Free Republic

Gov. Jerry Brown is no longer an Oakland homeowner. The governor and First Lady Anne Gust Brown closed on the sale of their Oakland Hills home last week, completing the journey that began late last year when the first couple moved into the historic governor's mansion in Sacramento. The real estate website Curbed San Francisco reported on Monday that the 4,147-square-foot home closed on July 30 with a sale price of $2.375 million. That's less than the Browns were asking for the home when it went on the market in April, and also slightly less than they reportedly paid for...

Less than a week before Omar Mateen walked into an Orlando gay club and killed or wounded more than 100 people, the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) submitted its Countering Violent Extremism report to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Jeh Johnson. The report instructs the DHS not to use any language that might be “disrespectful” to Muslims, including (but not limited to) the words “jihad,” “sharia” and “takfir.” The report was crafted by an HSAC subcommittee that Secretary Johnson created in November 2015. The head of that subcommittee, Farah Pandith, was appointed by Johnson in May 2015. The subcommittee...

A Georgia homeowner shot in the neck after police went to the wrong house has died, a lawyer for the family said Friday. William Powell, 63, died Thursday afternoon at Atlanta Medical Center, attorney Keith Martin said. A preliminary review of the 911 call indicates the three officers who responded had gone to the wrong home and showed up at Powell's house, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said. Powell was armed with a gun and was shot in the neck by Sgt. Patrick D. Snook, the GBI said in a report. Snook is on paid leave, the standard protocol in...

Sandra Miller was at work in January when her daughter called from their home here on Oakridge Drive with alarming news. The house was making loud noises, as if someone had jumped off the counter and landed with a bang. For seconds afterward, the house shook. A while later, it happened again, and again. Over the next several hours, terrifying bangs rattled the house. The next morning, Ms. Miller called Bill Neal, a structural engineer, who delivered the same stunning news to her that he has now told hundreds of homeowners: The concrete foundation was crumbling and, as a result,...

CBS4 News uncovered something every homeowner should know about. Your home can be stolen from you, with the filing of just one fraudulent documentat the County Clerk's office. It's a scam that is spreading across South Florida, and three influential leaders are teaming up to stop it. ....Using a fake notary and forged signatures on a quitclaim deed, the individual illegally transfers the ownership of a home to a third-party, a "straw buyer," who in turn sells the home to an unsuspecting real buyer. The thief then pockets the cash and runs, sometimes getting hundreds of thousands of dollars at...

Investigators say Tashfeen Malik, 27, left a post on a Facebook page using an alias pledging allegiance to ISIS and its leader al-BaghdadiMalik moved to Saudi Arabia from Pakistan about 25 years ago but returned home to attend Bahauddin Zakariya University where she studied to become a pharmacist Malik and her husband, 28-year-old Syed Farook, were killed in a gun battle with police after a mass shooting Police said 14 died and 21 were injured after suspects opened fire at the Inland Regional Center in San BernardinoFarook reportedly clashed with Messianic Jewish co-worker Nicholas Thalasinos, who was named as one of...

Considering the Freedom Center’s aggressive political work, poetry may not be something one would expect to find as part of its intellectual arsenal. But as many conservative writers such as Andrew Klavan and myself have noted for years, reclaiming America means reclaiming the culture, and that means engaging in the arts. As Finch writes in his introduction, “[I]f as a people, and a nation, we can return to something lost, recovering something from our culture that has been torn, then it can only happen through art.” The art of Finding Home is Michael Finch’s deeply personal contribution to the culture...

OWNING your own house is as much the Australian dream as the American dream, and it's one that feels increasingly out of reach for many. But when one user on Quora pondered whether it was ultimately better to rent or own your own home, blogger and investor James Altucher penned this highly controversial response: I am sick of me writing about this. Do you ever get sick of yourself? I am sick of me. But every day I see more propaganda about the American Dream of owning the home. I see codewords a $15 trillion dollar industry uses to hypnotise...

The Washington Post reported Wednesday night that a former Hillary Clinton State Department staffer who reportedly set up her home brew server will invoke his Fifth Amendment rights and refuse to testify to Congressional committees investigating Clinton’s home email system. Bryan Pagliano, though his attorney, informed the House Benghazi Select Committee which had subpoenaed him to testify on September 10, that he was declining to testify. The Post reported the letter cited the FBI investigation in to Clinton’s email system. Senate committees seeking Pagliano’s testimony were also informed he would be taking the Fifth. ““While we understand that Mr. Pagliano’s...

he death of an off-duty officer in Texas is being treated as a homicide, police said Tuesday. Abilene Officer Don Allen was found dead Monday inside his home in Clyde. Investigators haven't released details about the manner of death, but have described it as "clearly suspicious." "The circumstances behind his death indicate that the probable cause is homicide," police Chief Stan Standridge told reporters. "Aside from that, I'm not going to comment any further. ... I don't want to say anything today that would compromise our ability to hold these people accountable." Texas Rangers are leading the investigation, with assistance...

John Belles said he was prepared for the inevitability of a wildfire when he built his thin-shelled, concrete dome in 1999 surrounded by dry fields in Okanogan County. Earlier this week, Belles just happened to be working 30 miles out of town when he received a voicemail from a friend warning him about a fire approaching his home, he told ABC News today. After shuttling three vehicles off his property, Belles said he realized he had to hurry as the fire was only a couple hundred yards away. “The fire was getting close, in fact, there was a firefighter there...

There are times when excessive attention to monthly data reporting what’s up, what’s down, can be allowed to obscure underlying structural changes in an economy. With the game of what-will-Yellen-do-next in full flow, this is one of those times. No, the proverbial tectonic plates are not shifting, whatever that phrase might mean when applied to an economy other than one in the throes of an irreversible Margaret Thatcher-style revolution. But there are significant trends underway, trends that are unlikely to be reversed and which, as they play out, will result in an American economy considerably different from the one we...

Donald Trump laid out his immigration plan on Hannity Monday night. Trump called for “good illegals” to be sent back and let back in while keeping out the bad dudes. "Trump: You got to build a wall. It’s not an easy thing to do. And I’ll get it done. And believe me, I’ll do it for the right but I’m also going to have Mexico pay for it. Mexico is making a fortune off of us. They will pay for it. So, just mark my word. That’s called “negotiation.” …Before I even start a wall we’d get rid of the...

Houses have become stocks... the higher the price, the more demand (especially as the government has your back with low down-payment loans and the re-emergence of IOs). With Existing Home Sales soaring to a SAAR of 5.49 million, the highest since early 2007, the fact that median home prices are at an all-time high appears to be any problem for the releveraging American (or Chinese) homebuyer.  Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, says backed by June's solid gain in closings, this year's spring buying season has been the strongest since the downturn. "Buyers have come back in force, leading to the...

A Republican candidate: They're raping us! A Democrat candidate: Pretend you like it so they vote Democrat!

Windows were broken out on the second and third floors, while debris was piled on the sidewalk beneath a first floor window holding an Obama '08 poster." Irony, both that Cummings was one of those defending those defending Baltimore rioters as a "few bad apples" and that it could happen anywhere (anywhere apparently was through his ground floor window), and in front of a poster for the Savior that was to change race relations for the better. Congressmam Elijah Cummings Baltimore home catches fire. "Windows were broken out on the second and third floors, while debris was piled on the...

Chief executive Elon Musk announced the firm would build batteries that store solar energy and serve as a back-up system for consumers during blackouts. The device would allow consumers to get off a power grid or bring energy to remote areas that are not on a grid. Tesla plans to start shipping the units to installers in the US by this summer. In a highly anticipated event near Los Angeles, Mr Musk said the move could help change the "entire energy infrastructure of the world". "Tesla Energy is a critical step in this mission to enable zero emission power generation,"...

The deadline for temporary foreign workers to either become permanent residents or leave the country arrived Wednesday, leaving thousands of would-be Canadians scrambling. In 2001, the Conservatives set a deadline of April 1, 2015, for temporary foreign workers in low-skilled jobs who have been in Canada for more than four years to leave. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business says that leaves thousands of potential Canadians in jeopardy of deportation as their permanent residency applications are yet to be fully processed. The CFIB is calling for a faster track to residency for foreign workers in low-skilled jobs. "CFIB commended the...

In September, Susan Rodolfi celebrated an unusual anniversary: five years of missed mortgage payments. She is like a ghost of the housing market’s painful past, one of thousands of Americans who have skipped years of mortgage payments and are still living in their homes. Now a legal quirk could bring a surreal ending to her foreclosure case and many others around the country: They may get to keep their homes without ever having to pay another dime. The reason, lawyers for homeowners argue, is that the cases have dragged on too long. There are tens of thousands of homeowners who...