Free Republic

Tribune Co. has enlisted investment banks to help sell its newspaper business, including the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, people familiar with the matter said Tuesday.

Why must Republicans always play defense? Seemingly on the wrong side of any argument? Education; you? The pending sequester cuts have the President and his minions, like a flock of Chicken Littles, running to and fro, spinning tales of planes falling out of the sky.  For some reason - whether they’re too polite, too incredulous or just too inept - I barely hear a peep from the loyal opposition. So I wrote this little story to help Republicans explain the scale of sequester cuts to their constituents and hopefully help them put things in perspective: George Finds Out He’s getting...

"Big Sis" betrayed her fellow Arizonans - and all Americans - today by releasing criminal aliens into communities from coast-to-coast-by John HillStand With Arizona Despite potential budget cuts being 4 days away and Congress and the Administration have been negotiating to avoid them, the Department of Homeland Security has already started releasing hundreds of illegal aliens held in local jails in anticipation of automatic "sequestration" cuts - out of a planned total of more than 10,000 aliens to be released. Sources tell Stand With Arizona that DHS has "34,000 beds" for illegal aliens, meaning that Secretary Janet Napolitano is releasing...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke strongly defended the U.S. central bank's monetary stimulus before Congress on Tuesday, easing financial market worries over a possible early retreat from bond buys. The Fed chairman also urged lawmakers to avoid sharp spending cuts set to go into effect on Friday, which he warned could combine with earlier tax increases to create a "significant headwind" for the modest economic recovery. Bernanke said Fed policymakers are cognizant of potential risks from their extraordinary support for the economy, including the possibility that it might fuel unwanted inflation or stoke asset bubbles. But, in...

Meg Whitman, Jon Huntsman, Christine Todd Whitman, Carlos Gutierrez, Ted Olson, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and members of the Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain presidential campaigns.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke strongly defended the U.S. central bank's monetary stimulus before Congress on Tuesday, easing financial market worries over a possible early retreat from bond buys. The Fed chairman also urged lawmakers to avoid sharp spending cuts set to go into effect on Friday, which he warned could combine with earlier tax increases to create a "significant headwind" for the modest economic recovery. Bernanke said Fed policymakers are cognizant of potential risks from their extraordinary support for the economy, including the possibility that it might fuel unwanted inflation or stoke asset bubbles. But, in...

I'm thinking of buying one with the Freedom Drive II 4WD package. Seems a little underpowered, though. But I won't be hauling, or doing any serious off-roading.

Following in fellow MSNBC co-host Chris Hayes’s footsteps, the network’s conservative pundit S. E. Cupp has withdrawn from speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference next month over the issue of same-sex marriage and the exclusion of GOProud. Cupp announced her decision to back out on The Cycle earlier this afternoon.

For girls born after women were appointed to the Supreme Court, "Makers: Women Who Make America" is a history lesson. The three-hour special that airs at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 26, on PBS is naturally not just for younger women. It is for everyone — those who relished victories whenever women won higher office, experienced fury when colleagues made sexual advances or were frustrated when schools allocated money only for boys sports. It's for males and females — those who suffered the indignities and fought to change the world and those for whom the ERA is only a baseball stat....

A lame-duck pope. A secret dossier. Rumors of a gay cabal. A cardinal accused of "inappropriate" behavior. The Vatican is in an uproar, and church scholars say there hasn't been this much drama surrounding a conclave since 1800, when Pope Pius VI died while being held prisoner by Napoleon. One Vatican watcher says you have to go back to 1730 — when Pope Benedict XIII's right-hand man fled Rome in disguise amid allegations of corruption — to find a conclave buffeted by this much scandal. "This is not a healthy situation for any kind of institution," said the Rev. Thomas...

In a highly unusual move, federal immigration officials have released hundreds of detainees from immigration detention centers around the country, an effort to save money as automatic budget cuts loom in Washington, officials said Tuesday. The government has not dropped the deportation cases against the immigrants, however. The detainees have been freed on supervised release while their cases continue in court, officials said. But the move angered some Republicans, including Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte of Virginia, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who said the releases were a political gambit by the Obama administration that undermined the continuing negotiations over...

The deconstruction of marriage continues. It didn’t begin with gays asking for marriage, but with the heterosexual world rejecting marriage itself.It was only a matter of time, really. Britain, the country of my birth and my home for the first 28 years of my life, has legalized same-sex marriage. The Conservative government had not in any way campaigned for it during the election, and Prime Minister David Cameron had effectively said he would not pursue it, as had the gay lobby and its political champions. The United Kingdom, you see, had introduced civil partnerships for homosexuals in 2004, and one...

When Pope Benedict XVI resigns from the papacy at the end of this month, the Vatican would lose one of its most stylish men. He is credited to have brought back fashion that has been unseen for decades, often mixing it with his personal style sense. In 2007, Esquire magazine awarded him the title "Accessorizer of the year," for his ornate papal habit that the Pope usually pairs with red leather loafers. The magazine pointed out that the pope earned this title after making a pair of simple shoes his signature accessory. "The point is: Have a signature. It could...

MICHELLE MEYER: Don't Get All Excited About Today's Huge Home Sales Report Mamta BadkarFebruary 26, 2013 This morning we saw two huge housing data points. Home prices posted their biggest gain since July 2006, while new home sales surged 15.6 percent month-over-month. However, the already tight housing supply is getting even tighter. Bank of America economist Michelle Meyer tells us that while we are seeing an improvement in new home sales, today's data could be revised in coming months and that monthly data should be interpreted with caution since it can be very volatile. She also says that housing supply...

What does Hollywood have against the British? Once again on Oscar night, Tinsel Town gave warmly with one hand — while cynically taking away with the other. The good news is that at least nine Britons will fly back across the Atlantic with coveted golden statues. But the bad news is that Argo — the movie that won Best Film — is yet another piece of Hollywood’s Brit-bashing junk history that casts the British in a poor light.

a b s t r a c t The New Family Structures Study (NFSS) is a social-science data-collection project that fielded a survey to a large, random sample of American young adults (ages 18–39) who were raised in different types of family arrangements. In this debut article of the NFSS, I compare how the young-adult children of a parent who has had a same-sex romantic relationship fare on 40 different social, emotional, and relational outcome variables when compared with six other family-of-origin types. The results reveal numerous, consistent differences, especially between the children of women who have had a lesbian...

KALAMAZOO, MI -- When Jenn Amaya's mother left for a trip to her home in Mexico in 2009, Jenn didn't think it would be the last time she would see her mom. Amaya's mother, a Mexican citizen, was working out the details of filing for residency in the United States, when she was informed during her trip to Mexico that she couldn't return to her family in the U.S. "I have a torn family due to a broken immigration system," Amaya said to a group of more than 300 people from across southwest Michigan who gathered at St. Joseph Catholic...

Sequester Looming: On Tuesday, with just days left until a set of deep, across-the-board budget cuts are set to take effect, President Obama discussed what’s at stake for our country’s economy, security and future and pushed lawmakers to work out a deal for the American people. “So these cuts are not smart. They are not fair. They will hurt our economy. They will add hundreds of thousands of Americans to the unemployment rolls,” said President Obama, as emergency respondents stood behind him. “This is not an abstraction -- people will lose their jobs. The unemployment rate might tick up again.”...

The federal government released groups of illegal immigrants from custody across the country Monday at the same time the White House was making its case that impending budget cuts would harm efforts to protect the border and enforce federal immigration laws. Advocates reported “waves” of illegal immigrants being released from at least three detention centers in Texas, Florida and Louisiana. U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement confirmed the release of some illegal immigrants Monday night but would not say how many or from which detention centers. Sure, it’s not as if we have the right to know this stuff. Welcome to...

D.C.: Cut the Drama. Do Your Job. Americans are sick and tired of yet another ginned-up crisis. D.C. needs to grow up, get to work, and live within its means. The real economic Armageddon looming before us is our runaway debt, not the sequester, which the President advocated for and signed into law and is now running around denouncing because he never had any genuine intention of reining in his reckless spending. Remember that this sequestration deal came about because of the long debt ceiling standoff in the summer of 2011. It wasn’t the ideal outcome for anyone, but it...