Free Republic

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration late Friday to grant pregnant illegal immigrant girls in U.S. custody unfettered access to abortions, ruling they have a constitutional right to the procedure. Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee to U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., who has been a thorn in the side of the Trump administration in several major cases, said that the government has been creating too many hurdles in the path of the teen girls.

Sen. Claire McCaskill announced Friday that she will join Democrats’ attempted filibuster of Judge Neil Gorsuch, making it almost certain that Republicans will have to trigger the “nuclear option” to confirm President Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee. The Missouri Democrat said she is aware that her decision makes the nuclear option likely, and it could lead to more extreme judges being named to the high court, but she said she had too many questions about Judge Gorsuch’s “rigid ideology that always puts the little guy under the boot of corporations.”

Andrew Newman always pays his taxes, even if he hates what the government is doing with them. But not this year. For him, Donald Trump is the dealbreaker. He’ll pay his city and state taxes but will refuse to pay federal income tax as a cry of civil disobedience against the president and his new administration. Newman is not alone. A nascent movement has been detected to revive the popularity of tax resistance – last seen en masse in America during the Vietnam war but which has been, sporadically, a tradition in the US and beyond going back many centuries.

http://www.anderson-auction.com/lbj-no-more-ugly-children-lot94012.aspx How well the media controls history!

George Zimmerman has been arrested and was en route to the Seminole County Jail, according to Sheriff Don Eslinger. It's not clear what happened or what crime he's accused of committing, but just before 1:30 p.m., Eslinger confirmed that Zimmerman had been arrested today and was being driven to the county jail in Sanford. He said more information would be available shortly. WESH-Channel 2 reported that Zimmerman was accused of domestic violence by a girlfriend. The Sheriff's Office, in a short news release, reported that the agency had arrested Zimmerman after being called to a disturbance on Topfield Court in...

House Democratic leaders unveiled legislation Wednesday to overhaul the nation's broken immigration system and create a pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal residents. The sweeping proposal, which largely mirrors the bipartisan package approved by the Senate in June, is designed to keep the immigration issue in the headlines and intensify the pressure on GOP leaders to bring a reform bill to the floor. Excerpt.

FARMINGTON, Pa. (AP) -- U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts joked that he'll spend some time on an "impregnable island fortress" now that the court has ended a session that featured him casting the decisive vote to uphold President Barack Obama's health care law.

Maryland is the first state in the country to impose a new requirement to graduate from high school -- something called environmental literacy. But what is that? That is the question State Senator J. B. Jennings is asking. "What kind of education is it going to be?” he asks. “Is it going to be fact-based? Or is it going to be theory-based, which is usually politically, theory driven. And you can think, it's going to be about global warming or climate change." Sarah Bodor of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation supports the initiative and says there is no mandate. "People express...

At Highland Park High School, officials are canceling a girls' basketball team trip to Arizona to protest that state's new anti-immigration law. A school official tells the Tribune that going to Arizona now -- after that state passed a harsh anti-immigration law -- "would not be aligned with our beliefs and values." One parent tells ABC-7 that the girls on the team are very upset: "It was a big disappointment. They've been baking cookies to earn money for this and they were just very surprised. They just want to play basketball, that's all, these girls just want to play basketball."...

BROWNSVILLE — In a move that could affect the revenues of private prison firms and county jails, the Obama administration said Tuesday it will review, renegotiate and possibly terminate some of its more than 300 contracts for detaining unauthorized immigrants. The announcement by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is part of an overhaul aimed at ending the reliance on penal institutions for detainees with noncriminal immigration violations or valid asylum claims. The overhaul, first announced in August, followed scathing reports and lawsuits by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups alleging inhumane conditions, denial of medical care,...

Bush administration political appointees at the Defense Department have until the end of the week to sign President Barack Obama's ethics pledge, or they will be asked to resign, according to internal correspondence. In an April 7 e-mail, Robert Rangel, special assistant to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, gave all Bush holdovers until the close of business on Friday to sign the agreement, which puts restrictions on post-government employment. Politicos who refuse to comply will be required to leave their position by the end of April. "Those who choose not to sign the ethics pledge and leave before April 30, 2009...

Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) -- The Democratic-controlled Congress, acknowledging that it isn't equipped to lead the way to a solution for the financial crisis and can't agree on a path to follow, is likely to just get out of the way. Lawmakers say they are unlikely to take action before, or to delay, their planned adjournments -- Sept. 26 for the House of Representatives, a week later for the Senate.

This was supposed to be the week that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. returned to the pulpit to preach for the first time since his anti-American sermons generated nationwide outrage and drew condemnation from his longtime parishioner, Barack Obama. But, citing security concerns, Wright canceled his speaking engagements in Florida and Texas. A spokeswoman at his former church in Chicago said his schedule is pending.

The Bush administration cited poor performance and redundancy in its proposal to eliminate or slash the budgets of 151 federal programs in fiscal 2009. The cuts, touted during the president's State of the Union address and outlined in budget documents released Monday, would save approximately $18 billion. The cuts are listed in Table S-5 of the summary tables included in the budget proposal. They include the termination of 104 discretionary programs and significant funding reductions for 47 others. Look over Table S-5. We needed this sooner. Seems like Bush went along with high budgets when the Republicans controlled Congress, but...

This is an Activism subject, but I think a "Laura 2008" bumper sticker would send a great message! Perhaps it would high light the stupidy of a "Hillary 2008" bogus qualifications for being president. How do we produce this kind of bumper sticker is question? I'd definitely put one on my bumper.

This grand debate is welcomed but it could be that this is nothing more than a distraction from the dangerous military confrontation approaching with Iran and supported by many in leadership on both sides of the aisle. This resolution, unfortunately, does not address the disaster in Iraq. Instead, it seeks to appear opposed to the war while at the same time offering no change of the status quo in Iraq. As such, it is not actually a vote against a troop surge. A real vote against a troop surge is a vote against the coming supplemental appropriation that finances it....

Ahmadinejad: Israel, US will vanish / News agencies Ahmadinejad says Israel, US, Britain will vanish – 'this is a divine promise;' Iran demands UN Security Council condemn Israel's nuclear development, place Israel's facilities under inspection

The first time I heard the word "mendacity" was in the film "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." I loved the way Burl Ives's character spits out the word as something vile and unacceptable. Unfortunately, we live in a society where untruthfulness is routinely accepted and even mandated by politicians, union leaders, and members of the press. New York is the headquarters of the biggest producer of mendacity, the New York Times. Fortunately, it's also the home of the antidote, Lucianne.com.

November 4, 2006 -- Yesterday's front-page story in The New York Times about the U.S. Web archive of captured documents detailing Saddam Hussein's quest for nuclear weapons raises a lot of serious questions - certainly more serious than the one the paper itself was trying to highlight. The point of the Times story, coming just four days before the critical midterm congressional elections, was clear: The Bush administration messed up big-time by posting on the Web a collection of documents on Iraqi WMD programs that "could help states like Iran develop nuclear arms." -snip- The world is safer for it.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - A heckler who confronted Sen. George Allen at a campaign appearance Tuesday was put in a chokehold and slammed to the floor by three of the Republican's supporters in an incident captured on video. Mike Stark, a liberal blogger and first-year University of Virginia law student, approached Allen at an event in Charlottesville, loudly asking, "Why did you spit at your first wife, George?" according to witnesses. Three men, all wearing blue Allen lapel stickers, immediately grabbed Stark, dragged him backward and slung him to the carpet outside a hotel meeting room, according to video captured...