Free Republic

Kevin Faulkoner recaptured the mayor’s office in San Diego for Republicans in a special election yesterday. The polls were skin-tight leading into yesterday’s election, and unions poured in millions to keep control in the nation’s eighth-largest city. Faulkoner defeated fellow City Council member David Alvarez by nine points in a city that Barack Obama carried by 63 percent to 37 percent only 15 months ago.

Germany's Constitutional Court ruling last Friday marks a significant escalation in efforts to rein in the European Central Bank. The ruling's message? Either the European Court of Justice has to stop bond purchases or German justices will. It is also a clear indication that Germany's highest court is extremely skeptical of the ECB. Draghi's 2012 announcement that the ECB would embark on unlimited sovereign bond purchases from ailing euro-zone member states, the court found, is incompatible with European law. The ruling notes that OMT "exceeds the mandate" of the ECB and "encroaches on the responsibility of the member states for...

The Tories are doomed to defeat at the 2015 general election if David Cameron gives in to Eurosceptic 'obsessives' and allows policy to be driven by a fear of Ukip, MP Tim Yeo has warned. Mr Yeo believes his own pro-EU stance as well as his support for gay marriage and green policies contributed to his local party voting not to re-select him as its candidate after 30 years in the Commons.

A police officer filmed smashing the windows of a Range Rover in a video clip which became an internet sensation has won more than £400,000 after claiming he was 'ridiculed' out of his job. Former Pc Mike Baillon, 42, won the payout when an industrial tribunal said he had lost out on his future pension and some earnings when he quit his job. He had told the tribunal he was the butt of daily mockery by his colleagues in Gwent Police because of the YouTube video. Pc Baillon's behaviour was terrible to start with - but it is even worse...

The National Institutes of Health has spent millions of dollars studying male sex workers in Peru, including more than $400,000 to determine why gay men get syphilis in the South American country. “Syphilis remains an uncontrolled infectious disease globally, with high prevalence and incidence in certain high risk populations, affecting more than 20 percent of men who have sex with men (MSM) in Peru,” according to the grant, awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). “The incidence of syphilis in MSM in Peru is about 9 cases per 100 person-years,” it said. “We are proposing a study to improve...

Investments in renewable energy were supposed to be a sure thing, with wind park operators promising annual returns of up to 20 percent. More often than not, however, such pledges have been illusory -- and many investors have lost their principal to boot. Indications are mounting, however, that green capitalism will not be able to meet all expectations. In courts around the country, complaints are mounting from wind park investors who haven't received a dividend disbursement in years or whose parks went belly up. Consumer protection activists are complaining that many projects are poorly structured and lack transparency. In the...

You may never heard of it but "The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a trade agreement that is presently being secretly negotiated between the European Union and the United States. It aims at removing trade barriers in a wide range of economic sectors to make it easier to buy and sell goods and services between the EU and the US. On top of cutting tariffs across all sectors, the EU and the US want to tackle barriers behind the customs border – such as differences in technical regulations, standards and approval procedures. These often cost unnecessary time and...

Migrants would be forced to pay a £2,000 bond to enter Britain to cover the cost of them claiming benefits and using services, Nick Clegg's favourite think tank said today. The National Insurance Advance would be paid by anyone from outside the EU and would only be refunded once they have paid enough tax or left the country without becoming a drain on the welfare state. Alasdair Murray, the report’s author, said: ‘Politicians are engaged in an arms race around immigration policy which appears to have more to do with looking tough than genuinely addressing people's concerns with practical policy....

Raymond Boyer was known as 'Gay Ray' to Obama and his marijuana smoking 'Choom Gang' of privately-educated kids at Hawaiian high school Ray was bludgeoned to death with a hammer in 1986, seven years after he supplied the future president and his friends with drugs. Lover Andrew Devere, a male prostitute, gave police a variety of reasons for the murder. He said surfer Boyer put him down constantly and broke wind in his face Court documents uncovered for the first time by MailOnline Choom is island slang for pot smoking and group went on excursions to countryside to get high...

Reforms to the formula used to ration expensive medicines will make it harder for NHS patients to get new life-saving drugs, warn campaigners. The rationing body, The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), plans to lower the cost threshold for new treatments and end the priority given to patients who are dying. The reforms are a shift to a system which the Government pledged would allow patients to ‘access the drugs and treatments their doctors think they need’. It involves changes to a complex formula, known as quality adjusted life years (QALY). And some drugs approved under ‘end...

Almost a million people who applied for sickness benefit have instead been found fit for work, according to figures published today. A third (32 per cent) of all new claimants for employment and support allowance (ESA) were assessed as being fit to work and capable of employment between October 2008 and March 2013 - totalling 980,400 people, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said. More than a million others withdrew their claims before reaching a face-to-face assessment - this can be because of individuals recovering and either returning to work, or claiming a benefit more appropriate to their situation....

Politicians who are negotiating the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), view things differently, of course. Their task is a massive one. The pact is to go far beyond merely eliminating tariffs. In addition, standards are to be aligned and technical regulations, norms and approval procedures are to be harmonized in order to ensure that both goods and services can be transported across the Atlantic as free from bureaucracy and barriers as possible. Some aspects to be negotiated make a lot of sense -- ways of coming up with universal charger plugs for electric cars, for example. But other, more...

British patients should adopt more 'pushy' American attitudes with their doctors to get drugs they are entitled to, the head of the NHS rationing body has said. Professor David Haslam, chairman of the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (Nice), said that patients need to see themselves as 'equal partners' with doctors to get the treatment they need. And he explained that after working as a doctor near an American air force base in Cambridgeshire, he noticed that U.S. patients had a less deferential approach than local residents. Earlier this week a Government report found that a third of...

The Government has an archive of 17 billion pictures of vehicles discretely photographed at the roadside by hidden cameras every single day, it was revealed today. That works out as an average of 472 pictures for each of the 36 million cars, lorries and vans on Britain's roads. There are 8,000 Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras hidden on streets across the country which are used in the battle against crime. It is thought that by 2018, between 50 million and 75 million pictures of vehicles will be taken every day. Julian Blazeby, from the Association of Chief Police Officers,...

Conservative welfare reforms are part of an 'historic mission' in the tradition of the fight to end slavery, Iain Duncan Smith claimed today. The Work and Pensions Secretary said his determination to cut benefits and get people back to work is like the work of William Wilberforce who campaigned for the end of the slave trade and Lord Shaftesbury, who enacted laws to protect women and children in Victorian factories. Signalling further welfare reforms that will be central to the Conservative election manifesto, he also cautioned colleagues that ‘casual disapproval of those on benefits is too easy’, pointing out that...

A headteacher has warned parents they will be fined £60 each if one of their children is a few minutes late for school. Both the pupil's mother and father will be forced to pay the penalty if they miss registration 10 times in a 12-week term. And if the fine issued by Emerson Valley School in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, is not paid within 21 days it will double to £120. Parents who have two children will be hit with a combined £240 penalty - which will double to £480 if not paid within three weeks. Education campaigners and parents said...

The Nordic model, known for high taxes and its cradle-to-grave welfare system, is getting a radical makeover as nations find themselves cash-strapped. During the post-war period, the Scandinavian economies became famous for a "softer" version of capitalism that placed more importance on social equality than other western nations, such as Britain and the United States, did. Sweden aims to make sure people can see their general practitioner within one week, which the organization said was a modest goal in and of itself. "The target for maximum wait in Sweden to see your primary care doctor (no more than seven days)...

I have spent much of my career as a doctor working with disadvantaged patient groups — the mentally ill, in paediatric palliative care, geriatrics, in outreach programs, in drug clinics and with the homeless. Many of these people are desperately in need. Only a few weeks ago, a patient spat and then threw a chair at me because I had the audacity to suggest that if he continued to inject himself with heroin every day, despite being in treatment for more than two years, he should be discharged from my care and that this might affect his benefits. ‘They can’t...

FORT PIERCE, Fla. - Police in Fort Pierce are now armed with a U.S. military surplus battle wagon: a six wheel, 30-ton armored vehicle worth $700,000 — that the agency got for $2,000. “If you see my SWAT team roll up in this, it’s over, so just give up,” said Police Chief Sam Baldwin. However Baldwin hopes the mine-resistant, ambush protection vehicle just stays parked. If used, it would be for transporting the SWAT team and for a mobile command and rescue vehicle. Officer Keith Holmes got the vehicle in October through the auspices of the National Defense Authorization Act....

The speed limit on one of Britain’s busiest motorways is to be cut from 70mph to 60mph under a controversial plan to meet European Union pollution targets. The first ‘environmental’ speed limit is set to be imposed within months on a 32-mile stretch of the M1 – for seven days a week, from 7am to 7pm The limit will be in place for several years, and any driver caught breaking it faces a hefty fine and penalty points on their license.