Free Republic

After a two-day debate, MPs have voted by a majority of 384 to give Theresa May the power to get Brexit negotiations under way...

ST. PAUL, MINN.--After eleven years of facing labor organizers at their doors, Minnesota in-home child care providers overwhelmingly rejected union representation in an election decided today in St. Paul. "Providers have been saying 'no' to the unions for so long, it just feels so good that we’ve finally been heard," said Lakeville provider Pat Gentz. Despite more than a decade of organizing, card campaigns and expenditures, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 5 garnered 392 votes, compared to 1,014 for providers opposed to the union. The margin of victory announced by Bureau of Mediation Services officials...

Numbers USA has issued immigration report cards for the major presidential candidates.

With projections of a GOP win growing daily, nervousness in Senate committee offices has turned to panic as an army of Democratic staffers braces to be fired, replaced by a Republican majority and their aides. The spoils of political war? Estimates are that 300-600 Democratic committee and personal staff jobs would be on the chopping block if the Republicans pull off the expected victory. “There will be a mass exodus of Senate Democrat staff from committees,” said one insider. And Republicans will get to hire hundreds more aides. A loss on Tuesday that keeps the Democrats in charge of the...

Millions of dollars have been spent by the candidates and outside political groups in Minnesota's 8th Congressional District and now we know why. In our exclusive new KSTP/SurveyUSA poll, Republican challenger Stewart Mills leads incumbent Democrat Congressman Rick Nolan 47 percent to 39 percent. Another four percent support Green Party candidate Ray Sandman and 11 percent are undecided. "This is a shocking poll and may suggest we have Oberstar all over again," said University of Minnesota political scientist Larry Jacobs, referring to longtime Democratic incumbent Jim Oberstar's loss to Chip Cravaack in 2010. "Clearly Mills is benefiting from a fundamental...

It’s a major blow to the MNsure health insurance exchange – the insurance company with the lowest rates and the most customers signed up through MNsure will not be back in 2015. The decision is expected to have a major impact on health insurance customers and the governor’s race. Golden Valley-based PreferredOne Health Insurance just notified MNsure and the Minnesota Department of Commerce of their decision through a letter. Sources tell KSTP’s Tom Hauser that MNsure CEO Scott Leitz was notified by phone Tuesday morning. PreferredOne Spokesman Steve Peterson tells Hauser this is “purely a business decision.” He says the...

North Korea launched a short-range ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan on Saturday. The launch came the day before the 61st anniversary of the Korean War armistice. South Korean military officials say the North fired a Scud missile from around Ryongyon county in South Hwanghae Province on the western coast near the military demarcation line on Saturday night. North Korean media on Sunday suggested the country's leader Kim Jong Un himself ordered the missile to be fired. The official Korean Central News Agency reported that Kim directed a firing drill after checking on the deployment of US forces in...

In my last two blog posts, I have been critical of the government on New York City property taxes and the proposed reduction of the 1031 exchange. For a change, I wanted to voice my support for a potential tax revision regarding the Foreign Investment in Real Property Tax Act (FIRPTA). This tax would greatly boost foreign investment in US properties, and lead to job creation, stimulation of the economy and further increase property values. On March 29th, President Obama released major proposals to encourage private investment in US infrastructure as part of a proposed Rebuild America Partnership. For international...

A Vietnamese boat has capsized in the disputed waters of South China Sea after colliding with a Chinese vessel amid on-going maritime territorial disputes between the two Asian countries. The incident took place 17nm from a $1bn Chinese oil rig off the Paracel islands. Vietnam coastguard commander Nguyen Quang Dam was quoted by Reuters as saying that the Chinese boat rammed and sank the Vietnamese fishing vessel; however, nearby Vietnamese ships rescued the ten fishermen on-board. "A Vietnamese boat from the central city of Da Nang was deliberately encircled by 40 fishing vessels from China before it was attacked by...

On Monday, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters that his government had lodged a protest with Beijing for Chinese jets closing within meters of Japanese reconnaissance planes over the East China Sea. Tokyo has every right to be upset. Beijing, from all indications, looks like it was trying to create incidents by flying too close for safety. On Saturday, Chinese Su-27 jets flew within 50 meters of a Japanese OP-3C and within 30 meters of a Japanese YS-11EB, both propeller-driven reconnaissance craft. “This is a close encounter that is outright over the top,” said Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori...

General Fang Fenghui, China’s chief of general staff, is now in the US on a five-day tour of American military facilities, including the naval air station in San Diego, where he inspected the USS Ronald Reagan, one of America’s 10 active aircraft carriers. Most notably, he will receive a “full-military-honors arrival ceremony” at the Pentagon on Thursday. The visit comes as a fleet of about 80 Chinese vessels, both military and civilian, are protecting a drilling rig that China National Offshore Oil Corporation, a Chinese state-owned enterprise, positioned just off Vietnam’s coast at the beginning of this month. China’s ships...

North Korea fired several rockets into the Sea of Japan on Tuesday. The South Korean Defense Ministry on Tuesday said a total of 7 rocket-propelled projectiles were fired at 6:00 AM and 5:00 PM local time from near the eastern coastal city of Wonsan, North Korea. The ministry said the 4 rockets fired in the afternoon are believed to be a new model of multiple-launch rocket. It also said those rockets landed in the Sea of Japan after traveling about 150 kilometers. A spokesperson for the South Korean Defense Ministry strongly denounced the launches, calling them a threat against the...

The bloodbath in Venezuela directly effects a large part of West-Indie but most of all, the 17 members of Caricom, and the Petrocaribe-oil alliance. The population of Venezuela is revolting because the socialist State of Venezuela is out of money, rather out of dollars, and since most consumptions is imported ( 80%) and not locally produced, out of food and everything else. The Bolivarian Revolution of Hugo Chavez spent more money than its economy produced and the shortfall could only temporarily be bridged by international loans, mostly from China, and the money press. The latter caused dramatic inflation ( 58%),...

Whenever I write about homophobia in Russia, several readers invariably leave comments defending the country's approach to gay rights... Elsewhere, like when my articles about opposition figures are translated and posted on Russian news sites, the comments get downright personal and anti-Semitic... It's of course impossible to tell whose vitriol is genuine and whose is being bankrolled, but at least some anti-Western comments appear to come from staffers the Russian government pays to sit in a room, surf the Internet, and leave sometimes hundreds of postings a day that criticize the country's opposition and promote Kremlin-backed policymakers....

Doubts are growing about whether China can pass the US to become the world's biggest economy this century amid warnings that the country’s 30-year miracle is nearing exhaustion.

Chilean film “No” recently vaulted into international consciousness after winning the Art Cinema Award at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, for its depiction of a plebiscite in 1988, in which General Augusto Pinochet peacefully relinquished his power after 7 years and 6 months as President. The film generated a wave of international coverage, and brought the spotlight back to the administration of Pinochet, who passed away in 2006. Much of the focus of attention has placed more emphasis on his administration than the film itself. In 1976, the KGB approved “Operation TOUCAN,” as a propaganda initiative to capitalize on Pinochet’s...

Film directors, authors, journalists and socialites who raised £200,000 to secure Julian Assange bail face losing thousands after the WikiLeaks founder breached his bail.

What will it take for the Obama administration to realise that their treasured "Reset" is the foreign policy equivalent of Monty's Python's dead parrot? The insults and harassment heaped upon Michel McFaul, the American Ambassador to Russia, apparently aren't enough. Ever since his appointment in December, Michael McFaul has been subjected to a steady stream of overall hostility from Kremlin-sponsored front groups and the media. Now, the Foreign Ministry itself has joined in. Their latest salvo has taken the form of a twitter war. Russian officials have issued a barrage of tweets berating McFaul for remarks he made to an...

The United Nations flag came down outside the Hennepin County Government Center last week after commissioners unanimously voted to fly only the U.S., Minnesota and county flags over the red-brick plaza facing Minneapolis City Hall.

Twenty-first century Russia has three famous faces: Anna Chapman, the failed spy, who came in from the cold to become a red hot sex symbol back home; Alexander Litvinenko, the spy-turned-dissident, who was poisoned by a radioactive polonium isotope in London; and Vladimir Putin, the KGB colonel-turned-president, who had himself re-elected for a six-year term last month. It is no accident that all three of these faces belong to former intelligence officers. The point of Deception is to explain how and why Putin's Russia has succeeded in fooling us all, both about its own sinister nexus of espionage, politics and...