Free Republic

(CNSNews.com) – The municipal government of Washington, D.C. received a $1.8 million federal Community Transformation Grant in 2012 to promote healthy lifestyles in the city.Among the things the city would do with the money, as listed on its application, was increasing the "availability of fruit and vegetables to employees in their workplaces."Administered through the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the grant was awarded in September 2011, which is the beginning of fiscal year 2012.According to the CDC, the grant is intended to target “approximately 445,000 residents living in the District of Columbia, focusing on racial/ethnic minority, low-income, medically underserved, and...

Developers of the controversial Park51 Islamic community center and mosque located two blocks from Ground Zero earlier this month applied for roughly $5 million in federal grant money set aside for the redevelopment of lower Manhattan after the attacks of September 11th, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter. The audacious move stands to reignite the embers of a divisive debate that dominated headlines surrounding the ninth anniversary of the attacks this fall, say people vested in the issue. The application was submitted under a “community and cultural enhancement” grant program administered by the Lower Manhattan Redevelopment...

HARVEY, Ill., Illinois officials announced plans to demolish a suburban Chicago mall that served as a set for a famous scene in the 1980 film "The Blues Brothers." Gov. Pat Quinn said Thursday the state is receiving a $4 million federal grant to demolish Dixie Square Mall in Harvey to make way for redevelopment to revitalize the area, the Chicago Tribune reported Friday. The mall, which has been vacant for more than 30 years, served as a filming location for the mall car chase scene in "The Blues Brothers." "Dixie Square has been a place that we know has to...

If my experience with one Justice Department agency is indicative of the federal government as a whole, then I must conclude transparency causes "blindness."

Long Way From Abstinence Malcolm A. Kline, December 15, 2009 The results of a new study, and the record of who sponsored it, help show that the federal government, contrary to elite belief, has not been exclusively promoting abstinence for the past decade. On December 8, 2009, the University of Minnesota revealed that: * “University of Minnesota Project Eating Among Teens (EAT) researchers have found that young adults engaging in casual sexual encounters do not appear to be at increased risk for harmful psychological outcomes as compared to sexually active young adults in more committed relationships. Although there has been...

A University of Pittsburgh reproductive biologist relied on the now-discredited stem-cell findings of a disgraced Korean scientist to win a $16.1 million federal grant last fall, according to federal documents and letters obtained by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Pitt's Gerald Schatten will use the money for an ambitious stem-cell research program that will occupy four of seven floors of Magee-Womens Research Institute's building, now under construction in Oakland, the documents show. The five-year grant, awarded to Schatten in September by the National Institutes of Health, is based in part on cloning experiments deliberately falsified by Hwang Woo-Suk, the documents show.

California charter schools got a $75 million boost Tuesday when U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige announced a three-year federal grant that aims to help create 250 charters by 2007. Paige praised California for being at the forefront of the charter-school movement. "With this grant we recognize California's pioneering spirit," he said. "California was one of the first states to allow the creation of charter schools, and you're also one of the most welcoming states even now." Since charter schools were authorized in California in 1992, 471 campuses have been created, and one out of three serves low-income communities, according...