Free Republic

Cannabis businesses owe millions in overdue taxes to the Oregon Department of Revenue. The latest numbers show 176 businesses owe a total of $15.7 million. . . . The Oregon Department of Revenue says the top 10 businesses with outstanding balances owe more than $600,000 each.The problem is getting worse. Since July the total owed to the state has gone up by $3 million. The Oregon Liquor Control Commission says it does not have the ability to immediately pull licenses like its counterparts in Washington and Colorado. That's because the tax money is collected by the Department of Revenue and...

Donald Trump may be the most hated president in Hollywood since...well...ever. In the last month celebrities from Bill Maher to Cher have wished the worst, most vile things on the current president. Maher hoped First Lady Melania Trump would divorce her husband. Singer/actress Cher wanted to see Trump impeached, “locked up” and assaulted in prison. Author Fran Lebowitz claimed “impeachment” was just the “beginning of what he deserves” as she fantasized that Trump would be turned “over to the Saudis” to be tortured to death. New state laws intended to protect the rights of the unborn drew the ire of...

Is Tom Brady thinking this season could be his last? The six-time Super Bowl champion's latest tweet, quoting the Jay-Z track “My 1st Song,” sent New England Patriots fans into a frenzy as he appears to be thinking retirement. “’Treat my first like my last, and my last like my first!’” Brady wrote to go along with several photos of himself participating in minicamp Tuesday. Though the tweet appeared to be fairly innocuous, Brady didn’t offer much of an explanation about the message and it made fans contemplate the end of the quarterback’s career. Brady turns 42 in August and...

PHOENIX – The Phoenix mountain rescue of a hiker in her 70s created a stir Tuesday when video showed her rescue basket spinning wildly under the helicopter that carried her to safety. Video of the Piestewa Peak rescue on ABC15’s Facebook page had more than 2 million views within six hours of being posted. First-responders with the Phoenix fire and police departments said extreme spinning was rare during what’s called a hoist rescue, but they’ve seen it before and have a plan for how to handle it. “Sometimes when we bring the helicopter up from the ground, it will start...

In his last year in office, Barack Obama unilaterally reinterpreted Title IX in order to bully public schools into letting biological males play on girls' sports teams and use their bathroom and changing facilities or risk losing federal funding. As a result, the issue of biological males who “identify” as female playing on girls sports teams has become an increasing problem, even though Trump officially reversed this guidance in October 2018 . We’ve reported on a number of stories here at PJ Media of biological males who are breaking records by playing on girls' or women’s teams. In April, a...

A British Trump supporter live-streamed herself bursting the "Trump Baby" balloon with a pair of scissors as protesters attempted to fly it in London's Hyde Park on Tuesday.Anti-Trump activists have been flying the balloon over London to mock the president during his official state visit to the UK.The woman, who goes by the name "Based Amy," was subsequently surrounded by angered protesters before being arrested by London police for carrying a blade.Video footage captured the moment she popped the balloon before declaring "did it."

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke issued an ambitious plan on Wednesday to revamp the U.S. voting system by cracking down on voter suppression and getting an additional 35 million people to the ballot box by the 2024 elections. O’Rourke, a former congressman from Texas, a state with tough voter ID laws that critics say disproportionately affect the ability of minorities to vote, said his proposal would also allow the registration of an additional 50 million U.S. voters. O’Rourke’s plan comes as many in the huge field of 24 Democratic candidates vying to take on Republican President Donald Trump in next...

The 2.2 million diapers are being bought with funds provided in the February border spending bill for the DHS. The bill included “$192,700,000 for improved medical care, transportation, and consumables to better ensure the health and safety of migrants who are temporarily in [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] custody,” according to a congressional Explanatory Statement of the provisions. The money is also being used to fly migrants from the border to their target job sites and homes in the United States.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco officials decided Tuesday to force some people with serious mental illness and drug addiction into treatment, even if it goes against the spirit of a city known for its fierce protection of civil rights. Several members of the Board of Supervisors voiced deep concerns Tuesday about the possibility of taking away a person's civil liberties, but the proposal for a pilot program passed 10-1. Mayor London Breed and other supporters say the move — known as conservatorship — is necessary to help people who are often homeless, addicted to drugs and have a mental...

NEA Report says, quoting sources, that former Republican state Sen. Linda Collins-Smith of Pocahontas has been found shot to death in her home. A State Police spokesman will not confirm this report. He says that the State Police is investigating a death at a home near Pocahontas and that identification of the body has not been completed. The body had decomposed, which added to difficulties in identification. NEA Report has posted a photo of a coroner’s vehicle at Collins-Smith’s home. The State Police would not comment on the NEA Report that the death appeared to be not a suicide. Ken...

Ron Howard has said that online trolls were partly to blame for the lacklustre box office performance of Solo: A Star Wars Story. The Oscar-winning filmmaker, who is currently promoting upcoming documentary Pavarotti, told the Happy Sad Confused podcast that “aggressive trolling” was a crucial factor in the film’s financial under-performance but that he still greatly enjoyed the creative experience of making the film. “I wish it could have lived up to the box office expectations,” Howard said. “That’s disappointing. Why didn’t it? Maybe that’s the release [date], maybe it was too nostalgic, maybe pushback from the previous movie…some trolling,...

VIDEO Sleepy Joe Biden drew laughably small crowds at his two campaign stops in New Hampshire as you can see in this video. What adds to the pathetic nature of his small crowd sizes is the fact that many in attendance were forced to be there due being union members. Again a reminder that my videos going into about the incredibly low Biden crowd sizes is something that you WON'T see covered in such detail (or at all) by the mainstream media.

On the very first day of Pride Month, British police accosted a group of lesbians protesting against transgender activism, asking if they were a "hate group." The lesbian group Get the L Out made a stir last year at the London Pride parade by marching with a sign reading, "Transactivism Erases Lesbians." On Saturday, the group protested transgender activism again in the northern city of Bradford, with signs reading, "Lesbian = Female HomoSEXual." Dr. Lesley Semmens, a retired academic who once lectured at the School of Computing at Leeds Beckett University, took part in the protest and reported the "hate...

“I’ve talked with a number of people today, all of them off the record, but I can tell you tonight, I fear for the republic,” he said. “The Republican Party is being led on, well, in the U.S. Senate, on Capitol Hill, by cowards. They don’t represent the Americans who sent them there to represent the national interests. Instead, they’re clearly led by multi-nationalists, big business and Wall Street and the lobbies that represent those multi-nationals and business interests.” As he spoke, images of Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell were displayed on the screen. Earlier Tuesday, McConnell issued a statement...

One recent study, one of the latest demonstrations of hacking that exploits acoustics, found that the microphones in Android devices can be used to pick up the vibrations that are produced when you use the virtual keyboard on your phone or tablet. The sound waves that are recorded can then be interpreted to discern where on the screen you tapped and which keys you struck. ... For example, in 10 attempts, the researchers, using a machine-learning algorithm that classified each vibration, cracked seven out of 27 passwords on a smartphone and 19 out of 27 passwords on a tablet. ...the...

There is something wonderfully childlike in the inability of California liberals to figure out what to do about the frightening rise in homelessness. If the circumstances were different, you might refer to their naivete, ignorance, and stupidity as endearing, adorable, even cute.But their utter disconnect from reality has real-world consequences for tens of thousands of people who are victims of their idiotic policies.National correspondent for the Los Angeles Times Matt Pearce tweeted out the grim statistics: Spikes in this year’s homeless counts across California: -Los Angeles 🆙 16%-San Francisco 🆙 17%-Orange County (since 2017) 🆙 43%-Ventura, San Bernardino and Kern...

Many of our left-wing radical politicians, a.k.a., snake oil salesmen, are pitching free university education for all. And it's not surprising: Teachers’ unions and university administrators might salivate at the thought. High school students about to embark on post-secondary education might think it is a wonderful idea. After all, Hollywood has portrayed the university experience as one of a continuous four-year party of sex, drinking, drugs and debauchery. Would an aspiring student need to take those annoying SAT and ACT college entrance exams if universities were tuition-free? Government would now control the university system. Who decides who would go to...

Democrats hit a roadblock this week in their efforts to use the courts to go after President Trump. On the heels of several initial wins in lawsuits targeting Trump and his personal finances, Democratic lawmakers were dealt a blow Monday when a federal judge ruled that they don't have the authority to sue the president over his diversion of military funds to build a border wall. Judge Trevor McFadden - a Trump appointee - wrote that the "lawsuit is not a last resort for the House," pointing to "several political arrows in its quiver to counter perceived threats to its...

See also: Joe Biden is too stupid to win the nomination (#1)  Since plagiarism killed an earlier Biden run at the presidency and dogged him in law school, the first rule of a rational Biden campaign this time would be: nothing that even vaguely looks like plagiarism.  But evidently, the subject never came up when Joe Biden assembled his presidential campaign staff.  But it looks as though the Biden campaign panicked when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that his lack of a radical plan to restructure our thriving economy so as to emit less CO2 was a "dealbreaker." But with almost four weeks...

See also: Joe Biden is too stupid to win the nomination (#2) The purported frontrunner of the Democrats' presidential field is certain to self-destruct before the Democratic National Convention votes on a nominee more than a year from now, because he loves to talk and is too stupid to avoid making fatal mistakes.  Exactly a month ago, I predicted he would not get the party's nod, and I stand by that.  But secretly, I hope I am wrong, because he would fall apart when faced with Donald Trump. The latest example of Biden's stupidity: downplaying China's threat to us on the 30th anniversary of...