Free Republic

<p>NEW YORK (AP) — Chipotle is asking customers not to bring firearms into its stores after it says gun rights advocates brought military-style assault rifles into one of its restaurants in Texas.</p> <p>The Denver-based company notes that it has traditionally complied with local laws regarding open and concealed firearms.</p>

A tranche of new Internal Revenue Service e-mails refute the White House’s longtime defense of the agency’s actions in the IRS targeting scandal. The e-mails, uncovered by a Judicial Watch FOIA request, reveal there was direction coming from the Washington headquarters of the IRS and that the targeting of Tea Party groups was indeed political. The Washington Examiner‘s Mark Tapscott excerpts: In a July 2012 email, Holly Paz, who was then director of the IRS Rulings and Agreements division, asked IRS lawyer Steven Grodnitzky “to let Cindy and Sharon know how we have been handling Tea Party applications in...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon is trying to transfer convicted national security leaker Pvt. Chelsea Manning to a civilian prison where she can get treatment for a gender-identity condition. But her lawyer said Wednesday that a move from a military prison would make Manning choose between the treatment and her safety. Two Pentagon officials told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel gave the Army approval last month to try to work out a plan to transfer Manning from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to a federal prison. Manning entered the Army as a man named Bradley. The officials...

Conservative radio host and blogger Stacy Washington responds to the White Privilege Conference 2014 attendees. Warning: This is a very powerful message by a powerful young woman. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LT11g8W524"An open letter to the White Privilege Conference 2014 attendees; I’m in a state of shock right now. According to your conference, the accomplishments of my family going back generations simply do not exist. Allow me to explain. You see I am black. Your conference contends that this country was built on racism; you contend that a pernicious evil is the foundation of every institution and permeates every aspect of American life. According...

One of the most liberal Representatives in Congress wants California to raise its minimum wage to $26 an hour. Appearing on Crossfire on Friday, co-host Newt Gingrich asked Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) whether it was a good idea for the mayor of Seattle to propose a minimum wage of $15 an hour. Lee said, "good for him." "In California, more than likely from what I remembered, a living wage where people could live and take care of their families and move toward achieving the American dream was about $25, $26 an hour," Lee said. When pressed further, Lee said she...

The California Legislature is looking at a voluntary program that would tax motorists for every mile they drive.KCAL9’s Bobby Kaple reports that Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, introduced a bill to test out the vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax because the state’s gas tax was no longer bringing in the revenue it used to due to people driving more fuel efficient vehicles.The program is modeled after ones in Oregon and Washington.“We want to do as Washington and Oregon have done in a much bigger state with much longer commutes…to make sure that we find out whether it would work, whether the...

Editor’s Note: Kshama Sawant is a Seattle councilwoman. And a Socialist. She was elected last fall on a $15-an-hour minimum wage platform. That wage, which is 62 percent higher than this year’s inflation indexed state minimum wage of $9.32, already the highest in the nation, comes from what researchers at the University of Washington have calculated as the wage it takes to be self-sufficient in the area. The Seattle suburb of SeaTac, home of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, narrowly approved a $15 minimum wage ballot initiative last fall, but as we recently explored, most airport workers have yet to see a...

Using America's interstate system could get more expensive in some places in the near future. Provisions in the White House-endorsed, $302 billion transportation bill would allow states to get permission from the federal government to impose tolls on them to raise money for infrastructure upkeep. Of course, some states already charge to drive on the interstates – the New Jersey turnpike, for example – but for the most part charges are rare on the federally funded roads. "We believe that this is an area where the states have to make their own decisions," said Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx to the...

REDMOND , Wash. A mother in Washington is upset after a teacher at her daughter’s middle school allegedly gave students an assignment that required them to pick cotton so that they could "see what it was like to be a slave." Carolyn Walker called Redmond Middle School to inform them that her daughter would not be doing the assignment and later found out the teacher gave her daughter an F. "My daughter is African American and for her to pick cotton when her grandparents were raised on a plantation to pick cotton, is not OK, it's not OK at all,"...

The largest national group of Indian governments has declared Upstate Citizens for Equality a "hate group." The National Congress of American Indians adopted a resolution last week that says UCE, based in Verona, and two similar groups in other parts of the country want to "eliminate Indian governments, societies and culture." UCE also has a Cayuga-Seneca chapter that opposes the Cayuga land claim. The Verona group opposes the Oneida land claim. The resolution was sponsored by Alma Ransom, a Mohawk chief and treasurer of the Indian congress. It also labeled as hate groups the Citizens Equal Rights Alliance in ...

Washington Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee is not waiting for the state legislature to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, but instead has issued an executive order to implement a cap-and-trade program, eliminate coal power and fund green energy projects. “This is the right time to act, the right place to act and we are the right people to act,” Inslee said. “We will engage the right people, consider the right options, ask the right questions and come to the right answers — answers that work for Washington.” Inlsee argues that more action is needed if the state is to meet climate goals passed by...

April 30, 2014 5:08 PM Reid: NFL Should Punish Redskins Owner Like NBA Did Sterling By Andrew Johnson The NBA’s lifetime ban of Donald Sterling for his offensive comments should put the NFL on notice about Washington Redskins’ racist name, Harry Reid says. On the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon, Reid commended NBA commissioner Adam Silver for his response to the Sterling situation, and urged his NFL counterpart Roger Goodell to take similar action to “stamp out bigotry in its ranks.” The Senate majority leader also dismissed the tradition-based defense Redskins owner Dan Snyder has made of the team’s name when...

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...