Free Republic

The House on Thursday approved a funding increase for the national background check system in response to last week’s mass shooting in Santa Barbara, Calif. Adopted 260-145, the amendment to a 2015 appropriations bill provides an additional $19.5 million in grant funding for the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which is intended to prevent the sale of guns to criminals and the mentally ill. The vote represents one of the most significant legislative action taken by the House on guns since the 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Conn. Members of the GOP leadership were split on the...

President Obama said Thursday that he may have suffered from mild concussions while playing football in his childhood. "When I was young and played football briefly, there were a couple times where I'm sure that that ringing sensation in my head and the needing to sit down for a while might have been a mild concussion, and at the time you didn't think anything of it," Obama said at a White House event designed to highlight the risks of sports-related brain injuries. Obama said his experience was common and underscored the need to "change the culture" around concussion injuries in...

Rep. Jared Polis will gladly visit a marijuana dispensary in his home state of Colorado. He’ll stand in a fluorescent-lit room with hundreds of skunky plants, discuss the different types of high someone gets from Willie’s Wonder versus Super Lemon Haze (one’s a “creative upper,” the other “uplifting and euphoric”) and ruminate on the local ban on edibles. Just don’t try to take his picture in the grow room. “It’s like, that could go viral,” Polis says, leaving Choice Organics in Fort Collins. “I don’t shy away from the issue; we talk about it, whatever. But the problem is, we...

Hundreds of veterans with traumatic brain injuries will get kicked out of assisted living facilities this fall unless policymakers in Washington soon extend an expiring pilot program. Lawmakers are in an uproar over reports that dozens of veterans may have died because of obstacles to obtaining medical treatment at Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals, but Congress may contribute to the problem by failing to act on pending legislation. The VA has notified Congress that a pilot program for injured veterans will expire at the end of September without congressional action. A Senate bill that included language to extend the program stalled...

Clyde Ross was born in 1923, the seventh of 13 children, near Clarksdale, Mississippi, the home of the blues. Ross’s parents owned and farmed a 40-acre tract of land, flush with cows, hogs, and mules. Ross’s mother would drive to Clarksdale to do her shopping in a horse and buggy, in which she invested all the pride one might place in a Cadillac. The family owned another horse, with a red coat, which they gave to Clyde. The Ross family wanted for little, save that which all black families in the Deep South then desperately desired—the protection of the law....

It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry over the demand by U.S. college students for “trigger warnings” to alert them that something they’re about to read or see in one of their classes might traumatize them—apparently a new trend, according to the New York Times. Ditto for off-beat campus sculptures, placards displayed by protesters and more. Poor dears. These are the same kids who would riot in the streets if their colleges asserted any form of in loco parentis when it comes to such old-fashioned concerns as inebriation and fornication. God forbid they should be treated as responsible,...

Jim Wallis, the founder of Sojourners magazine, was preparing to coach his 11-year-old son Jack’s baseball team this week in Northwest Washington when two people he assumed were parents approached him on the field. Instead, they were White House aides, and they had some surprising news: President Obama was on his way to the game and would arrive in 15 minutes. “I said, ‘Really? He’s coming here?’ ” Wallis, 64, a pastor who has served on Obama’s faith council, recalled in an interview. He looked at his charges who were holding baseball bats and had not been screened by the...

The governor's office says federal prosecutors have subpoenaed state records for a grand jury investigation of the troubled Cover Oregon health insurance website. The state abandoned its plans for an independent site after it didn't work. They decided to switch to the federal portal, the first state to do so. The governor's office released subpoenas Tuesday issued by the U.S. attorney's office. They demand records of communications between state officials involved in developing the website, five of whom have resigned.

Monday was a big day for the nation’s cyber police. The Justice Department charged five Chinese military officials with hacking, and brought charges against the creators of powerful hacking software. But FBI Director James B. Comey said Monday that if the FBI hopes to continue to keep pace with cyber criminals, the organization may have to loosen up its no-tolerance policy for hiring those who like to smoke marijuana. Congress has authorized the FBI to add 2,000 personnel to its rolls this year, and many of those new recruits will be assigned to tackle cyber crimes, a growing priority for...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is defending a screening of a film on the Koch brothers in the Capitol, saying GOP criticism of the event shows how the billionaires’ “tentacles” are all over congressional Republicans. A screening of “Koch Brothers Exposed: 2014 Edition” is scheduled for Tuesday at the Capitol Visitors Center. Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.), who chairs the House Administration Committee, fired off a letter Monday that argued the event could violate congressional rules. On Tuesday, Reid said Miller’s concern “shows how [the Koch brothers] tentacles are in every part of the Republican congressional establishment.” (Also on POLITICO:...

For months, President Barack Obama has been telling donors that there’s nothing more important to him than the November elections. But many Democrats say their biggest worry for the fall is the president himself. The problem, according to the nearly two dozen top Democratic operatives and outside allies who shared their frustration with POLITICO, is Obama’s investment — or lack thereof — in the midterms. The White House, they complain, has yet to broaden its economic message. The president has no set meetings with his political staff, and does little to help beyond headlining events to activate big donors. There’s...

Growing allegations of mismanagement at veterans hospitals across the country are threatening to engulf President Obama in another scandal that brings into question his ability to make government work. As a candidate, Mr. Obama denounced delays and poor care for veterans at hospitals run by the Department of Veterans Affairs and vowed that his administration would fix the backlogs and dramatically improve care for those returning from the battlefield. In a speech in 2008, Mr. Obama pledged to build “a 21st century VA” and promised to confront what he called “the broken bureaucracy of the VA - the impossibly long...

Top Democratic donors say they are exasperated by a lack of leadership from the White House on policy and are questioning whether they should throw money into midterm elections they believe won’t change Washington. In interviews with The Hill, the donors, who have been staunch Obama supporters since 2008, showed a frustration with the constant Beltway gridlock. As some look to the promise of a 2016 presidential bid by Hillary Clinton, they express weariness with a White House that continually asks for money but has been unable to move anything in Washington since President Obama’s reelection. “We’re already seeing that...

Industrialization brought massive changes to warfare during the Great War. Newly-invented killing machines begat novel defense mechanisms, which, in turn spurred the development of even deadlier technologies. Nearly every aspect of what we would consider modern warfare debuted on World War I battlefields. When Europe's armies first marched to war in 1914, some were still carrying lances on horseback. By the end of the war, rapid-fire guns, aerial bombardment, armored vehicle attacks, and chemical weapon deployments were commonplace. Any romantic notion of warfare was bluntly shoved aside by the advent of chlorine gas, massive explosive shells that could have been...

Pascal Tessier is a 17-year-old Eagle Scout in suburban Maryland who says scouting made him who he is today, with its lessons about morality, leadership and responsibility. And those very strengths, this openly gay high school senior said, are what compel and equip him to fight back now against Scout policies on gays that he believes are wrong. After long, anxious debate, the Boy Scouts’ national board voted a year ago to allow openly gay youths to participate in scouting, while continuing to exclude gay leaders age 18 and over. It was promoted as a compromise intended to offer the...

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — The municipal water utility in this city, home to wide beaches, sun-kissed weekend getaways and evocative alternative scholarship, just got tough. Last week it started rationing water — for nonfarmers, the most draconian response to date to California’s debilitating drought. The message to customers: Use more than your allotment, and it will cost you. A lot. Water bills below the allocation run $40 or so. Go above it, and fines pegged to the amount of excess water used will quickly double, triple or quadruple that bill. “We live in a state where water supplies that are...

*A new survey of more than 5,000 Latinos by the Pew Research Center finds that parishes like St. Cecilia are facing a paradox: Even as the population of Hispanic Catholics is rising in the U.S., a greater number are defecting to other faiths.Nearly one-in-four Latino adults, or 24 percent, are now former Catholics, according to the survey.Roman Catholics who have left the faith have tended to either drift toward a Protestant denomination or have ended their affiliation with religion altogether. According to the Pew Research Center survey, about 22 percent of Hispanics in the U.S. identify as Protestant, while 18...

If a 19-year-old high-school dropout raped by her ex-boyfriend wants justice, she calls the police. The same should apply to a 19-year-old college freshman similarly attacked by another student. But it doesn't apply nearly enough. Colleges have let themselves become arbiters of violent crime. They have no business being in that business. Furthermore, they got into the business for bad reasons. The inevitable result has been students suing their universities over what they see as an inadequate response to their allegations of sexual abuse. The feds are investigating several schools -- including Harvard, Princeton, Ohio State and Florida State --...

A man convicted of robbery in 2000 but never sent to prison until last year because of a clerical mistake walked free Monday after a judge lauded his "exemplary" behavior during 13 years of freedom. uncredited | AP Cornealious Anderson ‹ › More News Craig Robinson fired by Oregon State Health care law-Holocaust comparison criticized Utah police seize furniture in dead babies case Police probe reports of shots at Ohio VA hospital Texas grand jury shooting simulator stirs debate Read more National News Cornealious "Mike" Anderson dabbed tears from his eyes as the judge announced his decision during a hearing...

David Gregory’s tenure at “Meet the Press” has suffered another blow after the show’s long-standing producer, Chris Donovan, quit after 12 years and defected to work for ABC rival George Stephanopoulos at “This Week.” Donovan, who started at ABC last week, was fed up with embattled Gregory and the direction of “Meet the Press,” sources tell Page Six, which has sunk to third place in the ratings, behind CBS’ “Face the Nation” and ABC’s “This Week.” One source said, “There is a tense atmosphere at ‘Meet the Press.’ Gregory is dismissive of the staff, and is often hard to reach...