Free Republic

The Kronies are in action...Mandating, Tarrify-ing, Inflating, and Boondoggling their way to profits powered by their special konnection to the G-Force. Watch Big-G and his team stomp out competition! http://www.thekronies.com ------------------------------------------------ The Entrepreneurs are shifty. They’ll sell you a line about how they “create jobs” and “offer customer value” to stay in business. They cry crocodile tears about regulation, red tape and higher taxes digging into their margins (and the smallest ones are the whiniest). But behind all the theatrics The Entrepreneurs are ruthless capitalists bent on fattening the bottom line. They’re cut-throat competitors. Turn your back for a minute...

Get ready for the next era in retail—one that will be characterized by far fewer shops and smaller stores. On Tuesday, Sears said that it will shutter its flagship store in downtown Chicago in April. It's the latest of about 300 store closures in the U.S. that Sears has made since 2010. The news follows announcements earlier this month of multiple store closings from major department stores J.C. Penney and Macy's. Further signs of cuts in the industry came Wednesday, when Target said that it will eliminate 475 jobs worldwide, including some at its Minnesota headquarters, and not fill 700...

The United States will deploy at least two warships into the Black Sea off the coast of Sochi, Russia, to respond to a potential terror attack during the upcoming Olympics, top officials said on Monday. The positioning of the ships would also enable the rapid evacuation of Americans in the event of an attack, CNN reported. The State Department would take the lead if evacuations became necessary. The ships will have helicopters that could fly Americans out of the country if needed. There are also aircraft on standby in Germany that could be at Sochi in about two hours if...

26-year-old Asef Mohamed is facing criminal charges after climbing over a barbed wire fence, trespassing and being found naked inside a pipe at a New Jersey water treatment plant Friday. Sergeant Robert Herring told TheBlaze Saturday morning authorities are still investigating the incident, but do not suspect Mohamed of any suspicious foul play or having the intention to sabotage the water supply. “This was a person that purposely climbed a six-foot fence with three or four layers of barbed wire on top,” he said. The man later got stuck in the pipe and started screaming for help before authorities rushed...

The video may make you think twice before peeking into the next stroller you see... What's being called a "devil baby" is terrorizing the streets of New York City...and it's all caught in a video that's gone viral. Residents are lured to a remote-controlled stroller with a robot “baby” crying inside, according to Daily Mail. Then, the animatronic “baby” jumps up, screams, vomits and even makes rude hand gestures. Their horrified reactions are all caught on video. It’s all a prank by the makers of a new horror film, “Devil’s Due,” to promote their movie.

Brookings Institution scholars, inspired by baseball statistics, conducted an analysis of the 113th Congress that points rather directly at the Democrat-controlled Senate as a the locus of congressional gridlock. The analysis opens with the observation that the House, contrary to expectation, passed twice as many bills as the Senate in 2013. Why? Because of the Senate committee process. "When we look at this category, then, we begin to understand where the problem lies: even in the traditionally collegial Senate, 87 percent of bills die in committee," Molly Jackman and Saul Jackman, of Brookings, and Brian Boessenecker write in Politico. "While...

If the law known as Obamacare gets struck down in the latest court challenge, the victors will thank a Hudson resident and Case Western Reserve University law professor who discovered what the law's critics say is a major flaw. Jonathan Adler, 44, says he didn't even appreciate initially how significant his discovery might be. He thought it was an interesting bit of legal arcana, worthy of scholarship. But his analysis of the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, has led to four pending cases in federal courts, two likely to be decided within months, that offer ACA opponents their best chance...

One Day of Fighting. Ten Different Perspectives Fallujah 2004 Garrett Anderson and Antonio de la Torre have been creating digital films together since they met at a high school digital media production class in the year 2000. Several of the students from that class are working in similar professional fields today. Garrett served as a U.S. Marine infantryman from 2003-2007; during which he deployed to Iraq as well as Afghanistan and continued to collaborate with Antonio when visiting home on vacation. The two filmmakers decided in late 2011 to interview members of Anderson’s former platoon who fought alongside each other...

On more than one occasion President Barack Obama or a top Administration official has lamented that the Commander in Chief is not a king or a dictator and is, therefore, unable to ram his progressive policies down the greater American public’s collective throat as quickly as his liberal supporters would like. And on several occasions, the sole hurdle halting the President in his dash toward liberal utopia—or totalitarian hell, depending on whom you ask — has been a pesky 226-year-old document called the Constitution of the United States of America. But the Obama Justice Department is working to change that....

A new Catholic health care sharing ministry may soon offer an alternative to traditional insurance plans for those who have moral objections to the requirements of the federal contraception mandate. Christopher Faddis, CEO of Immaculata Management Group, Inc., believes that health sharing may provide a “uniquely Catholic solution” to the problems posed by the mandate. Immaculate Management Group will be overseeing a new health share plan, called Solidarity HealthShare, which is expected to be functioning by January 1, 2013. In a July 18 interview with EWTN News, Faddis explained that health care sharing ministries are exempt from the Affordable Care...

So here I am sitting watching the History channel, instead of NFL and they are talking about the mystery of 3, the ancient Egyptians, monoliths, and different dimensions. Out of nowhere they make a leap to a discussion of the White House and President 0bama authorizing the Brain Initiative. So I am a little more than caught off guard. Being the curious sort I immediately jump on my computer to look up this 'initiative,' and why our government would be so interested in our brains. Much to my surprise the website comes up on the first try and initially looks...

Senators return on Sunday afternoon for more debate on proceeding to a measure proposing to lift the debt ceiling through December 2014. Negotiations among Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill and the President continue as all parties struggle to reach an agreement to resolve the impasse over re-opening the federal government and what to do about debt ceiling Funding for all government operations expired September thirtieth. The federal government has been shut down since October 1. On Saturday, the Senate was in session and held a procedural vote on S. 1569, a bill proposing an increase to the debt ceiling...

Earlier today, an unidentified bearded man took it upon himself to bring his lawnmower and a few tools to the Lincoln Memorial to provide free groundskeeping work to the closed federal monument. It's unclear how much of the expansive lawn behind the memorial was mowed, but Park Police were alerted and three cruisers with multiple officers showed up. THE WEEKLY STANDARD watched the officers observing the mystery mower from a distance

<p>The similarities of national debt to personal debt only go so far. The main difference is that countries can grow their way out of debt. When the United States issued billions in debt to pay for its part in World War II, the total amounted to more than 100 percent of GDP. But that ratio—debt divided by GDP—shrank during the post-war boom even without an aggressive effort to pay down the debt. With a growing economy and rising tax base, retiring the wartime debt became a much easier task.</p>

Despite the government shutdown, the doors to the Obamacare health insurance exchanges have swung open (kinda, sorta), which also means scam artists are strutting through them, looking for ways to defraud Americans eager to buy health coverage. As Federal Trade Commission chairwoman Edith Ramirez recently said, “At the FTC, we know all too well how scammers invariably try to take advantage of developments in the marketplace and new government programs.” Consumer watchdogs expect the fraudsters’ schemes will get worse over the next four to six months. Before I run down the scams to watch out for, a couple of words...

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In the showdown over the shutdown of the U.S. government, the Obamaites tipped their hand yesterday as what their strategy is. Taking a page out of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals," the plan is to maximize the people's pain — to maximize the political damage to the enemy, the Republican Party.What else explains it?Consider this: Asked Wednesday if there were any danger of America defaulting on her debt, President Obama rushed to assure a reporter that, yes, indeed, there certainly is such a peril. Why would a president act in so perverse a manner, were he not trying deliberately to...

Today the sun still rises on America. It rises on a Republic exercising her system of checks and balances. President Obama declared long before this shutdown that he would refuse to negotiate. Weeks ago he started with this strategy, long before Ted Cruz ever believed he would rise to a 21 hour filibuster, Obama said he would not negotiate. This odd position by the President and his party should cause every American, Democrat, Republican, Independent serious reason to pause. This is a tactic of a bully, not a President looking out for the good of the Nation. When a child...

Ohio's 8th District Court of Appeals ruled last week that storm water does not fall within the definition of waste water and blocked the sewer district from collecting a fee used to control runoff. The Cleveland Division of Water, which handles billing for 85 percent of the district's customers should have the fee deleted in time to keep it off statements that arrive next week, Jennifer Elting, a spokeswoman for the sewer agency, said in an email. Customers do not have to pay the fee if their bills come before then. The district bills customers who live outside the Cleveland...

In his decision yesterday, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that "we do not consider whether the [Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act] embodies sound policies." That is, to put it mildly, an understatement. While it may be constitutional, Obamacare remains fundamentally flawed legislation that creates a massive health care entitlement, slashes hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare (endangering seniors' access to care) and imposes hundreds of billions in taxes on the economy -- hardly a recipe for escaping our current economic doldrums. Sooner or later, Congress will be forced to repeal and replace it.