Free Republic

Amtrak, the national passenger railroad company of the U.S., continues to have routine breakdowns despite receiving massive injections of taxpayer dollars from the Biden administration, according to data from the Department of Transportation (DOT). Since 2021, there have been 333 Amtrak train incidents reported nationwide as of July 9, 2024, slightly less than the 397 incidents that occurred between 2016 and July 2020 during former President Trump’s tenure, according to the DOT. The Biden administration, as a part of an announced $66 billion for passenger rail in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, has dedicated huge amounts of taxpayer cash to Amtrak,...

Slain al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden was plotting to derail American trains on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, documents seized from his Pakistani hideout reveal, officials said today. The plan, which was formulated last year, was to sabotage the rails of a train, forcing it off the tracks over a bridge or into a chasm, the documents show. Although still considered in the "aspirational" phase, the information was disturbing enough that the FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued an alert to law enforcement and transportation agencies nationwide. "As of February 2010, al-Qa’ida [sic] was allegedly contemplating conducting an...

The Mirage that Is Derailing the Rebuilding of New Orleans By Ari Kelman 1-02-06 Mr. Kalman, the author of A River and Its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans, teaches history at the University of California, Davis. The flood was voracious; it swallowed whole neighborhoods, ending hundreds of lives. But the battered levees have been repaired. They again stand between New Orleans and catastrophe, holding the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain in check. The antique drainage system, too, is back online. Any water that falls in the city, every drop of rain or tear shed, ultimately flows through canals...