Free Republic

Rush Limbaugh's comments last week about a young law school student have caused some advertisers to flee his radio show. But if the leader of the Missouri House has his way, the broadcast icon soon will be in the company of Harry Truman, Walt Disney and Stan Musial. House Speaker Steve Tilley, R-Perryville, intends to honor Limbaugh with a place in the Hall of Famous Missourians, a ring of busts in the Capitol rotunda recognizing prominent Missourians. The unveiling is not expected until closer to the end of the legislative session in May. But word of the honor leaked Monday,...

For Vegas die-hards bored with the $750 tasting menu at Guy Savoy, the $250 Elton John tickets at Caesars or the $200,000 single-hand baccarat bet at the Bellagio, this city is serving up a new way to find high-priced thrills. Machine Guns Vegas — an upscale, indoor shooting range complete with skimpily dressed, gun-toting hostesses — opened last week a half mile from the Strip, with an armory of weapons and a promise to fulfill the desires of anyone wanting to fire off an Uzi or a vintage Thompson submachine gun. With its provocative mix of violent fantasy (think blowing...

The Colorado Supreme Court today ruled that University of Colorado students and employees with concealed carry permits are able to carry their weapons on campus. Colorado's highest court sided with Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, a gun-rights group that sued CU and argued that a 1994 university policy banning concealed weapons from its campuses violates state gun laws. "It's a great victory for gun rights, and civil rights in general," said James Manley, the attorney with Mountain States Legal Foundation who represented the gun-rights group. "CU will now have to fall in line and follow the state law." In...

The story of the tangled relationship between Casey Greenfield, a rising star in New York legal circles, and Jeffrey Toobin, arguably the nation’s leading legal journalist, has gone mainstream. Over the long weekend, the New York Times wrote an 1,800-word story on their affair. Actually, to be fair, the story was mainly about Casey Greenfield and her law partner, Scott Labby, launching their boutique law firm, Greenfield Labby (which has a beautifully designed website, by the way). The firm specializes in what the Times describes as “high-stakes family law,” which includes not just divorce and custody litigation, but “[c]risis management,...

Nearly 20 years ago, former Virginia governor L. Douglas Wilder announced that he wanted to create a museum that would tell the story of slavery in the United States. He had the vision, the clout, the charm to make it seem attainable, and he had already made history: the grandson of slaves, he was the nationÂ’s first elected African American governor. He assembled a high-profile board, hosted splashy galas with entertainer Bill Cosby promising at least $1 million in support, accepted a gift of some 38 acres of prime real estate smack along Interstate 95 in Fredericksburg and showed plans...

Scratch Karl Lagerfeld’s name off any future State Dinner guest lists. The famed fashion designer may be in hot water with the East Wing for an embarrassing quote that he incorrectly attributed to first lady Michelle Obama in a recent interview. Lagerfeld, the creative director for Chanel, told Metro on Monday, “My favorite line of Mrs. Obama is when a journalist asked her if she thought her skirts were not too tight and she answered, ‘Why you don't like my big black ass?’” (The taped interview took place in Paris and was conducted in English, according to Metro USA editor-in-chief...

The Navy's new drone being tested near Chesapeake Bay stretches the boundaries of technology: It's designed to land on the deck of an aircraft carrier, one of aviation's most difficult maneuvers. What's even more remarkable is that it will do that not only without a pilot in the cockpit, but without a pilot at all. The X-47B marks a paradigm shift in warfare, one that is likely to have far-reaching consequences. With the drone's ability to be flown autonomously by onboard computers, it could usher in an era when death and destruction can be dealt by machines operating semi-independently. Although...

IT TOOK A MATTER of seconds during a gathering with constituents at a Tucson shopping center for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’s (D-Ariz.) life to be profoundly transformed. Ms. Giffords was one of 19 people wounded or killed there last year, allegedly by a deranged young man who inflicted unspeakable damage with the help of a semi-automatic weapon and an extended magazine clip. The bullet that pierced Ms. Giffords’s head left her clinging to life; hers has been a remarkable rehabilitation over the past 12 months, during which she has learned to walk and speak again. * Ms. Giffords did not refer...

Too bad Christmas has passed. Here’s a gift idea for that hard-to-buy-for person on your list: Bonnie and Clyde’s Tommy gun. On Saturday, Mayo Auction & Realty of Kansas City will sell a .45-caliber Thompson sub-machine gun along with a 12-gauge shotgun, both supposedly left behind when the infamous duo shot it out with police in April 1933 in Joplin. The auction will begin at 10 a.m. Jan. 21 at the Mayo Auction gallery at 8253 Wornall Road. Bids also may be placed online. Interested? Well, get your special government permit — the Tommy gun is fully automatic and fully...

It was growing late on the night of Nov. 9, 2011. John P. Surma, the chief executive of U.S. Steel and the vice chairman of Penn State University’s board of trustees, sat at a rectangular table at the Penn Stater Hotel. Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania was on the speaker phone. Other trustees were present, many emotionally spent. The board, scrambling to address the child sexual abuse scandal involving the university and its football program, had already decided to remove Graham B. Spanier as president. Then, many of those present recalled this week, the tension in the room mounted. Joe...

The F.B.I. reports that gun dealers submitted the names of almost half-a-million customers in the six days before Christmas, with December on its way to surpassing November, which had a record tally of 1,534,414 names submitted for background checks for criminal convictions and mental health issues. Only a little more than 1 percent of buyers are typically rejected by federally licensed gun dealers. No one knows how many more firearms were purchased through the gun-show loophole that enables black marketeering. The F.B.I. data are particularly grim given the approaching anniversary of the shooting rampage in Tucson that left Representative Gabrielle...

OAKLAND, Calif. — Days after Jean Quan was elected mayor in the fall of 2010, the Oakland police put a wheel clamp on her silver Prius while it was parked outside City Hall. She cursed her husband for not paying the family’s parking tickets and braced for the embarrassing news articles. So it began: the rookie year from hell. In May, the city attorney quit, lambasting City Hall as being corrupt. In October, the police chief followed suit, complaining about micromanagement. In November, voters rejected a tax that Ms. Quan had advocated to help fix a budget shortfall. December brought...

Sen. Ben Nelson would draw salary offers of more than $1 million per year if he decided to move to K Street after his term ends in 2013, headhunters for the lobbying industry say. Headhunters contacted by The Hill estimated that Nelson could command salaries from $400,000 to more than $1 million per year, depending on whether he wanted to work full- or part-time. “[Lobbying firms are] going to look at him as a conservative Democrat, and I think that will stand well for him in the business community,” said Chris Jones of CapitolWorks. Nelson has given no indication that...

Across the Washington area, black students are suspended and expelled two to five times as often as white students, creating disparities in discipline that experts say reflect a growing national problem. An analysis by The Washington Post shows the phenomenon both in the suburbs and in the city, from the far reaches of Southern Maryland to the subdivisions of Fairfax, Prince George’s and Montgomery counties. In Washington area, racial gaps in school discipline Study exposes myths about school discipline Most students suspended, expelled at some point Police presence in schools spur Miranda questions View all Items in this Story School...

The National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday adopted a rule that will speed union-organizing elections in private-sector workplaces, ushering in some of the biggest procedural changes in decades and scoring a win for unions that say scheduling a vote often takes too long. The board's two Democrats approved the rule through electronic voting, while the lone Republican symbolically rejected it by choosing not to vote. The rule takes effect April 30. The approval drew immediate backlash from employers, which said it leaves them inadequate time to respond to unionization campaigns and limits their rights to legally challenge elections before employee...

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The evening is rainy and quite warm, which is disconcerting since it is almost December. A hundred or so people gather on the east side of what we may safely call Zuccotti Park, for their General Assembly.   Nothing about the park feels like Liberty Plaza anymore. Every inch of the perimeter, for instance, is lined with metal barricades, just inside which stand private security guards, husky and rude, dressed in all black, apart from their yellow vests. A massive Christmas tree has been set up in the park and barricaded off. Besides the few protesters, that’s who’s here. The...

<p>John Ford signed up for a revolution, but he’s running a clinic.</p> <p>In the early days of Occupy Boston, Ford, a 30-year-old bookstore owner from the white, blue-collar town of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Alex Ingram, a 22-year-old African-American from Georgia who served in the Air Force as a linguist, would stay up late into the night in Occupy Boston’s library. Enveloped by Rousseau and Chomsky, they’d ponder big ideas about how to change the system. But tonight they’re grappling with a different set of issues: How do we deal with Henry, who’s drunk and pissed off again and recently threatened another Occupier with a hammer? What do we say to the furious young woman who’s on a manhunt for the guy who promised her forty bucks for sex and then ran off? And what the hell are we going to do about Phil?</p>

Eighty-eight-year-old retired metallurgist Bob Wallace is a self-described tinkerer, but he hardly thinks of himself as the Thomas Edison of the illegal drug world. He has nothing to hide. His product is packaged by hand in a cluttered Saratoga garage. It's stored in a garden shed in the backyard. The whole operation is guarded by an aged, congenial dog named Buddy. But federal and state drug enforcement agents are coming down hard on Wallace's humble homemade solution he concocted to help backpackers purify water. Wallace says federal and state agents have effectively put him out of business, because authorities won't...

A transgender woman in South Florida faces charges of practicing cosmetic surgery without a license, after police say she injected an unwitting patient’s buttocks with a handful of unsafe substances, including tire mender Fix-A-Flat, NBC reported. The botched butt implant sent the unidentified woman to the hospital, and landed Oneal Ron Morris, who is legally identified as a man, in cuffs. Miami Gardens Police arrested Morris, 30, on Friday, following an investigation by the Florida Department of Health. Sgt. William Bamford said the illegal procedure took place in May 2010, after the woman and Morris met to discuss details, according...