Free Republic

Allen Park is well known for the fiasco surrounding a failed $30 million movie studio the city government got involved in, but that's only part of the problem. Allen Park also is being held hostage by a pension and a retiree health insurance program that is only a dream to people who work in the private sector. Typically, Allen Park's government union workers retire in their 50s, earn close to full salary with mid-career overtime loading, and get lifetime health, dental and vision care for themselves and their dependents for no more than $1,100 a year, according to city documents....

Requires no explanation -- veterans who lost two legs in war are heroes, period -- seriously please just help beat this guy! From: Jon Soltz Subject: Unbelievable! Tammy Duckworth Swiftboated! Date: Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 2:15 PM I was just getting ready for tomorrow's July 4th celebrations when I heard Rep. Joe Walsh's latest smears and had to let you know. Tammy Duckworth needs our support! He's said many disgraceful things about Tammy, her service and veterans in the past, but this is beyond the pale - on the eve of the 4th of July, Joe Walsh wants vets...

A growing number of Republican state leaders are revolting against the major Medicaid expansion called for under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, threatening to undermine one of the law's most fundamental goals: insuring millions of poor Americans. The Supreme Court opened the door Thursday, June 28, when it announced that although the rest of the law is constitutional, the federal government cannot punish states that refuse to adopt the measure's more generous eligibility rules for Medicaid. The Republican governors of four states -- Florida, Iowa, Louisiana and South Carolina -- have declared that they want to opt out of...

Pakistan agreed Tuesday to reopen its border crossings to U.S. and NATO military transit after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton apologized for a deadly U.S. airstrike last year. The moves ended a seven-month diplomatic standoff and raised hopes within the Obama administration that the Pakistanis are ready to expand counterterrorism cooperation. The White House had resisted Pakistan’s insistence on an explicit apology for the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers in the November airstrike. But a flurry of meetings in recent days led to Clinton issuing an artfully worded statement saying she had spoken with her counterpart in Islamabad and...

Vice President Joe Biden faulted Mitt Romney for believing that “so-called job creators” build the economy, as he suggested that government spending and increased taxes on the wealthy would provide long-term economic strength. “[Romney believes] somehow, that those so-called job creators will make everything okay for the rest of us,” Biden said at the National Education Association conference. “We believe that the way to build this country is the way we always have, from the middle out . . . [to] invest in the things that have always made our economy grow: innovation, research, development,

Members are banned from having children, are paid just $50 a week and can be punished for simply looking at somebody the wrong way by being thrown in ‘The Hole’ - two trailers set aside for punishment. It has been investigated by FBI agents looking into human trafficking and one member claimed he was locked in a ship’s hold for 18 hours a day with no food. Holmes is also said to have been alarmed at her daughter being pushed into an academy partly paid for by Will Smith which acts as a feeder to a school popular with Scientologists....

'Obama lies; freedom dies." That was Sarah Palin's tweeted response to last week's Supreme Court decision upholding President Obama's Affordable Care Act. Ultimately, the ruling turned less on lofty principles than on a narrow interpretive distinction. But as Palin's tweet suggests, the court's decision ultimately bears on broader questions about our national ideal of freedom. To appreciate this point requires a brief excursion into political philosophy. In concluding his defense of the Affordable Care Act, Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. argued that access to health care would "unshackle" citizens from the "disabilities" of bad health, thus giving them "the...

Following an profile news story in Newsweek detailing their work in the pro-life movement, Personhood USA leaders Keith and Jennifer Mason, who is pregnant, saw their home become the victim of the violent vandalism attack.In the middle of the night, a large rock was heaved through the double-paned glass of their front door, scattering glass throughout their living room and across the front porch, covering their children’s toys and items for the new baby. The pro-abortion criminals also spray-painted coat hangers and vulgarity in large letters on the front and sides of their house.The Newsweek article profiled the Masons and...

Address to the Nation on Independence Day July 4, 1986 My fellow Americans: In a few moments the celebration will begin here in New York Harbor. It's going to be quite a show. I was just looking over the preparations and thinking about a saying that we had back in Hollywood about never doing a scene with kids or animals because they'd steal the scene every time. So, you can rest assured I wouldn't even think about trying to compete with a fireworks display, especially on the Fourth of July. My remarks tonight will be brief, but it's worth remembering...

IRS officials on background tell FOX Business the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on health reform gives the IRS even more powers than previously understood. The IRS now gets to know about a small business's entire payroll, the level of their insurance coverage -- and it gets to know the income of not just the primary breadwinner in your house, but your entire family’s income, in order to assess/collect the mandated tax. Plus, it gets to share your personal info with all sorts of government agencies, insurance companies and employers. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. "We expect even...

D.C. Council members planned to meet face-to-face with officials from Pepco as soon as Tuesday to address the “unacceptable” pace of the utility’s recovery efforts after Friday night’s fierce storm swept through the region and left hundreds of thousands without power in stifling heat. Their stern response to a third day of widespread outages builds on years of skepticism aimed at the utility that serves nearly 800,000 customers in the District and Maryland. Several city lawmakers could empathize with their constituents’ plight, because they, too, lacked power in their homes. They wondered aloud whether Pepco gave “short shrift” to the...

James Cagney as George M. Cohan Song and Dance man

Danish archaeologists believe they have found the remains of the fabled Viking town Sliasthorp by the Schlei bay in northern Germany, near the Danish border. According to texts from the 8th century, the town served as the centre of power for the first Scandinavian kings. But historians have doubted whether Sliasthorp even existed. This doubt is now starting to falter, as archaeologists from Aarhus University are making one amazing discovery after the other in the German soil. "This is huge. Wherever we dig, we find houses – we reckon there are around 200 of them,” says Andres Dobat, a lecturer...

An ethics complaint against U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has been filed by David Codrea and Mike Vanderboegh with the Office of Bar Counsel, Board on Professional Responsibility of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. Codrea and Vanderboegh are the two bloggers who first broke the news of the Fast and Furious scandal in December 2010.Said Vanderboegh, Eric Holder believes that he will escape serious consequences of the congressional investigations of the Fast and Furious scandal simply by running out the clock on his tenure. We intend this ethics complaint to place him on notice that his lies and...

July 4, 2012   Wednesday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time   Reading 1 Am 5:14-15, 21-24 Seek good and not evil,that you may live;Then truly will the LORD, the God of hosts,be with you as you claim!Hate evil and love good,and let justice prevail at the gate;Then it may be that the LORD, the God of hosts,will have pity on the remnant of Joseph. I hate, I spurn your feasts, says the LORD,I take no pleasure in your solemnities;Your cereal offerings I will not accept,nor consider your stall-fed peace offerings.Away with your noisy songs!I will not listen to...

It was reported on Sunday that Obama was so broken up after touring the devastation caused by the Colorado wildfires that he promptly hopped aboard Air Force One and made an 18-minute conference call to his big donors asking for cash that was described as “pleading” and “a tad worried.” Daily Beast columnist Lloyd Grove, who obtained the audio tape from an Obama donor, went on to refer to the call as “rambling[s]”… from “a dog-tired idealist.” Almost a year ago today, Obama was in hot water for videotaping a campaign commercial in the White House Map Room begging for...

Microsoft spills the beans Microsoft has finally shed some light on Windows 8 upgrade pricing, or the cost of upgrading Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 OS to the upcoming Windows 8, and the actual price is surprisingly low. According to the info over at The Windows Blog, the online version of the upgrade will go for as low as US $39.99 for Windows 8 Pro. The packaged/retail DVD version will be rolling out for slightly higher US $69.99. According to Microsoft, the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant will check to make sure that your PC is ready for Windows 8...

Valerie Jarrett is President Barack Obama’s closest adviser, so close that she can and does overrule senior campaign adviser David Axelrod and members of the Obama cabinet. In a radio appearance on June 30, just two days after the US Supreme Court upheld the ObamaCare individual mandate as a tax, Jarrett appeared on a radio show to bask in the administration’s big win. “We will take it [the court victory] any way we get it,” said Jarrett. “I mean, we argued both ways. We thought this fell within the commerce clause, the court ruled it was a tax.

With the Supreme Court giving President Obama's new health care law a green light, federal and state officials are turning to implementation of the law -- a lengthy and massive undertaking still in its early stages, but already costing money and expanding the government. The Health and Human Services Department "was given a billion dollars implementation money," Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg of Montana said. "That money is gone already on additional bureaucrats and IT programs, computerization for the implementation." "Oh boy," Stan Dorn of the Urban Institute said. "HHS has a huge amount of work to do and the states...

(AP) — Campfires, fireworks and even lit cigarettes can spark wildfires. In the tinder-dry West, there is growing concern about the threat from guns.This year, officials believe target shooting or other firearms use sparked at least 21 wildfires in Utah and nearly a dozen in Idaho. Shooting is also believed to have caused fires in Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico.Those concerns come as states grapple with ways to cut the risk of new fires ahead of the Fourth of July holiday when many people fire their guns to celebrate the nation's independence.