Free Republic

The American Civil Liberties Union, which touts itself as a fierce defender of fair labor standards, is in a contractual dispute with an unforeseen group: its own workers. Last month, demonstrators from the UAW Local 2110 AFL-CIO, the collective bargaining unit that represents the ACLU’s assistant legal staff, administrative assistants, and other support staff, rallied outside the ACLU’s national headquarters in New York City, protesting the nonprofit’s new contract for unionized staff and accusing the organization of violating its own employees’ rights. Among the contentious issues in the new contract are smaller wage increases and the demand that workers pay...

As CBS 2’s Jessica Schneider reported, police on Wednesday were searching for several men wanted in the assault, which took place around midnight Tuesday night, shortly after the couple left the Chelsea Bowtie Cinemas on 23rd Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues. A rash of anti-gay attacks was plaguing the city only a few months ago. In the severest incident, Mark Carson, 32, was shot and killed on May 18 by a man who first called him and his partner “f***ots” and asked if they were “gay wrestlers,” police said.

No one will receive the $25 million reward for the capture of Osama bin Laden, say U.S. officials, because the raid that killed the al Qaeda leader in Pakistan on May 2 was the result of electronic intelligence, not human informants. "We do not expect a reward to be paid," said a senior U.S. official familiar with the bin Laden hunt, meaning that the $25 million bounty offered by the U.S. under the Rewards for Justice program after the 9/11 terror attacks will probably remain uncollected.

Reggie Love on Obama during Osama raid: “Most people were like down in the "Situation Room" and [President Obama] was like, ‘I’m not going to be down there, I can’t watch this entire thing,’ We must have played 15 games of spades,” said Love at a public event.

That's a lie, the anonymous sales clerk says according to the UK Daily Mail, adding she's felt "powerless" as a result of the media barrage following the incident. I explained to her the bags came in different sizes and materials, like I always do. 'She looked at a frame behind me. Far above there was the 35,000 Swiss franc crocodile leather bag. 'I simply told her that it was like the one I held in my hand, only much more expensive, and that I could show her similar bags. 'It is absolutely not true that I declined to show her...

A spate of gun-control bills could put California in the lead when it comes to restricting firearms. According to the San Jose Mercury News, the gun-control bills, which include proposals to ban a wide range of semi-automatic rifles and strict new regulations on ammunition, could reignite the national debate that erupted after a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school last year.

Small business owners across the country are receiving letters from the IRS questioning if they are reporting all of their cash income, in a new push by the agency some are saying could unnecessarily create fear in the small business community. The Wall Street Journal reports the initiative is an attempt to respond to what the agency feels is a widespread failure by small businesses to report all their cash sales. The agency says the letters are not the same as an audit, and it is simply seeking more tax information from the businesses. However, some lawmakers and business owners...

Shares of embattled retailer J.C. Penney Co. fell another 2.5% in premarket trading on Friday amid an interal battle with shareholders. The board slammed Pershing Square Capital Management's Bill Ackman for a letter in which he criticized the board's failure to find a longer-term solution for the Chief Executive Officer Mike Ulman.

Self-appointed civil rights leaders and celebrities remained mum on the vicious beating of a white sixth-grader at the hands of three older African-Americans in Florida, despite a growing chorus of critics who called their silence hypocrisy given their recent, racially-charged condemnation of the Sunshine State. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, who both blasted Florida in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting and the acquittal of George Zimmerman in Martin's death, with Jackson calling it an "apartheid state" and "our Selma," have not spoken publicly of the brutal beating aboard a school bus caught on cellphone and surveillance video. Neither...

A new national poll from Quinnipiac University shows that a majority Democrats believe the federal government should bail out Detroit, but an even larger majority of Americans oppose such a move. Fifty-one percent of Democrats support Washington providing federal assistance to Detroit, which last month became the largest American city ever to seek bankruptcy protection. Not surprisingly, there is a strong partisan divide on the question of a federal bailout for the Motor City. Seventy-three percent of Republicans oppose a bailout, while only 18 percent support the idea. Independents are nearly of the same mind as Republicans on the issue:...

July 4 2013 Bing and Google screens.

Vowing they’ve learned the lessons from the 1986 amnesty, the Senate on Thursday approved the biggest changes to the immigration system in a generation, promising this latest version will prevent another wave of illegal immigrants while at the same time granting a pathway to citizenship to most of the 11 million illegal immigrants already in the country. The 68-32 vote, which saw 14 Republicans join all 54 of the chamber’s Democratic caucus members support it, is likely the high-water mark for immigrant-rights advocates, who held prayer vigils and watching parties Thursday in anticipation of good news for illegal immigrants who’ve...

RUSH: I hear you, man. For 25 years I have been asking, "When's all this stuff gonna even out? When are we gonna hit the bottom? When are we gonna reach the point where people say, 'This is enough,' and we start a rebound?" I'm continually surprised that we haven't, that our decay continues apace. CALLER: Well, one thing you forgot to mention was obviously Obama's $100,000-plus vacation to Africa wasn't part of the sequestration. RUSH: Part of sequestration or not, that stuff doesn't matter to people. People don't care about that. Obviously they don't. CALLER: All right. I'm just...

Paula Deen's southern cooking empire continued to unravel Thursday. Home improvement giant Home Depot and retailer Target have decided to end their deals with Deen while drugmaker Novo Nordisk has suspended its relationship with her.

The IRS is set to pay roughly $70 million in employee-union bonuses, contrary to an Obama administration directive to halt such rewards amid the deep, government-wide budget cuts known as sequestration. The apparent deal with the National Treasury Employees Union is scheduled for Wednesday and was made public by Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa. Grassley's office said the information came from a "person with knowledge of IRS budgetary procedures." The IRS is already facing widespread criticism, which started last month when IRS officials acknowledged that agents had improperly targeted Tea Party groups and conservative organizations for additional scrutiny...

Seven people were killed and at least 30 others were shot in violence that plagued Chicago over Father's Day weekend. Six of the fatalities and 11 other shootings occurred overnight Saturday leading into Father's Day, including the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old boy. On the Southwest Side, five people were shot, one fatally, in two shootings in the Little Village neighborhood.

Omissions of certain articles, such as bans on slavery or promises to adhere to international rights treaties, were equally worrying to critics of the new draft, who pulled out from the panel before the vote. The Obama administration declined to criticize Egypt’s constitution despite its slavery clause.

The NSA does not need a court order to search the database it maintains of the call data surrendered by the nation’s telecommunications firms, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein told reporters on Thursday. Feinstein spoke to reporters after a briefing on NSA monitoring by top Obama administration national security officials. She echoed an explanation given by NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander when he appeared before a Senate panel on Wednesday, including the specific legal hurdle NSA says it must clear before it can look into the data it collects.

Can I be a little bit of a smart aleck here? Of course I can because it's my program. We're in the midst here of learning that the NSA and a lot of high-tech companies and phone companies are providing the regime with virtually every phone call we make. They have access to every e-mail we send, every photo we send, and yet there are 11 million people in the shadows? We're doing all of this sweeping. We're doing all of this Hoovering. When it comes to 10 to 11 million illegals we're told they're in the shadows and we've...