Free Republic

California would have the highest marginal state and local tax rate, at 62.64%, according to an analysis by leading free-market think tank the Tax Foundation. After California would be Hawaii at 60.34%, New Jersey at 60.09%, Oregon at 59.24% and Minnesota at 59.19%. New York City would have a 62.03 top rate and Washington, D.C., would have a 58.29 top rate...The foundation said that Biden’s tax plan does not repeal the SALT deduction cap...

Democrat Senator Mazie Hirono walked up as the roll call of the vote for Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation to the Supreme Court was read aloud. Footage shows Hirono (D-HI) tersely saying “hell no” while giving a thumbs down during the vote. Barrett was confirmed to the Supreme Court by a 52-48 vote Monday and was administered the oath by Justice Clarence Thomas. Hirono had earlier tweeted about Judge Barrett’s perceived “radical views.” She said last month that she would not support the nomination.

Democratic Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono said “hell no” while casting her vote against Judge Amy Coney Barrett on the floor of the U.S. Senate. A Republican-majority Senate confirmed President Donald Trump’s pick to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg by a 52-48 margin Monday night. While the roll-call vote was being conducted, Hirono could be seen walking up to the table and entering her vote against Barrett by saying “hell no” while putting her thumb down. WATCH:

Former CIA operative arrested in Honolulu, charged with helping China spy on U.S. [Video] HONOLULU, Hawaii (HawaiiNewsNow) -- A Honolulu resident who spent years working for the Central Intelligence Agency and as a contractor for the Federal Bureau of Investigation was charged Monday with spying on the U,S, and selling state secrets to China. Authorities say 67-year-old Alexander Yuk Ching Ma -- who moved to Honolulu from Hong Kong in 1968 and began his CIA career in 1982 -- had become ‘a compromised asset’ of the Chinese Ministry of State Security by at least early 2001. In a press conference...

This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates as more information becomes available. A former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer was arrested and faces charges he spied for China for years. Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, 67, a 15-year agent of the CIA, was charged Monday for selling U.S. secrets to China, NBC reported. Ma reportedly disclosed a substantial amount of highly classified national defense information” to five members of the Chinese Ministry of State Security, including the identities of CIA officers and human assets, information about the CIA’s internal organization and means of CIA communications.

Rarely has our nation seen a judge more competent and qualified to serve on the Supreme Court than Amy Coney Barrett. During her confirmation hearing, she held me in thrall with the magnificence of her mind. Only once before has anyone inspired the thought, "Greatness walks amongst us." His name is Trey Gowdy. In Amy Coney Barrett, I feel the same awe and chills once again. With Amy's confirmation, Lady Justice will no longer peek from underneath her blindfold. No longer will there be a finger surreptitiously pushing down on one side of her Scales of Justice. When Barrett's Senate...

Facebook is demonetizing the Christian, political satire page “The Babylon Bee” after they published an article satirizing Sen. Mazie Hirono’s comments during the Amy Coney Barrett hearings in a fictional depiction. The Bee’s CEO Seth Dillon announced the demonetization on Tuesday in a tweet, claiming that the big tech company pulled down the article based on a “regurgitated joke from a Monty Python movie.” “So after a manual review, Facebook says they stand by their decision to pull down this article and demonetize our page. I’m not kidding,” he wrote. “They say this article ‘incites violence.’ It’s literally a regurgitated...

WASHINGTON, D.C.—After two days of Amy Coney Barrett gracefully and stoically answering questions with perfect recall and no notes, suspicions grew on Capitol Hill that she might be a practitioner of the dark arts. "Oh, she's a witch alright, just look at her!" said Senator Hirono. "Just look at the way she's dressed and how she's so much prettier and smarter than us! She's in league with Beelzebub himself, I just know it! We must burn her!" Senator Hirono then pulled a live duck out of a massive burlap sack next to her and announced: "In addition to being a...

Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, asked a question pertaining to an issue that came up quite a bit during Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing but had yet to come up during Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s hearing: whether the Supreme Court nominee had ever sexually assaulted someone. Citing a statement from Chief Justice John Roberts in 2017 in which he acknowledged that the judiciary “is not immune” from the problem of sexual misconduct, Hirono said it is her duty “to ensure the fitness of nominees” for positions that have lifetime appointments.

The number of jobs lost due to the coronavirus shutdown continue to mount, with the latest weekly total of Americans applying for unemployment benefits coming in at 840,000. While some states have seen unemployment applications recede from record highs after the coronavirus pandemic hit the U.S. employment picture, others have suffered stubbornly high job losses months into the recovery. In some states, unemployment rates have shot higher than 20%. According to the Department of Labor’s latest report, which breaks out the insured unemployment rate (a ratio of people on unemployment benefits divided by labor force) through September 19, Hawaii is...

On 24 September 2020, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal heard the oral arguments in a virtual en banc panel to re-hear the case. The three-judge panel had held the Hawaii law violated the Second Amendment of the Constitution because it did not allow ordinary citizens a way to bear arms outside of the home for self-defense.Screen shot of virtual hearlng of the en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit in Young v. Hawaii. Cropped and scaled by Dean Weingarten The Ninth Circuit has established a tradition of re-hearing cases favorable to the Second Amendment and not re-hearing cases which...

@TulsiGabbardBrave whistleblowers exposing lies & illegal actions in our government must be protected. Join me and urge Congress: Pass my bipartisan legislation (HRes1162, HRes1175, HR8452) calling for charges against @Snowden & Assange to be dropped & to reform the Espionage Act.

HONOLULU (AP) — Zan Timtim doesn’t think it’s safe for her eighth-grade daughter to return to school in person during the coronavirus pandemic but also doesn’t want her exposed to a remote learning program that misspelled and mispronounced the name of Queen Liliʻuokalani, the last monarch to rule the Hawaiian Kingdom. Timtim’s daughter is Native Hawaiian and speaks Hawaiian fluently, “so to see that inaccuracy with the Hawaiian history side was really upsetting,” she said. Even before the school year started, Timtim said she heard from other parents about racist, sexist and other concerning content on Acellus, an online program...

In yet another Twitter-storm, Donald Trump Jr. has decided to put his foot down when it comes to “normalizing pedophilia” — or at least, his perception of it. Last month, Trump Jr. tweeted in response to a bill California Governor Gavin Newsom passed last week accusing the entire Democratic party of protecting sex offenders. “They’re normalizing pedophelia [sic],” Trump Jr. wrote. “It’s not just Hollywood and Netflix. This is now becoming mainstream Democrat groupthink. It’s insanity and we must stop it.” He continued his Twitter tirade against the alleged Democratic “pedophiles.” “Serious question: Why is @TulsiGabbard essentially the only mainstream...

A Keaʻau woman was arrested and facing charges after refusing to wear a face mask at the post office. Hawai‘i Police Department first came into contact with Sandra Smart, 59, at the Keaʻau Post Office and advised to put on a mask to cover her face and mouth which she refused to do. She was ultimately issued a citation for violating Mayor Harry Kim’s Emergency Rule No. 11, which requires all persons to wear a non-medical grade face covering while in public settings. SPONSORED VIDEO Officers again made contact with Smart on Friday after she was seen standing outside in...

Two Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee said they will not meet with Amy Coney Barrett -- President Trump’s pick to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. Sen. Blumenthal said he refuses 'to treat this process as legitimate.'

Tulsi Gabbard is back, looking splendid as ever. And she's got a cause any sane voter interested in free and fair elections can support, sponsoring a bipartisan bill targeting the odious practice of ballot-harvesting. The Hawaii repreentative's bill, co-sponsored with Rep. Rodney Davis of Illinois, calls for a witholding of federal funds for states that refuse to ban the practice, where sleazy political operatives target vulnerable voters in their homes and "helpfully" collect their ballots for them, doing what they need to do with make sure the vote goes in the direction of their party with the broken chain of custody before turning the ballots...

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) has put forward a bipartisan bill aiming to improve the security of vote-by-mail. It proposes to incentivize states to ban ballot harvesting.

The Hawai'i Federal District Court has issued an opinion in Teter v. Connors that guts the Second Amendment. The opinion holds that even if butterfly or “balisong” knives are protected by the Second Amendment of the Constitution, a state law banning any possession, manufacture or transport of such knives is constitutionally valid. From the opinion: The popularity of an all-encompassing class of weapon (the knife, or even the folding knife)is immaterial when only one narrow subset of the class (the butterfly knife) is banned here.The Court declines to treat the ban on butterfly knives—a relatively obscure weapon—the same way the...

At what point do results and outcomes begin to matter? On the current political trajectory, we will be stripped of our humanity and forced to wear face burkas indefinitely without any debate, votes, benchmarks, or transparency. Not only are there no randomized clinical trials showing evidence that mask-wearing in the general populace works to stop the spread of respiratory viruses, but the reality of these mandates in practice for the past few months shows they are worthless and that the virus spreads as it spreads, regardless of human input. The latest example is Hawaii. Just like in the Philippines and...