Free Republic

A patient with Ebola-like symptoms is being treated at Howard University Hospital, a hospital spokesperson confirms. The patient had traveled to Nigeria recently.

In Washington, D.C., where issuing traffic citations is a $179 million-a-year business, drivers get speeding tickets for violations they donÂ’t commit and for vehicles theyÂ’ve never owned. Those are among the findings in a 115-page audit of the three city agencies that issued nearly 2.5 million parking and traffic tickets in fiscal 2013, according to a withering report issued Monday by the D.C. inspector general. The report portrays the District as the Wild West of traffic enforcement when compared with neighboring jurisdictions and the states, with a shortage of regulations, a legion of ticket writers often confused about the rules,...

Post your conditions or noticable behavior of your city officials here. Little Rock-

On Aug. 24, 1814, the British started a fire — and ultimately kindled a capital’s future. The day began like so many days in Washington, with a painfully long meeting marked by confusion, misinformation and indecision. The British were coming. They were on the march in the general direction of Washington. The precise target of the invaders remained unclear, but their intentions were surely malign. James Madison, the fourth president of these young United States, had raced to a private home near the Navy Yard for an emergency war council with top generals and members of his Cabinet. The secretary...

Race-based hate crimes jumped in the District last year even as most other types of bias crimes decreased, with analysts saying such incidents could be vastly underreported among minority groups uncomfortable coming forward to authorities. D.C. police say that of the 18 race-based hate crimes in 2013, the majority of victims were white and the majority of suspects black. The number of incidents was up from the 13 race-based bias crimes reported in 2012. SEE ALSO: Race pimps and war tanks: Why Ferguson was a perfect storm The disclosure comes as a wave of protests and unrest after the fatal...

Transportation Security Administration workers will be getting training on how to recognize District of Columbia driver’s licenses and identification cards. […] The Washington Post reported earlier this year that a District teacher was questioned about the validity of her license while boarding a plane in Phoenix. Many similar stories later surfaced. …

Everyone knows how safe the streets of Washington, DC are [where as of 2010 violent crime was three times the national average], and how DC criminals scrupulously respect the District's very restrictive gun-control laws. So of course the last thing you would want is to permit law-abiding citizens to exercise their Constitutional rights to keep and bear arms. Why, that would only lead to the Gunfight at the DC Corral. No, better to keep all the guns in the hands of criminals. Such seems to be Eugene Robinson's logic. On today's Morning Joe, the Washington Post columnist bemoaned a federal...

A flash mob broke out in the Petworth neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Friday night, prompting police to fire a riot control agent into a crowd near a subway station.The episode underscores boiling tensions in a neighborhood that — like many inner-city communities across the country — is trying to launch a major “revitalization” project that will see the opening of upwardly-priced new apartment units this summer to accompany a major new chain store.Reports on social media suggest that D.C. Metropolitan Police broke up a party in Petworth due to fighting, prompting a crowd of teenage partiers — at least one...

WASHINGTON - A Virginia man is furious after he was pulled over in Alexandria while driving in a funeral procession. He missed his great-grandmother's burial because of the delay, his family says. Now Alexandria police are reviewing the stop. With their hazard and headlights on, Heather Spinner and her husband were on Duke Street driving to the Mount Comfort Cemetery on June 12 when they noticed red and blue flashing lights in the rear-view mirror. "My brother-in-law behind us was actually pulled over for running a red light," Spinner says. Both her husband and brother-in-law, R.G. Spinner, removed their yellow...

The Roman Catholic archbishop of San Francisco said Monday it’s his duty to proclaim “the truth about marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife,” even when those views are unpopular. The comment by Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone came in response to a coalition of liberal politicians, fellow clergy and gay-rights leaders who have urged him to skip an upcoming March for Marriage event in Washington. Cordileone, who chairs the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ subcommittee on the promotion and defense of marriage, is a scheduled speaker at Thursday’s march and rally sponsored by the National Organization for Marriage and...

The public schools in Washington, D.C., spent $29,349 per pupil in the 2010-2011 school year, according to the latest data from National Center for Education Statistics, but in 2013 fully 83 percent of the eighth graders in these schools were not "proficient" in reading and 81 percent were not "proficient" in math. These are the government schools in our nation's capital city -- where for decades politicians of both parties have obstreperously pushed for more federal involvement in education and more federal spending on education. Government has manifestly failed the families who must send their children to these schools, and...

Claiming that the District of Columbia's ObamaCare exchange is just too darn small in size to pay for itself, Mayor Vince Gray (D) is proposing the city council "approve legislation granting the District's exchange board broad new power to tax any health-related insurance product sold in the city -- regardless of whether it's offered on the exchange," Washington Post staffer Aaron Davis reported this morning.

A coalition of ranchers, farmers and native tribes are staging protests against the Keystone XL pipeline on the National Mall this week with teepees, horses and a sacred fire that will burn for days The National Mall in Washington, D.C., will look like a scene out of an Old Western this week, as the Cowboy and Indian Alliance holds a multi-day protest against the Keystone XL pipeline complete with teepees, horses and religious ceremonies. The confederation of ranchers, farmers and members of Native American tribes kicks off the week of protest and civil disobedience Tuesday, Earth Day, with a horse...

This is a topic that one must approach delicately so as not to offend the reader’s sensibilities, but since it is a matter of importance for which you may receive a bill for some portion of $470 million, we start out with an analogy. You need energy, so you eat. Through the miracle of digestion, your body sorts what you have eaten, say, a pastrami on rye with a glob of coleslaw and a dill pickle, and plucks out the nutrients — proteins, carbohydrates and sugars it needs to generate power. Then it jettisons the rest. What your body jettisons...

n an interview published Thursday in Roll Call, Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) lamented that his $174,000 annual salary was not enough to live "decently" in Washington, D.C. "I think the American people should know that the members of Congress are underpaid," Moran said. "I understand that it’s widely felt that they underperform, but the fact is that this is the board of directors for the largest economic entity in the world." The remarks came as the House begins markup on a bill to fund all legislators' salaries. Moran is planning to introduce an amendment that would offer lawmakers a per...

"9/11 plotter released in Syria prisoner exchange" SNIPPET: "The al-Qaeda recruiter reputed to have assembled the so-called Hamburg Cell, which planned and largely carried out the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, has been set free in a prisoner exchange between rebel and regime forces in Syria. Islamist rebel group Ahrar al-Sham has secured the release of 9/11 plotter and alleged al-Qaeda core member Mohammed Haydar Zammar, adding to concerns about the composition of the Islamic Front. A naturalized German citizen of Syrian origin, Mohammed Haydar Zammar left Germany shortly after the attacks and traveled to Morocco, where he was reportedly...

Five firefighters and four emergency dispatchers will face discipline over the poor handling and lack of response to an incident in which firefighters did not come to the aid of a man who collapsed across the street from a D.C. fire station, according to a report released Friday. The 13-page internal report issued by Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice Paul A. Quander Jr. lays the blame on both the trained medical personnel inside the fire station who refused to come to the aid of a man who was suffering from a heart attack as well as on emergency...

Feeling chipper about the economy? Think the future looks so bright, you gotta wear shades? Chances are, you’re either stuck in a 1980s time warp or … you live in Washington, DC. Gallup published its polling on economic confidence by state, and the only “state” to have a positive rating is the one where all the cash is going. Instapundit refers to this as a “Hunger Games update,” and it’s difficult to dispute that characterization: Although scores on Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index improved in most U.S. states in 2013, the index remained negative in all 50. Only the District of...

Gallup’s latest economic findings are seemingly straight out of the dystopian novel “The Hunger Games.” That is to say, every state in the nation boasted a negative economic index score; only the District of Columbia -- the capital city -- is seemingly prospering. Surprise: The pollsters posit some interesting takeaways for us to consider: (1) the disparity between the most economically confident state (Massachusetts) and the least economically confident state (West Virginia) is 43 percentage points. (This excludes the District of Columbia, of course, which is not a state).That’s an enormous gap, and one that doesn’t appear to be shrinking,...

Harry Reid and his Democrat Senate Campaign Committee (DSCC) are launching all out send me some money pleas to combat those old meanies, the Koch Brothers who “have already severely outspent the Democrats” in six battleground states that hold the key to a Senate takeover in November. Saying the consequences could be “ABSOLUTELY DIRE,” Reid and Senate Dems are warning that recent polls favor a Republican control shift because the math already is baked in. “That’s why it’s absolutely critical that 10,000 folks step up in the next 96 hours to respond. . .if we can’t fill the gap in...