Free Republic

HARTFORD — U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., has responded to letters sent to three Connecticut gun manufacturers by Mississippi state Speaker of the House Philip Gunn, urging them to relocate to Mississippi.

Aaron Broussard might have hoped his story would have been that of a witty, colorful and effective politician whose career in public service spanned 35 years. On Monday, however, a federal judge will write an epilogue that has the former Jefferson Parish president going to prison for what lawyers predict will be at least five years. The 10 a.m. sentencing in U.S. District Court in New Orleans will essentially end a political corruption scandal that burst open in 2009, quickly toppled the Broussard administration and became entwined with any number of unusual side stories. Judge Hayden Head Jr. was brought...

Gun Control: The silent media ignore a Colorado Democrat who says women don't need firearms to defend themselves from predators and a patronizing vice president who says women can't handle an AR-15 anyway. On Monday, the Colorado House passed four gun control bills. Among them is HB13-1226. It would ban concealed weapons on college campuses, as if creating more gun-free zones, such as the one around the Aurora, Colo., theater, where 12 were killed and another 59 wounded, will prevent more massacres. Colorado is a concealed-carry state, as was Virginia at the time of the Virginia Tech shootings. But like...

For example, one will virtually never hear that the Palmer Raids, Prohibition, or American eugenics were thoroughly progressive phenomena. These are sins America itself must atone for. Meanwhile, real or alleged “conservative” misdeeds — say McCarthyism — are always the exclusive fault of conservatives and a sign of the policies they would repeat if given power. The only culpable mistake that liberals make is failing to fight “hard enough” for their principles. Liberals are never responsible for historic misdeeds because they feel no compulsion to defend the inherent goodness of America. Conservatives, meanwhile, not only take the blame for events...

Please listen up. We are all being conned by the Obama administration. This year, the American taxpayer will fork over about $571 billion to pay for educating children in the nation's public schools. All told, the country spends close to $16,000 per student every year on primary through college education. That's the highest per-student spending rate in the world. However, according to President Obama, it's not enough. He wants more tax dollars, especially for "early education." He said so in his State of the Union address, and it drew big-time applause from his crew. Of course we need to spend...

Rather than seethe over President Obama's ongoing sequester-related demagoguery, Crossroads GPS has produced a web ad that duly notes that the cuts were Obama's idea to begin with, and pokes fun at his apocalyptic scare-tactics:   Crossroads GPS: "Obama's Mess"I especially enjoyed the audio clip at the tail end in which Obama laments the exhausting merry-go-round of "manufactured" crises, for which his party is almost exclusively responsible.  And how does the president behave during these standoffs?  New York Times columnist David Brooks -- a long-time admirer of Obama's, all the way down to his sartorial elegance -- identifies a pattern of...

According to Ynetnews.com, Jerusalem and Washington have set the itinerary for President Barack Obama visit to Israel as follows: Obama is scheduled to land in Ben Gurion International Airport around noon on Wednesday, March 20. He will be welcomed by a State reception which will include speeches by President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and by the American president himself. Obama will then fly to Jerusalem directly to Peres' residence where he'll again be ceremoniously received. He will continue with Peres and Netanyahu to Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, where he will lay a wreath in the Hall of Remembrance....

A FRENZY of back-stabbing as Beeb chiefs battled to dodge fallout from the Jimmy Savile scandal was exposed by a report yesterday — amid fury at chunks being BLACKED OUT. The acres of censoring — which came as the BBC insisted it was being “transparent” — immediately sparked accusations of yet another whitewash. That was despite the stuff that escaped the marker pen still being enough to leave senior executives squirming. In a huge dossier running to more than 3,000 pages, the panic at the corporation as Savile was exposed as a sex monster — after BBC2’s Newsnight shamefully ditched...

An American tyre tycoon has fired off a second virulent missive to France's industry minister, saying his country has “beautiful women and fantastic wine” but “no idea how to run a business”. Maurice Taylor - chief executive of Titan International - had already incensed the French once this week by saying the country's “so-called” workers put in “three hours a day” with the rest spent eating and talking. Industry minister Arnaud Montebourg hit back in a written response in which he told Mr Taylor his comments were “extremist and insulting” and displayed “a perfect ignorance of what our country is...

Unemployment in Europe is "unacceptably high" and threatens "grave social consequences", the European Commission has warned as it painted a gloomy picture of the eurozone's troubled economy. Publishing its winter forecast on Friday, the commission predicted that joblessness in the eurozone will peak at 12.2pc, or more than 19m people, this year as the currency bloc continues to struggle. Marco Butti, the EC's director general for economic and financial affairs, described Europe's labour market as a "serious concern". "Employment is forecast to shrink further for some quarters, and unemployment remains unacceptably high in the EU as whole and even more...

February 23, 2013 Saturday of the First Week of Lent   Reading 1 Dt 26:16-19 Moses spoke to the people, saying:“This day the LORD, your God,commands you to observe these statutes and decrees.Be careful, then,to observe them with all your heart and with all your soul.Today you are making this agreement with the LORD:he is to be your God and you are to walk in his waysand observe his statutes, commandments and decrees,and to hearken to his voice.And today the LORD is making this agreement with you:you are to be a people peculiarly his own, as he promised you;and...

1. LINCOLN 2. SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK 3. LES MISERABLES 4. THE IMPOSSIBLE 5. THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER 6. SALMON FISHING IN THE YEMEN 7. THE HOBBIT 8. A LATE QUARTET 9. ACT OF VALOR 10. WON'T BACK DOWN

Moody's Investors Service stripped the United Kingdom of its triple-A credit rating, predicting economic weakness will weigh on public finances for years to come. Moody's lowered the U.K.'s domestic and foreign-currency bond rating one notch to Aa1 and changed its outlook to stable. It is the first of the three major ratings firms to do so, though both Standard & Poor's Ratings Services and Fitch Ratings have the U.K. on negative outlooks. The move by Moody's is a psychological blow to the United Kingdom, which is fiercely proud of its historical position on the world stage and keenly attuned to...

West Midlands Police could be in the doghouse after someone from the force filled out a form in the guise of one of their police dogs, Peach. The faux statement was brief and said: ‘I chase him. I bite him. Bad man. He tasty. Good boy. Good boy Peach.’ It also came complete with a ‘signature’ from the Alsatian, which was a print of its paw. It was reportedly written in response to a barrage of requests from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for an account from PC Peach on a matter, the Daily Mail reports. Officers are said to...

Best Picture The nominees: Argo, Django Unchained, Les Miserables, Life of Pi, Amour, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, Zero Dark Thirty, Beasts of the Southern Wild Will win: Argo, which has overtaken Lincoln as the favourite and been sweeping up the hardware — BAFTA (the British Academy awards), the Golden Globes, the Producers Guild, Screen Actors Guild and more. It’s a worthy choice: a smart entertainment about the 1980 Iran hostage crisis that combines high tension with a hilarious portrait of Hollywood insiders who helped plan the escape. It’s also surprisingly sophisticated about the politics of the region. Should win: Zero...

Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke warned of a second American revolution if gun control and gun confiscation passed and said he would not enforce laws requiring confiscation in his county while speaking with Alex Jones, Infowars reported Tuesday. “First of all, to me that would be an act of tyranny," he said of the gun control measures currently under consideration. "So the people in Milwaukee County do not have to worry about me enforcing some sort of order that goes out and collects everybody’s handgun, or rifles, or any kind of firearm and makes them turn them in.” “The reason...

JR. WALKER & THE ALL STARS SHOTGUN SOUL RECORD LABEL 35008 MOTOWN

... these terrifying cuts will take us back to the dim dark days of 2009 and still be 10 percent above the domestic discretionary spending levels when President Obama took office... Congress should therefore do one of two things: Give maximum latitude to the Defense Department to direct cuts to items like civilian staff, or do the work for them in an appropriations bill (if we could ever pass a budget) to budget sanely. Better yet it should pass a budget which goes after the real money: entitlements. In Obama terms: We are giving Warren Buffett free Medicare so our...

One advantage of being in politics for more than 40 years is that Gov. Jerry Brown knows someone with a spare bedroom almost everywhere he goes. In Washington this weekend for a conference of the National Governors Association, Brown and first lady Anne Gust Brown will stay at the home of Lucie Gikovich, a former aide. "I don't like hotels," the 74-year-old, third-term governor said while waiting for a tram at Washington Dulles International Airport. He mentioned that his wife likes them, though, and she said, "You can see who gets their way." The conference is at a respectable hotel,...

Yesterday, I wrote about the silliness of requiring a file clerk to have a college degree. This morning, a friend sent me the following note about the narrowing of opportunity in modern America: Random thought inspired by the NYT article re: requiring BAs for everything and your post, especially the note about your IT team and their varied backgrounds, which is far less likely to be true today. It seems to me that a similar version of that narrowing-entry option is occurring in many fields You've written in the past about how the top banks have steadily narrowed the pool...