Free Republic

A California man has been charged with setting up fake businesses in three states, then using names taken from temporary visas issued to student visitors on a cultural exchange to obtain more than $355,000 in unemployment benefits for nonexistent workers, federal prosecutors in Iowa said in court documents. Nikolai Monastyrski is charged in federal court in Iowa with wire and mail fraud related to the scheme that prosecutors say he perpetrated there as well as in Illinois and Pennsylvania. A complaint filed Nov. 10 by Dana Johnson, a Chicago-based U.S. Department of Labor special agent, says Monastyrski was able to...

An economist at the U.S. Department of Labor quickly put her gears in reverse after sending out a tweet comparing Christians to Nazis. Elizabeth Ashack deleted her tweet that read “people in the red states vote for nazis to govern, and then call themselves Christian, it will not end well for them. #BoycottIndiana,” but not before screenshots were taken by several astute Twitter users. Ashack, an employee of the department since 1998, according to the Daily Caller, also removed “Economist at US Department of Labor BLS” from her Twitter profile after people began calling her out for the remark. That...

Labor Day: How it Came About; What it Means "Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country," said Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor. "All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day...is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation." Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation...