Free Republic

Numerous state statutes require that cities, townships, school districts, and counties publish advance notice of events and actions such as meetings, ordinances, assessments, proposed rezoning, and elections in traditional hard copy newspapers. Legislation offered in the Michigan House could put an end to that requirement. House Bill 4183 would, over a nine-year period, end the requirement that local governments post public notices in newspapers and let the notices be posted online instead. Debate over the measure pits efficiency, the prospects of saving taxpayer dollars, and current reading habits against weakening of transparency. The bill, which is sponsored by Rep. Amanda...

PASADENA, Calif. — Shattered cave formations in the central United States may preserve one of the longest records of powerful earthquakes in this region. Historical records from European settlers provide vivid accounts of deadly earthquakes in states such as Missouri, Tennessee and Illinois. For instance, in 1811 and 1812, people saw the ground ripple like ocean waves when the New Madrid Fault Zone unleashed earthquakes thought to be greater than magnitude 8. However, no written accounts exist from before Europeans arrived. And most earthquake faults in the Midwest are hidden deep beneath the surface, so scientists can't dig into the...

As Pope Francis continues his revolution against all things traditional, it is becoming clearer every day that faithful Catholics are beginning to wake up to what is really going on. Please watch and share this video post. Father Linus Clovis fearlessly addresses the issue of Pope Francis's compromise, the need to resist, the need to stay in the Church, the need to be ready to accept martyrdom rather than back down. Father Clovis is a priest of the Archdiocese of Castries, St. Lucia in the West Indies. He studied for the priesthood at the Angelicum in Rome and was ordained...

you can ban me now

In a burst of bipartisanship, the Republican-controlled Senate put President Obama's trade agenda back on course on Thursday, clearing the way for likely approval within days for legislation allowing the administration to negotiate global deals that Congress could support or reject but not change. The 65-33 vote to resurrect the measure capped two days of political intrigue in which Democrats on both sides of the legislation initially joined forces to block action, then reached agreement with Republicans for votes on other enforcement measures to protect workers who lose jobs as a result of exports.

Hawaii’s Obamacare exchange website will soon shut down because it is not financially viable, Americans for Tax Reform reports. The exchange website will be shutdown despite $205 million in federal taxpayer funds. The migration to a federal exchange will cost taxpayers another $30 million. [Snip] According to ATR, with only 8,592 enrollees, the state spent $23,899 on each individual.

ALTON, IL (KTRK) -- A police officer will be investigated after an incident caught on camera in January at police headquarters in Alton, Illinois. An officer is seen apparently using pepper spray on two teenagers handcuffed inside a holding cell. One of the teens is seen twitching and shaking after being sprayed. So far, as KMOV reports, no action has been taken against the police officer involved.

Do individual human beings matter? They do to Pope Francis, who recently had 150 of Rome’s homeless persons receive a tour of the Vatican museums and the Sistine Chapel. Particular men and women, so some folks tell us, aren’t that important, because if you really want to “change the world” and help people, you must turn your gaze from the people you see in front of you and contemplate instead social structures/societal forces/the root causes of poverty. This kind of thinking is common in places like the New York Times editorial pages, which seem to think Pope Francis shares their...

JEFFERSON CITY, MO – Missouri House Speaker John Diehl has resigned after screen shots of text message conversations were published in the Kansas City Star on Wednesday. He was attempting to repair his reputation and retain his powerful position while seeking forgiveness for what he describes as his “poor judgment” with a 19-year-old legislative intern. Diehl said Thursday that he is resigning both from his House speaker’s position and from his elected job as a Republican representative from suburban St. Louis. This is a statement from John Diehl’s office: "I appreciate those who have stood beside me and the overwhelming...

Michelle Obama for president? What if she ran against the seemingly impregnable Hillary Clinton? A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 14% of Likely U.S. Voters think the first lady should run for president. Seventy-one percent (71%) disagree, but another 15% are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.) Among black voters, however, 40% think Obama should run, and only 41% disagree. One-in-five (18%) is undecided. Seventy-eight percent (78%) of whites and 59% of other minority voters oppose a presidential bid by the first lady. In a hypothetical matchup with Hillary Clinton, the putative Democratic...

For project developers seeking the next big petro-play, some key news this week. With lawmakers in America moving to open one of the biggest swaths of new acreage in the history of the industry. On Tuesday, the U.S. senate introduced three bills to expand areas accessible for oil and gas drilling -- targeting the eastern Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic Ocean, and the Arctic. The Gulf of Mexico acreage would be the nearest play at hand. With this week's bill contemplating allowing drilling in this area as early as 2017.

A New Jersey public school teacher who instructed her third-grade students to write “get well” letters to a convicted cop killer was fired at a raucous school board meeting that stretched into the wee hours of Wednesday morning, despite her pleas that “there’s a community behind me.” Marylin Zuniga, a first-year teacher who drew widespread condemnation for assigning her young charges the task of writing to Mumia Abu-Jamal, was canned at the meeting of the Orange Board of Education, the Star-Ledger of Newark reported.

Last fall,..UK Home Secretary Theresa May had made it clear that if her Conservative Party were re-elected, one of the first orders of business would be a new "Extremist Disruption Orders" plan that would outlaw any speech or events that the government declared "extremist." She wasn't kidding around. Following last week's election in the UK, David Cameron appears to be announcing just such a plan ... The measures would give the police powers to apply to the high court for an order to limit the “harmful activities” of an extremist individual. The definition of harmful is to include a risk...

An elderly man who'd just returned home after months in the hospital said he was hungry, had no food and no one to turn to for help. So he dialed 911. "I can't do anything. I can't go anywhere. I can't get out of my damn chair." Clarence Blackmon, 81, of Fayetteville, North Carolina, told the 911 operator, according to ABC station WTVD in Durham. "I said, 'I'm not broken, I'm not bleeding, and I'm not in crisis. I just want somebody to help me buy some food,'" he told ABC News.

BURN LIBERTARIANS DROWN THE CONSERVATIVES ONLY THE LIBERALS AND FAPPINIST WILL SURVIVE BURN LIBERTARIANS DROWN THE CONSERVATIVES ONLY THE LIBERALS AND FAPPINIST WILL SURVIVEBURN LIBERTARIANS DROWN THE CONSERVATIVES ONLY THE LIBERALS AND FAPPINIST WILL SURVIVEBURN LIBERTARIANS DROWN THE CONSERVATIVES ONLY THE LIBERALS AND FAPPINIST WILL SURVIVE GOODBYE FOREVER FReaks and Rimjob I was actually a DAILY KOS SPY.

The University of Colorado-Boulder has launched an online system where students can report people who make “hurtful statements” — and it’s so intense that it even asks for offenders’ Social Security numbers. This “Bias Incident Reporting” system is intended to “address the impact of demeaning and hurtful statements as well as acts of intolerance directed towards protected classes,” according to the school’s website.

Brazilian artist Henrique Alvim Corrêa’s career was cut short when he died at only 34 years old. But the illustrator left behind a small science-fiction legacy thanks to his 1906 artworks detailing the Martian invasion of London in H. G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds. Wells’ tale preyed upon turn-of-the-century fears about the apocalypse and other Victorian superstitions (and social prejudices) about the unknown. Corrêa’s fantastical, murky style is fitting of Wells’ dark themes. The Martian fighting machines resemble frightening legions of massive spiders. There were only 500 copies of the Belgian edition of Wells’ story with Corrêa’s...

New York real estate mogul Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka have donated a combined total of at least $105,000 to the Clinton Foundation, records show. “Donald J. Trump” is listed on the Foundation’s website as giving between $100,000 and $250,000 to the charitable organization. “Ivanka Trump,” meanwhile, is listed as a donor who gifted between $5,001 and $10,000 to the nonprofit. “This list is comprised of those who made contributions or grants to advance the work of any part of the Clinton Foundation, including the Clinton Global Initiative, and indicates cumulative lifetime giving through 2014,” the website said.

The British General Election, on May 7th, was an epic in two respects. First, in spite of polls forecasting a hung parliament, David Cameron's Conservative Party was given unexpectedly large support, winning 331 seats, or 51 % for an overall majority of four, and showing once again the failure of left wing parties to make traction in Europe. Second, Nicola Sturgeon's Scottish Nationalists Party (SNP) swept the Labour Party aside in Scotland to achieve an unexpected landslide and rekindle Scottish pressure for independence and, with it, a threat to the continued cohesion of the United Kingdom. Likely there will be...

That comes from Conn Carroll, formally White House correspondent for our sister site Townhall and currently communications director for the junior senator from Utah. ABC News’s Election 2016 coverage can tolerate a boycott by a single senator, even one as influential on the right as Lee. Can it tolerate a domino effect among the rest of the GOP field, where Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and the rest of the gang all feel compelled by pressure from conservatives to follow Lee’s lead?Actually, why would there need to be pressure from conservatives to make them boycott ABC? It’s in...