Free Republic

Tommy Scott Photo courtesy of wdbj7.com In Bedford County, Virginia, Supervisor Tommy Scott has proposed a change to County administrative policy to restore County employee's ability to exercise their Second Amendment rights while at work.  Infringements such as these are common for lower levels of State and local governments.  They gradually crept into administrative codes that became popular during the "progressive" era of the last 100 years.  From wdbj7.com: At Monday's supervisor meeting, Tommy Scott proposed a change to county policy that would allow employees with a concealed carry permit to exercise their right while on the job. Scott...

General Electric has sold its appliance business to Haier for $5.4 billion, a deal that will greatly expand the Chinese firm's footprint in the U.S. Haier is best known as a manufacturer of household goods including washing machines, refrigerators and microwaves. In recent years, it has sought to expand into new international markets, including the U.S.

Months ago, during the Summer of Trump, Republicans looked at the appearance of this gross, comic, orange interloper among them with a mix of shock and disdain. Fox News tried to discredit him as a serious candidate; nobody else onstage knew quite what to do with him. Since then, Trump has created facts on the ground, making himself an indispensable element of the party. He now seems completely normal. Part of it is that Trump has gotten better, more polished. His cartoonish facial gestures come less frequently. He is less outrageous (and less funny). He seems to control his tone...

Gov. Andrew Cuomo claims his anti-gun law, known as the SAFE Act, is "the toughest in the nation," but on its three-year anniversary this Thursday it's looking more like a monumental failure. The governor claims his law bans sales of military-style assault weapons. Yet today you can walk into any gun store in New York and walk out with essentially the same kind of gun he intended to ban. The industry has reacted to the law by simply redesigning the guns to avoid the features the law prohibits and which Cuomo apparently believed made them more lethal. Worse, for those...

Frank Luntz’s focus group tonight overwhelmingly said that Ted Cruz won the debate. It wasn’t even close:Frank Luntz Focus Group Picks Their Overwhelming Winner of Fox Business GOP Debate (Video)I really feel that Ted had his best debate tonight. He’s gone from sounding too polished in the early debates to winning by a long shot tonight. Some will say it’s because I’m biased and what not, but really, his arguments tonight were passionate, emphatic, concise, and very effective. Cruz, simply put, did the best out of all of the candidates and this focus group proves it.

'I need you to throw away money on Jeb - out of loyalty,' a fundraiser told donors. When Jeb Bush announced a record fundraising haul in July, the Florida Republican rewarded major donors with a two-day celebratory retreat at the family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. They also delivered a message: $114 million was just the beginning of how much cash they would need to win. Now, seven months later and just 17 days before the first ballots are cast, Bush's donors are no longer high-fiving or strategizing how to keep funds flowing. Instead, the money spigot is shutting off as...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Wal-Mart is closing 269 stores, more than half of them in the U.S. and another big chunk in its challenging Brazilian market. The stores being shuttered account for a fraction of the company's 11,000 stores worldwide and less than 1 percent of its global revenue. More than 95 percent of the stores set to be closed in the U.S. are within 10 miles of another Wal-Mart. The Bentonville, Arkansas, company said it is working to ensure that workers are placed in nearby locations. The store closures will start at the end of the month.

Republican presidential contender Ted Cruz should be disqualified from the race because he isn’t a “natural-born citizen,” a fellow Texan claims in a “birther” challenge filed against the senator in a U.S. court.

To: RoosterRedux-- Do you think that if Trump wins the nomination he could bring sufficient pressure and influence to get McConnell to change? And if McConnell changed, what would be the next step? -- Action in the Senate is a non-starter. I had an epiphany a few minutes ago. I'll share it. Whether Cruz is NBC or not doesn't matter, not in the least. What matters is that the Canada BC creates a vector of plausible doubt. How, in the election process is this doubt resolved? At first, in the states. Trump is 100% right. In the general election, in...

Sen. Lindsey Graham on Friday endorsed Jeb Bush for president, a major get for the former Florida governor who has struggled to gain traction in the contest. "Honored to have @GrahamBlog on our team. A proven leader with a clear understanding of the national security threats we face," Bush tweeted on Friday morning.

Luis Arroyo, a stoutly built left-hander with a baffling screwball who was an All-Star in each major league, pitched in two World Series and as a reliever helped Whitey Ford achieve his finest season with the Yankees, died on Wednesday in Guayanilla, P.R. He was 88. His daughter, Milagros, said the cause was cancer. Over all, Arroyo had a middling career, spending all or part of eight seasons in the major leagues with four different teams. But in 1961 he was the best reliever in the game, a prototype of the late-inning specialist now known as a closer.

Starting now!

The National Transportation Safety Board wants to decrease the legal driving limit to one drink, lowering the legal limit on blood-alcohol content to 0.05 “or even lower.” The agency released its “most wanted list” on Wednesday, a laundry list of policies it would like implemented nationally. The list includes recommendations to reduce the current 0.08 blood alcohol content limit and outlaw all cell phone use while driving, even hands-free technology.

On Tuesday on the syndicated Howie Carr Show, Ted Cruz declared that Donald Trump "comes from New York and he embodies New York values." That night on Fox, New York-born Megyn Kelly asked Cruz to explain exactly what "New York values" are. Cruz responded: "The rest of the country knows exactly what New York values are, and I gotta say, they're not Iowa values and they're not New Hampshire values." Yesterday Kellyanne Conway, president of Keep the Promise I, one of four significant pro-Cruz Super PACs, endorsed Cruz's anti-New York perspective: "New York is home to many wonderful people and...

See Donald Trump testify before congress on the economic recovery in 1991. Long but worth seeing.

<p>TAMPA, Florida — Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Thursday it appears a navigational error caused the crews of two Navy boats to stray into Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf, where they were detained overnight by Iran and released.</p> <p>"It does appear — the information that they have given us and through their commanders — that they did stray accidentally into Iranian waters due to a navigation error," Carter said in an interview in Miami with Fusion network. Later, he flew to Tampa to meet with leaders of U.S. Central Command, which oversees the U.S. military in the Middle East.</p>

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) might disagree with Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) on a tax hike on wealthy residents of the city to pay for universal pre-kindergarten, but says Cuomo is 'absolutely right' about at least one thing — 'extreme' conservatives are not welcome in New York State. Cuomo recently came under fire for recent comments declaring 'extreme' pro-life, anti-gay, pro-assault weapons conservatives are unwelcome in the state but Mayor de Blasio defended the comments as 'absolutely right' after delivering a speech before the U.S. Conference of Mayors Thursday. ""I think he was absolutely right to say...

Belief in the American Dream among millennials is dimming as the nation's largest generation continues to face steep socioeconomic barriers despite overall economic recovery, according to a new report. Generation Opportunity, a nonprofit organization advocating limited government to spur opportunity for young Americans, reported Tuesday that for the first time in U.S. history, a younger generation may be left worse off than the one preceding it.

Liberals like to talk about women’s rights but among those rights is, or should be, the second right enshrined in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights -- the right to keep and bear arms to protect one’s self. A woman’s body is her own, liberals tell us, and she has the right to choose to have an abortion. But the same liberals would deny women like Kimberly Corban the right to defend her body, and her children, with a firearm against the predators who lurk among us.

President Obama's upbeat assessment of the economy is not likely to sit well with low-income families living in major urban or metro areas. For them, economic decline is a harsh reality, not "fiction."