Free Republic

Think of it as a rare instance of cross-aisle consensus or else a sartorial trend gone badly wrong. But it did not go unnoticed when, in a photograph from the Oval Office posted to President Joe Biden’s account this week, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, Senator Mitch McConnell and Representative Hakeem Jeffries were all captured wearing some variant of the dreaded footwear hybrid: the sneaker shoe. Weighing in on Twitter, cult men’s wear commentator Derek Guy (@dieworkwear) called out the footgear as a clear lapse in dignity, if not actual protocol. Why pay a visit to a sitting president...

The nation's top military official has apologized for taking part in President Donald Trump's walk from the White House to St. John's Church for what eventually turned into a controversial photo op after authorities had used pepper balls and smoke canisters to disperse largely peaceful protesters. "I should not have been there," said Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a prerecorded video commencement address to National Defense University. "My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics."

A man was arrested for setting his shelter on fire at a Madison-owned homeless shelter encampment Tuesday afternoon, authorities reported. Madison police on Tuesday did not say an arrest had been made their report on the incident, but Chief Shon Barnes said in his blog Wednesday morning that a man was arrested for arson and threatening law enforcement officers. Barnes said the man went to turn himself in and threatened law enforcement officers during the process. Based on the case number matching on the police report and the Dane County Jail record, the man arrested was Jeffrey M. Jalinski, who...

ATLANTA - Keisha Lance Bottoms released a farewell video on her last full day as Atlanta mayor. The video was posted to her social media accounts and it in part outlined some achievements she had during her four-year term. Bottoms released an open letter to the city in May 2021, announcing that she would not seek a second term as mayor.

Approximately 3,000 mail-in ballots counted in the Nov. 3 election were supposedly cast by UCSB students residing in a voting precinct that, along with other dorm buildings, includes the Francisco Torres/Santa Catalina Residence Hall at 6850 El Colegio Road in Goleta. Problem: Due to COVID-19, the Torres Building, which normally accommodates 1,300 students, was empty and locked down through most of 2020, as were all other UCSB dorms. This means no students/voters were residing inside the Torres Building (nor any of the other dorms) during the election season.

I woke up panicked early Saturday morning: I couldn't smell. I immediately sprung out of bed, terrified I had contracted Covid-19 from President Donald Trump and his supporters after sitting only 15 feet away from them at the debate in Cleveland last week, where I was a guest of former Vice President Joe Biden.

When the Education Department approved a proposal by Dream Center, a Christian nonprofit with no experience in higher education, to buy a troubled chain of for-profit colleges, skeptics warned that the charity was unlikely to pull off the turnaround it promised. What they didn’t foresee was just how quickly and catastrophically it would fail. Barely a year after the takeover, dozens of Dream Center campuses are nearly out of money and may close as soon as Friday. More than a dozen others have been sold in the hope they can survive. The affected schools — Argosy University, South University and...

Two top executives at AT&T and WarnerMedia flew to Atlanta a year ago to reassure Ted Turner to his face that the company would respect what he created and maintain editorial integrity at CNN, according to former CNN president Tom Johnson, who was also at the meeting. They met for lunch March 6, 2018 at the private Capital City Club in downtown Atlanta, about four blocks from Turner’s residence and a half mile from CNN Center. At the time, Dallas-based AT&T thought it was close to closing on its merger with Time Warner, which had purchased Turner Broadcasting from Turner...

EL PASO, Texas People walking over the Paso del Norte Bridge linking this West Texas border city to Mexico can watch President Donald Trump’s border wall getting bigger in real time. Workers in fluorescent smocks can be seen digging trenches, pouring concrete and erecting rust-colored slabs of 18-foot-high metal to replace layers of barbed wire-topped fencing along the mud-colored Rio Grande, which is usually little more than a trickle. Most of the more than 70,000 people who legally cross four city bridges daily — to shop, go to school and work — pay the construction in the heart of downtown...

A new internal document obtained by CNN shows the Transportation Security Administration's proposal to eliminate screening at more than 150 small to medium sized airports is just one of several cost-saving measures the agency is discussing. The document, which an agency source says TSA Administrator David Pekoske was briefed on last month, shows how the TSA could save more than $300 million in 2020.

In front of a backdrop of alternating American and North Korean flags, President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un approached from opposite sides of a stage and shook hands in the middle. While the leaders spoke little in their appearances Tuesday, experts in body language pointed out notable nonverbal cues that could provide insight into their demeanors during the meeting. Experts noted that Trump touched Kim on numerous occasions, while Kim was much more restrained. “It was those certain small unexpected touches by Trump that showed his power,” said Patti Wood, author of “SNAP: Making the Most of...

The first major Democratic candidate to launch a bid for Wisconsin governor has ended his campaign. Milwaukee businessman Andy Gronik announced his decision to withdraw from the race on Thursday, following a Marquette University Law School poll that found he was supported by 4 percent of Democrats who plan to vote in the Aug. 14 primary election. "The response to my candidacy has been incredible, and we’ve been picking up momentum and supporters every day, but just not fast enough," Gronik said in a statement. "It’s time for me to step down and give someone a legitimate chance to win...

Rick Tallini didn't worry much about the $55,000 in federal student loans he took out for law school in the 1990s. His future seemed bright. Yet in the decades since he graduated, he's struggled to find employment and pay the bills. His original student loan balance, meanwhile, has soared to well over $300,000. "They'll tack this thing to my coffin at this point," Tallini, 61, said.

SAN CRISTOBAL/BARINAS, Venezuela, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Hungry mobs ransacked a food collection center, and a supermarket in Venezuela's western Andean state of Merida on Thursday and reportedly even slaughtered cattle grazing in a field as unrest over food shortages spread through the country. An opposition lawmaker from Merida, Carlos Paparoni, said four people had died and 10 were injured in the chaos over the last two days, but he did not specify the circumstances. Four years of recession and the world's highest inflation have plunged millions of Venezuelans into poverty, and President Nicolas Maduro's authoritarian socialist regime faces mounting...

Puerto Rico, already trying to dig itself out of a historic financial crisis, is now facing a direct hit by a major hurricane that could destroy any progress the U.S. territory has made under a year-old economic rehab plan ─ and set it back further. Hurricane Maria is forecast to hit Puerto Rico early Wednesday, testing the local government's ability to respond to a humanitarian disaster. While the Caribbean island of 3.4 million people is accustomed to tropical storms, it hasn't been hit by a Category 4 or 5 hurricane since 1928.

One Confederate monument is gone and another is slated to be taken down at Forest Hill Cemetery after Madison Mayor Paul Soglin ordered their removal. Soglin said in a statement Thursday that he directed city staff to remove a plaque and a larger stone monument at the Confederate Rest section of the public cemetery, saying, “There should be no place in our country for bigotry, hatred or violence against those who seek to unite our communities and our country.”

Not able to copy.

The rising burden of student debt is weighing on interest rates in the U.S., and it would be a “reasonable conversation” for policy makers to explore making college tuition free, Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William Dudley said. The growing pile of student debt is “obviously one headwind to economic activity” that “probably pushes in that direction of lower equilibrium real rates” because it limits households’ spending power, Dudley said Monday during a press briefing in New York.

Dennis Gaudet has had some loyal VW customers. One of them bought his past four vehicles from Gaudet’s Volkswagen store, part of the AutoServ Dealer Group in Tilton, N.H., and had been back to the VW dealership three times since the diesel scandal erupted in September for guidance on what to do with his diesel vehicle as trade-in time approached. Each time, Gaudet says, his dealership told the customer to hang tight until more was known. “He didn’t show up a fourth time,” Gaudet said. “I happened to run into him, and he was driving a Honda.” Read more: http://autoweek.com/article/vw-diesel-scandal/tdi-toxic-vw-customers-are-moving#ixzz4CKLeP4qa

Madison — State Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley was elected to a 10-year term Tuesday, overcoming a challenge from Appeals Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg and keeping the job Gov. Scott Walker appointed her to in the fall. Her win preserves conservatives' 5-2 control of the court. The Associated Press called the race for Bradley just before 11 p.m.