Free Republic

Madison— Faced with delays and inflation over the past five years, four major state highway projects — including a Madison artery — have accumulated overruns in excess of $700 million. While some of these increases come from faulty cost estimates or unavoidable inflation, the new figures underline the obvious: Delays can be costly for Wisconsin taxpayers. When projects are paused because of financial challenges in the state's road fund, the price of materials, labor and real estate can rise. The numbers compiled by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel underline the urgency of a divisive issue for Wisconsin's Republican leaders: finding a...

On February 18th, 1792, James Madison posted an anonymous squib in his newspaper, the National Gazette. He asked: May not governments be properly divided, according to their predominant spirit and principles, into three species of which the following are examples? First. A government operating by a permanent military force, which at once maintains the government and is maintained by it; which is at once the cause of burdens on the people and of submission in the people to their burdens. Such have been the governments under which human nature has groaned through every age. Such are the governments which still...

If they care more about students than teachers’ unions, every school district in the country needs to pay attention to this: When Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker gave the boot to teachers’ unions, liberals predicted a disaster of apocalyptic proportions: Teachers quitting, slack-jawed, uneducated students meandering down vacant downtowns that closed shop. It turns out, though, that Walker’s “Act 10” may have been the best thing to happen to schools and teachers in decades. That’s because not only is teacher pay up for the best students, but without burdensome union rules, school administrators are empowered to make real changes they need...

George Washington, our first president, is probably our greatest and most decent statesman. We celebrate Washington's Birthday each February. But March 16th marks the birthday of probably the second-most important and decent American, James Madison. Madison became our fourth president, but his presidency is not the chief source of his greatness. There would have been an entirely different America without Madison's enormous input and foresight at the contentious 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. There were 55 delegates to the convention. Like Madison, some had a formal college education, while others did not. From Madison's notes about the quality of the...

Monday, March 7, 2016: GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump held a campaign rally in Madison, MS at Madison County School District.

The stadium has seating for 5,000 and has never held an event with over 8,000 attendees with parking for 1,000 vehicles. Maj. Jim Cooke with the Madison police told AL.com the huge expected crowd for the Trump rally is a logistics nightmare: “I don’t think you could have picked a worse location for this number of people. …I’m about as frustrated as I can get,” Cooke said. “I never imagined that I would be notified at 10 minutes after 5 on Thursday afternoon that we needed to plan for an event that takes three weeks to properly plan. We’ll figure...

For your Brick By Brick file.More great news from the Extraordinary Ordinary of Madison, His Excellency Most Reverend Robert C Morlino.This comes by way of the liberal (for Madison a tautology), secular newspaper the WSJ. My emphases and comments. At area Catholic churches, the tabernacle, ‘Christ’s dwelling place,’ moves to center stageASHTON -- Like centuries of Catholic priests before him, the Rev. Tait Schroeder consecrated the communion bread at a midday Mass last week, turning it into what the denomination's faithful believe is the actual body of Jesus Christ.After offering the sacramental bread -- referred to as the Eucharistic host...

An American researcher says it is highly likely that the United States is responsible for the crash of a Russian passenger plane over Egypt this week. On Saturday, the Airbus A321-200 broke up in midair and crashed in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, killing 224 people on board. An investigation is underway to find out how the disaster happened; however, the airline has said that technical faults or human errors could not have caused the tragic crash. "New information from sources with contacts in the CIA are reporting that the US recently sold ships to Egypt in return for a drone base...

Kraft Heinz announced Wednesday that it will move Oscar Mayer and the company's U.S. meats business from Madison, Wis., to Chicago — a move that will add 250 jobs to Chicago's Aon Center. The company also announced plans to consolidate its production facilities during the next two years, which will result in the shutdown of seven North American manufacturing facilities: Fullerton, Calif.; San Leandro, Calif.; Federalsburg, Md.; St. Mary's, Canada; Campbell, N.Y.; Lehigh Valley, Pa., and the one in Madison. The closings will result in the loss of about 2,600 manufacturing jobs at the company, including 700 in Madison. About...

Part 269 of 267 in the series Wisconsin's Secret War By M.D. Kittle | Wisconsin Watchdog MADISON, Wis. – Wednesday was old school “Back to the Future Day” in the state Assembly – the Huey Lewis and the News “Back in Time” kind. As their fellow Democrats in the Senate did in winter 2011, the minority party fled another vote on a controversial piece of legislation. Back then it was a temper-tantrum over Act 10, Gov. Scott Walker’s public employee collective bargaining reform bill that sent the Fleeing 14 over the border into Illinois in a failed attempt to stave...

As a veteran of the global smart phone wars, Apple is used to courtroom battles with fierce competitors such as Samsung and Nokia. This week, however, a federal jury returned a verdict against Apple in a lawsuit brought by a different kind of adversary: a public university. The University of Wisconsin-Madison's licensing arm, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, convinced a jury that Apple had infringed its patent for improving chip efficiency when the company incorporated the technology into some of its phones and tablets. Research institutions and universities have not traditionally been major players in patent litigation, and even now...

Dioceses across the US have been bombarded with questions about the annulment news from the Rome. The Diocese of Madison, Wis. has already released a timely document (Frequently Asked Questions Re: Mitis Iudex Dominus Iesus) that should prove helpful to Catholics seeking an annulment and Church leaders concerned about setting realistic expectations... Who qualifies for the shorter process? Answer: The shorter process is designed only for those rare cases when it can be employed without injustice. Three strict qualifications have to be met. Both spouses have to petition for it together, or if not, then the other party must at...

Sara Goldrick-Rab, a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, caused a firestorm last month when she publicly compared her governor, Republican Scott Walker, to Adolf Hitler in a tweet. She poured fuel on the flames by tweeting at incoming freshmen who were Walker supporters, encouraging them not to attend the school because of Walker’s education funding policies. Then, she apologized. Now she’s promoting a class she’s teaching this fall on “scholar activism.” The graduate seminar will “explore the biographies and narratives of a diverse array of scholar activists, examine the sociopolitical and economic forces shaping their work, and consider...

One of the leading lights of Marxism on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison brings home a sweet salary of $170,000 per year. The well-heeled sociology professor is Erik Olin Wright .. The tenured, capitalism-hating professor’s annual salary of $170,000 is $117,587 greater than the household income of a typical Wisconsin family and is in the top 2 percent of all Americans. Whil an average middle-class family in Wisconsin survives on $4,368 per month, the Marxist professor enjoys a cushy monthly income of $14,166. He will teach exactly two courses in the fall semester for this princely sum. ......

Perhaps it's wrong to gloat, but I'm going to anyway because the very existence of this site has always bugged the $#*t out of me, standing as a glaring, in-your-face example of how our society is in complete and utter moral free-fall. And now that there's been a second, even more massive dump of data from the shadowy, elusive 'Impact Team' -one that includes the CEO's own emails, even source code for all his websites/mobile apps, etc- this is a hack even a righteous man can love... Credit card info, email/billing addresses, and other data released by the hackers has...

Perhaps you missed this small and unimpressive candidate for president, for his physical presence was as weak as the voice that delivered his message. At barely five feet, two inches tall, he stood up and criticized our government’s expensive actions, focusing on the problems before us instead of engaging in the sound bite war waged by the other candidates. Some in the audience craned their necks to hear his timid presentation, but most quickly dismissed him as being horribly incompetent in today’s media society. However, his words hit home with some people as he spoke about how Congress was wreckfully...

http://www.wired.com/2015/08/happened-hackers-posted-stolen-ashley-madison-data/ Wired link, can't post excerpt.

If there is one thing consistent about the tides of the culture wars, it is that whenever one side is emboldened, it inevitably leads to overreach. The secular Left is proving this point with gusto in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to nationalize gay marriage, calling for the removal of tax exemptions for churches and religious non-profits who continue to hold the tired old definition of marriage that existed all the way up until yesterday. This step, which would crush the budgets of many churches and non-profits, reveals an amusing hypocrisy of the modern Left’s turn against civil...

For a website like AshleyMadison.com that prides itself on secrecy and anonymity, a breach like this can be catastrophic. The site’s subscribers pay to have access to other married people looking to have affairs. They all, presumably, felt that their private information was safe. “The quick answer is: not that safe,” says Dr. Michael Sulmeyer, the director of the Cyber Security Initiative at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Belfer Center.He says Ashley Madison’s clients know now the truth of the web: everything is hackable.“Largely, you should not have an expectation of ultimate security and privacy,” Sulmeyer explains. “And...

Police have evacuated the Wisconsin Capitol building in the wake of a bomb threat. Officers began evacuating the building shortly before 4 p.m. Wednesday as legislators were in the midst of debating the state budget in the Assembly chambers. …