. The measure would take effect on July 1, 2020 should it pass. “The science is very clear — (Puget Sound Energy is) selling a fossil fuel that is destroying our planet, and my hope is that they recognize they need to get out of that business,” O’Brien said. According to the bill, natural gas in buildings accounts for a fourth of Seattle’s greenhouse gas emissions. Just over half of the city’s...

A gunman who opened fire inside a Walmart in Washington state and injured at least two people during carjacking attempts was fatally shot by one of two armed civilians on Sunday evening, according to police. The Thurston County coroner identified the dead suspect as Tim O. Day, 44, though police said they were still piecing together the full story of what happened at the Tumwater, Wash. Walmart. About 5 p.m. Pacific Time, authorities received a call about a possibly drunk driver heading the wrong way on a main road near a local high school, said Laura Wohl, Tumwater police public...

A Washington state police chief who took a stand in refusing to enforce elements of the state’s widely encompassing new gun control package is now running for Governor of the state. He’s making a pledge to restore the gun rights of Washingtonians a central message of his campaign. Loren Culp is the police chief of Republic, Washington. He was praised by gun owners and vilified by liberal prosecutors for his constitutional refusal to enforce parts of a massive gun control law enacted in 2018.

Gridlock on America’s roadways is increasing, according to the 2019 Urban Mobility Report published by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute – in part due to job growth that is “exacerbating” the nation’s traffic woes. As a result, over that 26-year period from 1982 to 2018: The number of hours per commuter lost to traffic delay has nearly tripled, climbing to 54 hours a year. The annual cost of that delay per commuter has nearly doubled to $1,010. The nationwide cost of gridlock has grown more than tenfold to $166 billion a year. The amount of fuel wasted sitting in stalled...

The controversial way America elects presidents is barreling toward a crisis point. A federal court ruling has spotlighted the confounding nature of the system, which twice in the last five elections put presidents into office against the wishes of the majority of American voters. Under the Constitution, the voters who select a president every four years are, in fact, picking a party-chosen slate of electors pledged to that candidate. The presidential candidate who wins a state’s popular vote gets all its electors — except in Nebraska and Maine, which split the electors by Congressional districts. These electors formally select the...

by John Urban This is the modern day left in action. Pure insanity. Seattle has a human feces problem on their streets and sidewalks. But the city council cannot agree on how to remove the crap. Councilmember Larry Gossett says power-washing the sidewalks bring up images of using hoses against civil rights activists. The Seattle News reported: Some committee members expressed concern about addressing the symptoms of the area’s problems without getting to the cause. Councilmember Larry Gossett said he didn’t like the idea of power-washing the sidewalks because it brought back images of the use of hoses against civil-rights activists.Another...

Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren wove details of her personal history — her father’s heart attack, her mother’s minimum wage job, her commuter college — with calls for a radical remaking of America’s economy and political system, as she spoke in Seattle on Sunday to what her staff called the largest crowd of her 7-month-old campaign. The U.S. senator from Massachusetts described a country that has gone off course. When she was a child and her father got sick, she recalled, her mother was able to take a minimum wage job at Sears that paid the mortgage and put food on...

RUSH: So the onslaught continues in the Drive-By Media’s incoherent attack, popularized by Laurence Tribe now claiming that Trump wants to reverse the outcome of the Civil War. But the truth of the matter, ladies and gentlemen… The truth of the matter is on the other side of the aisle. Here’s a little story that will never show up in the Drive-By Media. Stephen Green, PJ Media. “Democrats Seemed Bored with Their Presidential Candidates.” You know it’s bad when Joe Biden’s brain surgeon has to come out and assure everybody that Biden’s brain is okay despite the fact he doesn’t...

Well, that's the end of the road for presidential candidate John Hicklenlooper. But it's just the beginning for Senate candidate John Hickenlooper. The former Colorado governor gave it his best shot but never exceeded an average of 1 percent national support in his 2020 campaign. The press repeatedly asked him why he was running for the White House and not the Senate, where he could be much more influential, but he insisted Congress wasn't for him. “I’m not cut out to be a senator,” Hickenlooper said in February. “Senators don’t build teams. Senators sit and debate in small groups, which is...

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is dropping out of the 2020 presidential race, he announced Wednesday night on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.” "It's become clear that I'm not going to be carrying the ball, I'm not going to be the president so I’m withdrawing tonight from the race," he told Maddow, vowing he'd help keep the other 2020 candidates focused on issue of climate change, the focal point of his campaign. "I’ve been fighting climate change for 25 years and I’ve never been so confident of the ability of America now to reach critical mass to move the ball."

RUSH: I mentioned this piece earlier. Paul Waldman at The American Prospect, a left-wing publication. “There Will Be no Justice for Trump’s Enablers.” Now, that headline’s a little confusing. This is actually a story of hatred, and it is written in the form of anti-Trump elitism. Now, this guy Paul Waldman is a hate-filled leftist guy, but he is having to come to grips with the facts, and the facts are that the Never Trumpers have failed. The Never Trumpers haven’t succeeded. They haven’t moved their ball an inch! The Never Trumpers haven’t even been a sore spot with Trump,...

(WCMH) — Walmart employees are expected to walk out in protest of the retailer’s gun sales policies Wednesday afternoon. The Washington Post reports hundreds of workers at Walmart e-commerce offices in California, Portland and Brooklyn are planning to walk out at 3 p.m. The walk out comes after a gunman opened fire in an El Paso Walmart Saturday, killing 22 people and wounding dozens. Last week, a Walmart employee shot and killed two co-workers at a store in Southaven, Mississippi. Organizers started a Change.org petition calling on Walmart and the retailer’s president and CEO Doug McMillon to “cease the sale...

Democrat Rep. Debra Haaland (NM) proclaimed on Sunday that far-left extremist group Antifa consists of "peaceful protesters" who are just trying to protect Portland from "domestic terrorism." ... "It's not surprising that Trump would side away from the folks who are the peaceful protesters working to safeguard their city from domestic terrorism," Haaland continued. "Just not surprised at all that the president sides with the white nationalists. That's been his mode of operation since before he was elected president." Haaland seemed unaware of the fact that a self-described member of Antifa carried out a domestic terror attack against an ICE...