Free Republic

Democrats who oppose the Keystone XL pipeline have thousands of dollars invested in direct competitors to the company looking to build the pipeline, public records show. A recent environmental assessment by the State Department was seen as a step toward the pipeline’s approval, but Sen. Tim Kaine (D., Va.) remains opposed to its construction. “In my view, there is now enough evidence to conclude that construction of this pipeline is not in America’s long-term interest,” Kaine said in a statement on the review. The freshman Democrat has between $15,000 and $50,000 invested in Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, according to his...

by Brian Hayes | Top Right News Two days, two victories for opponents of illegal immigration in the state of Nebraska. Just yesterday TRN reported on the landslide victory in a Fremont, NE vote to bar illegal aliens from being able to rent housing. Today, a federal judge threw out a lawsuit challenging Nebraska’s authority to deny driver’s licenses to illegal aliens who have received temporary authorization to live and work in the United States by Barack Obama. The ruling could have a major impact across the nation as states come under well-funded pressure to hand licenses to illegals under...

LANSING, Mich. (AP) - An anti-violence advocacy group says black Michigan residents are slain at one of the highest rates in the nation and are seven times more likely to be killed than Americans overall. The Washington-based Violence Policy Center said Thursday that 31.5 of every 100,000 African Americans in Michigan was a homicide victim in 2011. That's third-highest in the country, behind Nebraska's 34.4 and Missouri's rate of 33.4 per 100,000. Michigan's black homicide victimization rate is nearly twice the national rate for blacks of 17.5 per 100,000. The rate for all Americans is 4.4 per 100,000.

The day of the funeral for a 5-year-old Omaha girl killed by a stray bullet, a national organization declared that Nebraska has the highest black homicide rate in the nation. The statistics that the Washington D.C.-based Violence Prevention Center analyzed do not include the Jan. 15 killing of Payton Benson. The numbers come from 2011, the most recent year for which comprehensive national homicide data is available. But a high ranking is not a one-year anomaly. Thirty black people — including 27 people in Omaha — were killed in homicides in Nebraska in 2011. That translates to a black homicide...

A city free of government...A city with no manager, no police, no building inspector, no streets department, ,..the people do it themselves. Nice video.

Inquiring minds are digging into a George Washington University paper on State Fiscal Conditions, a ranking of 50 states, by Sarah Arnett. PolicyMic Produced this Chart of State Fiscal Conditions based on the working paper. Highlights and Lowlights Let's return to the original working paper for some highlights and lowlights. At the bottom of the rankings are New Jersey and Illinois. New Jersey faces long-run solvency problems due in part to nearly 15 years of underfunding its state and local pensions. It has an estimated unfunded pension liability of around $25.6 billion as well as $59.3 billion in unfunded liabilities...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-v1Ta_il94&feature=youtu.be

LINCOLN — Gov. Dave Heineman is wasting no time promoting his push for tax-relief legislation in 2014. Heineman scooped his own State of the State address — scheduled for delivery this morning — by revealing his plan Tuesday night to seek up to $500 million in tax cuts over the next three years.

Select grade beef has hit a record high this week. The weather has an impact, but that’s not all... Beef prices will increase by 2.5 to 3 percent this year, according to the USDA. “For some peoples' diet it’s gonna be a pretty big chunk of change,” says George Lesznar of Harvey’s Market in D.C. U.S. cattle cost more because of a rebound effect from several years of drought in major producing places like Texas, Nebraska, and Kansas. With the increased cost of feed some ranchers reduced their herds. The USDA called America’s cattle herd the smallest in 60 years....

Teaching a child racial epithets isn’t a crime, but it can lead to your children being taken from you. A police union in Nebraska has posted a video of a toddler using the “N-word” and a “slew of profanities” while arguing with adults over a toppled chair, reports CNN, who, unlike police, has blurred the face of the child. The kid even knows how to “shoot a bird.” The toddler and three other children were taken from the home Wednesday by Omaha police and Nebraska Child Protective Services. The police union, who says it got the video from a “local...

One of the men seeking the GOP nomination for Nebraska’s open Senate seat is proposing moving the capital from Washington to his home state, saying it would be an effective way to cut out the lobbyists and special interests that have turned Capitol Hill into an ATM dispensing taxpayers’ money. “That’s it, the way to cure the incredible ineffectiveness and dysfunction of both parties in Washington — we move the Capitol to Nebraska,” Ben Sasse, a university president and former Bush administration official, said in 30-second campaign ad that ran in Nebraska over the weekend during the NFL playoff games....

Fatal shooting ruled self defense. 61-year-old Gary Bouzek died of a single gunshot wound to the head in the early morning hours of June 16th in Wabash. His 36-year-old son pulled the trigger. (snip) Time passed and it was during the early morning hours of June 16th in Wabash that David’s girlfriend awakened him because she heard loud pounding on the roof and the door of the in-ground home. Cox said David went outside and found his father with a hammer. The son went back into the house and came back out with a .22 caliber rifle loaded with one...

A recent study by the Nebraska Department of Revenue (DOR), intended to inform the members of Nebraska’s Commission on Tax Modernization, confirms what pro­growth tax reformers have long argued: tax cuts lead to personal income growth, investment growth, and job growth. Though the study incorrectly found sales tax cuts to be a greater boon to state economic performance than income tax cuts, the study notes that even after accounting for offsetting cuts to government spending, tax cuts of any kind would provide a boost to Nebraska’s economy. At the direction of the Nebraska legislature, the DOR compared the presumed economic...

On Tuesday, November 12, Nebraska Senate candidate Ben Sasse walked into Mitch McConnell’s office to clear the air. Contrary to the rumors, Sasse wanted to say, he hadn’t secretly vowed to oppose McConnell’s leadership if elected. In fact, he hadn’t been asked to make such a pledge and would never have even considered it. That was the plan, anyway. As soon as Sasse sat down, McConnell lit into him, criticizing him for working with the Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF) as well as for posting a viral YouTube video in which he demanded “every Republican in Washington, starting with Minority Leader...

Good! If we had all Ted Cruz like people in government can you imagine how our economy would take off. Check it out: The competition to be the next Ted Cruz is extremely hot within the Republican Party, where a number of emerging challengers are hoping to capitalize on the newest brand name in conservative politics. In Kansas, Milton R. Wolf opened his fundraising pitch to supporters last week by asking them whether he could be the next Cruz candidate. In Mississippi, Chris McDaniel announced his campaign to unseat Sen. Thad Cochran last week and welcomed the comparison to Mr....

Nearly 10 percent of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun group Mayors Against Illegal Guns retired from their job or were sacked in Tuesday’s elections, including the organization’s two leaders: Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino. Some 95 key members of the group that targets and criticizes lawmakers backed by the National Rifle Association are losing their title of “mayor.” According to an election review of Bloomberg's membership list of about 1,000, three quit the group, 69 retired from their jobs, and 23 were rejected by voters.On the retirement list: Bloomberg and Menino.Among the defeated members of Mayors Against Illegal...

Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander (R) Montana Senator Max Baucus (D) Alaska Senator Mark Begich (D) Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss (R) Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran (R) Maine Senator Susan Collins (R) Texas Senator John Cornyn (R) Massachusetts Senator William "Mo" Cowan (D) Illinois Senator Dick Durbin (D) Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi (R) Minnesota Senator Al Franken (DFL) South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham (R) North Carolina Senator Kay Hagan (D) Iowa Senator Tom Harkin (D) Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe (R) Nebraska Senator Mike Johanns (R) South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson (D) Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu (D) Michigan Senator Carl Levin (D) Kentucky...

The Niobrara Shale Play – the Next Bakken? [ 0 ] February 1, 2013 The Niobrara shale formation extends across northeastern Colorado, northwestern Kansas, southwestern Nebraska and southeastern Wyoming.  The play ranges in thickness from 275-400 feet deep, with three primary carbonate-rich benches that average 10-25 feet thick with 5-10% porosity. Within the Niobrara, oil and natural gas are found at 3,000-14,000 feet beneath the earth’s surface.  O&G producers tap these resources through both vertical and horizontal wells typically drilled at 7,000-8,000 feet with variable geopressures. To date, most of the Niobrara’s O&G development focuses on the Denver-Julesburg Basin (“DJ...

the (relatively silent) majority of Americans feel(s) that the most compassionate treatment for Terri Schiavo - as well as the proper legal course of action - is to let her vegetative existence end, as advocated by her legal guardian, her husband. For Republicans who consider their party a captive of the religious right on matters like medical research and right-to-die legislation and now legislative intrusion into the judicial system, there is a way to at least feel more comfortable with their political consciences. That way is to leave a party whose leadership is currently attempting to leave behind in the...

On Oct. 7, Alliance High School principal Pat Jones told students they wouldn't be reciting the pledge that day, pointing out that the federal government had been partially shut down since Oct. 1. Scottsbluff television station KDUH reported that some students were outraged by Jones' decision, and one woman said her son stood up in class and recited the pledge anyway.