Free Republic

Debbie Wasserman Schultz and CNN’s Anderson Cooper engaged in a heated exchange Thursday night when Cooper charged that the Florida congresswoman “misquoted” the Los Angeles Times in a letter that the anchor also said misrepresented Mitt Romney’s stance on the Republican Party’s abortion platform plank. The segment, which has gone viral in the conservative blogosphere, features Cooper, on his CNN show “Anderson Cooper 360,” pointing to a fundraising email Wasserman Schultz signed. He said that a quote she used from the Los Angeles Times in the appeal was taken “completely out of context.”“The DNC chairwoman calls out Mitt Romney and...

First of a five-part seriesThe history of fire in the American Southwest is buried in a catacomb of rooms under the bleachers of the football stadium at the University of Arizona.Here rules Professor Thomas Swetnam, tree ring expert. You want to read a tree ring? You go to Tom. He's a big, burly guy with a beard and a true love for trees."Around 1890 or 1900, it stops," Swetnam says. "We call it the Smokey Bear effect."Settlers brought livestock that ate the grass, so fires had little fuel. Then when the U.S. Forest Service was formed, its marching orders were...

ILION, N.Y. — This is the town that Remington built. Almost 200 years ago, a young man named Eliphalet Remington Jr. forged his first rifle barrel at his father’s ironworks here in the Mohawk Valley. These days, the Remington Arms factory in this village, midway between Albany and Syracuse, is one of the few large manufacturers still prospering in a part of upstate New York that was once filled with them. But now residents of Ilion, a community whose history and economy are indelibly linked to one of America’s more celebrated gunmakers, are starting to worry about Remington’s future. The...

A decision by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. BRKB -0.15% to end a large wager on the municipal-bond market is deepening questions from some investors about the risks of buying debt issued by cities, states and other public entities. The Omaha, Neb., company recently terminated credit-default swaps insuring $8.25 billion of municipal debt. The termination, disclosed in a quarterly filing with regulators this month, ended five years early a bullish bet that Mr. Buffett made before the financial crisis that more than a dozen U.S. states would keep paying their bills on time, according to a person familiar with the...

Missouri Congressman Todd Akin, a conservative Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, sparked a furor and earned a rebuke from Mitt Romney’s campaign after saying in an interview broadcast Sunday that women’s bodies can prevent pregnancies in “a legitimate rape” and that conception is rare in such cases. Akin, a six-term congressman running against incumbent Democrat Sen. Claire McCaskill, was asked in an interview on St. Louis television station KTVI if he would support abortions for women who have been raped. “It seems to me first of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare,” Akin said. “If...

CHICAGO — He still walks the same streets here as his old acquaintance Barack Obama once did. That is about all they have in common anymore. At 50, Chicago activist Mark Allen lives with his parents, barely able to pay his bills. The head of a small, community-assistance organization called Black Wall Street Chicago, Allen regards his personal survival alone as a small victory, grateful he can pay the rent on his modest office space, aware he is doing better than many on this city’s restive South Side. “Things haven’t gone the way we’d hoped after Barack got elected,” he...

<p>Republican polemicists once used the phrase "San Francisco Democrat" to demonize Democratic rivals – an allusion to the city's singular ideological proclivities.</p> <p>This year, however, the whole state is becoming Republicans' dark symbol of where the country is headed should Barack Obama return to the White House.</p>

Near the back of the St. Francis Xavier cemetery in Centerville, Mass., are the resting places of Eunice and Sargent Shriver. Set in a secluded grassy area, surrounded by a circle of manicured bushes and white flowers and shaded by a large tree, the setting is peaceful and pristine. At the foot of the adjacent 4-foot high gravestones are floral arrangements that are just starting to wilt. The card on Sargent’s grave reads, “Dear Daddy, I miss you so much, Maria.” A similar card lies on her mother’s grave. The area is clean and well-tended, the only blemish is a...

After last week’s massacre in Colorado, President Obama’s remarks Wednesday night about gun violence were a rare departure for a president who usually steers clear of the subject. Now another gun issue is coming to a head that the president likely would just as soon avoid: the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty. The treaty, whose final version is due out on Friday, aims to regulate the $60 billion international trade in small arms in an effort to keep weapons out of the hands of terrorists and rogue regimes. But gun owners in the United States are on high alert over...

The state's July 1 ban on foie gras was supposed to prevent the fatty goose or duck liver from being served at California restaurants. Instead, foie gras has become more popular, and enforcement of the new law has been nearly nonexistent. Sacramento chefs and others from around California are exposing loopholes in the law, making foie gras fairly easy to find in restaurants despite its blacklisted status. You can find it served at such restaurants as The Kitchen in Sacramento, where foie gras is treated as a complimentary item – not officially for sale and technically, some say, not illegal....

Link only: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_21142159/gun-sales-up-since-tragedy

Books, music and 6,300 rounds. The Internet’s 24-hour shopping mall is now under scrutiny for the role it played in providing the suspect in the Colorado theater shooting access to bulk ammunition with little state, federal or human oversight. While the national debate over gun control seems permanently stalled, the discussion over online sales of guns, bullets and other equipment could be revived by the Colorado shooting that left 12 dead and 58 injured. Private gun sales, which often take place on the Internet, account for more than 40 percent of U.S. gun sales, according to a 2011 report by...

Link only: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/07/ff_kaspersky/all/

To be clear, no one is threatening to deport 20-year-old Lauren Gray. No federal agents have rapped on the door of her family’s home, or at the Lakeview Motor Lodge and Restaurant they’ve owned for 17 years in Trenton. She’s received no phone calls or letters from the Department of Homeland Security telling her she needs to get out of the United States. Yet at 9:30 a.m. on July 31 — if the miracle Gray and her family have been working for does not come through — she will board an American Airlines flight that will take her to Dallas...

Published on The New Republic (http://www.tnr.com) Dough-Faced Liberal fat cats wimp out. Alec MacGillis June 22, 2012 | 12:00 am IN EARLY JUNE, a small group of Barack Obama's top fund-raisers gathered for an urgent meeting in a bar on Chicago's Michigan Avenue. They had been summoned to town for a briefing from campaign manager Jim Messina to the several dozen moneyed men and women who make up Obama's finance committee. But, in a classic example of Citizens United-era subterfuge, a handful of the attendees slipped away from the Renaissance Blackstone Hotel in the South Loop and headed to...

A Forestville teenager pleaded guilty Tuesday to fatally stabbing a 92-year-old neighbor who had acted like a grandmother to him and then making off with her credit card and cash last summer, authorities said. William Fitts, 16, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, first-degree burglary and theft in the killing in August of Thelma Steele, authorities said. Prosecutors said that Fitts stabbed Steele several times with a pocketknife after the two argued about family issues and that he then left her for dead on the couch in her home. Her body was not discovered for several days, after Fitts’s family became...

U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver's car wash headache is raging once again. The bank that loaned the Kansas City congressman and his wife $1.3 million in 2002 to buy the Grandview Auto Wash at 12204 Blue Ridge Extension is now demanding payment of more than $1.5 million, after the Cleavers repeatedly fell behind on repaying the loan. The suit, filed last week in Jackson County Circuit Court, said the demand for repayment came after three attempts to delay foreclosure. Bank of America also is seeking attorney's fees and a receiver to protect collateral. "The Cleaver Company failed and refused, and continues...

A leading rights advocacy group this week called on Congress to add civil liberties protections to a recently passed law that opens U.S. airspace to unmanned aerial vehicles. The Federal Aviation Administration Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, signed into law by President Barack Obama last month, requires the FAA to permit the use of drones by law enforcement agencies, commercial organizations and hobbyists. The statute will initially let law enforcement authorities and emergency services use drones that weigh less than five pounds and fly at an altitude of less than 400 feet starting in May. The law requires that...

A new class of private submarines has become the latest plaything for the super rich. They allow would-be adventurers to navigate the wonders of the coral reefs, explore shipwrecks or even to cruise alongside dolphins. The cheapest models start at $1.7 million, but prices can go as high as $80 million. Just recently, Graham Hawkes tracked down a group of hammerhead sharks. Along for the ride on his Deepflight Super Falcon at the time was an investor named Tom Perkins, a potential client. "We were literally stalking them from below," Hawkes says. "It felt like flying in liquid sky." Hawkes...

Former Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) writes in a new book that President Obama ditched him in the 2010 election after he helped Obama win the biggest legislative victory of his term by passing healthcare reform. Specter also claims that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) did not uphold his promise to grant him seniority accrued over 28 years of service in the Senate as a Republican. Specter, who rocked Washington’s political establishment and made headlines around the country when he left the Republican Party to join Democrats in April of 2009, has kept quiet about these slights until now. He...