Free Republic

People convicted of felonies should not forever lose their right to vote, according to Attorney General Eric Holder. In remarks prepared for delivery at a criminal justice conference Tuesday, Holder takes aim at state laws which strip voting rights from those convicted of serious crimes. "It is time to fundamentally rethink laws that permanently disenfranchise people who are no longer under federal or state supervision," Holder is to tell the Leadership Council on Civil and Human Rights Criminal Justice Forum at Georgetown law school. "These restrictions are not only unnecessary and unjust, they are also counterproductive. By perpetuating the stigma...

A company has developed a high-tech pistol it says can help curb gun violence by allowing only its owner pull the trigger. The slick Smart System gun from Armatix looks like something James Bond might carry and uses watch that transmits an identifying radio frequency that prevents everyone but its wearer from firing. The gun is one of several competing for a $1 million prize from the Smart Tech Challenges Foundation, a group started by tech investors in response to the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, where 26 were killed in 2012.

The new healthcare law will slow economic growth over the next decade, costing the nation about 2.3 million jobs and contributing to a $1 trillion increase in projected deficits, the Congressional Budget Office said in a report released Tuesday. The non-partisan group’s report found that the healthcare law’s negative effects on the economy will be “substantially larger” than what it had previously anticipated. The CBO is now estimating that the law will reduce labor force compensation by 1 percent from 2017 to 2024, twice the reduction it previously had projected. This will decrease the number of full-time equivalent jobs in...

ST. LOUIS — The American Civil Liberties Union is hoping that a federal judge’s ruling Monday that temporarily barred a Missouri city from punishing drivers for using their headlights to warn others of speed traps will itself serve as a warning to other cities who try to do the same. ACLU Legal Director Tony Rothert said Monday that it was the first federal court ruling on the issue anywhere in the country. “It is legal in Missouri to communicate in this manner,” he said, “and detaining, ticketing or arresting someone for the content of their speech is illegal. “ U.S....

Labor leaders who have spent months lobbying unsuccessfully for special protections under the Affordable Care Act warned this week that the White House’s continued refusal to help is dampening union support for Democratic candidates in this year’s midterm elections. Leaders of two major unions, including the first to endorse Obama in 2008, said they have been betrayed by an administration that wooed their support for the 2009 legislation with promises to later address the peculiar needs of union-negotiated insurance plans that cover millions of workers. Their complaints reflect a broad sense of disappointment among many labor leaders, who say the...

If you receive a call on your cellphone preceded by just one or two rings, chances are it’s part of the new One Ring phone scam spreading across the U.S. faster than a summer wildfire. Here’s how it works: International scammers have programmed computers to blast out millions of calls to cellphone numbers, ring once or twice, then disconnect. The objective is to make you curious enough to dial that number back. The “gotcha” happens when you return the call. You’ll be charged $19.95 for the international call fee itself and $9 per minute thereafter. “Oftentimes consumers say they hear...

For House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the bad news keeps piling up. On Thursday, longtime Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman, a Pelosi ally and fellow Californian, announced he would retire at the end of this Congress. That closely follows Rep. George Miller’s (D-Calif.) decision to also leave the House at the end of the year. While Democrats should hold both seats, the departures put more districts in play. Perhaps more important, the retirement of two Pelosi friends — both of whom would be chairmen in a Democratic majority — bolsters the GOP argument that their grip on the House is solid....

The son of Colorado Sen. Mark Udall was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of breaking into cars and possessing heroin, according to a local news report.According to authorities cited by the Boulder, Colo., newspaper The Daily Camera, 26-year-old Jed Udall allegedly broke into three cars. He was found with heroin in his pocket, a local sheriff told the paper. He was booked into jail and later released.Mark Udall, a Democrat, is up for reelection this year. Republicans hope to find a competitive challenger among the several entrants in the primary field, but, so far, Udall appears to be in a strong...

The chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee said the House won’t vote on an overhaul of immigration laws for several months. “When you lay out a major policy initiative like immigration, I don’t know when its going to appear on the schedule,” Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) said to reporters at the party’s retreat here. “My hunch is it doesn’t come up tomorrow. It’s probably months out, I don’t know. But the point would be most of the primaries would’ve faded by then, anyway. By the time you get to June, most of them are behind you.” House Republicans will...

At the Volkswagen plant nestled in Tennessee’s rolling hills, a unionization drive has drawn national attention as business groups worry about organized labor’s efforts to gain its first foothold at a foreign-owned automobile plant in the South. In a region known as anti-union, many view VW’s response as unusual, if not topsy-turvy. Unlike most companies that confront unionization efforts, Volkswagen — facing a drive by the United Automobile Workers — has not mounted a vigorous campaign to beat back the union; instead VW officials have hinted they might even prefer having a union. And while unions that seek to organize...

The Apothecary Shoppe, a Tulsa-based compounding pharmacy, publicly denied it has broken any federal or state laws in reportedly supplying lethal injection drugs to corrections officials in multiple states. "In recent weeks, there have been erroneous allegations in the media about The Apothecary Shoppe’s supposed non-compliance with Federal and State laws and regulations regarding the preparation and dispensing of certain sterile injection compounds. The Apothecary Shoppe expressly denies these allegations," pharmacy employee Sarah Lees said in an email sent to NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune on Tuesday (Jan 28)."The Apothecary Shoppe has, and continues to, comply with all Federal and State...

As death penalty states struggle to obtain drugs suitable for lethal injections, more old-fashioned methods of executing prisoners are getting another look.Lawmakers in Missouri and Wyoming have introduced measures this month that would give their states an option to use firing squads — instead of lethal drugs — to carry out executions. Another bill proposed by a Virginia lawmaker would authorize death by electrocution if lethal injection isn’t possible.The measures have surfaced as a number of pharmaceutical firms have barred corrections departments from buying drugs that could be used in executions, forcing states to scramble for other suppliers and to...

Rep. Vance McAllister is bringing “Duck Dynasty” reality TV star Willie Robertson as his guest to the State of the Union address, the Louisiana Republican announced Tuesday.  I’m happy to announce that my friend, constituent & small business owner @williebosshog will be attending tonight’s #SOTU as my guest.— Vance McAllister (@RepMcAllister) January 28, 2014   During the closing days of McAllister’s 2013 special election campaign, Robertson starred in a TV ad supporting the Louisiana Republican, who he called his “good buddy.” Robertson’s name had been briefly mentioned as a potential candidate for the open seat when Rep. Rodney Alexander resigned in...

Here we go again: sexist tropes being used against a high-profile female political candidate who happens to be a working mom from Alaska Texas.Last week, an article in the Dallas Morning News purported to correct the biography of Wendy Davis, the Democratic candidate for Texas governor. While these alleged discrepancies would be hardly a blip on a male candidate’s record, they have unleashed a barrage of attacks straight out of the GOP’s anti-woman playbook. Advertisement A number of right-wing magazines ran cover stories pandering to the prurient, 1950s mindset of their readership. The Weekly Standard, for example, featured a scantily...

Darion Aguilar, neatly clad in jeans and a dress shirt, strolled into a Rockville gun store Dec. 10 with a wad of cash and lots of questions. He wanted a weapon for home defense, he told the owners, who remember him as upbeat and courteous. He didn’t know much about firearms and asked for their help in picking one out. “His whole demeanor was, he smiled, he was polite, he wasn’t aggressive,” said Cory Brown, a proprietor of United Gun Shop. Aguilar, then 18, told Brown and co-owner Dan Millen that he had been researching Mossberg shotguns. Could they show...

E-cigarettes are so popular that even long-time smoker John Boehner’s been seen on occasion puffing one — and Big Tobacco wants to keep it that way. Big players in the tobacco world are betting the new electronic devices will surpass regular cigarette sales in the next 10 years, a multi-billion dollar boon for an industry that’s seen its profits tank over the last 50 years. But the Food and Drug Administration is set to decide soon whether the e-cigarette market should remain the Wild West, unfettered by strict advertising and other rules that apply to normal cigarettes. The looming FDA...

It is an invisible force that goes by many names. Computerization. Automation. Artificial intelligence. Technology. Innovation. And, everyone's favorite, ROBOTS. Whatever name you prefer, some form of it has been stoking progress and killing jobs—from seamstresses to paralegals—for centuries. But this time is different: Nearly half of American jobs today could be automated in "a decade or two," according to a new paper by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, discussed recently in The Economist. The question is: Which half? Another way of posing the same question is: Where do machines work better than people? Tractors are more powerful...

For the past few weeks, protests have been building against a private bus system used by Google and others in Silicon Valley. The action took a menacing turn yesterday when one Google worker was followed home.Google and other Silicon Valley tech companies have attracted the protesters' ire because sky-high tech salaries have led to sky-high real estate prices in San Francisco, pricing out poorer residents. They're also in the cross-hairs for their role in assisting NSA surveillance. The private bus system (which used public bus stops) was seen as another kick in teeth by, in the words of Kevin Roose,...

Immigration back on GOP agenda By: Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer January 23, 2014 05:36 PM EST SAN ANTONIO — The same House Republicans who punted on immigration last year are now privately crafting an intricate plan to try to pass it in 2014. Most people close to the planning expect votes on four bills by the end of the summer, including one that would give undocumented workers legal status. And though none of the bills is likely to offer a path to full citizenship, the fact Republicans are preparing to take on immigration at all is a sign the...

The criminal jury trial is a vital check against prosecutorial excesses, police misconduct, and arbitrary state power. But over the last three decades, criminal justice policy has transferred enormous amounts of power to prosecutors and away from juries and judges. Judges once had wide discretion in weighing the facts and circumstances of each case prior to sentencing. Mandatory sentencing laws give control of sentencing proceedings to prosecutors instead, leading one federal judge to describe the process of sentencing someone to years in prison as having “all the solemnity of a driver’s license renewal and [taking] a small fraction of the...