Free Republic

Was Catholic Charities Complicit in the Murder of Laken Riley?March 3, 2024 Tags Illegal Immigration from Complicit Clergy by StaffThe story of the murder of Georgia college student Laken Riley by an illegal alien suspect named Jose Ibarra has dominated national news headlines this past week.Ibarra allegedly entered the US via El Paso, Texas in 2022 and was released from a detention center due to overcrowding. NewsNation reports that a suspect matching Ibarra’s name and age was arrested by New York police in 2022 for endangering a 5-year-old child.Now we learn that Ibarra was apparently a resident of Covenant House,...

Democratic California Rep. Zoe Lofgren earmarked $2 million in federal taxpayer money for the renovation and relocation of a Planned Parenthood clinic in the omnibus spending bill currently working its way through Congress, according to analysis of the federal government’s budget by Open the Books. Members of Congress sometimes agree to vote for a spending bill under the condition that it includes funding for an unrelated cause or project they’re interested in in a process known as earmarking. The omnibus bill for the federal government’s 2023 budget includes $2 million for a Planned Parenthood clinic at the request of Lofgren,...

According to a bombshell new report from the Associated Press, President Joe Biden and his Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are considering bringing back illegal aliens who were previously deported. The stunning revelation would most likely funded with your tax payer dollars. The Biden administration is being pressured by open borders activists and the National Immigrant Justice Center who want Biden to issue an executive order, creating a separate branch within the DHS allowing illegal aliens the ability to request their return back in to the States. Check out what the the AP reported: The plan asks the government to...

Editor's Note: This piece was co-authored by Loyd Pettegrew.In a few short months the United States of America has been sucked into a growing tornado-like vortex of destructive change ordered by the political left and duly executed by their puppet president--Joseph Robinette Biden. Tax dollars trapped in this whirlwind, flap and spin wildly with increasing centrifugal force. Bloated pork filled congressional bills oink not in protest as they rotate above the capital but in deep ecstasy as the paper proclamations block the sunlight with a hemispheric opacity. Their shadows cast a pall over America’s Capital as our rule of law...

America’s recycling is in the dumps. Once the focus of Do-It-Yourself environmentalism, many recycling dreams are collapsing. Households have willingly accepted burdens of sorting their trash. But big companies have broken their word by failing to reuse more of the packaging they sell. Unless we require them to reprocess more old products into new ones, they won’t do it. This once-hidden problem rose to the surface when China in 2018 quit buying America’s discarded plastics, unable to use it profitably after paying to ship it across the Pacific. Without buyers for the waste that Americans separate from our regular discards,...

The Allegheny Institute for Public Policy is reiterating its long-standing call for the state Legislature to repeal Pennsylvania’s Prevailing Wage Law. “Many studies over the years involving many states have demonstrated the higher construction costs … that are caused by prevailing wage laws that require ‘prevailing wages and benefits’ be paid to employees on projects using government funds,” says Jake Haulk, president-emeritus of the Pittsburgh think tank. The prevailing wage and other compensation are the union wage in most states. But repeal has not been entertained in the Keystone State “because of the political power of the law’s supporters,” the...

Since his election to the U.S. Senate in 2010, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has been a steadfast champion of private property rights. Driven by many of his constituents’ horrific experiences living under communism, Sen. Rubio has taken a strong stand against eminent domain, intellectual property infringement, and taxes and regulations that make it difficult for people to pursue their livelihoods and the American Dream. Now, by continuing his commendable stand for property rights by standing firm against Venezuela’s vile expropriation schemes, the lawmaker has a chance to help the victims of Venezuela’s socialist regime reclaim property that was stolen from them. Under...

There’s a stark contrast in suffering between the private and public sectors in this era of unprecedented government intrusion into American life and business. Millions of mom-and-pop shops are shut and their income is decimated and large-company employees are furloughed. But we hear virtually nothing about government workers being laid off – or even taking a pay cut. Let that sink in: the folks whose work and taxes underwrite bureaucrat pay are cut off from livelihood while those they support in government are not only not hurting, but many are being given what are essentially paid vacations. And we’re hearing...

Months after spending $900,000 to supply immigrants and their families with “targeted services and resources,” the mayor of Washington DC is giving an open borders group $100,000 to provide English classes, legal consultants and workshops to help them become American citizens. The mayor, Muriel Bowser, proudly announced this month that the taxpayer allocation “represents the largest such government fund in the nation.” The money will help pay for projects that collaborate with employers to assist immigrant workers with the citizenship process by also hosting seminars, and individual legal consults. “Together, we’re giving more immigrants in our community a fair shot...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Democrats are pretty enraged President Trump cancelled their taxpayer funded trip overseas -- in the middle of a government shutdown -- at the last minute on Thursday. In fact, they were already sitting on the bus ready to go to the airport. Democrat House members getting off the bus that was to take them on an overseas trip while the government was shut down. Adam Schiff looks unhappy he couldn’t go pic.twitter.com/mywvLNtsId #maga #democratShutdown— Matt Batzel (@MattBatzel) January 17, 2019 But it turns out these taxpayer funded Congressional Delegation [CODEL] trips lead by...

Electric automaker Tesla is cutting 9% of its employees across the company ... Throughout its nearly 15 years of existence, the company has never made a profit, ... Tesla will also not be renewing its residential sales agreement with Home Depot, Musk said, opting instead to focus on selling its solar products in its stores and on its website.

I'm calling foul on all the leftists rushing to protect the NFL's protest crusaders from President Donald Trump's criticism of their national anthem antics. Their shabby line of defense? The NFL is a "private enterprise" whose "rights" are being violated by those who dare to challenge the league's political radicalization. The anti-Trump Democratic Coalition has even filed an ethics complaint alleging that the president's comments constitute a criminal violation against using government offices "to influence the employment decisions and practices" of a private entity. Funny. These fair-weather friends of corporate free speech and the First Amendment were nowhere to be...

As the media complain about security spending for President Donald Trump and his family, they happily overlook the billions of dollars wasted on seemingly contradictory programs to hold up corrupt governments we are supposedly at war with. Are they just ignorant? Or is the war not actually a war? To start with, there is so much conflicting information on when the war actually began; it has been renamed, repurposed and twisted in so many ways that even official sources seem to be at odds with each other about when war kicked off, and even when it finished! The Council on...

If you abort over 325,000 human beings a year, you’re going to abort the facts, too.One would think that actual parenthood would be part of Planned Parenthood’s mission. The abortion organization never mentions “mom”, “dad”, “father” or “parent” ever in their latest Annual Report. They do mention “mother” one time, in a bizarre quote that sums up the political group’s warped perspective on motherhood: “I was resolved to seek out the root of evil, to do something to change the destiny of mothers, whose miseries were as vast as the sky.” These words are from Planned Parenthood’s eugenicist founder, Margaret Sanger,...

Former president Bill Clinton used taxpayer funds from cash provided to him as an ex-president to pay for employees to set up the family’s private email server, according to a new report from Politico. Clinton drew money from the General Services account to pay part of his aide Justin Cooper’s salary — the same person who helped set up a private email server in Clinton’s home. It goes deeper. Clinton used taxpayer funds to boost the salaries of ten different Clinton loyalists, despite his growing wealth from delivering paid speeches. The funds were also used to purchase equipment for the...

The University of Washington used federal grant funding to buy thousands of dollars worth of custom embroidered Snuggies. Taxpayer-funded National Science Foundation grants were used to purchase Snuggies, pottery, and a trip to Hawaii. The agency’s inspector general audited the University of Washington and found millions in unallowable salary costs, and numerous examples of “unreasonable transactions” from funds intended for scientific research. The audit, released last month, identified $8,821 charged to five separate grants on unallowable promotional items and gifts, including personalized Snuggie blankets. The wasteful expenditures included $3,920 on canvas bags, mini optical computer mice, and custom Snuggies, as...

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The Department of Housing and Urban Development provided a $9.4 million loan guarantee to renovate an apartment complex here eight months after the owner convinced the county to value the complex at just $3.8 million, a Watchdog.org investigation found. The loan for Apollo Village Apartments defaulted and the property was foreclosed on in 2012 with HUD losing as much as $4.5 million on the deal, public trustee records show. Pete Sepp, president of the National Union of Taxpayers, said these government programs put a substantial amount of taxpayer money at risk and should be eliminated. ......

Things are up to date in Kansas City — politicians are going about as far as they can go. Unless the people get in the way. But, but . . . “the people are the fountain of all power,” James Madison, father of our Constitution, wrote . . . well, quite some time ago. Today, Kansas City’s brilliant and heroic political leaders fully recognize Madison’s people power, and indeed want to frolic in the enormous fountain. Or even build a brand new, bigger and better fountain — a fantastic fountain, the very best. Whether the public is smart enough to...

All in favor of more separation between sports and state, raise your beer koozies and stop millions of dollars from being wasted on bad coaches and old stadiums. I love sports and so do you. But itÂ’s not right that you and I donÂ’t have a strong say in how our politicians play ball with our money when it comes to renovating Stone Age stadiums or retiring awful athletic directors. IÂ’m calling foul on plays like a Texas judgeÂ’s plot to renovate the Astrodome despite strong voter opposition. And IÂ’m hitting the buzzer on schemes like asking taxpayers to subsidize...

Last week, President Obama visited the set of Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" for the third, and presumably final, time. Obama has set records for the most late-night talk show appearances. He's also appeared alongside YouTube star GloZell Green, in the online series "Between Two Ferns," and Miami radio host DJ Laz, aka "The Pimp with the Limp." Obama has treated the White House like his own personal concert venue, complete with selfie-stick video. After all, as they say, you only live once. Meanwhile, the same week as Obama's final French-kissing session with palace guard Stewart, Obama vowed to push...