Free Republic

Malaysia’s former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has questioned whether flight MH370 crashed into the southern Indian Ocean and has blamed Boeing, the plane’s maker, for its disappearance. Dr Mahathir, who maintains a powerful influence in his country’s ruling party, also suggested the reason why the passengers and crew never acted to stop whatever was happening on board was because they were “somehow incapacitated". “Even if the pilot wants to commit suicide, the co-pilot and the cabin crew would not allow him to do so without trying something,” he said. “But no one, not even the passengers, did anything.” Writing in...

On the day that Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) told a local newspaper that she believed amnesty legislation could be brought to the floor by August, she met with Satya Nadella, the new CEO of Microsoft. “I believe there is a path that we get a bill on the floor by August,” House GOP Conference Chair McMorris Rodgers said last Friday. “We’re going to have to push that this is a legal status, not amnesty." That same day, she tweeted a photo of herself with Nadella from her verified @cathymcmorris Twitter account.

The movement to change how presidents are elected is gaining steam and proponents of the long-stalled popular vote initiative are predicting victory by 2020. Eleven states/jurisdictions have enacted the National Popular Vote (NPV) bill, giving the proposal 165 electoral votes — 61 percent of the 270 electoral votes needed to trigger the new voting system. Legislatures that passed the law include California, Illinois, New Jersey. Massachusetts, Maryland, Washington, Washington, D.C., Hawaii, Rhode Island and Vermont. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) signed a popular vote bill into law last week. All of these states, as well as the nation’s capital...

A new report analyzing the financial ramifications of a takeover of some of Nevada’s millions of acres of federal lands suggests the state would benefit from such a transfer. A transfer of 4 million acres of U.S. Bureau Land Management land could bring in anywhere from $31 million to $114 million a year, based on a review of four Western states that have significant amounts of trust lands under their control, the report says.

SEATTLE — Seattle Mayor Ed Murray has scheduled a news conference for Thursday to announce a plan to raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. **SNIP** Committee members representing business and labor could not agree on issues like crediting tips and benefits against the $15 minimum. And council member Kshama Sawant revealed another hurdle -- she said there has been little talk of automatically increasing the minimum wage with inflation. “If going forward the new minimum wage does not have a cost of living increase attached to it every year of the phase in it's not going to...

Health insurers and hospitals, usually on opposite sides, lined up together Tuesday to give Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler an earful about his proposed new rule for insurance-provider networks. Kreidler proposed the rule after complaints that consumers have been taken by surprise about narrower networks in insurance plans offered in the Affordable Care Act. Those networks exclude some of the region’s prominent hospitals and medical centers, meaning some consumers don’t have access to providers they expected to use. For example, only one insurer offering plans through the Washington Healthplanfinder online exchange includes Seattle Cancer Care Alliance in Seattle; only three include...

WASHINGTON -- For nearly a decade, the National Rifle Association successfully blocked a bill in Washington state that would have required alleged domestic abusers to surrender their firearms after being served with a protective order. Only those actually convicted of felony domestic violence, the nation's largest gun lobby argued, should be made to forfeit their gun rights. This past year, the NRA changed its tune. As the bill, HB 1840, once again moved through the state legislature, the gun lobby made a backroom deal with lawmakers, agreeing to drop its public opposition to it in exchange for a few minor...

People holding illegal arms and occupying government buildings are perfectly OK, as long as they are permitted to do so, believes Washington’s top diplomat in Europe. But doing exactly the same thing without permission is bad. This piece of infallible logic came from the US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, as she refused to equate the situation in Ukrainian capital, Kiev, in February with the present one in eastern Ukraine. In both cases armed militias have seized buildings and refused to leave. “You can’t compare the situation in Kiev, where now everything that is still being held by protesters...

In 1999, Kitsap County Prosecuting Attorney Russ Hauge, a Democrat, was prosecuting a legal gun owner for using his gun to defend himself.  Hauge was also a guest instructor on gun laws at the Kitsap Rifle & Revolver Club in Bremerton, Washington.  The gun owner was found innocent of all charges and that did not set well with Hauge who took up two class periods lecturing the students about the case.Hearing what Hauge was saying about the case and gun rights, Marcus Carter, Executive Officer for the gun range, knew that the students did not get the full story.  The...

The Planned Parenthood abortion business in Seattle, Washington is taking a page out o the religious bigotry book in order to raise funds for itself. Tomorrow night, the abortion corporation will stage “Bar Nun Bingo” at and, two days later, with hold another “Bar Nun Bingo” — fundraising events that, as Bill Donohue of the Catholic League tells LifeNews in an email, are aimed squarely at Catholics: barnunbingoBoth fund-raising events will bash nuns, and will be led by the demonstrably anti-Catholic gay group, Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Pictures of previous “Bar Nun Bingo” affairs show how sick it is. Planned...

The former hedge fund of one of the Democratic Party’s most important donors was involved in a scheme to defraud foreign investors out of tens of millions of dollars, according to documents filed in a Texas court. Farallon Capital Partners L.P., a fund run by Farallon Capital Management, the multibillion-dollar hedge fund founded by Democratic donor Tom Steyer, became a limited partner in a project to build a large shopping mall near Seattle, Wash., in the mid-1990s after it guaranteed a line of credit for the project.

Over the past week, I had conversations with two long-time friends who are interracially married, over the ongoing controversy over gay marriage in Massachussetts and San Francisco. One is a next door neighbor in Louisiana, who is a white man married to a Vietnamese woman. The other is a black man from Seattle whom I have known since college, and he is married to a white woman from Alabama, and they are now living in Salt Lake City, Utah (we talked over the phone). Both men are very conservative Christians and very pro-family, and they feel deeply insulted when they...

Please help me get this information out to the American people. I've been sending it to various conservative media for months and NOT ONE has done anything with it! Confirm for yourselves, copy & paste, then forward to as many media sources as possible. This bum Conyers, who heads the powerful House Judiciary Committee and is out "investigating" the White House, needs to be EXPOSED before the American people as the treasonous RAT that he is! And any politician, Left or Right, who does NOT immediately call for Conyers' impeachment should also be held accountable. This group that Conyers has...

Mayor Ed Murray’s minimum wage advisory committee is “deadlocked,” Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant said Friday, with the socialist officeholder pledging she will now work to “build a strong coalition in the streets.” Sawant and two other left-leaning City Council members sit on the panel, which is co-chaired by business leader Howard S. Wright III, CEO of Seattle Hospitality Group, and Service Employees Union leader David Rolf, the city’s most able labor leader. The statement by Sawant comes amids increasing indications that Seattle voters will have the final say on on the minimum wage issue. And, like Washington voters...

New York has joined the campaign to effectively end the Electoral College’s role in determining winners of presidential elections. Under the National Popular Vote Compact, which Gov. Cuomo signed off on Tuesday, the state has agreed to award its electoral college votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the national popular vote. Currently New York’s electoral colleges votes go to the winner of the state’s popular vote. …

Governor Cuomo has signed off on the National Popular Vote Compact, giving New York's 29 electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. SILive: Count New York in. The Empire State has joined the National Popular Vote compact with legislation signed Tuesday by Gov. Andrew Cuomo. States that have signed on to the interstate agreement will award electoral votes for president to the candidate who receives the majority of the national popular vote. "With the passage of this legislation, New York is taking a bold step to fundamentally increase the strength and fairness of our nation's presidential elections,"...

Western Washington University sent a questionnaire to students asking them for advice on how the administration could succeed at making sure that in future years, “we are not as white as we are today.” The question notes that WWU’s racial make up does not perfectly reflect the nation at large, and asks students to consider strategies that other universities have used to focus on skin color as the paramount indicator of a student-applicant’s worth. The president of WWU has stated that his explicit goal is to reduce the white population on campus, according to Campus Reform. “I’ve said before and...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is working to to enlist 30 specific House Republicans on a mission to grant amnesty to illegal aliens. In a memorandum from the chief cosponsors of the Democratic House comprehensive immigration bill to “interested parties” published on Pelosi’s House website and pushed to press by her communications team, Pelosi specifically targets 30 Republicans she says aren’t working hard enough for amnesty. “It’s Time for [Insert name of GOP House member here] to Walk the Walk on Immigration Reform,” the memo, from Democrat Reps. Jared Polis (D-CO), Judy Chu (D-CA), Suzan DelBene (D-WA), Joe Garcia (D-FL)...

- WWU's marketing department asks "How do we make sure that in future years 'we are not as white as we are today?'" - This question has been posed several times already by University President Bruce Shepard. - President Shepard equates a "white" student body and faculty to "failure."

A plan, now stealthily making its way through state legislatures with astonishing speed, would junk the Electoral College and award the presidency to the winner of the popular vote. The plan involves an Interstate Compact where states would commit to select electors pledged to vote for the national popular vote winner regardless of how their own state voted. When enough states pass this law, sufficient to cast 270 votes which is the majority of the Electoral College, it will take effect. So far, nine states and the District of Columbia, casting 136 electoral votes, have joined. This is halfway to...