Free Republic

"This is the video of my experience with SLCPD the day I was told my best friend was shot. — at my own Back Yard." Weimaraner dog shot dead in owner’s back yard by police who were searching for missing three-year-old boy Sean Kendall said the Salt Lake City animal control department contacted him and told him a police officer had shot his dog in the head. Kendall said that the dog had been locked up in the fenced backyard of his house. He drove home and demanded answers about the incident from several police officers who were outside his...

San Francisco's iconic Golden Gate Bridge moved a big step closer to getting an oft-debated suicide barrier after bridge officials on Friday approved a $76 million funding package for a net system that would prevent people from jumping to their deaths. The bridge district's board of directors voted unanimously in favor of the funding for a steel suicide net. The funding sources are $20 million in bridge toll revenue, $49 million in federal money and $7 million from the state. ... funding for the project remained a major obstacle. A significant hurdle was overcome two years ago when President Barack...

I sure hope my name pops up when Edward Snowden's list of Americans the Obama administration has been spying on becomes public. You have to understand that for years I went into a deep funk having not been influential enough as a reporter to have made President Richard Nixon's famous "enemies list" back in 1973 and 1974. I sat back at the old Boston Herald in deep depression when I witnessed many of my friends and colleagues in the media bragging around town how they had been important enough critics of Nixon to have made the list.

For the past few centuries, the Western world has witnessed a contest of historic visions. On the one side was the dream of the beautiful collective. Human progress was a one-way march toward socialism. People would liberate themselves from religion, hierarchy and oppression. They would build a new kind of society where equality would be the rule, where rational planning would replace cruel competition. On the other side was . . .

How in the world does the government expect us to trust the economic numbers that they give us anymore? For a long time, many have suspected that they were being manipulated, and as you will see below we now have stone cold proof that this is indeed the case. But first, let's talk about the revised GDP number for the first quarter of 2014 that was just released. Initially, they told us that the U.S. economy only shrank by 0.1 percent in Q1. Then that was revised down to a 1.0 percent contraction, and now we are being informed that...

Of all the purposes for which you might put U.S. taxpayer dollars at risk, helping wealthy petro-states borrow millions to buy Boeing jets would not rank among the most urgent. Yet that is what the Export-Import Bank does: In fiscal 2013, Ex-Im backed $8.3 billion in aircraft and related sales, including a $117.5 million loan guarantee to support Boeing 737 purchases by Dubai — a typical transaction for an agency that has, over the years, earned the sobriquet “Bank of Boeing,” though it does also support Caterpillar and General Electric, among others. Now Ex-Im suddenly faces extinction: Its charter expires...

PThe second page of the passport can be filled with regional language. Citizens are entitled to the second page of the passport not completed in Russian or in Ukrainian passport there can be no Russian language. As stated in the story zik.ua, few know that the Ukrainian may require that the second page of the passport filled with the language of national minorities or regional. The failure of Ukrainian have the right to go to court. It is scandalous in law language "Kivalova-Kolisnichenko" says that Ukraine passport or document that replaces, and information about its owner, made to him in...

One of the lessons that Andrew Lampart learned from being on his school’s debate team was to gather facts for both sides of an argument. So last month when his law class was instructed to prepare for a debate on gun control, Andrew went online using the school’s Internet service. “I knew it was important to get facts for both sides of the case,” said the 18-year-old at Nonnewaug High School in Woodbury, Connecticut. When Andrew tried to log onto the National Rifle Association’s website, he realized there was a problem – a big problem. “Their website was blocked,” he...

They’re adults. They had to be told this? It wasn’t part of their upbringing? I know that most EPA workers are urban liberals, but were they raised in barns? Management for Region 8 in Denver, Colo., wrote an email earlier this year to all staff in the area pleading with them to stop inappropriate bathroom behavior, including defecating in the hallway. In the email, obtained by Government Executive, Deputy Regional Administrator Howard Cantor mentioned “several incidents” in the building, including clogging the toilets with paper towels and “an individual placing feces in the hallway” outside the restroom. Confounded by what...

Today’s educational reform movement ignores the valued American ideals related to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Without fully engaging the American people, the federal government, through the Race to the Top program, coerced states to accept significant changes of which every parent should be aware: the adoption of the Common Core State Standards, expansive high-stakes testing, and unprecedented data-gathering and sharing. As a result, students’ personal freedoms are being violated, and the rights of parents are being infringed. The very creation and adoption of the standards took place in a secretive, non-democratic, and non-representative fashion, so much so...

At a White House summit for working families Monday, Vice PresidentJoseph R. Biden tried to relate to the audience by calling himself “the poorest man in Congress.” While acknowledging that he was wearing “a mildly expensive suit,” Mr. Biden said he’s not as wealthy as most of his peers in Washington. “I don’t own a single stock or bond,” Mr. Biden said to laughter. “I have no savings accounts. But I got a great pension and I got a good salary.” Mr. Biden and wife Jill reported $407,009 in adjusted gross income in 2013, including $230,700 for his salary as...

Top GOP officials are concerned that missing among the IRS’s internal emails are communications with Sen. Mark Udall and a dozen other Democrats who received campaign contributions from the federal agency’s union. The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) first issued Freedom of Information Act requests to the IRS last year seeking all electronic and written documents between top officials there and the Democrats who received the campaign funding, but the attempts have been repeatedly stonewalled. Udall has accepted $13,000 in donations from the National Treasury Employees Union that represents IRS employees ... This is just another instance of Mark Udall...

If Secretary of State John F. Kerry ever gets the chance to catch President Barack Obama coming off the golf course, or in between fundraisers, he should ask him this: "Mr. President, how do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" That is the question Vietnam War veteran John Kerry asked when he appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations committee as a leader of the anti-Vietnam War movement in April 1971. Nobody knew back then he would become a U.S. senator, the Democrat Party nominee for president in 2004, or Obama's secretary of...

It has become a daily frightening occurrence, hearing politicians, commentators, pundits, and stunned Americans say, “That's outrageous!” “He can't do that!” “No way!” “It's against federal law!” “They have no legal authority to force us to do that!” These comments are in response to the daily unprecedented out-of-control tyranny handed down by Obama and his operatives. We are talking arrogance with a capital A coming out of the Obama administration. For example: the GOP was moving too slow in caving to Obama's amnesty scheme, so Obama said, Heck with it, I'll bypass everyone and make it happen. Obama sent a...

An Article V convention, also known as the Convention of States, has quietly become a political inevitability, as state legislators all over the nation consider how to rein in the federal government’s unprecedented overreach and abuse. Last week, a group of over a hundred state legislators – most appointed as delegates from their states – came from all over the nation to Indiana to prepare for the Convention of States. The legislators, who hailed from thirty-three states, attempted to establish the structure and rules of a convention. Though Article V is clear about Congress’s duty to call a convention upon...

Conservatism Is Calling: Share this with everyone you know, Obama is exposed on every lie, with facts and comparisons. Show the world what his liberal voter base is doing to America. If there's one video you share in your life, make it this one. HELP expose their lies so voters can vote responsibly in 2014.

Well, my friends, how does it feel to watch our Republic bleed out?

Opinion: Immigrants are productive and make us a richer nation With House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s primary loss to tea party candidate David Brat, federal immigration reform looks dead. But the Tea Party should favor sensible immigration reform with border controls. It would result in additional economic growth, allowing the government to cut spending and lower taxes — key tea-party demands. Immigrants increase gross domestic product growth. Immigration expands the American workforce and encourages more business startups. In 2013 the labor-force participation of foreign-born workers was higher than native-born workers (66.4% vs. 62.7%). Their unemployment rate was lower (6.9%, compared...

David Brooks makes a good point and then a bad point in his take on the so-called reform conservative agenda. Today, millions of Americans are behaving in ways that make no economic sense: dropping out of school, having children out of wedlock. They do so because the social guardrails that used to guide behavior have dissolved. Giving people in these circumstances tax credits is not going to lead to long-term thinking. Putting more risk into vulnerable peopleÂ’s lives may not make them happier.The nanny state may have drained civil society, but simply removing the nanny state will not restore it....

Look for state Treasurer Steve Grossman to come out a winner when the Democrats meet in convention in Worcester Saturday to endorse a candidate for governor. Grossman, serving his first term as treasurer, appears to be too far out in front in the delegate count to have anyone overtake him, including Attorney General Martha Coakley. "He has put all his eggs in one basket," one key Beacon Hill insider said, "and that is to win the convention." Coakley, who is ahead of all five Democrats running for governor in the public opinion polls, is lagging behind Grossman in the delegate...