Free Republic

In 1916 the French and English drew borders in the Middle East to satisfy their imperial ambitions. Jay Shapiro thinks that the division now collapsed completely. So what is the big mistake of Europe? Listen to figure it out. Video

A Kansas furniture store owner is closing up shop and leaving town, but not before he tells other residents what he thinks about them. Bob Fyfe, the owner of Payless Furniture in Lawrence, has polarized the community by posting signs on a large truck in his store parking lot that attack the town. The main sign reads; 'Lawrence: Commie and Candy Ass Capitol [sic] of Kansas. Goodbye Obamaville.'

State legislators are criticizing a $35 million bailout plan for the cash-strapped city of Lawrence, as Beacon Hill prepares to debate the proposal amid growing public outcry over the new mayor’s refusal to resign his state representative post. With the city nearing bankruptcy, a key legislative committee will launch discussions today of a measure that would allow Lawrence to take out millions in loans to repair its tattered finances, while appointing an outside overseer to help the city stabilize its budget. Facing a deficit of close to $25 million, the city is in danger of running out of money this...

<p>Peter O’Toole died in London yesterday. He was one of the few actors I was happy to watch in any role. He improved almost anything he was in, although I wish there had been more late-career stuff after his charming turn in My Favorite Year.</p>

The Lawrence Board of Registrars met Friday evening to vote on whether or not provisional ballots and absentee ballots would be added to the election totals of Lawrence Mayor Willie Lantigua or Challenger Dan Rivera. On Tuesday Rivera was declared the winner by 60 votes, but the day was marked with ballot machine mishaps, challenged votes and people voting in Lawrence after also voting in other communities. The Board of Registrars is comprised of Annie Medina, Larry Collopy and City Clerk Billy Maloney. After considering more than 41 provisional ballots and two absentee ballots that were “found” in the Election...

LAWRENCE - A Trenton woman shoplifted $250 worth of dresses from Macy’s Saturday afternoon, pushed a security officer, and then led police on a one-mile car chase before crashing and fleeing into a marsh along the highway, police said today. Shabrika Laster, 24, was captured after a 20-minute police search of the marshy area near Route 1 and Interstate 95, Sgt. Joseph Amodio said. Laster was in Macy’s at Quaker Bridge Mall at around 3:10 p.m., and had allegedly stuffed $251.98 worth of dresses under her tube top. “She was approached by Macy’s security,” Amodio said. “She was stopped outside...

Wednesday, June 19, 2013 Angry Liberals in America Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell is staring at me with the uncontrolled intensity usually reserved for serial killers and time-share salesmen. "We know how to get the country back to work. The government needs to lead the way." He folds a napkin in what looks like some expensive oyster bar, but is probably just a television studio backdrop. "The government has to get us back to work." O'Donnell already has a job. His job is to yell angry things on MSNBC. Most of his listeners...

With two Supreme Court cases pending that could either reaffirm or remake an institution that forms the bedrock of society, the debate over "same-sex marriage" has come down to political celebrities brandishing clichés. All the world grows stupid. According to a February 20th report on a local Fox News station, Joe Darger and one of his wives are lobbying the Utah legislature to decriminalize polygamy. In the Sexual Wonderland America is traversing at breakneck speed, polygamy is the latest thing. Take a law professor, mix with The New York Times opinion page, stir well, and – voila – you have...

Last nights Academy Award winning best actress Jennifer Lawrence discusses her fall while accepting her Oscar with a reporter who asked what she was thinking at that moment: “A bad word that I can’t say...

A U.S. supercomputer has won back the crown in the never-ending battle for the world's most powerful supercomputer. Its victory is the latest milestone marking the steady climb of computing power all across the globe. The Top500 industry list gave its No. 1 ranking to the Sequoia supercomputer housed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California — a spot earned by Sequoia's ability to crunch 16.32 quadrillion calculations per second (16.32 petaflops/s). Such supercomputing power is used by the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration to simulate nuclear weapons tests for older weapons that have been sitting in the U.S. arsenal....

... Times are hard in the state’s poorest city. The mayor is under federal and state investigation for campaign-finance improprieties and other questionable behavior, while a state-appointed overseer is managing the city’s municipal budget. Lawrence’s public school system is in receivership — the former superintendent, Wilfredo Laboy, is under criminal indictment for fraud and embezzlement, and the high school dropout rate is more than 50 percent. Public-safety cuts have been drastic, and felony crimes have skyrocketed from 1,777 in 2009 to 2,597 during the first 11 months of 2011. Unemployment is as high as 18 percent, compared with the state...

LAWRENCE — Jorge Gomez sat at the bar at the Malaya Nightclub Saturday night and ran up a $118 bar tab while dressed as a woman. When he refused to pay the tab at the end of the night, club management called police about 1:15 a.m. Sunday. When they arrived, club security directed Officers Michael Mangan, Carmen Purpora and John Tully to the bar, where they met Gomez. He was dressed as a woman in jeans, a woman's sweater, high heels, earrings and makeup, police said. Club owner Juan Hidalgo told police he would forgive the bill if Gomez just...

Leaders of an effort to oust controversial Lawrence [MA] Mayor William Lantigua are worried that they may not have collected enough signatures for their recall election petition to be approved. The anti-Lantigua forces collected 5,600 signatures, turning the last ones just two minutes before the Aug. 8 deadline, apparently exceeding the minimum of 5,232. But city officials have told the group and the local media that hundreds of the signatures have not met certification criteria and been rejected. The city’s Board of Registrars will make an official statement at 5 p.m. today. “During our effort to collect the signatures, many...

LAWRENCE - A Lawrence man has been ordered held without bail after pleading not guilty to slashing his grandmother’s throat and robbing her of $20. Rouluis Felix was arraigned Wednesday in Lawrence District Court and faces a number of charges including armed robbery and assault and battery on a person over age 60. Police said that the 22-year-old attacked his 66-year-old grandmother last week at her Lawrence apartment.

Last November, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell proudly declared himself a socialist on national television. On Wednesday, "The Last Word" host took this a huge step further saying the whole idea that Americans are rugged individualists is an illusion because they're all really socialists (video follows with transcript and commentary): (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: From our first days as a nation, we have put our faith in free markets and free enterprise as the engine of America's wealth and prosperity. More than citizens of any other country, we are rugged individualists, a self-reliant people, with a healthy skepticism of too...

Soldier faces international scrutiny, death penalty Tuesday, 22 Feb 2011 By: Karen HenselLAWRENCEBURG, Ind. (WISH) - An Indiana soldier charged with murder is making international headlines. I-Team 8 investigated how the Indiana soldier is sitting within two of the more controversial aspects of the war in Afghanistan. It includes the controversy of the strained relationship between the U.S. and Afghan President Karzai and how the military treats soldiers with mental instability in the war zone. Indiana soldier Pfc. David Lawrence faces the death penalty for killing a top Taliban commander in a prison cell last October. The I-Team 8 investigation...

Where is video of Vicki Lawrence as Veda in movie spoof?

A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. Like so many others her age, she considered herself to be a very Liberal Democrat, and among other liberal ideals, was very much in favor of higher taxes to support more government programs, in other words redistribution of wealth. She was deeply ashamed that her father was a rather staunch Republican, a feeling she openly expressed. Based on the lectures that she had participated in, and the occasional chat with a professor, she felt that her father had for years harbored an evil, selfish desire to keep what...

Soldier's trial has broader implications for military's treatment of mental health By Kevin Vaughan The Denver PostPosted: 12/05/2010 12:00:00 AM MST Updated: 12/05/2010 09:11:50 AM MST The questions raised in the case against Army Pfc. David Lawrence go far beyond whether he killed a shackled Taliban commander, or even whether he knew what he was doing when he pulled the trigger. They stretch to the military itself, and how commanders deal with service members who have mental-health problems during a time that the United States is fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. During a time when military men and women...

Soldier's sanity debated in murder case Published: Dec. 1, 2010 at 3:58 PM FORT CARSON, Colo., Dec. 1 (UPI) -- A Colorado hearing for an Army private, accused of killing a prisoner in Afghanistan, heard conflicting reports on his mental state. Soldiers testified by telephone from Afghanistan Tuesday for Pfc. David Lawrence's preliminary hearing at Fort Carson, the Denver Post reported. Lawrence, 20, is charged with premeditated murder for allegedly killing Taliban commander Mullah Mohebullah in his cell Oct. 17, hours after his capture. The defense portrays a troubled young man who was put on antidepressants and sent back to...