Free Republic

Rather than degenerate into a lawless land where criminals rule the streets, a Texas town that fired its entire police department has seen a 61% decrease is crime. In 2012, Sharpstown, a community of 66,000 located just southwest of Houston, declined to renew its contract with the constable’s office, essentially dismissing its cops. Instead, the Sharpstown Civic Association hired SEAL Security Solutions, a private firm, to patrol their streets. “Since we’ve been in there, an independent crime study that they’ve had done [indicates] we’ve reduced the crime by 61% in just 20 months," James Alexander, Director of Operations for SEAL,...

Secretary of State John F. Kerry — now Boston’s most prominent shoveling scofflaw — returned home to his Louisburg Square manse last night, his sidewalk newly cleared just in time to avoid an international incident. Kerry is due to host the foreign ministers of Canada and Mexico in Boston today and tomorrow, he announced on his Twitter feed. “Glad to welcome FM @Baird & FS @JoseAM­eadeK up to #Boston on Fri. Hope they don’t mind a little snow. #GoodNeighbors,” 
@JohnKerry tweeted. But in a neighborhood where people were out diligently cleaning their sidewalks, Kerry’s remained untouched two days after the...

The proponents of currently fashionable planning doctrines favouring density promulgate a variety of baseless assertions to support their beliefs. These doctrines, which they group under the label of “Smart Growth”, claim, among other things, that from a health and sustainability perspective, the need to increase population densities is imperative. With regard to health these high-density advocates have seized upon the obesity epidemic as a reason to advocate squeezing the population into high-density. This is based on a supposition that living in higher densities promotes greater physical activity and thus lower levels of obesity. They quote studies that show associations between...

NASA thinks it might have a solution that will allow sending humans up to check it out, though: Cloud City. The High Altitude Venus Operational Concept -- HAVOC -- is a conceptual spacecraft designed by a team at the Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate at NASA Langley Research Center for the purposes of Venusian exploration. This lighter-than-air rocket would be designed to sit above the acidic clouds for a period of around 30 days, allowing a team of astronauts to collect data about the planet's atmosphere.

Chicago is the rattiest city in America, according to pest control company Orkin. The company released a top 20 list with Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and New York City trailing Chicago. “Each city on this list is a major urban area that provides ideal conditions for rats and mice to thrive,” said entomologist and Orkin Technical Services Director Ron Harrison, Ph.D. in the release. The list was based soley on the number of treatments performed by Orkin in the past year. Orkin estimates rats and mice invade 21 million American homes each year and one-third of Americans saw a rodent...

Hundreds of adoptive parents in New York City who've sent their children to live elsewhere continue to get monthly government subsidies of up to $1,700 per child. They can continue receiving the checks until the child turns 21 years old.They gave up on their “hard-to-place" adopted kids — but not on the government check intended for the discarded kids’ care. Hundreds of adoptive parents across the five boroughs who've sent their children to live elsewhere are continuing to pull in monthly checks of up to $1,700 per child while the city, state and feds look the other way, the Daily...

Los Angeles is considering turning voting ballots into lottery tickets. With fewer than a fourth of voters showing up for recent local elections, the city's Ethics Commission voted unanimously Thursday to recommend that the City Council consider a cash-prize drawing as an incentive to vote. Commission President Nathan Hochman suggests the prizes could be $25,000 or $50,000, saying a pilot program should be used first to find out the number and size of prizes that would bump up turnout. The Los Angeles Times reports (http://lat.ms/1uV1Ekw) that federal law prohibits payment for voting, but Ethics Commissioner Jessica Levinson says that statute...

The fifth night of demonstrations in support of gunned down Ferguson, Missouri teen Michael Brown saw scores of protesters marching through the streets of New York in a vigil that culminated in Times Square Thursday night. Tensions flared as some protestors attempted to shove their way through a police barricade set up in their path toward the beating heart of the city. Police held their own and tempers soon calmed, but as night gripped New York, the already congested Times Square ground to a halt as thousands flowed into the streets to demand an end to police brutality and militarization...

Times Square is quickly becoming the costume capital of the world. They seem to be everywhere. City officials have said they want to crack down, but now the people who wear the costumes also want to take action and organize to protect their jobs. You know them as Elmo, Cookie Monster and Woody, but the people who wear these costumes decided to take on a new name: Association of Artists United for a Smile New York City.

Concerned that the City is an inhomogeneous hodgepodge with pockets of great wealth in some neighborhoods and squalor in others, newly appointed Housing Preservation and Development Commissar Vicki Been announced a plan to move 80,000 to 120,000 poorer families into middle class neighborhoods. “This way instead of having blight and filth in every direction they might look poorer families will be within easy walking distance of a better kept neighborhood,” Been boasted. “The crimes that plague poorer sections of our City would be more evenly dispersed throughout the whole City. Victims will come from a more broadly representative subset of...

'The pernicious impact" of federal immigration enforcement "on certain communities in Philadelphia" is pushing the city to curtail police cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Public Safety Director Michael Resnick said Wednesday. At a City Council hearing packed to the balcony benches with immigrant-rights groups, Resnick said Mayor Nutter would soon sign an executive order barring police and prison officials from honoring immigration detainers except when a suspect in custody was previously convicted of a violent felony and ICE obtained a warrant to support the detainer request.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio took off the gloves in his battle with education reformers, rescinding an agreement for the city to share space with several public charter schools. The move undercuts educators, parents and some 700 students at four schools, including Harlem Success 4, one of the public charter school movement’s top success stories, and two set to open in the fall. While agreements at those schools were rescinded, expansion of a fourth school was also blocked. The schools were to operate rent-free in city-owned facilities under deals backed by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an ardent supporter...

A conservative Southern California group has launched a public pension database that includes retirees’ names, their annual pension payments, years of service, last employer and year of retirement. ---SNIP-- A center press release announcing the database notes that nearly 100 former government employees received a quarter-million dollars or more in annual pension payments in 2012, that more than 1,700 CalPERS pensioners received at least $150,000 from the fund and that California’s two university systems paid 27,115 retired public employees pensions of $100,000 or more. “It’s indefensible,” Bucher said.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio is world famous as "America's Toughest Sheriff". Inmates weak pink underwear, eat bologna sandwiches that cost only 40 cents per meal (and for which Joe charges them!) . In Summer inmates bake in Tent City, which recently celebrated its 20th year. When Sheriff Joe put up flags in prisoner's cells, he warned if any are defaced that inmate would get only bread and water for a full week -- and 38 inmates have been punished so far. But Joe also has a heart of gold. He spends a huge amount of time helping animals,  giving indoor space to...

Bayonne officials are planning to have several health officials on hand and local emergency services available tomorrow when a Royal Caribbean cruise ship which recently cut its trip short due to a gastrointestinal breakout overseas arrives at the Cape Liberty Cruise Port in Bayonne.

Situated on the eastern border of Turkey, across the Akhurian River from Armenia, lies the empty, crumbling site of the once-great metropolis of Ani, known as "the city of a thousand and one churches." Founded more than 1,600 years ago, Ani was situated on several trade routes, and grew to become a walled city of more than 100,000 residents by the 11th century.

**SNIP** Sills, 48, was a graduate of the DOE’s “Leadership Academy,” which trains principals, and had little teaching experience. Insiders said she lacked literacy skills, noting her invitation to a Nov. 23, 2005, holiday buffet “in honor of my gradutitude” to employees, including “security personel” and “custodially staff members.” Sills ruled by threats and intimidation, ex-staffers complained. She “yells at a volume that resounds throughout the building, slams doors and uses foul language,” a 2006 letter to Condon claims. That letter also accuses Sills of racism: “She has hired only black teachers and has targeted white teachers and a secretary.”...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's federal Anti-Terrorist Committee said on Friday it had detained six men suspected in a bombing in the southern city of Pyatigorsk last month that killed three people and added to security fears in the run-up to the Winter Olympics. Russia is on security alert only weeks before it opens the 2014 Winter Games on February 7 in the southern Black Sea resort of Sochi, some 270 km (170 miles) west of Pyatigorsk where the car bomb went off...

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Days after a Republican was elected mayor of Annapolis, City Council members say they will revisit legislation that would strip the mayor’s office of much of its power. Democratic Alderman Ross Arnett of Ward 8 tells The Capital he will introduce a charter amendment to move Annapolis to a council-manager style of government. The city manager would report directly to the City Council, not the mayor.

Annapolis Alderman Ross Arnett insists the City Council's decision to take another look at making the mayor's job a more ceremonial role has nothing to do with party politics. But if the Democrat-majority council acts to remove the mayor's power, the timing will coincide with the election of Annapolis' first Republican mayor in nearly two decades, Mike Pantelides, who defeated the incumbent Democrat, Mayor Josh Cohen, last week.