Free Republic

On July 4, 1960, the Eugene (Ore.) Register-Guard rang in Independence Day with a dire Associated Press report by one Norma Gauhn headlined “American Dialects Disappearing.” The problem, according to “speech experts,” was the homogenizing effect of “mass communications, compulsory education, [and] the mobility of restless Americans.” These conformist pressures have only intensified in the half-century since the AP warned “that within four generations virtually all regional U.S. speech differences will be gone.” And so as we enter the predicted twilight of regional American English, it’s no surprise that publications as venerable as the Economist now confirm what our collective...

CHILD CARE FRAUD This is real. There are 10 open investigations and a number of closed cases, including convictions. The state has closed 13 centers since it formed a fraud investigation unit in 2014, officials have said. Patterns are similar: Someone opens up a child care center and accepts children of poor parents who qualify for state taxpayer day care subsidies. The center bills the state and gets the money. But here’s the catch: The day care center doesn’t really provide day care. Parents sign the kids in and sign them out, providing the center with needed paperwork to bill...

For five months, Fox 9 has been investigating what appears to be rampant fraud in a massive state program. This fraud is suspected of costing Minnesota taxpayers as much as $100 million a year. The Fox 9 Investigators reporting is based on public records and nearly a dozen government sources who have direct knowledge of what is happening.

Hockey is a sport played mostly by white people, and that’s just the way too many hockey fans want to keep it. As more African Americans move into professional hockey, they provide a barometer of just how rooted in racism the sport still is. In Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., Ontario Hockey League’s boss was so concerned about threats against a black player during a playoff series that he requested a police escort to help get Givani Smith of the Kitchener Rangers to a playoff game, the New York Times reports. Smith, a draftee of the Detroit Red Wings, had scored...

A motion filed by lawyers representing the woman accused of starting fires on the campus of St. Catherine University seeking to suppress evidence obtained as a result of search warrants has been denied by a federal court judge. In early February, the U.S. Attorney's Office announced a three-count indictment of Tnuza Jamal Hassan, charging her with attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, making a false statement to the FBI and arson. The charges came in connection to fires that were set at St. Kate's on Jan. 17, including inside a building that housed a day...

<p>A Minneapolis man is apologizing for black piñata figures that he hung by cords from the porch roof of his home.</p> <p>Victor Chavarria says the figures were piñatas created for a multiracial wedding. Chavarria told Minnesota Public Radio News he left the freshly created piñatas to hang from his home for their paint to dry, not realizing they could be viewed as racial violence.</p>

A video posted online Monday shows a Democratic Party leader wearing a T-shirt calling for an end to U.S. borders while participating in a local May Day parade in Minnesota last Friday. Democratic National Committee deputy chair Keith Ellison, D-Minn., wore a black shirt that read, "Yo no creo en fronteras." In English, that sentence translates to, "I don't believe in borders." Ellison, a progressive Democrat, said in March he supports a new type of welfare proposal that would have the government pay people a basic salary if technological advancements put them out of work. "I personally do think that...

A former Minneapolis police officer who shot and killed an Australian woman last summer after she called 911 to report a possible assault is scheduled to appear in court. Mohamed Noor is charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the July 15 killing of Justine Ruszczyk Damond. An omnibus hearing will be held Tuesday in Hennepin County .... Prosecutors say Noor was in a squad car's passenger seat when he shot Damond through the open driver's side window after she approached the vehicle. Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman has said there is no evidence that Noor encountered a threat...

The college student, then just 18, left little doubt of her intentions when federal agents in Minnesota approached her last fall following a thwarted attempt to go to Afghanistan. Tnuza Hassan offered a surprisingly forthcoming account of her itinerary and the reasons behind it in the September encounter: The St. Catherine University student said she wanted to join al-Qaida and, when pressed by an FBI agent, conceded that she would be willing to kill if ordered. Agents later found an image of the twin towers in flames on a cellphone she ditched before flying overseas. But four months passed before...

High-tax states face a choice: reduce taxes or lose taxpayers. Stephen Moore and Art Laffer forecast in the Wall Street Journal the loss of 800,000 California and New York residents over the next three years. The exodus, the economics experts say, comes because of the tax bill, which limits the state and local tax (SALT) deduction to $10,000, passed in December. Previously, the feds forced no monetary limit on filers. California taxes individuals earning $1 million or more at a rate of 13.3 percent. New York levies an 8.8 percent rate upon individuals making a similar amount of money annually....

In his first major public speech since resigning from the U.S. Senate, Al Franken returned to the spotlight to deliver a blistering rebuke of tech companies, specifically Facebook, over abuse of users privacy data while speaking at a cybersecurity conference in Lisbon, Portugal.

Richard Painter, a longtime Republican who was chief ethics lawyer for George W. Bush’s White House, intends to run for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota this year as a Democrat, according to a filing he made recently with federal elections officials. Painter, a persistent and frequent critic of President Donald Trump on national cable TV news appearances and on Twitter, is expected to announce his candidacy at a Monday news conference. He’s running for Democrat Al Franken’s former seat. Franken resigned Jan. 2 in the wake of numerous sexual harassment allegations.

How Democrats Suppressed the #MeToo Movement in the Party Threats, blacklisting and sex scandals in the feminist party. April 27, 2018 Daniel Greenfield aniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism. A funny thing happened to the #MeToo movement in the Democrat Party. While #MeToo burned a fiery trail through the media, leaving behind the wrecked careers of top talent, after suffering some initial losses, the Democrats built a firewall by ruthlessly targeting activists. Their approach was eerily similar to that of Harvey Weinstein....

The most popular place to put a city park is, increasingly, on a highway. Cities looking to boost their downtowns, or to improve downtrodden neighborhoods, are creating “highway cap parks” on decks constructed over freeways that cut through the urban center. Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Denver and Dallas have deck parks underway. Atlanta, Houston, Minneapolis and Santa Monica, California, are among the cities considering similar projects. In crowded cities, highway deck parks are a way to create new acreage and provide green space that can spur downtown development. Capping a highway to create a park also can reconnect urban neighborhoods sliced apart...

Only six states do not have some sort of right to keep and bear arms amendment or clause in their state Constitution. They are California, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, and  New York. California, Maryland, New Jersey and New York show the lack of a state constitutional protection with their highly restrictive firearms laws.Two outliers on that list are Iowa and Minnesota. State constitutional protections of the right to bear arms provide protection when the federal Constitution fails to do so. The U.S. Supreme Court has been reluctant to protect Second Amendment rights for a decade. Getting to the U.S....

A former Minneapolis FBI agent caught leaking classified documents to The Intercept pleaded guilty in federal court in St. Paul Tuesday afternoon.

Incredible Anti-Gun Bill Introduced in MN HF 3022 could make California seem "gun-friendly." Posted March 1, 2018 in Legal Issues by Russ Chastain with No Comments If you live in Minnesota, be afraid. Be very afraid. Then get busy.A nasty piece of gun control legislation called HF 3022 has been introduced, and it is hell on gun rights. Not only does it restrict just about everything related to firearms, it also makes gun owners’ information public, as in how many guns you own and of what type, and your home address.A Facebook post by AccuTac Arms, which calls itself “the largest...

A nationwide manhunt is underway for a grandmother known as "Losing Streak Lois" to authorities, who believe she killed her husband last month in Minnesota, then killed a woman in Florida, likely in a bid to steal her identity. Lois Riess, 56, of Blooming Prairie, Minnesota, was last seen Sunday, about 50 miles from Corpus Christi, Texas, heading south on Highway 77, Deputy US Marshal John Kinsey told CNN. She is known to have a gambling addiction and often frequents casinos, which accounts for her nickname among local police, according to the US Marshals Service. Riess allegedly killed her husband...

<p>Chief Perry Beise says the victims aged 8, 9 and 13 suffered “superficial wounds” requiring stitches in the attack before classes started Monday at Pleasantview Elementary in Sauk Rapids. No one else was hurt.</p> <p>School Superintendent Bruce Watkins says the boy lashed out at the other students until an adult intervened.</p>

Windmills use an enormous amount of copper. For example, a single wind turbine can contain 335 tons of steel, 4.7 tons of copper, 3 tons of aluminum and 700-plus pounds of rare earth minerals. ... In fact, wind and solar energy use more copper than conventional forms of energy, such as coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants. Conventional power plants require about one ton of copper to produced one megawatt of electricity, whereas wind and solar can require between three to five tons per megawatt. ... Make no mistake, switching from reliable sources of electricity like coal, natural gas,...