Free Republic

A member of the Portsmouth school board repeatedly asked the court earlier this year to reduce his child support obligations, according to court documents. Part of De’Andre Barnes’ reasoning: His position on the board prevents him from landing some good-paying jobs. “I never said I can’t get a job,” Barnes, 33, explained Friday in Portsmouth Juvenile Domestic Relations Court. “I said it precludes me from certain opportunities.” When asked outside the courtroom how long he’d been unemployed, Barnes said he “wasn’t 100 percent sure.” During a subsequent interview Monday, he said he left the For Our Future Political Action Committee...

At the back of Costco's stores, past the televisions, jewelry, jumbo-sized ketchup jugs and tubs of mixed nuts, is one of the retailer's most prized items: The rotisserie chicken that costs just $4.99. Cheap Kirkland Signature rotisserie chickens aren't only a quick way for families to get dinner on the table. For Costco, the chickens are a lure, pulling customers into stores and getting them to browse the aisles, adding sometimes hundreds of dollars worth of items to their shopping carts before they pick up that bird. The chickens have become almost a cult item. 91 million were sold last...

Felicity Huffman reported to a California federal correctional institution Tuesday to serve time for her part in the college admissions scandal. **SNIP** Huffman, 56, pleaded guilty in May and accepted responsibility for her part in the high-profile college admissions scandal that demonstrated the lengths wealthy parents will go in order to secure their kids a spot at the college of their choice. The "Desperate Housewives" star pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud earlier this year. She confessed to paying an admissions consultant $15,000 to have a proctor correct her older...

HOWARD KURTZ, FOX NEWS: The media criticism of President Trump's decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Northern Syria, especially on the right, focused on abandonment of America's Kurdish allies and with Turkey continue to go bomb the region, dozens of Kurds reported to have been killed and 130,000 people have been displaced and the president defends on other grounds. PRESIDENT TRUMP: I campaigned on ending the endless wars. We are all over the world fighting wars, half of the places nobody knows what they're doing over there. HOWARD KURTZ: Mollie, as you know, there is a whole slew of conservative...

You have probably heard about a so-called "vaping health crisis," complete with "horror stories" that are growing worse and worse. Over the past few months, more than 1,200 people have become sick and 29 have died from a mysterious acute lung disease. This has led national, state, and local politicians to demand bans on e-cigarettes to protect public health, often invoking emergency powers to implement them. It has become increasingly clear that the wave of respiratory illnesses alarming health authorities is linked primarily to black market cartridges delivering THC, the psychoactive cannabinoid in marijuana, rather than the commercial nicotine vapor...

SPARTANBURG, S.C. (WYFF) – A pastor who pleaded guilty to child sex charges will spend the next decade in prison. The victim says she became pregnant twice by 32-year-old Phillip Buckson and had abortions to terminate the pregnancies. According to the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office, Buckson, pleaded guilty to this week to two counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor 11 to 14 years old in Spartanburg County. He was sentenced to 20 years, suspended to 10 years and 5 years of probation, must register as a sex offender, and can have no contact with the victim....

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warned on Tuesday that a recession is on the horizon thanks to the continuing trade tensions with China. “Of course there’s a recession ahead,” Dimon said during a morning call with reporters after the bank announced its third-quarter earnings. “It does look like geopolitics, particularly around China and trade, are reducing business confidence and business capital expenditure,” Dimon added. On Tuesday afternoon, however, JPMorgan Chase spokesman Joe Evangelisti sought to downplay Dimon’s comments, noting that his boss didn’t mention the timing of his prediction.

Romney holds himself out as a voice of conscience, "deeply concerned" about Trump's Ukraine call. Ok, fine. What about Schiff's secretive hearings? What happened to the public's right to know? Has anyone heard Romney demand that the hearings be opened up? Has anyone heard him take a stand for for transparency, open government and due process? Or is Romney's tender conscience act just a put-on?

BERKELEY, Calif. (KGO) -- Sarah Morris says 12-hour days are not uncommon at her bio-chemistry lab in Morgan Hall at UC Berkeley. But PG&E's power outage may have destroyed two years of her ground-breaking cancer research, valued at $500,000. "I kind of had a moment of thinking, 'is my dissertation thesis going to include the lines: I did this, and then it got wiped out because of a power outage. Please let me graduate!'" says Morris. Morris is a PhD student researching new therapies to fight drug-resistant forms of cancer. She says PG&E assured UC Berkeley that the power would...

On Friday, anti-Trump protesters became violent outside the rally venue for President Donald Trump in Minneapolis , assaulting at least one female Trump supporter walking out of the event. In video captured by Alpha News MN, a young woman walking hand-in-hand with a young man in a pro-Trump “Make America Great Again” hoodie was sucker-punched by a female anti-Trump protester. “After the [Donald Trump] rally in Minneapolis, his supporters were attacked by left-wing extremists. An unprovoked assault on a woman was caught on camera by [Alpha News MN],” reported journalist Andy Ngo. “Mayor [Jacob Frey] defends charging Trump campaign $530k...

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) said House Intel Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) wants to impeach President Donald Trump behind closed doors in an interview Monday with FOX Business Network's Maria Bartiromo on 'Mornings With Maria.' "Well, this is part of Adam Schiff's -- it's like a kangaroo court he set up, but they've got this shroud of secrecy, where they want to drip out things that they want to allude to, they make false accusations to try to," Scalise said. "And so, why Adam Schiff continues to hide in secret the Volker testimony, he was already starting to...

A pro-life display memorializing the unborn victims of abortion was destroyed by vandals Saturday outside a Catholic church in Pennsylvania. The report is the latest in a growing string of harassment, assaults, vandalism and other incidents targeting pro-lifers. Earlier this month, volunteers at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Buckingham, Pennsylvania, set up the pro-life display for Respect Life month, according to a news release. The 61 crosses in the display symbolize the 61 million babies who have been aborted since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion on demand in 1973. The pastor Rev. Monsignor Joseph P. Gentili said 40 of...

Five police vehicles were traveling through the municipality of Aguililla in the early morning when they were ambushed by more than 30 armed individuals, according to a statement from the Michoacan state prosecutor. The attackers, in five "presumably armored" vehicles, opened fire with high caliber weapons, said the prosecutor, Adrián López Solís. Security forces dispatched to the scene found officers slain and injured with bullet wounds, their vehicles shot up and two of them on fire, the statement said. Images published on social media showed posters left on police vehicles signed "CJNG" -- the initials of the Jalisco New Generation...

A federal appeals court will reconsider a ruling from a three-judge panel that threw out a lawsuit accusing President Donald Trump of illegally profiting off the presidency through his luxury Washington hotel. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed Tuesday to hold a hearing before the full court of 15 judges. Arguments are scheduled for Dec. 12. Maryland and the District of Columbia have accused Trump of violating the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution by accepting profits through foreign and domestic officials who stay at the Trump International Hotel. A judge in Maryland ruled that the lawsuit could...

For a second day, shaking has rattled areas in Northern California. The United States Geological Survey reported a 4.8-magnitude quake rocked areas near Salinas and Hollister, west of Fresno County just before 1 p.m. Tuesday. The earthquake comes after an overnight of shaking set off by two quakes Monday night...

How The NFL Referee Got Together To Ruin The Lions Vs Packers Game & Whats Next!

We hadn’t thought of Tulsi Gabbard as a whistleblower but the Democratic presidential hopeful from Hawaii may have to enter a witness protection program to be shielded from her own party. Gabbard asked supporters last week whether she should boycott this Tuesday’s televised “debate.” She says it’s not a true debate (she’s right there). She says it’s part of her national party’s effort to replace the role of voters in New Hampshire and elsewhere by “using polling and other arbitrary methods which are not transparent or democratic...” The “so-called debates,” she says, “are not debates at all, but rather commercialized...

Cardi B predicted, with dismay, that Donald Trump will not only not get impeached, but win the 2020 election. She explains why in a new interview on T.I.’s podcast. Cardi B is an enthusiastic Democrat who once interviewed Senator Bernie Sanders, but she doesn’t believe any Democratic candidate can win the 2020 presidential election. Cardi, 27, said during her October 15 appearance on T.I.‘s podcast expediTIously With Tip that Donald Trump‘s bigger pool of supporters is going to land him a second term in the Oval Office. “I really hate to say it, but sometimes I do believe that Trump...

A couple of years ago, a retired teacher who stays in close touch with history teachers across Texas told me something disturbing. Like most states, Texas has standardized testing. Unlike most states, Texas requires public school students to study Texas history in the 4th and 7th grades. Texas history is red in tooth and claw and full of big personalities and big ideas. Standardized testing is forcing teachers to drop about half of the second semester of Texas history to focus on U.S. history -- not to deepen students' understanding of American history, but to teach to the standardized tests....

A New Jersey professor suggested on a TV program that racism and President Donald Trump’s policies are responsible for black female obesity. Rutgers University women’s and gender studies professor Brittney Cooper made the argument during an appearance on “Black Women OWN the Conversation” on the Oprah Winfrey Network. "I hate when people talk about Black women being obese," Cooper said on the program. "I hate it because it becomes a way to blame us for a set of conditions that we didn’t create." "We are living in the Trump era," the professor said. "And look, those policies kill our...