Free Republic

On January 22, a committee of the Rapid City School Board implied that homeschoolers were to blame for the school system losing thousands of dollars in funding. Just six days later, the Clear Lake Courier blamed homeschoolers for the loss of $41,000 in school funding. When homeschoolers are wrongly accused of creating financial problems for public school systems, it’s time to respond. HSLDA attorney Scott A. Woodruff sent the following letter to the editor to the Clear Lake Courier: Dear Editor: By leaving the blame for the school system losing $41,981 at the door of area homeschoolers, your recent article,...

For 31 years, Mary Quigley's mother waited for her 17-year-old daughter's rape and murder to be solved. For 31 years, Brendan Murry, who used to walk the pretty blond-haired senior home from Santa Clara High School, wondered who it was that instilled fear into the community and got away with stringing Quigley's body up from a park fence. And for most of that time, Richard Archibeque lived as a free man, getting married, divorced and raising a daughter who is now the same age as Quigley was the night of her gruesome death. After three decades — and three days...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The engineer of a commuter train that crashed and killed 25 people in California last year planned to let a teenage railroad fan operate the locomotive on the night of the collision, text messaging days earlier — "I'm gonna do all the radio talkin' ... ur gonna run the locomotive."

A Posteriori. Revising what you know about something based on the observed evidence. Recalculating your probabilities on the strength of how the coin turned out. The arithmetic should be simple: eight hundred billion dollars and the fact that a penny weighs 2.5 grams means that a two million ton penny has dropped. It’s the size of twenty aircraft carriers. Even solid Obama supporters are slowly approaching the gigantic coin to see if has turned up heads or tails. Jan 29, 2009 — “I don’t want to get over your head here but why in the world aren’t we doing what...

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Hello, everybody. Good to see you. Where -- where are the Brits? (UNKNOWN): They're over here. OBAMA: They're over there, huh? BRITISH PRIME MINISTER GORDON BROWN: In fact, Barack, they're everywhere. OBAMA: Are they? They're spread out? All right. My understanding is, we're going to do four questions. And we'll just alternate. I'll start off with Jennifer Loven of A.P. QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) OBAMA: You know, I think that the report that was in the New York Times didn't accurately characterize the letter. What we had was a very lengthy letter talking about a whole range of issues,...

OKLAHOMA CITY – Private employers would be prohibited from asking applicants if they own a gun by Senate Bill 793, by state Sen. Anthony Sykes, R-Moore. The bill passed on a vote of 43-1 in the state Senate on Monday. An employer who asks an applicant for any information about whether the applicant owns or possesses a firearm would be subject to a $1,000 fine and/or 90 days in the county jail. “So an employer could be put in jail if they ask during the interview process?” asked state Sen. Tom Adelson, D-Tulsa, who cast the lone vote against the...

WASHINGTON - A commuter train engineer text messaged a promise to a teenage railroad fan — "I'm gonna do all the radio talkin' ... ur gonna run the locomotive" — minutes before a crash that killed 25 people in California last year, according to documents from federal investigators. The transcript of text messages sent and received by engineer Robert Sanchez were released Tuesday as the National Transportation Safety Board opened a two-day hearing into the Sept. 12 collision in the Los Angeles suburb of Chatsworth that also injured at least 130 people.

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama is comparing the stock market to the daily tracking polls used during campaigns, saying that paying too close attention to Wall Street's "fits and starts" could lead to bad long-term policy. Obama spoke to reporters Tuesday after meeting in the Oval Office with visiting British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Obama said he is not measuring policies against "the day-to-day gyrations of the stock market,"

The Dow fell below 7000 this week. But I was looking at the numbers, and it was standing at about 1000 points in the 1979-1981 time frame (I wanted to pick a good point to start from). Then I did a simple calculation assuming 3%, then 4% average growth rate since that time 29 years ago. (1.03)^29 = 2.36 (1.04)^29 = 3.12 Would this make the real value of the Dow Jones to be about 2360 to 3120? I know the future value is higher, due to market expectations, and confidence in future earnings, but when the Dow was 14,000,...

Okay Freepers in the East Tennessee/Western North Carolina/ Southeastern VA Area, we’re gonna have a picnic! Time to gather, meet one another, and become a potential network in the coming months if needed. [ It’s also fun to have a picnic in the Spring before the insects get going too strongly. ] My family has a nice picnic area with entertainment pavillion in Boones Creek (the Tri-Cities area) and I am inviting you freeper folks to gather there on April 18th for food and conversation. I’m not even asking y’all to bring anything to the picnic, unless you have something...

Castro's propaganda ministry is not notorious for fawning over Republicans. But lately they've been gushing over the Ranking Republican member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Senator Richard Lugar. "Changing Cuba Policy-Staff Trip Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations United States Senate," is the title of the report Senator Lugar released on Tuesday February 24rd to delirious and unanimous acclaim from the mainstream media. This acclaim-- to the surprise of no Cuba-watchers--was quickly echoed in Havana. Typically, as with anything spoken or written regarding Castro and Cuba that receives such Beltway media acclaim, the report is a...

You know Katie Couric and her CBS Evening News have some serious problems when they become the butt of sports-talk mockery . . . On his ESPN show this afternoon, the acerbic Jim Rome raked Alex Rodriguez for seeking career advice from Couric. JIM ROME: Katie Couric says that while she was trying to line up an interview with Alex Rodriguez back in ‘07, he actually asked her what she thought that he should do about his contract: quote, what team do you think I should play for? . . . Katie Couric? I mean, judging from her ratings, she...

Here we go again - another Obama administration/media personality feud in the works. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has no problem addressing media critics of President Barack Obama - even on an individual basis. Since Obama was sworn in as president, Gibbs has addressed criticism from conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, CNBC mercantile exchange floor reporter Rick Santelli and now CNBC "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer. During the March 3 White House press briefing, Tom Costello of NBC News asked Gibbs to respond to remarks from Cramer, who was described as "not a conservative," made on NBC's March 3...

CNN's Jeffrey Toobin reportedly "crossed the line" with Casey Greenfield, daughter of a CBS reporter. Columnists Rush & Molloy don't give details, but one can speculate from what they omit: Greenfield is pregnant. Toobin, 13 years Greenfield's senior, is still married (with children) to Amy McIntosh. Toobin declined to talk to the Daily News about his relationship with Greenfield, as did Greenfield herself. Their refusal to speak is sure to arch eyebrows. Given Greenfield's advanced pregnancy, which she tracks on her Facebook profile, Rush & Molloy surely knew what their item was implying: Toobin is the father of Greenfield's child....

By Philip Rucker Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, March 3, 2009; Page A01 President Obama's budget is so ambitious, with vast new spending on health care, energy independence, education and services for veterans, that experts say he probably will need to hire tens of thousands of new federal government workers to realize his goals. The $3.6 trillion plan released last week proposes spending billions to begin initiatives and implement existing programs, and given Obama's insistence that he would scale back the use of private-sector contractors, his priorities could reverse a generational decline in the size of the government workforce. Exactly...

President Obama said Tuesday that the country already is "seeing shovels hit the ground" on the first infrastructure repair project funded through the Transportation Department's share of the $787 billion stimulus bill. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said, "The work begins today in Montgomery County, Maryland, where a work crew is starting on a project to resurface Maryland State Highway 650 -- a very busy road that has not been fully repaired in 17 years." The resurfacing contract is going to a Pennsylvania-based family-owned company, America Infrastructure, LaHood said. He said the project will support 60 jobs. "And that's how we're...

Cardinal Roger Mahony has banned Holocaust-denying British Bishop Richard Williamson from entering any Roman Catholic church, school or other facility in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Mahony published the ban today in a joint statement with two members of the American Jewish Committee. Williamson is one of four members of an ultra-traditionalist group who were excommunicated. He denied the Holocaust in a previously taped interview broadcast in January on the same day Pope Benedict XVI lifted his excommunication. Mahony's statement makes no mention of any plans by Williamson to come to Los Angeles, but it notes that the situation has...

On Today's Show...   Obama Aims to "Remake" Nation and Stamp It with His Own Emblem He wants to drive the country deep, deep into disaster, so he can ride in with government and remake the country as a high-tax, low-freedom, socialist republic. (Rush 24/7 Members:  Listen) » The Heritage Foundation: Obama Adds 250,000 New Government Workers   "If Obama's policies 'work' -- quote, unquote -- you won't recognize the America in which you live.   The federal government will control the means of production, which is a key part of socialism. Why, in the name of God that...

By more than a two-to-one margin, Americans believe the Democratic Party is better suited to getting the country out of a recession over the Republican Party, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll to be released today. Almost half of all respondents, 48%, identified the Democratic Party, while just one in five, or 20%, said the Republican Party. Some 8% said both parties were equally qualified, while 16% said neither party was qualified. Comparatively, in December 1990 when the U.S. economy was also going through a recession, the Democratic and Republican parties tied at 33% when asked who...