Free Republic

Pop icon Cher said Sunday that Los Angeles, California, “can’t take care of its own” residents, much less newly arrived illegal and legal immigrants. Cher said she failed to understand how the city of Los Angeles in the sanctuary state of California could afford to admit and take care of any more immigrants when city officials have failed to care for homeless, veterans, and poverty-stricken Americans. “I Understand Helping struggling Immigrants,but MY CITY (Los Angeles) ISNT TAKING CARE OF ITS OWN.WHAT ABOUT THE 50,000+Citizens WHO LIVE ON THE STREETS.PPL WHO LIVE BELOW POVERTY LINE,& HUNGRY? If My State Can’t Take...

Protesters and counterprotesters Tuesday made Arizona the second border state to become a national flashpoint over what to do with the surge of unaccompanied immigrant children entering the country illegally. Dozens of demonstrators gathered in Oracle, Arizona, about 100 miles north of the Mexican border, where federal officials were expected to send dozens of detained immigrant children for housing. One protester said his opposition to the transfer wouldn't scare the detained children because "after they've been all the way up through Mexico, I don't think anything is going to frighten them," Eldon Rhodes told CNN Tucson affiliate KVOA. "I'm protesting...

Palm Springs, CA -- In an effort to keep dangerous terrorists out of California, Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack (CA-45) today launched today an online petition calling on President Obama to keep Guantanamo Bay detainees from being transferred to the State of California. "We as Californians need to band together to let the Administration and the Majority in Congress know that we do not want these dangerous criminals in our prisons or on our streets," said Bono Mack. "I join with the majority of Americans in being outraged by the Administration's decision to bring deadly terrorists to U.S. soil without a...

Our building trembles, sometimes, but perceptibly. It is unmistakably a tremble, and I can't imagine what brings it about because the heavy machinery is across the river, where the paper is printed. I've worked in newspapers that house the presses, and when those babies start rolling, you have to grab a strap and hold on because the place feels like a submarine that just got the dive command. Probably, old buildings like ours occasionally settle themselves even more comfortably on their haunches and it is nothing to get worked up over. It only comes to attention, the trembling down at...

When wind turbines began dotting the skyline around Dale Rankin's horse ranch near Abilene, he teamed up with other property owners to sue the company in charge of the project, FPL Energy. Brandon Wade: For the Chronicle JACKSBORO — The wind rustling the oak trees on the Squaw Mountain Ranch soon may be its undoing as a starkly empty, unspoiled corner of North Texas. Riding the boom that last year pushed Texas past California as the nation's leading wind energy producer, a wind power company wants to scatter 100 turbines across an area roughly nine miles long and two miles...

Late on the night of July 18, 1969, a car went off a bridge on Martha’s Vineyard. With a young senator from Massachusetts, Edward Kennedy, at the wheel, the Oldsmobile sank into the water beneath the Dike Bridge. In a sequence of events that instantly became famous, Senator Kennedy escaped from the submerged vehicle and swam to shore. By 2:30 a.m. he had made his way back to his hotel in Edgartown, where he was sighted in the lobby. He made 17 phone calls to family members and associates. But not until 10 hours after the accident did he call...

NEW ORLEANS, April 4 — A mayoral election is less than three weeks away, and the sympathy of elected officials for the irritations of voters in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is boundless. Skip to next paragraph Lee Celano for The New York Times Work on this FEMA trailer park rising in the Algiers area of New Orleans has been stopped, officials say. As a result, there will be no trailer park in Lakewood Estates, a collection of solid, spacious homes behind a high locked gate in the Algiers section. Last weekend, angry residents of the neighborhood took to the...

'Not in my back yard' cry holding up FEMA trailers Emotional tone of opposition hints at role of stereotypes of race, class Monday, December 26, 2005 By Rob Nelson and James Varney%%par%%Staff writers As officials desperately seek temporary housing locations for New Orleans families whose homes were shattered months ago by Hurricane Katrina, the best site in the minds of many residents is clear: somewhere else. In one of the post-Katrina era's ironic role reversals, the same local officials and residents who once screamed at FEMA to get trailers to New Orleans quickly are now fending off the 17,777 trailers...

... The leaders could decide to call up a bill that would allow parties to the case, which has been tried in Florida courts, to petition to have it heard in Federal District Court. Alternatively, the GOP leaders could decide to try to move a private bill dealing specifically with the Schiavo case. ... Santorum said that Schiavo, based on brain activity, was close to equivalent of someone with the disease cerebral palsy and that he wouldn’t let the courts allow her to die, adding, “That’s not going to happen on my watch.” Santorum said that if it was apparent...

A Jacksonville victim rights group and a state legislator urged Gov. Jeb Bush on Monday to launch a criminal probe into events that put Terri Schiavo in the hospital with severe brain damage 15 years ago. Justice Coalition founder Ted Hires also asked the state Department of Children & Families to take Schiavo into protective custody and Florida's attorney general to initiate a civil rights investigation into her treatment and efforts by her husband to have the feeding tube that keeps her alive removed. . . . Her parents said they filed the divorce proceedings because of Michael Schiavo's "total...

Carly Simon, made famous by her song You're So Vain, has been told that she cannot move into one of New York's smartest apartment blocks after allegedly being "rude and disrespectful" at an interview with residents.The singer is now locked in a bitter legal row over her rejection by the co-op board of the Dakota Apartments, a majestic building overlooking Central Park.   Carly Simon Interviews by existing residents are compulsory for anyone seeking to move into most of New York's grandest addresses. But Simon complained that her meeting with the Dakota's board was more akin to "an inquisition". The...