Free Republic

Convicted Ex-Rep. Duncan Hunter was sentenced on Tuesday to 11 months in prison with three years of supervised probation after he pleaded guilty to a single corruption charge. Family, friends and lawyers say the California Republican is a devoted father and proud former Marine who should be shown some mercy for making mistakes after returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Prosecutors paint a different picture. They have submitted 87 pages of details to U.S. District Court Judge Thomas J. Whelan ahead of Tuesday's sentencing that shows a corrupt congressman who intentionally and repeatedly stole from his campaign funds...

Bernie comes with baggage, and the American public rejected him. Looking at how his campaign is awash in money, however, indicates socialism is not going away. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders likes to say his political ideology never changed. In his case, consistency is not a positive.Over the course of decades in public life, Sanders has made multiple statements praising and apologizing for socialism all over the world. Here are a sampling, as well as explanations for why he’s dangerously wrong.1. Bread Lines Are Great “It’s funny sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are...

Another casualty in the quest to ‘save’ workers from ‘misclassification’ California’s AB 5 has taken another life: The new law has now killed off the 40-year old Lake Tahoe Music Festival. “After 40+ years of classical music concerts offered outside with family and friends, the Lake Tahoe Music Festival will call a wrap to our summer festival with two performances in August of 2020,” the official festival website says. The Festival also posted the announcement on their Facebook page. Assembly Bill 5 by former labor leader Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), has already significantly limited Californians’ ability to work as...

In the latest escalation of tensions between the two superpowers, China announced on Tuesday that it would expel American journalists working for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. It also demanded that those outlets, as well as the Voice of America and Time magazine, provide the Chinese government with detailed information about their operations. The announcement, made by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, came weeks after the Trump administration limited the number of Chinese citizens who could work in the United States for five state-controlled Chinese news organizations to 100. China instructed American journalists...

TEMECULA, Calif.—Temecula-based destination wedding and event planner Michelle Garibay has run her business for the past 14 years without employees. Garibay has appeared in some of the nation’s most prestigious bridal magazines, including Style Me Pretty, The Knot, and Southern California Bride. However, Assembly Bill 5 (AB5) has impeded her latest business operations, along with many others in her industry who use independent contractors. AB5 essentially prohibits freelance work, with a few exceptions; it mandates that businesses hire employees instead of paying contractors. “This industry isn’t well suited to having employees, because the work isn’t steady,” Garibay said. “And the...

This is a long post addressing two underlying issues with the current response to the pandemic that leave me concerned. It’s the longest post I’ve ever written. For those of you not taking action, or believing the pandemic to be “over hyped”, you can make fun of me as much as you want now or when this is over. You can make me the subject of memes and post it everywhere. I will pose for the picture. I am not trying to convince you, but I do feel compelled to share information that I deem critical to all of us,...

Polls across Chicago opened Tuesday morning amid a cloud of concerns about how the coronavirus pandemic could affect voter turnout. Reports of polling places without the necessary equipment or poll workers were cropping up across Cook County. Days before Election Day, efforts to contain the virus escalated in Illinois with the announcement of schools temporarily shuttering and restaurants shifting to only take out or delivery services. A spokesman for the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners said city election officials asked Gov. J.B. Pritzker to call off in-person voting but the governor declined. The governor’s office issued a statement Tuesday mid-morning...

After Gov. John Bel Edwards ordered bars, casinos and other businesses to shut down or curtail operations to fight the rapid spread of the coronavirus in Louisiana, U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins posted a video in which he blasted the governor as “out of line” and accusing him of sitting in an “ivory tower.” Higgins, a Republican from Port Barre, took a stance that is sharply at odds with public health professionals, political leaders and President Donald Trump’s administration, which has advised Louisiana and other states to put in severe restrictions to tamp down a rising tide of COVID-19 cases. Higgins...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwpx-8Rl7lM

With some experts predicting, at a minimum, anywhere from 480,000 to 1.6 million American deaths from the coronavirus over the next three to 18 months, how smart does urban living, mass transit, open borders, reusable straws, reusable grocery bags, reusable water bottles, gun restrictions, over-regulated housing, using the Centers for Disease Control to fight gun violence, and outsourcing to China look now? Hey, we don’t know what’s going to happen with the coronavirus. What we do know, though, is that between last Sunday and this Sunday, things went from Zero to Crazy in one week: We shut down our economy,...

Polls that failed to open. Election judges that failed to show. Promised bottles of hand sanitizer that failed to arrive. And low voter turnout. With the coronavirus on the loose, Chicago’s elections on Tuesday are looking like a shaky affair. Barely 2 hours after the polls opened in Chicago, city election officials ripped Gov. J.B. Pritzker for refusing last week to reschedule the whole thing. And, lashing back, Pritzker’s office contended that it had offered Chicago reinforcements — including National Guard troops to work as election judges — but the city failed to take the state up on the offer....

ST. PAUL, Minn. (FOX 9) - Gov. Tim Walz ordered thousands of businesses to close by Tuesday, vastly reshaping life in Minnesota as the state tries to control the spread of coronavirus. The order shuts down bars and restaurants to dine-in customers by 5 p.m., only allowing them to provide curbside or delivery services. Walz’s executive action also shutters theaters, museums, fitness centers and bowling alleys across the state. Gov. Walz orders bars and restaurants across Minnesota to close to dine-in customers Tuesday night Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has ordered bars and restaurants to close to dine-in customers by 5...

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released an assessment of the cost of a college education and advised recent high school graduates planning on getting one to "save your money. You're going to need it to help pay down the student debt of those foolish enough to have already incurred the cost of earning a degree." The CBO report found that "a glut of graduates without marketable skills has led to a crash in the salaries many of them counted on to repay the loans they took out to be able to afford going to college. What America needs now is...

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof predicted a nationwide surge in gun sales during the coronavirus outbreak will lead to more deaths across the country. "One way in which the coronavirus will lead to more deaths," Kristof tweeted. "It is leading to a rush to buy guns, which will lead to more murders, suicides and accidents."

It's official. I just got the Santa Clara County Health Department ORDER to "shelter in place." The link provided above is to Santa Clara County Public Health - Novel Coronavirus COVID-19 which advises... When does the Order go into effect?–The Order goes into effect immediately after midnight, starting at 12:01 am, Tuesday, March 17, 2020. Although this is soon, please do not panic. The Order allows for all essential activities such as shopping, taking care of children, and getting medications to continue. ​​

ANCHORAGE (KTUU) - Veteran musher Richie Diehl, of Aniak, scratched from the 48th running of the Iditarod after deciding to leave the race at the Unalakleet checkpoint on Monday. Diehl, wearing bib no. 16, was consistently on the top-ten leaderboard throughout the duration of the race thus far. He was in as high as second place starting with the McGrath checkpoint, but had dropped to 23rd at the time of his departure, which came after a nearly 12-hour rest in Nulato and a seven-hour break in Kaltag ahead of arriving to the coast. Veteran musher and special correspondent DeeDee Jonrowe...

“Stealth” coronavirus cases are fueling the pandemic, with a staggering 86% of people infected walking around undetected, a new study says. Six of every seven cases – 86% — were not reported in China before travel restrictions were implemented, driving the spread of the virus, according to a study Monday in the journal Science. “It’s the undocumented infections which are driving the spread of the outbreak,” said co-author Jeffrey Shaman of Columbia University Mailman School, according to GeekWire. Using computer modeling, researchers tracked infections before and after the Chinese city of Wuhan’s travel ban.

Emma Graham-Harrison @_EmmaGH China is expelling all US citizens working for NYT, WSJ, Washington Post, Time and Voice of America. Unprecedented attack on foreign coverage of the country, just when the rest of the world is entirely preoccupied with coronavirus

Amazon is banning sellers from shipping any non-essential items to its warehouses as it grapples with overwhelming demand for basic staple items as the coronavirus pandemic continues to grow. The Seattle-based e-tailing giant sent an email to sellers Tuesday announcing that it would only be accepting “household staples, medical supplies, and other high-demand products” for the next three weeks so that it can “more quickly receive, restock, and deliver” the products to customers. “We are seeing increased online shopping, and as a result some products such as household staples and medical supplies are out of stock,” Amazon told sellers, according...

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Tuesday the Trump administration is working with Congress on a plan that would send checks to Americans in an effort to blunt the coronavirus pandemic’s effect on the economy. “We are looking at sending checks to Americans immediately,” Mnuchin told reporters. “Americans need cash now and the president wants to get cash now. And I mean now, in the next two weeks. “We want to make sure Americans get money in their pockets quickly,” Mnuchin said at a White House briefing on the virus. “We want to make sure small business owners have access to...