Free Republic

NORCROSS, Ga. (FOX 5 Atlanta) - Looking for a last-minute dinner idea for your special someone this Valentine's Day? Why not celebrate love with something scattered, smothered, and covered. This year, select Waffle House restaurants accross 21 states will be offering a romantic night out for two to celebrate love that special way that only a Waffle House can offer. Nearly 200 restaurants in the chain will be dimming the lights, putting out nice white table cloths, and welcoming couples for a special dinner service. This is the 12th year in a row the company is celebrating with the Valentine's...

GEORGETOWN — The city of Georgetown’s bill for wind and solar energy ended up being $8.6 million more than anticipated in fiscal year 2018 because the falling prices of oil and gas meant it had to sell its surplus renewable power for less than forecast, said City Manager David Morgan. The city had budgeted $45 million for renewable energy but ended up paying $53.6 million, he said. Georgetown was able to reduce the $8.6 million unanticipated extra to $6.8 million through savings from lower capital improvement utility project costs, Morgan said. It paid the remaining $6.8 million with reserves from...

Haunting this year’s presidential contest is the sense that the U.S. government no longer belongs to the people and no longer represents them. And this uneasy feeling is not misplaced. It reflects the real state of affairs. We have lost the government we learned about in civics class, with its democratic election of representatives to do the voters’ will in framing laws, which the president vows to execute faithfully, unless the Supreme Court rules them unconstitutional. That small government of limited powers that the Founders designed, hedged with checks and balances, hasn’t operated for a century. All its parts still...

(KHOU) -- It was only a photo of the stands at a Texas A&M home football game. But the commandant of the Corps of Cadets took to social media to say that the story behind that photograph captured what the “Aggie Spirit” is all about. The photo shows the Corps of Cadets section at the Kyle Field when the Aggies hosted Mississippi State on Oct. 3. As the cadets stand to cheer for the team in the fourth quarter, one cadet stands quietly holding his 6-year-old son. Despite the noise, the boy is asleep – his feet resting on the...

More than 2 million illegal immigrants will be approved for President Obama’s deportation amnesty over the next few years, and they will be eligible to collect Social Security and Medicare benefits as well as claim a special tax break for low-income families, the Congressional Budget Office said in an analysis Thursday. Mr. Obama predicted that up to 5 million illegal immigrants could be eligible for his amnesties, but the CBO numbers predict only 2.25 million will have signed up and been approved by 2017. The estimate was released as the administration defended the law in a federal court in Texas...

Mexico is now issuing birth certificates at its United States consulates so illegal immigrants can avoid deportation. Until now, Mexico has required its citizens to get birth certificates at government offices in Mexico. Many of those living in the U.S. ask friends and relatives back home to retrieve the paperwork, but the delay can hold up their applications for various benefits.

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Governor-Elect Greg Abbott criticized city bans this week and said reducing “regulatory burdens” would make Texas a better state. “The truth is Texas is being California-ized and you may not even be noticing it,” said Abbott as he spoke Thursday. “It’s being done at the city level with bag bans, fracking bans, tree cutting bans. We’re forming a patchwork quilt of bans and rules and regulations that is eroding the Texas model.” If you live in Austin, you’ve likely had an experience with the plastic bag ban. “I realized that something that I originally thought was a...

Lt. Col. Ralph Peters tonight gave a detailed plan to Bill O’Reilly on how he would fight terror. “One: You accept that you are in a war. Two: You name the enemy, Islamist terrorists. Three: You get the lawyers off the battlefield […] you accept there will be collateral damage and you do not apologize for it. You do not nation build, you don’t try to hold ground. You go wherever in the world the terrorists are and you kill them, you do your best to exterminate them, and then you leave and you leave behind smoking ruins and crying...

A backdrop to the massacre in Paris on Wednesday by self-professed al Qaeda terrorists is that city officials have increasingly ceded control of heavily Muslim neighborhoods to Islamists, block by block. France has Europe’s largest population of Muslims, some of whom talk openly of ruling the country one day and casting aside Western legal systems for harsh, Islam-based Shariah law.

The federal government shipped nearly 4,000 more assault rifles to local law enforcement agencies in the three months following the Ferguson riots, marking a huge surge in the amount of lethal firearms being doled out to police and sheriff’s offices. The Ferguson riots drew attention and criticism to the massive firepower state and local police are now able to bring to bear on their citizens, and earned scrutiny for the Pentagon project, known as the 1033 program, that helps arm many of those agencies by making surplus military equipment available to them. President Obama called for a review of the...

UPDATE, 5:45 p.m.: Belton ISD has called a press conference for 6:30 p.m. tonight regarding the student who was on the same plane with the Ebola patient. Tune in tonight at 6 p.m. for the latest. Belton ISD sent out a letter to parents from two schools Wednesday, informing them that a Belton ISD student traveled on the flight Monday with the second nurse who tested positive for Ebola. The letter reads: 'Dear Parents: Your child's health and safety is our top priority at North Belton Middle School. When issues of concern are brought to our attention, we want to...

MURRAY, Ky. (AP) - Texas Gov. Rick Perry threw his support behind U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell on Saturday, telling 300 fellow Republicans that the minority leader will win re-election. McConnell finds himself in a GOP primary fight with wealthy businessman Matt Bevin, who attended the event but wasn’t allowed to speak. “I love the number six,” Perry told the crowd at the Lincoln Reagan Dinner of West Kentucky. “Sam Houston was 6 foot 6 inches tall. And Mitch McConnell is going to be in his sixth term as United States senator.” Organizers said the dinner was supposed to unite the...

A fight has erupted over the costs of granting amnesty to the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in America, with the White House claiming the cash benefits to the Treasury are huge and will slash the deficit, and critics showing it will cost Americans more and increase the deficit. The White House late Thursday dispatched an email to President Obama's campaign supporters that provided a video claiming that immigration reform will result in a 5.4 percent growth in GDP as "highly skilled" workers and "entrepreneurs" add to the country's economic base. No mention was made of low-skilled workers, the bulk...

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin wrote Wednesday that America is a nation being bankrupt by a federal government led by "venal politicians" in her response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union Address.  "What is the true state of our union? Though this may sound harsh, I’ll speak the truth here," Palin wrote. "We are a country going bankrupt to fund a bloated, distant, and often corrupt federal government led by venal politicians more concerned with paying off their campaign cronies and consolidating their own power than in preserving the constitutional republic that so many have fought and died...

As President Barack Obama delivered the State of the Union address, activists involved in his new non-profit advocacy group, Organizing for Action, gathered in local meetings around the country to watch and cheer him on. The new 501(c)4 organization, which is an offshoot of his re-election campaign, aims to support the president’s policies and to project the power of the White House beyond Washington into local communities and media. I joined a gathering in southern California, which rented out a local pub and tuned in on the big screen. The buildup to the event was almost as interesting as the...

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is boasting that the negotiations he is conducting with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce regarding immigration reform are “going well.” The AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which both represent labor, are trying to cajole the Chamber, which represents business, to come along with their plans for temporary workers. Trumka was confident that this time, unlike 2007 when talks failed because there was not enough common ground regarding temporary workers, things would go smoothly, saying, “I think they are going well. We have been working in good faith with the Chamber, and I continue...

-snip- McDERMOTT: This whole society is gradually changing in response to what’s going on. Now, we’re in a very difficult period right now, because we have a lot of people who suddenly think it’s all about me. And it isn’t about me; it’s about we. If we don’t take care of one another, and we say everybody’s on their own, then it will simply fall apart as a society: become a mob scene, as it was in Paris if you go see Les Misérables. You can see what the country can become, if you don’t have equity in the society....

  NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Violent, thieving mobs have been making headlines across the country for the past few years, and now they have hit New York City. And Maurice Dubois reported in this CBS 2 investigation, the teen mobs have left neighborhoods worried as businesses take matters into their own hands. Judson Bennett, 78, recently ran into a violent group of teens – often described with the once-benign term “flash mob” – as he made his daily trip to buy a newspaper at his favorite news team. “I’m approaching the newsstand, and then suddenly there is a tremendous force...

Snip... Echoing comments by President Barack Obama and others in the administration, Morton said that Arizona's new law targeting illegal immigration is not "good government." The law makes it a crime to be in the state illegally and requires police to check suspects for immigration paperwork. Morton said his agency will not necessarily process illegal immigrants referred to them by Arizona officials. The best way to reduce illegal immigration is through a comprehensive federal approach, not a patchwork of state laws, he said. "I don't think the Arizona law, or laws like it, are the solution," Morton said.

Last week, the city council of Austin, Texas passed a resolution to boycott Arizona over its new immigration-enforcement law. For those who don’t know much about Texas politics, Austin is as liberal as the rest of the state is conservative. However, in an embarrassing display of just how marginalized the Austin liberals have become, the local newspaper has run 20 letters from readers regarding the council’s boycott — all of them opposed to it. While the Austin city council has likely not read the bill — and neither has the White House — Barack Obama’s political organizing group has decided...