Free Republic

The Grateful Dead’s three-night farewell shows don’t seem like they’re shaping up to be a great time for the band’s most dedicated followers. Over the weekend, we reported that tickets for the event were being scalped for as high at $10,000. And now, Chicago’s police and fire departments have decided not to let Deadheads camp out or park overnight on the land in front of Soldier Field. Earlier this year, a petition circulated around asking the venue to waive their usual policy. “We took this seriously and did not want to dismiss it,” Luca Serra, a spokesman for Soldier Field,...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s 2011 fight with public-sector unions sparked huge protests—and elevated him into a national figure in conservative politics. Now, as he eyes a run for president, he is targeting another group on the public payroll: university professors. Mr. Walker, a Republican, has proposed a two-year tuition freeze and a $300 million cut to the University of Wisconsin System’s budget—about a 13% drop next year from current funding levels. Under the plan, Mr. Walker would shift control of the university system from the state to a new independent authority. He has also said that he thinks faculty needs...

After years of cuts in state subsidies and growing resistance to rising tuition, U.S. colleges and universities are starting to unwind decades of administrative bloat and back-office waste that helped push up costs and tuition. The State University of New York system shaved $48 million in the past two years by cutting unused software licenses and consolidating senior administrators. The University of California, Berkeley, cut $70 million since 2011 by centralizing purchasing and laying off a layer of middle managers, among other things. And the University of Kansas revamped its back-office operations to save about $5 million in 2013. One...

When an arbitrator ruled this month that Detroit could reduce the pensions being earned by its police sergeants and lieutenants, it put the struggling city at the forefront of a growing national debate over whether the pensions of current public workers can or should be reduced. Conventional wisdom and the laws and constitutions of many states have long held that the pensions being earned by current government workers are untouchable. But as the fiscal crisis has lingered, officials in strapped states from California to Illinois have begun to take a second look, to see whether there might be loopholes allowing...

Anyone worried that, once in charge, Democrats wouldn't be vigilant in protecting our southern border can relax. The grave threat of Mexican long-haul truckers has been shut down. With any luck, Mexicans will never have the temerity to attempt to deliver commercial goods into the United States again. At least such is the fervid hope of the Teamsters, the fiercest adversary the Mexicans have faced since President James K. Polk sent Winfield Scott south in the Mexican-American War. The union can't abide Mexican trucks because they represent competition, and so they must be blocked - legal obligations, economic rationality and...

In a House budget hearing last week that addressed the growing size of the state government's payroll, Rep. James Morris, R-Oil City, summed up his alarm by remarking, "I don't know how we can continue to afford that." The state has about 105,000 people on its payroll, with base salaries totaling $4.6 billion annually, the highest level in its history. Add retirement and benefit expenses and state supplements for teachers and other local public workers, and the state's overall annual obligation for personnel comes close to $8 billion. That is more than four-fifths of what the state general fund will...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters Life!) - The Grateful Dead, the San Francisco cult rock band that has played at political events since the 1960s, will reunite on Monday for the first time in four years to rally support for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, a spokesman said on Friday. Band leader Jerry Garcia died in 1995. Surviving members have played together occasionally since then, most recently in 2004. On Monday, original members Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh and Bob Weir will play at a San Francisco theater a day before California's primary. "They have agreed to reunite for this one-time-only event in...

Bob Weir, Founding Member of the Grateful Dead Both my natural and adopted fathers were military men. My adopted dad attended Annapolis for seven years and came out with the military equivalent of a doctorate in Engineering. When they gave him his first commission and put him out to sea he was seasick from the time he left port to the time he got back. It was so bad they had to put him in the hospital. Then he tried it again right at the beginning of World War II. He wanted nothing more than to serve his country but...

At about 3 p.m. on Wednesday a group of anti-war protesters entered Sen. John Sununu's Elm Street office. By 11:30 nine were still sitting around, refusing to leave. All nine managed to get themselves arrested. No doubt they are proud of themselves, but the question is, what did this little stunt accomplish? Besides disrupting the work of Sen. Sununu's staff, the protesters achieved nothing. No one's opinion was changed, nor was Sen. Sununu's position on the war. Does anyone really believe the senator would change his vote based on the rude antics of nine peaceniks? Yes, the protesters received some...

Think back to the ringing guitars, the spinners, the patchouli oil and the haze of pot smoke hanging over an arena - the psychedelic country rock of Grateful Dead concerts seem like an unlikely cradle for today's conservative commentators. And yet, 10 years to the day after Jerry Garcia's death on August 9, 1995, no less than three of Generation X's most high-profile young conservatives remain dedicated Deadheads: Deroy Murdock, Tucker Carlson, and Ann Coulter.

Panel Denies License for Dead Reunion By CARRIE ANTLFINGER Associated Press Writer MILWAUKEE (AP) - The promoters of a concert meant to bring the surviving members of the Grateful Dead together on stage have been denied a permit by a county highway committee. The event, planned for Aug. 3-4 in East Troy, is expected to draw 200,000 fans, Walworth County Highway Committee Chairman Odell R. Gigante said. He said only 35,000 people are allowed in the Alpine Valley Music Theatre, about 30 miles southwest of Milwaukee. "You can imagine the amount of humanity that's going to converge on little...