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U.S. Senator and Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz was not such a bad apple, according to appellate lawyers who identify themselves as Democrats and previously opposed him in court. Indeed, those lawyers don't entirely recognize the abrasive Cruz described in national news accounts by fellow senators, other prominent Republicans and even some former colleagues. "Cruz was very professional and left a good impression on me. I've told that to two other reporters who asked and then they never ask for details. I think they are looking for salacious stories of co-counsel misbehavior," Nina Perales wrote in an email. Perales is...

A Chinese national has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to steal trade secrets after investigators say he stole valuable intellectual property from DuPont Pioneer and Monsanto. On January 27, 2016, 46-year-old Mo Hailong, also known as Robert Mo, admitted to participating in a long term conspiracy to steal trade secrets from the U.S. agricultural companies. Court records say Hailong participated in the theft of inbred corn seeds from fields in the Southern District of Iowa for the purpose of transporting the seeds to China. The stolen inbred, or parent, seeds were the valuable intellectual property of DuPont Pioneer and Monsanto. During...

In 2012, Mitt Romney ran on a solidly conservative platform and rhetoric, just as Trump is doing now. Yet most (IMO) FReepers agreed with Jim Robinson in vigorously opposing Romney during the primaries and supporting him, if at all, only with nose firmly held in the general election. Why? Because Romney had a record, and it was on far too many matters a liberal record. Well, Trump's many liberal public statements are at least as fresh as Romney's were ... and in some cases are ongoing (cf. "Donald Trump a Typical New York City Liberal Then and Now" - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3385906/posts)....

Topeka - Navy veteran Raymond Schwab started treating symptoms from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder with a slew of prescription medications that he said nearly ruined his life. But he found relief in cannabis therapy that helped him to get a degree and be a more effective parent, Schwab told a panel of Kansas senators on a second day of hearings. The Kansas Senate's Corrections and Juvenile Justice Committee heard Schwab - who was deployed during the Bosnian War in the 1990s - and other opponents testify about a bill that would soften criminal penalties for marijuana possession, allow for hemp oil...

Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are trading their first attack ads in the GOP presidential race as their rivalry reaches a new level of intensity. The billionaire launched his offensive Friday morning, unveiling a commercial that portrays the U.S. senator from Texas as weak on illegal immigration. Cruz returned fire later in the morning with a spot of his own going after Trump over his support for eminent domain. The 30-second video from the Cruz campaign calls eminent domain a "fancy term for politicians seizing private property to enrich the fat cats who bankroll them - like Trump." A narrator...

Praised as a policy that would reduce dependence on oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which requires refineries to blend ethanol into gasoline, has been fraught with unintended consequences. The RFS mandates the use of an inefficient fuel, drives up food prices, and causes adverse environmental effects. The 2012 drought and problems meeting the quotas in the RFS have put the program under the political microscope. The Heritage Foundation's Nicolas Loris explains how the only true reform to the Renewable Fuel Standard is to eliminate it, and why Congress should repeal the costly and unnecessary...

A native-born employee at Disney who was fired spoke out against abuse in the H-1B visa program, explaining how he was replaced by cheap foreign labor, in a new ad campaign produced by the Federation for American Immigration Reform.Last year, Disney World fired 250 American workers and replaced them with cheaper foreign workers, through the H-1B visa program.One of those displaced American workers was Leo Perrero who said he and his co-workers were shocked and surprised when they heard the news that they were being fired."We thought we were being brought in to be delivered news of accolades, bonuses, and...

"Thank you so much. It's so great to be here in Iowa. We're here just thawing out. Todd and I and a couple of our friends here from Alaska, lending our support for the next president of our great United States of America, Donald J. Trump. "Mr. Trump, you're right, look back there in the press box. Heads are spinning, media heads are spinning. This is going to be so much fun. "Are you ready to make America great again? We all have a part in this. We all have a responsibility. Looking around at all of you, you hard-working...

India's top software services firm Wipro said the recent H1B visa fee hike by the US will have a "large impact running into multi-million dollars", on Monday. The company will try to hire more locals in the US to offset the impact. "It is a large impact running into multi-million dollars for Wipro and also I'm sure for similar such organizations, and it will have meaningful impact on our operating margins. Once we start applying for that, we will disclose those numbers," Wipro chief financial officer Jatin Dalal told reporters in Bengaluru, reported the Press Trust of India. "...this is...

Raghunandan Yandamuri, who killed an Indian American 10-month-old baby and her grandmother in 2012 in Pennsylvania during a botched kidnapping attempt, lost his bid Jan. 6 to charge a detective involved in his case with fraud. On Oct. 10, 2014, before being sentenced to death for the gruesome killings, Yandamuri told Montgomery County Common Pleas Court Judge Steven T. O'Neill: "I don't want this hearing. I would rather take the death penalty." O'Neill sentenced Yandamuri to die by lethal injection. A day earlier, jurors convicted the 27-year-old of two counts of first degree murder for killing 10-month-old Saanvi Venna and...

Industry executives and university advocates have successfully duped nearly every reporter, editor and anchor nationwide about the scale and purpose of the H-1B professional outsourcing program. The journalists–and Americans-have been kept in the dark while universities and many allied name-brand companies have quietly imported an extra workforce of at least 100,000 lower-wage foreign professionals in place of higher-wage American graduates, above the supposed annual cap of 85,000 new H-1Bs. Less than one-sixth of these extra 100,000 outsourced hires are the so-called "high-tech" computer experts that dominate media coverage of the contentious H-1B private-sector outsourcing debate. [...] The American professionals who...

I'm not guaranteeing it won't be New England - but 4 losses in their last 6 games is not a fluke. Of the others: it's not clear that Denver has a QB who can do it (Manning is old and hurt, but Osweiler still got benched for him); Cincinatti looks good in many ways but has managed to lose in the wild card round after 10 or 11 regular season wins in each of the last three seasons; Pittsburgh is inconsistent, having lost to the lowly Ravens just two weeks ago; and Houston just barely scraped in by winning a...

Heads-up, America.President Obama is dropping a New Year's Eve bomb on the nation's best and brightest workers.It was top-headlined on the Drudge Report late Wednesday night with a link to Neil Munro's report at Breitbart.com: New Year's Surprise: Obama Regulation To Give Work-Permits To Foreign College-Graduates As the nation prepares to ring in the New Year, President Barack Obama is preparing a colossal new executive action that could print-up work permits for a huge number of foreign white-collar graduates every year, above and beyond the levels set by Congress.This executive action, which directly bypasses Congressional lawmakers, is likely to reverberate...

H-1B visas are used by large corporations to bring into the United States cheap foreign workers who typically have college degrees. Corporations like this because they can control these foreign workers, and keep wages low for Americans by hiring foreigners. H-1B visas are a big reason why real wages in our country have not increased for the average worker. Each year, companies are allowed to import 65,000 new hires from foreign countries, plus another 20,000 who have received a degree from an American university. The result over the past decade has been to staff corporations with hundreds of thousands of...

Recreational marijuana use would be legal in Kentucky in 2016 if proposed legislation becomes law. State Sen. Perry Clark, D-Louisville, is sponsoring a bill called the Cannabis Freedom Act. The bill proposes to legalize recreational marijuana use for those 21 years or older, decriminalize offenses such as unauthorized growing and distribution and consuming cannabis in public and place an excise tax on the drug. "Originally what inspired me was a group of retired Teamsters," Clark said. The Teamsters knew that using marijuana was a cheaper alternative to costly prescription painkillers they needed, he said. "They didn't want to be criminalized...

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) is lending his significant credibility to Senator Ted Cruz in a spat with Senator Marco Rubio, after the two presidential candidates tangled over their respective records on the issue of immigration. Cruz opposed a path to citizenship, a position remarkably close to Jeb Bush's 2013 in a book Bush co-authored, "Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution". RUBIO: Does Ted Cruz rule out ever legalizing people that are in this country now? Rubio has also hit Cruz over an amendment that would have massively increased the number of H-1B guest worker visas - a proposal that could...

Political analysis of the Las Vegas debate immigration dust-up between Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio is missing a key ingredient: the money factor. You can read the lips of the candidates till the cows come home. But you'll get to the truth much faster when you learn where pro-amnesty power brokers have placed their bets and hitched their wagons. Rubio's brazenly fraudulent campaign to paint Cruz as soft on illegal immigration is a flabbergasting attempt to distract from the Florida junior senator's faithful allegiance to the open-borders donor class. Here's what you need to know: Facebook, Microsoft and Silicon...

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) says IT jobs will grow 12% over the next decade, except for programmers. That occupation will shrink as more work is shifted to lower wage countries, according to the government. [...] Software developers, the largest occupational group in IT, which employs 1.11 million, will increase by 17% or 186,600, over this period. Programmers are focused on coding and implementing requirements, and that's why they may be more susceptible to offshoring, in contrast to software developers who may be more engaged with the business, analyzing needs and collaborating with multiple parties. In IT occupations...

NAPLES, FL - They're normally the guys locking people up for marijuana possession, but a group of current and former law enforcement officers will meet in Naples to push for people's right to get high. Not all law enforcement officers are on board, however. Legalizing marijuana, it's a hot-button issue in Florida. Law Enforcement Against Prohibition is pushing for the change to save taxpayer dollars and valuable resources. "Sixty-thousand people get arrested every year for marijuana possession. That's a waste of law-enforcement resources," said Ray Strack of LEAP. The group meets Thursday in Naples. The Florida Sheriff's Association is not...

Within a month, another bill has been introduced in the US Senate to cut the number of business (H-1B) visas. Co-sponsored by Senators Bill Nelson (Democrat) and Jeff Sessions (Republican), it proposes cutting the number of such visas by 15,000, giving priority to the highest wage earners during the selection. The H-1B visa programme was created by the US legislature in 1990, to allow specialised workers to enter for taking up jobs in segments where there is a shortage of people. It is a non-immigrant category, meant to allow employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in speciality occupations. At present,...