Free Republic

Lowe's Home Improvement has found itself facing a backlash after the retail giant pulled ads from a reality show about American Muslims.

A 29-page list of 1,300 people accused of being in Utah and the US illegally was mailed anonymously to media outlets and law enforcement agencies last week. It included Latino names, addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, and private health information such as the due dates of babies. Two state employees – identified within the Utah Department of Workforce Services and already placed on administrative leave – could face criminal charges in connection with the list’s release. And state Attorney General Mark Shurtleff says his office is still investigating further leaks. Intentionally releasing a private record in Utah is a...

Two Columbia sanitation workers who apparently couldn't stand by and let beer go down the drain allegedly took dozens of cases of expired brew from the city landfill. Police and city supervisors are trying to determine if the salvage was a crime — theft of city property — or just a policy violation. Scheppers Distributing Co., sent 1,500 cases of expired beer to the landfill on April 1 in two shipments. The first shipment was destroyed immediately, but the second, containing about 700 cases of Budweiser and Michelob Ultra, was not. two Solid Waste Division workers, who haven't been identified,...

The threat to its pension plans has always been an issue, butit took on a new urgency when GM disclosed April 7 that its plans were underfunded by more than $27 billion, with more than half of that being owed to U.S. workers and retirees.

Police said they were able to identify a Newark man as the armed robber of a local supermarket because he left some clues behind -- namely his mother and son.

Who is the worst killer in the long, ugly history of war and extermination? Hitler? Stalin? Pol Pot? Not even close. A single book called Silent Spring killed far more people than all those fiends put together. Published in 1962, Silent Spring used manipulated data and wildly exaggerated claims (sound familiar?) to push for a worldwide ban on the pesticide known as DDT – which is, to this day, the most effective weapon against malarial mosquitoes. The resulting explosion of mosquito-borne malaria in Africa has claimed over sixty million lives.

The 2009 U.S. Climate Impacts Report found that large-scale cold-weather storm systems have gradually tracked to the north in the U.S. over the past 50 years. While the frequency of storms in the middle latitudes has decreased as the climate has warmed, the intensity of those storms has increased. That's in part because of global warming - hotter air can hold more moisture, so when a storm gathers it can unleash massive amounts of snow. Colder air, by contrast, is drier; if we were in a truly vicious cold snap, like the one that occurred over much of the East...

The Senate has rejected a plan backed by President Barack Obama to create a bipartisan task force to tackle the deficit this year.

Unemployment rates rose in 43 states last month, the government said Friday, painting a bleak picture of the job market that illustrated nationwide data released two weeks ago.

"We will serve you if you will get us free from the French." Video at link.

MADRID — A doctor says a 16-year-old boy has become Spain's first minor to undergo a sex change operation.

TAMPA, Fla. — Florida police say a man arrested for repeatedly calling 911 looking for sex claimed it was the only number he could dial after running out of cell phone minutes.

HOUSTON—A grand jury will decide whether to press charges against a pregnant woman who, police say, shot and killed a burglar. The ordeal began when the unidentified woman saw a group of men allegedly breaking into cars at her apartment complex on Pinemont in northwest Houston late Monday night. When the group moved on to her car, the woman, who is eight-months pregnant, said she fired a shotgun from her balcony. One of the men died, say police. The others fled the scene in a black truck.

A piggy-back race with dwarfs dressed as jockeys has been slammed by critics as offensive and derogatory. Thousands watched the race at a Cranbourne racetrack in Victoria, dubbed the "midgets' cup", as part of Sunday's Cranbourne Cup meeting, Adelaide Now reports. What do you think of the race — was it harmless fun or just plain ridicule? Share your thoughts below. Three men raced down a 50m stretch with a short statured person on each of their backs. The race ended with one "jockey" falling and crashing headfirst into the dirt but he was uninjured. Victorian racing minister Rob Hulls...

Seriously.

A state employee and a former leader with the SEIU Local 1000 union was sentenced today to 25 years in state prison after he pleaded no contest to child molestation, possession of child pornography and manufacturing child pornography Feliciano had been convicted of child molestation in 1993 and was a registered sex offender, the release states. In 2006, he was convicted for failing to register. Feliciano is a former president of one of SEIU's 50 district labor councils, which are located across the state.

Scroll down to The Audacity of Hos video. Bear in mind Jon Stewart is an über-lib.

WICHITA — A man and woman decided to give the phrase "dumpster diving" a new twist over the weekend, crawling inside one on North Waco so they could be alone. But while they were engaged in what Wichita police described as "an intimate moment," they were robbed by a man armed with a pocket knife. It all unfolded shortly after 6 p.m. Saturday in the 700 block of North Waco, police said, when the man and woman, both 44, crawled into a dumpster for privacy. A short time later, a 59-year-old man and his 64-year-old companion interrupted the couple inside...

Exonerees will get $80,000 for each year they spent behind bars. The compensation also includes lifetime annuity payments that for most of the wrongly convicted are worth between $40,000 and $50,000 a year — making it by far the nation's most generous package. Dallas County alone has 21 cases in which a judge overturned guilty verdicts based on DNA evidence, though prosecutors plan to retry one of those.

I was reading the Chron’s piece about Sheila Jackson Lee’s town hall, when something caught my eye: One supporter, Dr. Roxana Mayer, a physician who does not live in Jackson Lee’s district, praised the reform plan for overhauling a broken system. “I don’t know what there is in the bill that creates such panic,” she said. In this video, Mayer claims to be a general practitioner, eliciting applause and even a hug from Queen Sheila: I’m not sure why, but something didn’t smell right. So my colleagues and I did a little digging, and wouldn’t you know it? Roxana Mayer...