Free Republic

* The man said he was security and would be up there at night with others to protect the pocket of second-story apartments and lower-level storefronts near the Ferguson Police Department. A day earlier, rioters had broken out windows below Hildebrand’s apartment in the 100 block of South Florissant Road and torched a nearby beauty supply store. “I am in the middle of a difficult spot,” Hildebrand said. “I feel a lot better having those guys up on the roof.” But he wasn’t clear exactly who “those guys” were or where they came from. Puzzled and alarmed protesters have wondered,...

FERGUSON, Mo. — Demonstrators forced the temporary closing of the St. Louis Galleria mall after staging a mass “die-in” on Friday afternoon, lying on the floor for four and a half minutes In Oakland, Calif., a group of people protesting a grand jury’s decision not to indict the officer chained themselves to a train at a Bay Area Rapid Transit station, forcing officials to close the station and causing delays across the system. And in San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Seattle, hundreds of demonstrators flocked to the streets and retail locations with chants like, “If we don’t get no...

Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri said on Tuesday that he would triple the number of National Guard troops in this suburban St. Louis city and broadly expand their role in keeping the peace, after a night of arson, looting and rampaging demonstrators showed that weeks of preparation for a grand jury decision in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown had failed to prevent violence. In Washington, St. Louis and Ferguson itself, an array of public officials, community leaders and clergy were deeply critical of one another as they sought to explain how protests over the grand jury’s decision not to...

As ruins of about a dozen businesses here smoldered today, an "extremely frustrated" Mayor James Knowles III was asking what happened to onetime plans to shield vulnerable businesses with a protective line of Missouri National Guard members. "The National Guard was not deployed in enough time to save all our businesses," he said in a press conference just after 2 p.m., calling the delay "deeply disturbing." Earlier, in an interview, the mayor said: “What should have happened last night? They should have had National Guard troops protecting the hard targets in Ferguson and allowed law enforcement to pursue a very...

Darren Wilson, the officer who fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown in August, has been out of public sight ever since. Yet last month, he stepped into a St. Louis County office building, gave his name and applied for a marriage license. Several days later, Officer Wilson married Barbara Spradling, a fellow officer in the Ferguson Police Department, public records show. The couple obtained their marriage license in Clayton, Mo., outside St. Louis, in the recorder of deeds office on the fourth floor of the Lawrence K. Roos administrative building, steps away from the courthouse where the grand jury has been...

How many shootings will it take before we adopt common sense gun control? A former Navy weapons instructor lays out the simple steps lawmakers can take to make us all safer. Last week, there was yet another campus shooting. This time, it was at Florida State University. The exhaustingly predictable cycle of mass shooting, recycled talking points from all sides, proposed legislation, insider lobbying, stagnation, and loss of public interest is about to begin and has been repeated far too many times in recent memory. Face it: the gun rights debate in this country is stale. In May, I talked...

Seattle is a strange city. There’s a giant troll under one of the city’s main bridges, a giant statue of Vladimir Lenin on a random street corner and an annual Spam carving contest to take in. The neighborhood with the Lenin statue, Fremont, encourages visitors to set their watches 5 minutes ahead, because Fremont is the self-proclaimed center of the universe. Everyone calls the cool new mass transit project the SLUT — the South Lake Union Trolley — without batting an eye. Seahawks fans celebrating the city’s first Super Bowl championship in February waited patiently for street lights to change...

Department of Justice representatives have come to Ferguson in the wake of Michael Brown’s death. They’re making strong demands they don’t appear to follow themselves. Activists often complain about officers without name tags. Department of Justice representative Christy Lopez jumped on the issue in a recent public meeting saying, “That’s a problem. We need to fix that.” A police wife told us that officers agree they should not be anonymous, but said they`ve lately faced extreme circumstances that have caused some to remove their name tags at times. The police wife said officers have been, “screamed at by protestors, “we`re...

Beleaguered store owners in Ferguson, Mo., are boarding up their shop windows again; police departments throughout the area are purchasing riot gear; and the governor of Missouri has declared a state of emergency, a condition precedent to activating the National Guard — all in anticipation of the grand jury’s imminent decision on whether to indict Officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in August. These depressing precautions are considered normal. Fifty years after the cataclysmic riots of the 1960s, rioting is still regarded as virtually a black entitlement. No one is “bracing,” in press parlance, for...

There are few political figures who have had as many lives as Al Sharpton. He has been so many things. A boy preacher. A roadie for James Brown. A racial rabble-rouser. Tracksuit aficionado. New York tabloid staple. Senate, mayoral and presidential candidate. Cable news host. Presidential adviser. And almost like clockwork, stories emerge from time to time, about his, shall we say, complicated, finances. This week, the New York Times posted a story about his messy management of the National Action Network, a grassroots group he founded in 1991. Here's the key paragraph: Mr. Sharpton has regularly sidestepped the sorts...

President Obama’s Affordable Care Act will face a substantial new test starting Saturday, when the second enrollment period for buying health insurance under the law begins and proponents embark on a three-month mission to persuade millions more Americans to sign up. Officials running the revamped online insurance exchanges are promising a smoother enrollment experience this time, after spending heavily on website overhauls and simplifying the application process. Outreach groups are rolling out different strategies, from holding “pop-up” enrollment events at shopping malls to bluntly emphasizing the tax penalties that many Americans will face if they fail to get covered. And...

The Democrats’ widespread losses last week have revived a debate inside the party about its fundamental identity, a long-running feud between center and left that has taken on new urgency in the aftermath of a disastrous election and in a time of deeply felt economic anxiety. The discussion is taking place in post-election meetings, conference calls and dueling memos from liberals and moderates. But it will soon grow louder, shaping the actions of congressional Democrats in President Obama’s final two years and, more notably, defining the party’s presidential primary in 2016. “The debate will ultimately play out in a battle...

Several years ago Republicans seized on a National Science Research-funded research project of a shrimp jogging on a miniature treadmill as a prime, and ridiculous, example of wasteful government spending. Various critics said it cost taxpayers anywhere from $500,000 to $3 million. And scientists have tried (futilely) for years to explain the significance of testing an exercising shrimp. Now David Scholnick, a professor of marine biology at Pacific University in Oregon, who takes credit for the study, is trying again to set the record straight with an article this week in Chronicle of Higher Education where he introduces himself like...

There are five 2014 House races still to be decided before we can answer a question of historical interest: Was this the worst election for House Democrats since 1928? Or was it merely their worst since 1946? Either way, the results do not reflect well on the House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi – a conclusion that seems to have escaped Nancy Pelosi. “I do not believe what happened the other night is a wave,” the former speaker informed Politico’s Lauren French and John Bresnahan this week. She preferred to describe the election as “an ebb tide.” If Democrats lose three...

http://www.usatoday.com/longform/news/nation/2014/11/12/rural-hospital-closings-federal-reimbursement-medicaid-aca/18532471/

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, announced Saturday that the party will conduct a full review of its poor performance in recent midterm elections. In a video posted to YouTube, Wasserman Schultz said Democrats need to examine why their party suffered significant losses this year, costing them control of the Senate, and in 2010, when they lost control of the House. At the same time, Democrats have fared well in presidential election years, winning the White House and making gains in both chambers in 2008 and 2012. “The electoral success we have when our presidential nominee...

Vice President Biden and several top White House officials have vacationed with their families at the same log cabin in Grand Teton National Park. Located on Jackson Lake, the rustic getaway is the perfect escape from the fast-paced Washington grind. The cabin also happens to be owned by the federal government, and was banned 20-some years ago by the National Park Service for anything other than “official use.” Some great reporting by Time’s Zeke Miller has prompted the Interior Department to ask for an investigation into Biden’s stay, as well as uses of the cabin by several Obama cabinet secretaries,...

Missouri is preparing to execute a man who wasn't able to appeal his conviction in federal court because his attorneys missed a filing deadline to do so. Mark Christeson is scheduled to die at 12:01 a.m. CDT Wednesday for the killing of a woman and her two children in 1998. * Christen was 18 in 1998 when he and his cousin, Jessie Carter, were living about a half-mile from Susan Brouk. On Feb. 1, the cousins broke into Brouk's home and used shoelaces to tie up her daughter, Arian, 12, and son Kyle, 9. Christeson raped Brouk in a bedroom....

Highest priority question for President Obama: What the hell is your Ebola czar doing, anyway? After hesitation, confusion and flubs, Obama on Oct. 17 named Ron Klain to ride herd on the U.S. response to the deadly virus. The White House advertised Klain as the ultimate political and bureaucratic fixer. All would be better, the administration promised in the throes of criticism that the President’s performance testified to governmental incompetence. Since then, hesitation and confusion still prevail, presaging flubs to come. The latest milestones in incoherence: Anonymous White House sources spread word that the administration is none too pleased by...

When Islamic State fighters conquered the border region between Iraq and Syria, the Yazidi village of Kocho also fell into their hands. Twenty-year-old Nadia was among dozens of young women who were abducted and abused. This is the story of her ordeal. During the ninth night of her captivity, Nadia seized an unexpected opportunity to flee. Back on the first day, the men who kidnapped Nadia and the other young women as hostages and sex slaves had away taken their shoes. Escaping barefoot was out of the question. As the women could see from the windows, the surrounding terrain was...