Free Republic

Boron, Calif. - A shadow has fallen over this close-knit community of 2,000 as fears deepen of a strike at the borax mine on the city's edge. "The whole town is tied to that mine. Most of the people who live here now work at the plant," said David Liebengood, president of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 30, which represents the employees. "It has passed through generations." But the days of generational job security may be over. Citing a 25% loss in its share of the global market, mining company Rio Tinto has spent the last five months trying...

To defend himself, McDonald says, he needs a handgun. So, in April of 2008, the retired maintenance engineer agreed to serve as the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging Chicago's 28-year-old handgun ban. Soon after, he walked into the Chicago Police Department and, as his attorneys had directed, applied for a .22-caliber Beretta pistol, setting the lawsuit into motion. When that case is argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on March 2, McDonald will become the public face of one of the most important Second Amendment cases in the nation's history.

The United States has suspended its medical evacuations of critically injured Haitian earthquake victims until a dispute over who will pay for their care is settled, military officials said Friday. The military flights, usually C-130s carrying Haitians with spinal cord injuries, burns and other serious wounds, ended on Wednesday after Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida formally asked the federal government to shoulder some of the cost of the care. Hospitals in Florida have treated more than 500 earthquake victims so far, the military said, including an infant who was pulled out of the rubble with a fractured skull and ribs....

Saddam Hussein's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majeed -- also known as Chemical Ali -- was executed Monday, an Iraqi government spokesman said. He was hanged after having been convicted on 13 counts of killings and genocide, Ali al-Dabagh said.

...The legislation focuses on "military-style" assault weapons, which can fire rapidly and carry large magazines of ammunition. *Owners of weapons affected by the bill would be able to keep them if they allow the local sheriff's department to inspect and make sure they are stored "safely and securely." The weapons can still be used at firing ranges.

A Michigan defense contractor will voluntarily stop stamping references to Bible verses on combat rifle sights made for the U.S. military, a major buyer of the company's gear. In a statement released Thursday, Trijicon of Wixom, Mich., says it is also providing to the armed forces free of charge modification kits to remove the Scripture citations from the telescoping sights already in use. The Marine Corps has purchased more than 200,000 Trijicon sights and the Army has bought about 100,000.

For the first time, John Edwards is publicly admitting that he is indeed the father of a 2-year-old daughter conceived with Rielle Hunter, a campaign videographer with whom he had an affair. In a written statement provided exclusively to NBC News, the former North Carolina senator and Democratic presidential candidate says he’s taking responsibility for the child, Frances Quinn Hunter: “I am Quinn’s father. I will do everything in my power to provide her with the love and support she deserves. I have been able to spend time with her during the past year and trust that future efforts to...

HYANNIS PORT - In this quiet seaside village where his family was rooted, Senator Edward M. Kennedy was a familiar figure, known by many residents as a friend and neighbor. But yesterday, Ted Kennedy’s hometown did not look or sound like a place deeply attached to the senator’s liberal legacy, with blue-and-red Scott Brown signs propped in shop windows and driveways, and many voters voicing an appetite for change.

Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson and his wife were leaving dinner at a new pizza joint near their home in Omaha one night last week when a patron began complaining about Nelson’s decisive vote in favor of the Senate’s health care bill. Other customers started booing. A woman yelled, “Get him the hell out of here!” And the Nelsons and their dining companions beat a hasty retreat. “It was definitely a scene in there,” said Tom Lewis, a 41-year-old dentist and registered Republican who witnessed the incident. A second witness confirmed the incident to POLITICO. It’s a new experience for Nelson....

E&P will shut its doors this afternoon after more than 125 years in operation as "the bible of the newspaper industry" and one of America's oldest magazines. Staffers are vacating the offices in New York City, but we still hope to be back. We shipped our January issue on Monday and it will be mailed to subscribers next week. This Web site and our two blogs will remain alive but we will not be updating them after today. Office phone and email service will be suspended but staffers--a vast majority have worked here from 10 to 25 years--can be reached...

The attack on illustrator Kurt Westergaard wasn't the first attempt to carry out a deadly fatwa. When Muslims tried to murder Salman Rushdie 20 years ago, the protests among intellectuals were loud. Today, though, Western writers and thinkers would rather take cover than defend basic rights.

There's a decent chance that if you walked up to a U.S. soldier fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan, some piece of equipment on his rifle would be stamped with the words, "Boulder, CO." But Magpul Industries, a growing manufacturer of injection-molded plastic parts primarily for use on the AR-15 weapons platform, isn't actually located in Boulder -- rather it's a few hundred yards from the Boulder County border in Erie. The company's head honchos know this geographical fact, but they like the bit of irony that comes from a weapon-gear manufacturer operating so close to the liberal stronghold of Boulder....

Now, with a new bullet-stamping law scheduled to take effect in 2010, the gun industry predicts it will introduce even fewer new models in California rather than install a device necessary to trace individual casings to a statewide database.

In the years since their bitter battle, both former President Bill Clinton and independent counsel Ken Starr have predicted they’d be vindicated in the history books. Now the first definitive history of the Clinton scandal is about to arrive — and neither man can be completely happy about his portrayal in its pages. “The Death of American Virtue,” due out in February, asserts that Clinton had yet another extramarital affair, with Susan McDougal of Whitewater fame. Also in the book, Monica Lewinsky tells author Ken Gormley that she believes the president lied under oath when he described their encounters. At...

Why wouldn't you just fire a pistol the normal way? As police chased Raymond "Ready" Martinez through Times Square on Thursday, the street hustler and aspiring rapper fired two shots, holding the gun sideways "like a character out of a rap video."

Some parishioners in the Church of Obama discovered last week that their spiritual leader is a false prophet.

Blacks are living a tale of two Americas — one of the ascension of the first black president with the cultural capital that accrues; the other of a collapsing quality of life and amplified racial tensions, while supporting a president who is loath to even acknowledge their pain, let alone commiserate in it. --snip-- ... the election’s afterglow has nearly faded, the hysteria of hope is being ground against the hard stone of reality. Things have not gotten better. In many ways, they’ve gotten worse.

LOGAN, UTAH Forever a part of American electoral history, Joe Wurzelbacher -- better known as "Joe the Plumber" -- is hitting back at the media for its coverage of him over the past year, telling Editor & Publisher the reporting has been "poorly done." In a wide-ranging interview with E&P, Wurzelbacher also shared his thoughts on Sarah Palin (he hopes she doesn't run for president in 2012), Palin's references to him in her new book, and the charge that he has capitalized off the publicity that has come with being Joe the Plumber. He also called President Obama's ideology "un-American."...

Freshman Magali Flores, and ethnic studies major, was locked arm-in-arm with other students outside Wheeler, one day after she'd returned from protests at UCLA, where the regents met this week. "It's horrible, how could they possibly do this?" she said of the fee increases. Flores acknowledged the increase would not affect her because her family earns less than $70,000, and tuition remains free. However, she said that she's already in debt from cost of living, registration fees, and books, totaling $10,000.

At the Congressional hearings, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, a Connecticut independent who is chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said that the Nov. 5 shootings allegedly carried out by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, was a “homegrown terrorist attack” and that law enforcement and military agencies may have failed to act appropriately.