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Dear Carrie, I'm 55 and in a position to leave my full-time job and work freelance from home. I'm trying to weigh the financial benefits vs. costs. Any tips? --A Reader Dear Reader, When thinking about working at home, most people focus only on the pluses: no commute, flexible schedule, more personal time, little or no cost for things like transportation, wardrobe and eating out. It all sounds great. And it can be. By working freelance from your home, you'll certainly cut down on a lot of work-related expenses. But what might you be giving up? Most full-time jobs come...

The average state worker in Michigan is taking as many as five times more sick days than a worker in the hospitality and leisure industry or a construction worker and more than twice as many sick days as many other workers in the private sector, according to state and national reports. State workers have called in sick on average between 9.4 to 11 days a year over the past five years, according to the Michigan Civil Service Commission annual workforce report. The report applies only to workers directly employed by the state; not public school teachers or local government workers....

The 2012 presidential campaign is over, but not for President Obama. The community organizer turned Senator turned president, who ran on hope and change in 2008 and its antipode character assassination in 2012, has no intention of putting politics behind him. Rather, he is seeking to wage a total war against the Republicans for their political immiseration. Total war is a two-pronged approach to battle: first, mobilizing the entire population for the war effort; and second, targeting the entire enemy population, not just its military. Examples from World War Two include German submarine attacks on merchant ships and passenger ships,...

FARMINGTON, N.M. (AP) — Speakers from major oil companies and the U.S. Department of Energy are expected to participate in a conference on the potential for shale oil production in the San Juan Basin.

(NOTE: This letter is a response from Mark Alexander to his son, a Cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy, concerning the Boy Scouts of America national board proposal to allow homosexual Scout leaders. Alexander is both a Troop Scoutmaster and member of his area Boy Scout Executive Council.) I received your note about news of an upcoming proposal before the Boy Scouts of America national board, which meets Wednesday, February 6th. According to the news release regarding that proposal, "The BSA is discussing potentially removing the national membership restriction regarding sexual orientation." You are correct, the removal of this...

Not a single gun shop can be found in this city. They are outlawed. Handguns were banned in Chicago for decades, too, until 2010, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that was going too far, leading city leaders to settle for restrictions some describe as the closest they could get legally to a ban without a ban. And yet Chicago, a city with bans on both assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, finds itself laboring to stem a flood of gun violence that contributed to more than 500 homicides last year and at least 40 killings already in 2013.

A 2012 performance review of the The Colorado Energy Office (CEO) revealed several disturbing findings by the State Auditor last month, which included a non-existent accounting system for CEO’s 34 programs, a runaway budget, and staff who had no knowledge of program goals or standards. The forty-eight page report was was dated December 18, 2012 and included background information on the CEO, key facts and findings, the State Auditor concerns, and recommendations for the CEO moving forward. The CEO was established via executive order in 1977 as the Office of Energy Conservation. Last year, House Bill 12-1315 changed CEO’s overall...

January 16, 2013 Where Congress Stands on Guns Lena Groeger In the aftermath of the Newtown tragedy, President Obama on Wednesday announced new national gun control measures. He has already urged members of Congress to do the same. Here is our comprehensive look at where lawmakers stand on guns, as well as political spending and voting history... (How individual members, House and Senate, rank with the NRA and the Brady Campaign on Gun Rights and Gun Control)

A United States minesweeper ship that crashed into a coral reef due to inaccurate Navy maps will have to be cut into small pieces and removed in order to prevent harming the ocean’s ecosystem, according to the Navy and other reports. The $277 million USS Guardian, a Naval warship that clears waterways of mines, crashed into a coral reef near the Philippines earlier this month. The Navy will disassemble it piece by piece in order to avoid damaging the reef rather than tow the multi-million dollar ship off of the reef and perform necessary repairs. “Our only supportable option is...

Israel conducted a rare airstrike on a military target inside Syria, foreign officials and Syrian state TV say, amid fears President Bashar al-Assad's regime is providing weapons to the Islamic militant group Hezbollah. A statement from the Syrian military read aloud on state TV confirmed the strike, saying the jets bombed a military research centre in the area of Jamraya, northwest of the capital, Damascus.

This is a standing invitation to my fellow Americans: If congress ever enacts a law mandating the registration and/or a production ban of detachable magazine semiautomatic rifles then you are hereby invited to the town square of your local community. There, burn barrels will be set up and we will publicly burn Form 4473s, FFL Bound Books, state and local registration records, and the sales receipts for every firearm in the United States. On that same day, FFL holders and public officials holding electronic firearms records will simultaneously erase those records, permanently and irretrievably. (Using special file erasure software such...

FBI agents have raided the West Palm Beach, Fla. eye clinic owned by Dr. Salomon Melgen, the wealthy donor to New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez who allegedly procured prostitutes for him — some of them as young as 16 — during trips to the Dominican Republic.

'When an alien voting bloc begins to dominate American politics, there's no stopping whatever they want' Could it be that “comprehensive immigration reform” isn’t even needed, because the population of illegals in the United States already has won the fight? There are experts in the field who suggest President Obama already may have taken action that, essentially, has ended the controversy. “As distasteful as pardoning lawbreakers is, the problem with amnesty has never been amnesty itself. Rather, it’s the certainty that amnesty will be followed by yet another wave of illegal aliens permitted to settle here owing to elite indifference...

Norway is failing to live up to its obligations as a member of the European Economic Area (EEA), including imposing extra taxes on EU products and not implementing more than 400 directives, according to an EU report to be published later this year. … Moreover, the EU also dislikes the fact that Norway has rejected several directives coming from Brussels. The Norwegian government has for example warned it won’t implement the EU’s postal directive about competitiveness for letter mail weighing less than 50 grams. … (Denmark MEP Bendt) Bendtsen said the problems in the EU-Norway relations could eventually affect the...

Why do all these shootings seem to come in waves? Sometimes multiple shootings or gun related crimes happen in one day? For instance an office shooting in Phoenix AND.. this other crazed guy who took a child hostage down in a "bunker" This happened a week or so ago where we had two or three shootings in different cities on in one day?? What's going on???

Last week, Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced a new, supposedly improved version of the federal "assault weapon" ban that expired in 2004. But like that earlier law, which the California Democrat also sponsored, Feinstein's bill prohibits the manufacture and sale of guns based on characteristics that have little or nothing to do with the danger they pose. Although arbitrary distinctions are a defining characteristic of "assault weapon" bans, recent polls indicate that most Americans support them. New survey data suggest one possible explanation: Most Americans don't know what "assault weapons" are. Feinstein's bill would ban "157 dangerous military-style assault weapons" by...

President Obama is riding a wave of personal popularity into his second term, with his highest favorability ratings since his first year in office, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.Fully 60 percent of Americans have a favorable impression of Obama in the new poll, up slightly from October but a clear shift in opinion from an election year in which his ratings hovered in the mid-to-low 50s. And by 39 percent to 26 percent, the president now has more “strongly” positive ratings than strongly negative reviews, breaking a two-year stretch in which intense opposition was on par...

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard surprised voters on Wednesday by announcing that national elections will be held September 14, in a country where governments have traditionally given the opposition little more than a month’s notice to keep a strategic advantage. September 14, 2013, falls on Yom Kippur, leading former opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull to post on Twitter that he was “deeply disappointed that Julia Gillard chose to hold the election on Yom Kippur — the most solemn and sacred day of the Jewish year.”

The federal government is, in practice, a one-party state controlled by an oligarchy, which is a relatively small group, composed of financiers, politicians and journalists. Written by Lawrence Sellin The oligarchy is roughly divided into two types of individuals: ideologues and pragmatists. Ideologues are adherents to uncompromising and dogmatic policies and are determined and unyielding in achieving their goals. Pragmatists have no solid core principles and will adjust their political positions for the purpose of remaining accepted members of the oligarchy. The ideologues always drive the political agenda, which is only moderated or delayed when met by sufficient resistance. Think...

Originally, I planned to add this to the GDP announcement --- but that was before the BEA laid an egg, and a red egg at that. Instead, let's look at the early indicator from ADP of Friday's upcoming BLS jobs report, which is a lot sunnier than Q4 GDP would suggest: Private sector employment increased by 192,000 jobs from December to January, according to the January ADP National Employment Report, which is produced by ADP, a leading provider of human capital management services, in collaboration with MoodyÂ’s Analytics. The report, which is derived from ADPÂ’s actual payroll data, measures the...