Free Republic

Representative Anthony D. Weiner, a once-promising politician whose Brooklyn roots and scrappy style made him a leading candidate to be the next mayor of New York, resigned his seat on Thursday, ending a three-week scandal over his lewd online behavior that startled his constituents and alienated many of his colleagues. Mr. Weiner made the decision after long and emotional discussions with his political advisers and his wife, Huma Abedin, whom friends described as devastated by the behavior of her husband of 11 months, and worried about the couple’s financial future. In a chaotic four-minute news conference at a senior center...

Anthony D. Weiner’s alma mater confirmed Thursday that it had canceled his speech at its graduation because of the scandal surrounding his sexually explicit communications with women. Brooklyn Technical High School, one of the city’s most competitive public high schools and the one Mr. Weiner graduated from in 1981, withdrew the invitation after parents and administrators questioned the wisdom of having him address an auditorium of high school seniors. “I just don’t think at this point it was a good message to send across to the students, especially in a graduation ceremony when the commencement speaker has issues that are...

Reported on MSNBC that Weiners office staff is packing up and leaving his office, locking up behind them. Phones not being answered. Pelosi to address at 10:45.

IPHONE users may soon be stopped from filming at concerts — as a result of new Apple technology. The leading computer company plans to build a system that will sense when people are trying to video live events — and turn off their cameras. A patent application filed by Apple revealed how the technology would work. If an iPhone were held up and used to film during a concert infra-red sensors would detect it. These sensors would then contact the iPhone and automatically disable its camera function. People would still be able to send text messages and make calls. The...

Suggest adding the whipping post to America’s system of criminal justice and most people recoil in horror. But offer a choice between five years in prison or 10 lashes and almost everybody picks the lash. What does that say about prison? America has a prison problem. Never in the history of the world has a country locked up so many of its people. We have more prisons than China, and it has a billion more people than we do. Forty years ago America had 338,000 people behind bars. Today 2.3 million are incarcerated. We have more prisoners than soldiers. Something...

Unshackle New York! New York's notoriously high taxes and public spending, combined with restrictive "nanny" policies, make it the "least free" state in the country, a new study has found. The Empire State ranked 50th in George Mason University's biannual "Freedom in the States" rankings. "New York has by far the highest taxes in the country," the study reads, citing steep levies on property, income and corporations compared to other states. The high taxes, in turn, fuel massive spending, according to the analysis by George Mason's Mercatus Center, a libertarian think tank. "Spending on public welfare, hospitals, electric power, transit,...

CHICAGO — FBI agents took box after box of address books, family calendars, artwork and personal letters in their 10-hour raid in September of the century-old house shared by Stephanie Weiner and her husband. The agents seemed keenly interested in Weiner’s home-based business, the Revolutionary Lemonade Stand, which sells silkscreened infant bodysuits and other clothes with socialist slogans, phrases like “Help Wanted: Revolutionaries.” http://www.washingtonpost.com The search was part of a mysterious, ongoing nationwide terrorism investigation with an unusual target: prominent peace activists and politically active labor organizers. The probe — involving subpoenas to 23 people and raids of seven homes...

<p>The RoboCop look is coming nationwide, a law enforcement supplier says, and Johnson County deputies are on the cutting edge as they test cameras they wear on their ears.</p> <p>Executives at Taser International Inc. hope the company’s new device spreads as quickly among police as its zappers did in the 1990s.</p>

They said it was like napalm: it exploded in a flash, stuck to skin and clothing, and refused to stop burning. A 14-year-old Long Island boy is fighting for his life after he was slathered with blazing, jellylike citronella fuel on May 28, when his cousin tried to light a ceramic firepot to prepare for a backyard wedding reception, but the quart bottle of fuel he was pouring instead burst into flames. In Manhattan, a 24-year-old man has been on and off a ventilator after an almost identical blaze nearly killed him and badly wounded his best friend on June...

Representative Anthony D. Weiner of New York, reeling from revelations of salacious online behavior that threaten his political career, moved rapidly on Tuesday to make amends as Republicans called for his resignation and leading members of his own Democratic Party distanced themselves from him. Mr. Weiner spent much of the past 24 hours apologizing over and over to stunned Congressional colleagues and Democratic leaders angry at him for misleading them and the public. Even neighboring House Democrats seemed shaken, with many of them worrying that worse disclosures may still surface. During a tense telephone call with Mr. Weiner, during which...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Steve Israel, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, are calling for an investigation into Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) over the series of sexually explicit conservations and lewd photos he exchanged with a half-dozen women during the last several years. “I am deeply disappointed and saddened about this situation; for Anthony’s wife, Huma, his family, his staff and his constituents,” Pelosi said in a statement released on Monday night. “I am calling for an Ethics Committee investigation to determine whether any official resources were used or any other violation of House...

Memorial Day barbecues may be over, but this town is enjoying a Weiner roast of obscene proportions. On the spit: Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York, perhaps the most pugilistic Democrat in the House, who now finds himself in a fight he does not relish. Over the holiday weekend, a waist-down photograph of an aroused man in boxer briefs was sent from Weiner’s official Twitter account to tens of thousands of followers. Weiner had a plausible explanation: His Twitter account was hacked and he didn’t send the photo. That’s where the plausibility ends. Asked by NBC’s Luke Russert whether the...

Apparently, a lot of people consider President Obama to be bumblingly inarticulate. "The guy can't talk his way out of a paper bag!" a reader wrote to me recently. "Sarah Palin is a brilliant speaker. It's the president whose sentences are undiagrammable," said another in response to a column I wrote about Palin. It's not just my readers, nor is it exclusively conservatives, who hold this view. A Google search of "does Obama have a speech impediment" turns up several pages of discussion among the president's supporters and critics alike.Admittedly, the president is given to a lot of pauses, "uhs"...

My brother David and I have long supported the principles that help societies prosper. I have actively done so for nearly 50 years, as has my brother for more than 40. Recently, we have stepped up our efforts to deal with enormous threats to the future well-being of the country. This has prompted some extreme criticism. From the White House to fringe bloggers, we are vilified, mischaracterized and threatened. In a perverse way, these attacks indicate we are having a positive effect on public awareness and policymaking. It’s why we are working even harder to advance economic freedom and prosperity....

Newt Gingrich, a fiscal conservative? Not when it comes to Tiffany’s. In 2005 and 2006, the former House speaker turned presidential candidate carried as much as $500,000 in debt to the premier jewelry company, according to financial disclosures filed with the Clerk of the House of Representatives. Gingrich, who represented Georgia in Congress for two decades, retired in 1999. But his wife, Callista Gingrich, was employed by the House Agriculture Committee until 2007, according to public records. She listed a “revolving charge account” at Tiffany and Company in the liability section of her personal financial disclosure form for two consecutive...

Congressman Todd Akin is set to kick-start the 2012 campaign, announcing today his entry into the race for U.S. Senate in a move that will set off a cascade of maneuvering among those trying to replace the Wildwood Republican in the House. Akin's decision to leave his relatively safe perch in Congress — he hasn't had a competitive race in over a decade — to challenge U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill underscores the belief among many Republicans that the incumbent Democrat is vulnerable. McCaskill's close relationship with the White House, along with the recent disclosure she failed to pay taxes on...

When the news of IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn ("DSK")'s arrest for attempted rape came out, many of the noises coming out of France was that it was a national embarrassment. And of course it is. Tabloids are making great headlines out of DSK's Frenchness and taste for women. But the real national embarrassment for France is the response of its elites. First came the two-faced appeals to the sacred "presumption of innocence" by French politicians on both sides of the aisle. DSK rival and self-proclaimed women's advocate Ségolène Royal extended her thoughts to DSK and his family for going through...

France's broadcasting watchdog called Tuesday on the country's television channels to be extremely cautious in showing footage of International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn in handcuffs, a practice that contravenes French law. In the days since New York City police said Mr. Strauss-Kahn had been arrested and charged with sexually assaulting a cleaning woman in his room at the Sofitel Hotel near Times Square, images of the International Monetary Fund chief have flooded airwaves and the pages of newspapers and magazines in France. The footage has transfixed the nation, not least because French law prohibits cameras inside French courtrooms,...

Not long ago, Rep. Dennis Kucinich was championing the anti-war movement on the presidential stage with the likes of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. But now, the die-hard liberal who launched his 30-year career on a high note as the “boy mayor of Cleveland” has become something of a political outlaw on the hunt for a new House district reportedly as far west as Washington state and as far north as Maine. It’s a moment brought on by a set of circumstances ranging from dreary to bizarre. The anti-war movement has almost disappeared. He’s bracing to be redistricted out of...

It’s hard not to conclude that one of the most storied families in Missouri political history is on a downward slide. Rep. Russ Carnahan of St. Louis got about as much love as cold pot pie in the recent redistricting battles in the Capitol. Secretary of State Robin Carnahan was trounced badly by Republican Roy Blunt in last year’s Senate race. Remember? It was 54 to 41 percent. The matriarch, Jean Carnahan, was nipped at the wire in the 2002 U.S. Senate race by Republican Jim Talent. The count: 50 to 49 percent. You hear it all over the Capitol...