Free Republic

For the past three years, art director Matilda Kahl has been wearing the same outfit to work every single day. “I just wanted to save some time and energy,” she told Business Insider. Kahl was tired of running late in the morning, reevaluating her outfits, and stressing about whether her clothes were appropriate for different events or meetings at her creative advertising agency. For someone in the creative field who has to make a lot of decisions throughout the day, she longed for one less choice to make. “During the weekdays, I have so many creative challenges at work to...

Happy Earth Day! Today is a day we can all band together and share our love for this beautiful planet—or at least drown our sorrows about climate change with nerdy themed cocktails. Later today, President Barack Obama will mark the occasion with a climate-focused speech in the Florida Everglades. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination, had a different idea: Fire a big chunk of the state's environmental staff. From the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: Fifty-seven employees of the state Department of Natural Resources began receiving formal notices this week that they might face layoff as part of...

A lawyer for the man who shot President Ronald Reagan has told a court his client should be permanently released from his mental health hospital. John Hinckley Jr shot the president, who survived, and three others outside the Hilton Hotel in Washington in 1981. Mr Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity but was sent for treatment to a Washington hospital. Currently, he spends 17 days per month at his mother's home in the nearby state of Virginia. Mr Hinckley's lawyer, Barry Levine, told a federal court on Wednesday that the would-be assassin is "clinically ready" to leave...

His name is Peter. He’s a “concerned 8-year-old citizen.” And when it comes to expressing his concerns about the direction America is headed, he sugarcoats nothing. Peter’s shoot-from-the-hip sentiments were on full display in a blistering handwritten letter he penned to first lady Michelle Obama, which appeared in the Weekly Standard. So why wasn’t the letter addressed to the president? Apparently Peter initially got miffed over the first lady’s much-maligned school lunch calorie cutback — even though he attends a private school — and simply added other issues to the letter: “He said something about wanting to ‘give a voice...

Tesla shares (TSLA) are getting a charge from a Bloomberg report that the company will unveil a home battery and a large-scale utility battery, at an event at its Hawthorne design studio next week. Bloomberg got a hold of an email from Tesla’s investor-relations chief saying the company will explain the benefits of Tesla’s solutions compared to battery options in the past. There has been speculation that Tesla will look to challenge the traditional utility power grid with home and utility batteries, and a research note from Deutsche Bank says Tesla could be at the forefront of an energy storage...

That didn’t take long. Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wis.) is now the first 2016 GOP presidential potential walking the anti-immigration plank, hoping — against history — that this time it will lead to the White House and not just to a watery political death. Since Republican nominee Mitt Romney crashed in 2012 on the shoals of his "self-deportation" strategy of harassing immigrants until they left the country, many Republican leaders and operatives have concluded that Romney's immigration policies were sure losers in a national election. How else to explain Romney's showing among American Latino voters — the worst since President Ford?...

These are fighting words for the Left. The Left has been given a free pass by the mainstream press over the last decade with regard to their immigration agenda’s effect on the ordinary American worker. Huge legal immigration combined with gargantuan illegal immigration has put downward pressure on blue-collar wages and reduced the opportunities for Americans to find good jobs. This is an obvious consequence of millions of legal and illegal immigrants coming into America to compete with regular Americans looking for work. Yesterday, Scott Walker told the mainstream press and the Left that their emperor has no clothes. A...

Bruce Jenner, the thrice-married father of six who’s set to reveal he’s transitioning to a woman, was spotted wearing a floor-length striped dress Tuesday outside his Malibu home. Jenner, 65, was photographed sporting the long-sleeved black-and-white dress, with a slit from the knee to the hem, while stretching and smoking a cigarette on the mansion’s patio. The photos emerged less than three days before Jenner’s highly-anticipated interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC where it is believed he will discuss his future as a woman. “My whole life has been getting me ready for this,” Jenner, his shoulder-length hair pulled back...

BERLIN (AP) — A widely used assault rifle has "no future" with the German military in its current form, Germany's defense minister said Wednesday, escalating a dispute over the weapon's alleged shortcomings. Ursula von der Leyen said last month that a study showed the G36 rifle has a "precision problem, particularly at high temperatures."....

[During] Governor Palin's....first major interview...interviewer Charles Gibson asked her what insight she had gained from living so close to Russia, and she responded: "They're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska":

Colorado lawmakers started work Wednesday on a proposal to ask voters to keep some $58 million in marijuana tax collections. Colorado voters already approved the taxes on recreational pot sales in 2013. But because that ballot measure didn’t account for a quirk in state law related to new taxes, the money will have to be refunded unless voters again approve the 10 percent sales and 15 percent excise taxes. Colorado voters approved the taxes the first time by a 2-to-1 margin. The new ballot measure has broad bipartisan support, with lawmakers calling the measure a do-over of what voters already...

Full title: Judicial Watch, AEF File Amici Brief with Supreme Court Supporting Arizona, Kansas Efforts to Require Proof of Citizenship on Voter Registration Forms ‘Illegal voting at any level can change the outcome of elections. And there is no acceptable amount of fraud.’ (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has joined with the Allied Educational Foundation (AEF) to file an amici curiae brief with the United States Supreme Court in support of Arizona’s and Kansas’ efforts to add proof-of-citizenship requirements to a federal voter registration form ( Kris W. Kobach, et al., v. U. S. Election Assistance...

Authorities at Fort Benning, the U.S. Army post in west Georgia, say they're dealing with an ongoing "emergency situation" at the post's Warrior Transition Battalion. Fort Benning officials said Wednesday afternoon on the base's official Facebook account and on Twitter that officials have secured the area and that personnel were safety evacuated as a precaution. Officials at the scene have determined that there is no longer a threat to anyone on base, according to a Facebook post. Base officials said in the social media posts that children in a child development center were safe but were being moved to another...

The correct answer is false. Instead of ensuring that all legal practitioners are competent, the bar exam (and its long prelude, law school) merely creates an artificial barrier that keeps many people from competing in the market for legal services. That has two main consequences. First, some people who could earn a pretty good living as attorneys are prevented from doing so; they have to look for work in other fields. Second, some people (quite a large number in fact) are unable to afford legal help when they need it because few of those who do overcome the barrier to...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday introduced a short bill that would extend key expiring provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, a sign this extension could happen without any substantive talk about whether and how to reform these provisions. The bill from McConnell and Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) would extend sections of the PATRIOT Act through 2020 that allow access to business records and roving surveillance. The business records provision is found in the controversial Section 215 of the bill, which has been used to justify access to phone records.

<p>AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — More than 9,000 Maine residents have been removed from the state's food stamp program since Republican Gov. Paul LePage's administration began enforcing work and volunteer requirements late last year, officials said.</p> <p>The number of people that have been dropped from the program has exceeded even the administration's expectations.</p>

<p>DES MOINES, Iowa — They don't make power suits in her size. If asked for political insights, she might just respond with a goo or a giggle. And her campaign vehicle of choice is a stroller.</p> <p>But Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky is playing a significant part in Grandma Hillary's 2016 presidential bid. Since her birth in September, the daughter of Chelsea Clinton and husband Marc Mezvinsky has been a political star, photographed while cradled in the arms of Bill and Hillary Clinton and name-dropped by her grandmother as a newborn during the 2014 midterm elections.</p>

CERAWEEK-U.S. fracking costs falling fast, may keep fields in play HOUSTON, April 22     (Reuters) - U.S. oil and natural gas companies have pushed down costs of fracking a shale well faster than expected, and if the trend holds up it could allow producers to keep working in oilfields that just months ago looked uncompetitive after the oil price crash.A more than 50 percent fall in the price of crude oil since June has left oil and gas producers insisting on steep price cuts from oilfield service companies that provide everything from drilling rigs to hydraulic fracturing.Oil is trading...

..."The next president and the next Congress need to make decisions about a legal immigration system that's based on, first and foremost, on protecting American workers and American wages," Walker said. "Because the more I've talked to folks—I've talked to Sen. Sessions and others out there, but it is a fundamentally lost issue by many in elected positions today—is what is this doing for American workers looking for jobs, what is this doing to wages, and we need to have that be at the forefront of our discussion going forward."Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera, responded, “It...

President Obama said he wanted Americans to gain perspective and be thankful there is less violence now than there was during the Cold War. Obama predicted Islam’s process to rid itself of extremism would be a “generational project,” he said in an interview with Chris Matthews. “I remind people that, you know, there actually is probably less war and less violence around the world today than there might have been 30, 40 years ago. It doesn’t make it any less painful but things can get better,” Obama said. The president set a high standard for himself: at least the United...