Free Republic

With the issue of excessive college tuition on the front burner for decades, many colleges and universities have compounded the problem by arbitrarily shutting their doors in the past week or so, purportedly as a countermeasure to the coronavirus "pandemic." This is occurring without any evidence of coronavirus on campus. Seems like students and/or their parents or other benefactors who have already paid their tuition and/or room/board for the current semester/trimester/quarter are being unilaterally ripped off here, with no compensation in sight. The question I'm posing here is: Should there be a strident demand for pro-rated refunds from the colleges,...

Over the past 40 years, the federal government has shut down 21 times due to political disagreements over funding. Most of America, including the government itself, goes largely unaffected by a government shutdown. But for federal workers who are furloughed or required to work without a paycheck, a lapse in government funding can cause financial problems, leading some to default on debt or miss rent payments. This can result in real hardships up to and including eviction. The blame for this rests squarely on the lawmakers who fail to fund the government. Remarkably, though, some Democrats in Congress believe that...

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 30 (C-Fam) Many websites are shutting down or curtailing their sex trade just weeks after the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives passed similar anti-human trafficking bills that would allow victims to sue the websites on which they were bought and sold.“Illegal commercial sex advertising platforms and forums have been blowing up, and johns have been calling our office and messaging us left and right, indicating that Congress has taken a powerful first step,” Congressman Ann Wagner’s staff told an anti-trafficking coalition on Thursday. “FOSTA-SESTA is disrupting demand for sex trafficking and shaking up the illegal commercial...

With the passage of a $1.1 trillion spending bill that fails to defund President Obama’s immigration amnesty plan (as promised), it seems many Republicans still believe in Beltway fairy tales. If President Obama had shut down the government by vetoing an appropriations bill that didn’t fund the president’s amnesty plan, so the fairy tale goes, Republicans would be blamed and damaged politically. There’s just one problem with this fairy tale: the 2014 election results. Nobody blamed Republicans for a shutdown in 2013, and nobody cared. The Washington establishment fears big bad shutdowns because they illustrate to the rest of the...

I wasn’t aware that Maverick, whose pronouncements now carry roughly the same weight with tea partiers as Obama’s, is in a position to be guaranteeing anything about how House Republicans might behave. In fact, here’s what one GOP congressman said last night after the final conference huddle: As Republican lawmakers left the closed meeting Wednesday, some were already thinking of the next fight.“I’ll vote against it,” said Representative John C. Fleming, Republican of Louisiana, referring to the Senate plan. “But that will get us into Round 2. See, we’re going to start this all over again.” If by “guarantee” McCain...

Concerns about Japan’s earthquake-induced nuclear-power shutdowns spread to another reactor at the Tokai No. 2 Power station, but authorities said a pump is keeping the reactor cool, according to reports early Monday. One of the two pumps used to cool the water of a suppression pool for the nuclear reactor at the Tokai plant stopped, but a second system is working, according to the English-language version of Kyodo News, which cited the nuclear safety section of the prefectural government. Japan Atomic Power said the reactor core at Tokai No. 2 Power station has been cooled, “without any problem,” Kyodo News...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- At least 49 offshore oil platforms, all with production of less than 1,000 barrels a day, were destroyed by Hurricane Ike as it raced across the Gulf of Mexico, and some may not be rebuilt, the Interior Department said Thursday. It said in the latest hurricane damage assessment that the platforms altogether accounted for 13,000 barrels of oil and 84 million cubic feet of natural gas a day. There are more than 3,800 production platforms in the Gulf producing 1.3 million barrels of oil and 7 billion cubic feet of gas each day. Most remain shut down.

LAKE NORMAN, N.C. - Nuclear reactors across the Southeast could be forced to throttle back or temporarily shut down later this year because drought is drying up the rivers and lakes that supply power plants with the awesome amounts of cooling water they need to operate. Utility officials say such shutdowns probably wouldn't result in blackouts. But they could lead to shockingly higher electric bills for millions of Southerners, because the region's utilities could be forced to buy expensive replacement power from other energy companies. Already, there has been one brief, drought-related shutdown, at a reactor in Alabama over the...

In Albany, Rape, Punch-Outs, and Shutdowns Are All a Baffling Blur Fri Jun 27,12:24 PM ET By Wayne Barrett Village Voice Writer Lost in the media bombast about the Albany rape arrest of Michael Boxley, chief counsel to Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver, were the surprising comments of state Democratic chair Denny Farrell, who also heads the powerful Assembly Ways and Means Committee. In an appearance on NY1 on June 12—a day after the arrest—Farrell tried to parrot the silver line, insisting that he "shouldn't be making any comments" and that this was now in the hands of the criminal justice...