Free Republic

The Texas State Senate will vote at 10:30am Austin time, 11:30am Pacific. This will conclude the impeachment trial of Texas AG Ken Paxton.

Senate Democrats are set to unveil legislation that would tax energy companies responsible for major greenhouse gas emissions to pay for the costs of climate disasters. The Polluters Pay Climate Fund Act, sponsored by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), would require between 25 to 30 of the U.S. corporations responsible for the most greenhouse gas pollution to pay $300 billion into a fund over 10 years. The legislation would require companies to pay into the fund if they were responsible for at least .05 percent of global carbon dioxide and methane emissions between 2000 and 2019 based on data from...

Students will no longer be graded based on a yearly average, or on how late they turn in assignments. Those are just some of the major grading changes approved this week by California's second-largest school district. The San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) is overhauling the way it grades students. Board members say the changes are part of a larger effort to combat racism... Academic grades will now focus on mastery of the material, not a yearly average, which board members say penalizes students who get a slow start, or who struggle at points throughout the year. Another big change,...

“With the increase in #COVID19 cases across the country, we are committed to doing our part to help reduce the spread of the virus. Starting July 22, we will require all customers in all locations to wear a mask, joining our associates who continue to wear masks,” the [Kroger] company tweeted Wednesday.

n a rebuke to the Obama administration, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been violating federal law by delaying a decision on a proposed nuclear waste dump in Nevada. By a 2-1 vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered the commission to complete the licensing process and approve or reject the Energy Department's application for a never-completed waste storage site at Nevada's Yucca Mountain. In a sharply worded opinion, the court said the nuclear agency was "simply flouting the law" when it allowed the Obama administration to continue plans...

A landmark federal study on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, shows no evidence that chemicals from the natural gas drilling process moved up to contaminate drinking water aquifers at a western Pennsylvania drilling site, the Department of Energy told The Associated Press. After a year of monitoring, the researchers found that the chemical-laced fluids used to free gas trapped deep below the surface stayed thousands of feet below the shallower areas that supply drinking water, geologist Richard Hammack said... The DOE team will start to publish full results of the tests over the next few months, said Hammack, who called the...

My good friend's 53 year old mother has been battling cancer for two years. She has decided to end treatment (chemo) to manage pain and nausea. Doctors have given her 2-6 mo. They're asking for prayers. Her first name is Margaret.

California college students hit with tuition increases in recent years will get a little financial help after Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Thursday to create a website on which popular textbooks can be downloaded for free. Twin bills by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) will give students free digital access to 50 core textbooks for lower-division courses offered by the University of California, California State University and California Community College systems. Hard copies of the texts would cost $20...

Mayor Jerry Sanders created some surprising news Tuesday when he endorsed City Councilman Carl DeMaio to be his mayoral successor. His opponent, Congressman Bob Filner, widened his lead in the mayoral race in a poll released the same day ... The relationship between Sanders and DeMaio has been notoriously frosty. Sanders said they don’t talk much and haven’t always gotten along. But Sanders said Tuesday he cared about the city too much to "sit out" the endorsement. ... A 10News and SurveyUSA poll of likely voters out Tuesday put Filner up 12 points over DeMaio, 50 percent to 38 percent....

After weeks in which the fate of the Senate simmered at nearly even odds of flipping for Republicans or remaining in Democrats' control, the outlook has shifted dramatically in the Democrats' favor. The incumbent party now has an 80 percent chance of retaining its majority, according to the Signal's prediction model. The break is largely due to critical races in Missouri, Wisconsin, Massachusetts and Virginia, all of which have favored the Republican at some point in the past month and now favor the Democratic candidate. ...

Saying there is no fundamental right to a secret ballot, a federal judge Friday dismissed a lawsuit filed by elections integrity activists that challenged whether counties can print ballots with identifying numbers that critics say can be traced back to individual voters easily. ... [Judge] Arguello said activists had not shown the plaintiffs had suffered or would suffer any specific injury that could be remedied by a federal court. She said that even if a ballot could be traced back to a specific voter, it doesn't show that a person's voting rights were violated, saying there was no "fundamental right"...

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius violated federal law when she campaigned this winter for President Obama, federal investigators announced Wednesday. Sebelius broke the law by making “extemporaneous partisan remarks” during a speech in February at a Human Rights Campaign Event in Charlotte, N.C., according to the Office of Special Counsel (OSC). She made the comments in the city that would later host the Democratic National Convention. ... The agency said Sebelius’ comments violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits public officials from campaigning in an official capacity. The agency said the Department of Health and Human Services after the...

Consumer credit fell in July for the first time in nearly a year as Americans reduced credit card debt, a worrisome sign for an economy that has struggled to create jobs. Consumer credit shrank by $3.28 billion in July, the Federal Reserve said on Monday. That was well below the $9.1 billion advance Wall Street economists had forecast in a Reuters poll. ... "(The data) looks consistent with the lackluster gains in consumer spending reported elsewhere," JPMorgan economist David Silver said in a note to clients. ... Consumer credit flows -- a relatively new data series that the Fed says...

Noam Neusner, a former White House speechwriter for President George W. Bush, thought he had given $250 to Ohio GOP Senate candidate Josh Mandel. He hadn't. Instead, Neusner was one of nearly 3,000 donors who stumbled onto a network of look-alike campaign websites that have netted more than $570,000 this year in what some are calling a sophisticated political phishing scheme. The websites have the trappings of official campaign pages: smiling candidate photos and videos, issue pages, and a large red "donate" button at the top. Except that proceeds from the shadow sites go not to the candidates pictured, but...

In his gut, Kurt Myers knows when a student arrives at school on an empty stomach. He can see it on a cold Monday morning in the coat that remains zipped and the hat that stays pulled down, in the rush to eat school breakfast as if it's the student's first meal in days. And in the Reading School District, where 92 percent of students received free or reduced-price meals in 2011-12, Myers knows it doesn't take a food services director such as himself to realize that "when a student looks like he hasn't eaten all weekend, he probably hasn't...

THURSDAY — 7 p.m. Call to order Introduction of Colors US Central Command Joint Forces Color Guard Team Pledge of Allegiance by Dylan Nonaka National Anthem sung by SEVEN Invocation by Ken and Priscilla Hutchins Remarks by Republican Senate candidate and U.S. Rep. Connie Mack, R-Fla. Reagan Legacy Video Remarks by former House Speaker and GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and wife Callista Gingrich Remarks by Craig Romney — 8 p.m. Remarks by former Gov. Jeb Bush, R-Fla. Remarks by Bob White, chairman of Romney for President campaign Remarks by Grant Bennett Remarks by Tom Stemberg — 9 p.m. Remarks...

ATLANTA — Illegal immigrants who are granted permission to stay in the country under an Obama administration policy announced in June will be eligible for driver’s licenses in Georgia, the state’s attorney general wrote in a letter to the governor. “While I do not agree with the actions of the President in issuing the directive, it has been implemented by the Department of Homeland Security, USCIS, and state law recognizes the approval of deferred action status as a basis for issuing a temporary driver’s license,” Attorney General Sam Olens, a Republican, wrote in a letter obtained Thursday by The Associated...

A revamp of Mexico’s beleaguered health-care system is proving to be a runaway success and offers a model for other nations seeking to reform their own systems, according to a review published this week in The Lancet1. The key to the scheme’s success is the way in which it has modified its reforms in response to scientific assessments of their effectiveness, the authors say. Launched in a law in 2003, the Mexican scheme was designed to sort out widespread inefficiencies and inconsistencies in the country's health-care system. Some 50 million Mexicans — nearly half the country’s population — who previously...

WASHINGTON — Fearing that a seat crucial to winning a Senate majority could slip away, the national Republican establishment on Monday unleashed a furious campaign to drive Representative Todd Akin, the party’s newly selected nominee, out of the race against Missouri’s Democratic senator.Amid an uproar over provocative comments on rape and abortion that Mr. Akin made in an interview broadcast on Sunday, the National Republican Senatorial Committee declared that it would withdraw financial and organizational support for Mr. Akin, including $5 million in advertising already reserved for the fall. ...Crossroads GPS, a Republican advocacy group that had already spent more...

PITTSBURGH (AP) — In a surprising turnaround, the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in the U.S. has fallen dramatically to its lowest level in 20 years, and government officials say the biggest reason is that cheap and plentiful natural gas has led many power plant operators to switch from dirtier-burning coal. Many of the world's leading climate scientists didn't see the drop coming, in large part because it happened as a result of market forces rather than direct government action against carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere. Michael Mann, director of...