Free Republic

MEMPHIS — For decades, this storied American city has watched companies come but mostly go, its vacant storefronts and blighted buildings a reminder of its days as a thriving manufacturing hub and the painful decline that followed as those jobs vanished.As Paul Young, the city’s mayor, puts it, Memphis has been “the city people forgot about.”Then last summer, Memphis landed what Young and local business leaders called the city’s largest corporate investment in a generation — a “transformative” development for a place that has struggled to convince outsiders of its continued potential.The project was something every city dreams of, Young...

TOPEKA, Kan. — Four years ago, Joan Wagnon was a 70-year-old grandmother preparing to retire after decades of public service. A centrist Democrat long credited as blazing the way for women in politics in Kansas, she spent 12 years in the state Legislature and four years as mayor of Topeka — the first and only woman to hold the job. After eight years as state secretary of revenue, Wagnon was preparing to hang it up when "the massacre" happened. On Election Day 2010, Sam Brownback, a two-term, hard-line conservative U.S. senator and a 2008 candidate for the Republican presidential nomination,...

First Lady Michelle Obama took a lot of grief for her decision to vacation in Spain last week, a glitzy getaway that prompted one New York Daily News columnist to liken her to Marie Antoinette. But now we're learning more about the trip, which, despite the furor over its alleged excess, seems to have been launched with good intentions. According to the Chicago Sun-Times' Lynn Sweet, the first lady made the trip because she wanted to spend time with her best friend, Chicago physician Anita Blanchard, who lost her father this summer. Blanchard (who is married to President Obama's best...