Free Republic

Tuesday will mark five years since President Obama’s signing of the Dodd-Frank law, the most sweeping rewrite of the country’s financial laws since the New Deal. Mr. Obama told the country that the legislation would “lift our economy.” The statute itself declared that it would “end too big to fail” and “promote financial stability.” None of that has come to pass. Too-big-to-fail institutions have not disappeared. Big banks are bigger, small banks are fewer, and the financial system is less stable. Meanwhile, the economy remains in the doldrums. Dodd-Frank was based on the premise that the financial crisis was the...

Former Harrisburg Mayor Stephen R. Reed was charged Tuesday with a battery of theft, fraud and bribery charges that, if proven, would stamp corruption in indelible ink on the Reed Era. They would also likely put Reed, who has been out of office since January 2010 and has indicated his intent to fight for vindication, in jail. The 65-year-old Reed was arraigned before Magisterial District Judge William Wenner Tuesday on charges that go right to the heart of his longtime role as benevolent dictator of Pennsylvania's Capital City.

One thing about teaching that is easy for parents, policy-makers and others to forget is that working with students for hours every weekday to help them learn is very, very hard work. Even in the best of schools and even with supportive administrators, teachers have unrelenting jobs. In recent years, a growing number of teachers have found that reforms which force them to test students more than ever, collect more data than ever and attend more meetings than ever, are making the job literally impossible. That’s what happened to Scott Ervin, who has worked as a teacher, principal and discipline...

In a preview clip from his interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Speaker of the House Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) said there will be a debate about removing the Confederate flag from national cemeteries in Congress but in his opinion the flag “should be gone.”

The mayor's office issued the statement Wednesday through spokesman Kevin Harris: “It is disappointing that the FOP continues to issue baseless and false information instead of working with us to find solutions that will protect our officers. The FOP is using the same sad playbook they relied on when they opposed our efforts to reform state laws and hold officers who act out of line accountable for their actions. Our hope was that this report would shed some additional light on how we can better prepare our officers should there be future unrest. Instead this report is no more than...

Score one for the good guys, even if it's only a partial victory. The State of Oregon has failed in its attempt to bankrupt Aaron and Melissa Klein for the crime of declining to bake a cake - as the preposterous $135,000 fine it levied was no match for the willingness of good people to help out the Kleins and their now exclusively online business, Sweet Cakes by Melissa. Through a campaign via Continue to Give, people who still respect both faith and freedom have responded to the following appeal by contributing more than $200,000:

After just two minutes of floor debate late Tuesday evening, the House passed a measure to prohibit the display of Confederate flags on graves in federal cemeteries. Despite the lack of fanfare, the vote marked the House's first entry into the debate over removing the Confederate flag from federal property that went beyond codifying already established policies. Rep. Jared Huffman's (D-Calif.) amendment to the 2016 Interior Department spending bill seeks to end a policy that allows a temporary display of the flag in cemeteries under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service. It sailed through on a voice vote after...

The Memphis City Council approved a resolution to move the remains of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Mayor Wharton said this is a movement designed to honor Forrest’s will and testament, in which his last wish was that he and his wife be buried at Elmwood Cemetery.

In the wake of several Gettysburg-area stores making announcements on if they'll continue to sell Confederate flag-related merchandise, the Lutheran Theological Seminary is making its stand. Saturday, the day before a Living History event was slated to take place on the seminary's campus, the administration announced it would be banning symbols of hate speech and racism on seminary grounds, said the Rev. John Spangler, executive assistant to the president for communication and planning. The ban prohibits the display of the flag or flags associated with the Confederate States of America, Spangler said. "The subsequent use by other groups have made...

Welcome to the exciting new world of the slippery slope. With the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling this Friday legalizing same sex marriage in all 50 states, social liberalism has achieved one of its central goals. A right seemingly unthinkable two decades ago has now been broadly applied to a whole new class of citizens. Following on the rejection of interracial marriage bans in the 20th Century, the Supreme Court decision clearly shows that marriage should be a broadly applicable right—one that forces the government to recognize, as Friday’s decision said, a private couple’s “love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family.” The...

About 10 or 15 minutes after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its 5-4 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which made gay marriage legal across the country, including the 13 states that up until now had banned it, a colleague of mine walked into the PennLive newsroom. A smile lit up her face and there were tears in her eyes. Up until about 10 a.m. on Friday, my gay colleague sat on pins and needles, waiting to see if nine lawyers were about to throw the life and her and her partner into absolute upheaval. We embraced and I offered...

The controversy over the display of the Confederate flag in the wake of the killing of nine black church members in Charleston, S.C., has reached the annual Union County Veterans Fourth of July Parade in Lewisburg. The 18th North Carolina Co. A re-enactors have been asked not to display the Confederate flag if it marches, parade chairman Kevin Bittenbender said Friday. The parade is scheduled to step off at 10 a.m. Saturday. The decision was made following a discussion by the parade committee's executive board, he said. He understands there will be some opposed to the decision, he said.

On June 24, National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis asked park superintendents to work with their partners and bookstore operators to voluntarily withdraw from sale items that solely depict a Confederate flag. The National Park Service press release can be found here. "We strive to tell the complete story of America," National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis said of the agency's reputation for telling difficult parts of our history. "All sales items in parks are evaluated based on educational value and their connection to the park. Any stand-alone depictions of Confederate flags have no place in park stores."...

Cavuto took the opportunity to confront Jason Chaffetz over ousting Mark Meadows for his TPA vote. Chaffetz admitted that the TPA vote was part of it, but claimed there were a ‘variety of factors’ and also said Boehner had nothing to do with it.

For the past couple of days I’ve been ashamed and disappointed that RedState has decided to enter into the feeding frenzy over the Confederate flag (note: the flag in question is actually the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, but for sake of brevity I will refer to it as the Confederate flag) and have cooperated in tying that flag to the shootings in Charleston, SC. As humans we are, at the core, herd animals and we like to be liked. That is understandable and, from an evolutionary point of view, essential to survival. There is a line,...

The heavily scrutinized assessment of women attending Army Ranger School could be nearing its end soon, and it comes with a dichotomy: senior service officials are laudatory of their efforts, while some of the women who washed out question whether they got a fair shake.

The number of veterans seeking health care but ending up on waiting lists of one month or more is 50 percent higher now than it was a year ago when a scandal over false records and long wait times wracked the Department of Veterans Affairs, The New York Times reported. The VA also faces a budget shortfall of nearly $3 billion, the Times reported in a story posted online ahead of its Sunday editions. The agency is considering furloughs, hiring freezes and other significant moves to reduce the gap, the newspaper reported. (snip) The Times also reported intense internal debate...

Did you listen to Jeb Bush make his announcement yesterday? Did you hear loud cheers from a crowd that seemed excited at the prospect that there could be another Bush as President? Was I the only one confused? I don’t know one person who doesn’t threaten to leave the Country if it’s Bush vs Clinton for President again. Can’t imagine folks actually excited and cheering for Jeb. It got me wondering, would someone like Jeb, or another candidate that’s been struggling like he has, hire a crowd? Pay people to attend their rallies to make them seem like their gaining...

House Republican leaders are cracking down on rebellious members after a near-disaster on a trade vote last week, but another imperiled rule coming to the House floor Tuesday is making it difficult to punish the members who leaders need to pass the measure. Reps. Cynthia Lummis, Steve Pearce, and Trent Franks have been removed from the whip team after they sided with GOP rebels to vote against a rule governing debate on a trade bill, according to sources close to the team. Lummis, a deputy whip and a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, was perhaps the whip team's...

Wow. You have to watch this earnest exchange, in which a young girl who lost her father in last summer's war asks the prime minister, who lost his brother in the Entebbe Operation, how it felt.