Free Republic

LOS ANGELES — A former Transportation Security Administration agent who was accused of tricking a traveler into showing her breasts as she went through security at Los Angeles International Airport pleaded no contest Friday to false imprisonment, authorities said. The woman told investigators that Lomeli told her he had to look inside her bra to ensure she wasn't hiding anything, had her hold her pants away from her waist for a check, and then said he would take her to a private room for further security screening, prosecutors said. But when they were alone on an elevator, Lomeli told the...

LONDON (AP) — The British government is increasingly troubled by soccer players hugging and kissing in celebrations, risking coronavirus infections and the sport’s ability to be allowed to continue during the latest lockdown. Outbreaks at Premier League teams, forcing the postponement of matches, have heightened concerns about the avoidable and very visible close contact between players.

SNIP Charles Calvin is a volunteer firefighter in New Chicago, Indiana, and unbeknownst to him, he received his first stimulus payment from the federal government on Friday. SNIP “I went to the ATM at the Family Express, and once I withdrew $200 out of my account, I looked at the available balance still left in my account,” he said. He said his account had $8.2 million in it. He was only supposed to receive $1,700.

We’ve all done something wrong. Watch us long enough and you’ll find us running a red light or making a U-turn where it’s prohibited. Luckily, nobody would accept it if the local police department tried to subpoena every car’s records and determine whether it had ever been used to break a traffic law. Americans know we cannot be forced to testify against ourselves in that way. The same principle holds in a large organization. There’s no doubt that, from time to time, somebody in just about any company is doing something wrong, whether intentionally or by mistake. That doesn’t excuse...

Mobility Justice From the City of Austin Imagine Austin program – Mobility Justice is one of the crucial political and ethical issues of our day in the midst of a global climate crisis and the extreme challenges of urbanization. – Mimi Sheller, author of Politics of Movement in the Age of Extremes. Please join us as we welcome Dr. Lugo, who will share her work on a building movement called “mobility justice,” the practice of accounting for the diverse vulnerabilities that individuals carry with them as they travel through shared public spaces. How can cities, including Austin, use mobility justice...

President Donald Trump may not be a genius. But he is the smartest guy in the room when it comes to manipulating the media, particularly the media that hates him, which includes just about everybody outside the television studios of FoxNews. That open White House meet

Sometimes there’s a level of irony that goes beyond the normal boundaries of ordinary irony and simultaneously creates a tear in the space-time continuum of DC hypocrisy; this is one such example. From her own 2016 press release:Washington, D.C.– In a long-awaited victory, the U.S. House of Representatives today by a voice vote passed H.R. 3833/S. 1632, legislation introduced by Congresswoman Frederica S. Wilson (D-Florida) and Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) to help combat Boko Haram.

It’s now six months since the Presidential election which was held on November 8th, 2016 and almost four months since President Trump’s Inauguration on January 20th. How is President Trump doing? The main stream media (MSM) and Democrat Party insist that President Trump should be impeached. But is this reasonable? Perhaps the best measurement of President Trump’s first few months in office is to compare President Trump with President Obama, the MSM’s ideal and perceived greatest President. So here it is – a comparison between Presidents Trump and Obama in their first six months since their respective election wins and...

Someone should get European Union boss Jean-Claude Juncker a map. If Juncker is serious about breaking up the United States and turning it into a look-alike Europe, he'd be wise to start in historic places like Massachusetts rather than in Ohio and Texas. He'd be much better off launching his separatist revolution in Somerville, the key municipality in the Bermuda Triangle of sanctuary cities, which includes Boston and Cambridge. These cities know something about rebellion and separation, especially from England

On Thursday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, introduced the “Deterring Undue Enforcement by Protecting Rights of Citizens from Excessive Searches and Seizures,” or DUE PROCESS, Act. The reforms contained in Grassley’s bill would significantly alter the federal civil asset forfeiture landscape, dramatically improving the lot of innocent property owners caught up in a skewed and unfair forfeiture system. Civil asset forfeiture laws target property, not people. As a result, no criminal charges or convictions are needed in civil forfeiture cases. Rather, the government need only prove by a preponderance of the evidence that there is a nexus between...

You could tell by his body language and the look in his eye that John Kerry, appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, wanted to say to Marco Rubio: "Listen, punk, I was testifying before this committee before you were even born." And Kerry, the secretary of state and former veteran Massachusetts U.S. senator, would have been right. Kerry is 72. Rubio, the Republican U.S. senator from Florida, is 43.

He promised to bring about fundamental change in America, and he has. The only thing is that people believed that it would be change for the better, and not for the worse. But the people were wrong. Days before he was inaugurated, President-elect Barack Obama said, almost ominously, to a cheering crowd in Chicago and to the rest of the country: "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."

The shabby practice of selling the Office of the President to the highest bidder has become common these days. But the Clintons have taken it to new heights, or depths. Not only has former President Bill Clinton amassed a fortune cashing in on his presidency, Hillary Clinton is cashing in as well, and she is not even president yet, but only president in waiting. And if you don't think there is money to be made in the modern, grubby game of American politics, just watch the Clintons. They represent the American Dream, or American Nightmare, on steroids. We have come...

President Barack Obama ought to appoint the Rev. Al Sharpton to succeed Gen. Keith Alexander as director of the National Security Agency. Alexander ended his directorship of the controversial spy agency and its global surveillance dragnets, as well as his 39-year military career, when he retired last week. Sharpton may not be a general, but he is a civil-rights activist and a man who is not only close to the president but was a community organizer, just like Obama. More importantly, he has a lot of experience in surveillance and spy work, having served as a wired-up, paid informer for...

I am thinking of selling the house, borrowing money, then bundling it all and giving it to President Barack Obama. That way I can become U.S. Ambassador to Albania. Of course, I could just give the man the money outright. But that might look like I am buying the ambassador's job in a sort of "pay to play" manner. That would be wrong and illegal. So it is better if I give it to one of his committees. It sort of launders the cash, as it were. Also, I figure it sounds more impressive if I bundle it. That way...

We've got to stop people from Massachusetts running for president. Because every time they do, they lose. It is getting embarrassing, and it is giving the state a bad name -- like loser capital of the world. What is it with this place? How is it that our professional sports teams (except today's Boston Celtics) win while all our professional politicians lose? The list of Massachusetts failed presidential candidates is long, and getting longer. It includes Massachusetts governors, former governors, U.S. senators, former U.S. senators, and everybody else in the Bay State who now thinks -- with good reason --...

Former Rep. Carlos Henriquez may be the latest member of the Massachusetts Legislature booted out of office by his colleagues, but he certainly is not the first. That "honor" belongs to Rep. Joseph Hiss of Boston, who in 1855 became the first member of the Massachusetts Legislature to be expelled from office. In between Hiss and Henriquez, a third state representative was ousted 100 years ago. Little did Hiss know at the time that his ouster would lead to an historic Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling 160 years ago, since upheld, that confirmed the authority of the Legislature to police...

Here is some unsolicited and free advice for Attorney General Martha Coakley, one of five Democrats running for governor: Be bold. Convince Juliette Kayyem, the other female candidate running for governor, to team up with you and run as your running mate for lieutenant governor. Kayyem, an accomplished woman in her own right, as well as an articulate and forceful candidate, may not want to do it. But if she did, it would seriously shake up the race for governor and put you on a path to win the governorship.

Massachusetts does not need a climatologist; it needs a psychiatrist. That is what should be part of Gov. Deval Patrick's last televised State of the State speech that he will deliver tonight before a joint session of the Legislature. The governor, as part of his proposed $52 million boondoggle of a program to help cities and towns fight climate change -- which used to be called global warming -- is calling for the hiring of a $100,000-a-year climatologist to tell us which way the wind is blowing.

A great sushi chef in another state once complained to me about a health code violation he'd received for making sushi without gloves. "Making sushi with gloves is like making love with a condom," he said. "It just isn't the same." Well, as of Jan. 1, California's law has changed so that there can no longer be any bare-handed contact with foods that won't be cooked. That means baked goods, salads - and yes, even sushi. According to Nation's Restaurant News, the new law will undergo a "soft rollout" over the next six months, meaning restaurants will receive warnings rather...