Free Republic

TOPEKA, Kan. - The Kansas Senate passed Sunday what would be the largest tax increase in the history of the state of Kansas. The measure passed by a 21-17 margin. Kansas Sen. Julia Lynn, who represents Johnson County, Kan., was the deciding vote on the bill. Details on the $471 million tax increase: The sales tax increases to 6.55 percent from 6.15 percent. The cigarette tax will go up by 50 cents each pack, bringing the total tax to $1.29. The food tax will drop on July 1, 2016. However, it will be 6.55 percent until that time. Most itemized...

MOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree to make losses of Russian troops in peacetime a secret. The decree published on the official government website and signed by Putin on Wednesday makes it a state secret to divulge information about peacetime losses of Russian troops in "special operations." The decree comes as evidence of Russian involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine is mounting. Ukraine last week captured two men who it said were Russian officers operating on the side of the separatists in eastern Ukraine. The Russian defense ministry said the two are no longer active...

As Lee’s desperate army swarmed the riverfront streets from Petersburg across the Appomattox River late on April 2 and early April 3, it presented an inviting target of opportunity for enemy cannon-fire. But, a humane General Grant, whose huge army swiftly entered the city, allowed it to temporarily get away. “I had not the heart to turn the artillery upon such a mass of fleeing men I hoped to capture soon,” he said. Making good time, on April 3, Lee’s harried forces reached Amelia Courthouse, 35 miles westward, where supposedly a trainload of 350,000 rations Lee had ordered was awaiting...

It has long been an open secret that an army of paid Russian Internet commenters works out of a sleepy residential neighborhood in northern St. Petersburg. A new report from Moi Region and Novaya Gazeta provides an even more revealing view into the so-called “troll den” that allegedly produces thousands of pro-Kremlin posts and comments every day. Andrei Soshnikov of the weekly St. Petersburg publication Moi Region secured a collection of documents and an interview from a former employee of the notorious Internet Research Agency, which employs over 400 people in a non-descript building located at 55 Savushkina str. in...

A 2008 Pentagon report claims Russian President Vladimir Putin has Asperger's syndrome, according to a copy of the study obtained by CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin. The research was conducted by the Office of Net Assessment, a secretive, internal Pentagon think tank. It defined Asperger's syndrome as "an autistic disorder which affects all of his decisions." The analysis is solely based on videos of Putin's public actions, dating back to the year 2000. The researchers did not claim to have access to any data from scans of Putin's brain.

http://www.avclub.com/article/mashup-popular-country-songs-confirms-how-formula I-213620

For twenty years now, the Western politicians, journalists, businessmen, and academics who observe and describe the post-Soviet evolution of Russia have almost all followed the same narrative. We begin with the assumption that the Soviet Union ended in 1991, when Mikhail Gorbachev handed over power to Boris Yeltsin and Russia, Ukraine, and the rest of the Soviet republics became independent states. We continue with an account of the early 1990s, an era of “reform,” when some Russian leaders tried to create a democratic political system and a liberal capitalist economy. We follow the trials and tribulations of the reformers, analyze...

Joseph Andrey was 5 years old in 1927 when his impoverished mother sold him to the manager of a popular vaudeville act. He was 91 last year when he told the story again, propped in a wheelchair in the rehabilitation unit of a nursing home where it seemed as though age and infirmity had put a different kind of price on his head. Craning his neck, he sought the eyes of his daughter, Maureen Stefanides, who had promised to get him out of this place. “I want to go home, to my books and my music,” he said, his voice...

JACKSON, Wis. — Alicia Beltran cried with fear and disbelief when county sheriffs surrounded her home on July 18 and took her in handcuffs to a holding cell.She was 14 weeks pregnant and thought she had done the right thing when, at a prenatal checkup, she described a pill addiction the previous year and said she had ended it on her own — something later verified by a urine test. But now an apparently skeptical doctor and a social worker accused her of endangering her unborn child because she had refused to accept their order to start on an anti-addiction...

With all the studio hirings and firings in the last 24 hours, I've been too busy to revisit until now one of the most wonderfully bizarre twists in the Roman Polanski case. For days on end, I've been reading stories everywhere about how the Hollywood elite has rushed to Polanski's defense, saying he should be released from custody in Switzerland, seemingly glossing over that in 1977 he gave a 13-year-old girl champagne and a Quaalude and had sex with her. There is no disagreement about the sex. But I take issue with all the stories -- including this latest one...

Bernard L. Madoff's massive fraud stunned some of the wealthy denizens of Malibu Colony, especially when a couple devastated by the scheme surrendered their oceanfront home to Wells Fargo Bank. But some neighbors say the real shocker came when they saw one of the bank's top executives spending weekends in the $12-million beach house and hosting eye-catching parties there. What's more, Wells Fargo spurned offers to show the property to prospective buyers, a real estate agent said.

AS FAMILY AND FRIENDS TRY to make sense of the San Fernando Valley bloodbath that took the lives of SWAT Officer Randal Simmons and three members of the gunman's family, and badly wounded Officer James Veenstra, word is emerging that Simmons probably stepped into the bullet's path to save the badly injured Veenstra seconds after he went down. "We believe Jim was hit first, and Randy did his training and moved up to cover Jim, and he was subsequently shot," SWAT Sergeant Chuck Buttitta, one of the supervisors that deadly February 6 night, tells L.A. Weekly. "He acted instinctively, and...