Free Republic

Amazon has been ramping up hiring in the 20 cities it shortlisted for its HQ2 search and Philadelphia is dead last in those efforts while Virginia, Boston and New York rank in the top three, according to a GeekWire report. One can only wonder whether Amazon's hiring has anything to do its HQ2 search and the city it ultimately selects. ▪“A GeekWire analysis of Amazon job data provided by a third-party firm found that of the HQ2 finalists, offices in the Washington D.C. area — which includes three of the 20 regions on the short list in D.C. proper, Northern...

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was in the hot seat Wednesday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee over his company’s practices on content moderation. Both Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Michael Burgess (R-TX) asked about the excessive amount of time it took the company to take down a tweet threatening Meghan McCain despite many people reporting it.An image of McCain crying by her father’s casket was doctored to show a gun trained at her with the caption: “America, this one’s for you.”Many Twitter users, including Meghan McCain’s husband Ben Domenech, complained as the image was left up for five...

A federal judge on Monday granted a preliminary injunction to a coalition of states seeking to block a Texas-based company from posting online blueprints for how to make 3D-printed guns. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Robert S. Lasnik followed an initial temporary restraining order he granted in late July that blocked the federal government from implementing terms of a settlement the company, Defense Distributed, struck with the State Department earlier this year that would have allowed founder Cody Wilson to start posting the files again. The ruling Monday means the blockade will continue while the judge considers the broader...

Judge Robert S. Lasnik, United States District Judge of the Western District of Washington, at Seattle, issued a permanent injunction against the Trump Administration State Department. The injunction is to prevent the State Department from implementing a court settlement with Defense Distributed, allowing them to exercise their First Amendment rights. The permanent injunction was issued on the 27th of August, 2018, in Seattle, Washington State.  The temporary restraining order had been issued on 31 July.   Judge Lasnik has taken the power of deciding what may or may not be lawful, based on the principle of potential harm. Potential, or irreparable...

Seahawks owner hedging his bets like all corporate billionaires. But then you look at the state of Washington and see how whacko they've become with their homeless problem and the eat-the-rich solutions you can see why he wants the GOP to keep congress. Backlash to ensue. His response should be like Trumps: Double the donation.

Billionaire Seahawks owner and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen this year has made his largest-ever foray into congressional politics, donating $100,000 to a group aiming to keep Republicans in control of the U.S. House of Representatives. The June 14 donation, disclosed in mid-July, went to Protect the House, a committee headed by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. It’s the biggest check Allen has ever sent to a federal political candidate or committee, according to a review of Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings.

Dr. Howard Dean, a physician who previously served as the governor of Vermont, told MSNBC on Sunday that Donald Trump suffers from mental illness and he is unfit to be president. “I’ve long believed the president is mentally ill,” Dean said as part of a panel discussion hosted by Alex Witt, Raw Story reported. “And I believe narcissism overcomes his ability to know, A, what’s good for the country, and B, what’s good for him.”

There appears to be a contact-style naval mine floating in the waters near Bainbridge Island, Washington. This island is located directly across from Seattle and vessels have to navigate around either side of it to reach the sprawling Kitsap Naval Base. The base is home to one of the Navy's most important shipyards as it is capable of servicing even the largest supercarriers and is a major decommissioning site for retired nuclear powered vessels. KGW.com reports that the mine was spotted near Brownsville Marina, which sits across the channel from the western side of the island. The Coast Guard has...

General Washington was outgunned, outmanned, outnumbered, & outplanned at the Battle of Long Island.

"...It was no surprise that Gov. Jay Inslee was promising the state would take the feds to court over a proposed change in the Clean Power Plan rules regarding coal-burning generating facilities. "...The real surprise was one of Inslee’s reasons for challenging the proposed rule to allow states more control over emissions from coal-burning power plants, a reason that suggests either an unfamiliarity with geography or meteorology. (1st money quote - from the village idiot): "...“We’re breathing smoke from Mississippi,” he told reporters. “We’re breathing smoke from the rest of the United States.” "...Weather patterns generally go from west to...

The Washington State Supreme Court on Friday overturned a lower court's decision on the state's controversial gun control ballot initiative, I-1639. The Court ruled unanimously that the initiative must appear on the November ballot. "The problem with the petitions is that they failed to underline new law and strike through removed law so that the reader could not know the current law, added law and subtracted law," Alan Gottlieb, Founder and Executive Director of SAF, previously told Townhall. "If they are so careless about knowing what is, or is not, shown on their own petitions, how is anyone else supposed...

Washington state’s top-two primary on August 7, for the 2nd U.S. House district, was so close, that there will be a recount. It will be conducted the week of September 3-7. Here is a link to the election returns. The obvious first place finisher is incumbent Democrat Rick Larson. The second place finisher after the original count is the Libertarian, Brian Luke, who leads independent Gary Franco by 51 votes. http://results.vote.wa.gov/results/20180807/Congressional-District-2-US-Representative.html

The recent wave of censorship of conservative voices on the internet by tech giants Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Apple mirrors a plan concocted by a coalition of George Soros-funded, progressive groups to take back power in Washington from President Trump’s administration. A confidential, 49-page memo for defeating Trump by working with the major social-media platforms to eliminate “right wing propaganda and fake news” was presented in January 2017 by Media Matters founder David Brock at a retreat in Florida with about 100 donors, the Washington Free Beacon reported at the time. On Monday, the Gateway Pundit blog noted the memo’s...

Right-wing demonstrators gathered Saturday in Seattle for a "Liberty or Death" rally that drew counter-protesters from the left while dozens of police kept the two sides separated. The right-wing groups Washington 3 Percenters and Patriot Prayer were holding the rally outside Seattle City Hall to protest an effort to launch a gun-control initiative that would raise the age in Washington state for people buying semi-automatic rifles. The left-wing groups Organized Workers for Labor Solidarity, Radical Women and the Freedom Socialist Party were rallying at the same site.

... “In 2016, a lot of us assumed we knew what would happen in Michigan and Wisconsin,” Salvanto told The Post. “It was a great lesson for us pollsters: Even if you think you know what will happen, poll it if you can.” Blame it on the Blue Wall. Since 1992, in six consecutive presidential elections, a solid block of 18 states had voted for the Democrat every single time. They would have given Clinton 239 electoral votes — 89 percent of the way to victory — if she had held on to them all.Few bothered to ask those states’...

BY THE OREGONIAN/OREGONLIVE (Compiled from news accounts, court records, public notices) Last week's arrest of a long-sought accused eco-saboteur pushed the spotlight back on a tight-knit cell of radical environmentalists responsible for a $48 million run of firebombings and other crimes across the West in the 1990s and early 2000s. Six men and five women prosecuted in Oregon received sentences ranging from three years to 13 years. They were arrested starting in 2005 in what the FBI called "Operation Backfire," a task force that tracked down the suspects with the help of an informant deep within the underground group....

Organizers behind gun control Initiative 1639 did not comply with state signature gathering rules, according to a Thurston County superior court judge who ruled in favor of the NRA Friday. I-1639 will now be removed from the November ballot. “The National Rifle Association is glad to see the court today recognized how negligent, if not worse, gun control advocates were in their signature-gathering for this ill-advised ballot initiative,” said Chris W. Cox, executive director, NRA-ILA.Gun rights advocates protested the manner in which I-1639 collected signatures in Washington state. Secretary of State Kim Wyman even commented that her office has never...

Cruel: A spokesman for a prominent Native American tribe is blasting uber-Left-wing politicians in deep blue coastal states for using onerous EPA regulations to deny his people the opportunity to coal, gas, and other forms of energy. The Daily Caller reports that officials in a small number of coastal states led by Washington are essentially denying Crow Tribal members the opportunity to earn a much better living. CJ Stewart, a Crow Tribal member and co-founder of the National Tribe Energy Association, told the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Thursday that his people are dependent on producing energy to...

President Donald Trump sought to cast blame Friday for the cancellation of his planned military parade on Washington city council officials, saying they had inflated the cost. Soon after the President tweeted, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser claimed she "got thru" to Trump about costs for the parade, which at one point was calculated to run about $12 million but more recent estimates said could run as high as $92 million by the time Trump canceled the event. "The local politicians who run Washington, D.C. (poorly) know a windfall when they see it. When asked to give us a price for...

Seattle’s anti-Trump mayor, Jenny Durkan, may be on track for a political backlash: Her city’s $52 million money splash on public transit appears doomed because new taxpayer-funded streetcars apparently won’t fit the existing tracks. Durkan’s office has braced city residents for the possibility, the Seattle Times reported. The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) reportedly ordered 10 new streetcars last year, to help expand the Seattle Streetcar system by linking the two existing streetcar lines. But the new streetcars also are reportedly heavier and longer than the ones currently in use, raising concerns about whether they'll be used at all. “It...