Free Republic

At least 1.8 million registered voters won’t be showing up to the polls this fall - because they’re dead. The shocking finding emerged in a report from the Pew Center on the States that concluded a whopping 24 million - or one in eight - of the nation’s active voter registrations have serious errors. In addition to the 1.8 million dead on America’s rolls of registered voters, the study, released Tuesday, also found that 2.75 million in the U.S. are registered as active voters in more than one state.

<p>SYRACUSE, N.Y. - Authorities say a group of nine people swarmed a neighborhood grocery store in Syracuse and stole nearly $40,000 by distracting the clerk and blocking her view.</p> <p>Syracuse police tell local media that they believe the thieves are a roving band of scam artists who target small stores with few employees. Authorities say the group made off with $38,000 from a Vietnamese grocery store on Saturday night. The store's surveillance video shows several men and women milling about while others lure the lone employee away from the cash register and block her in an aisle.</p>

Police say Markishia and Tina Ducket, a mother-daughter tandem, attacked passengers on a TriMet bus. They say the attack happened at southeast 122nd and Division this afternoon. The pair is being accused of lashing out at the bus driver after being caught trying to use invalid transfers. Witnesses say a man riding the bus asked the women to leave and the mother punched him in the face. Shortly after, a woman with a baby also asked them to get off the bus and Tina punched her in the face. Both the mother and the daughter now face a number of...

Two women will be arraigned Friday on charges stemming from the beating of a teenage girl on a MAX train. YouTube video from the Dec. 26 attack surfaced this week, sparking outrage in the Portland area. It showed a 14-year-old girl being attacked by three other passengers on a MAX Green Line train in southeast Portland. The cell phone video also showed others who appeared to be celebrating the attack. It didn't appear that any MAX passengers tried to intervene or stop the attack. On Thursday, police arrested 38-year-old Selena Harris, her 18-year-old daughter Rakeshia Burns, and Burns' 16- and...

Growing numbers of New Yorkers seeking food stamps have created an unwelcome spillover effect at some of New York City's job centers: overcrowding that in some cases has grown so severe, benefits were jeopardized. The crush of people grew so large at one Brooklyn center in November that the Fire Department intervened and prevented anyone from entering the building.

F ootwear brought frenzy to malls in Palm Beach County and across the nation today as police quelled scuffles, unrest and even near-riots among shoppers out to buy the crown jewel of sneakers: the Nike Air Jordan Retro XI. Officers used pepper spray at the Finish Line store at the Boynton Beach Mall, where some shoppers had tired of waiting in line and began pushing their way into the store. Two people were arrested and a police sergeant taken to Bethesda Memorial Hospital after sustaining injuries to his head and elbows. "It's a shoe," said Calvin Cannon, a manager at...

Dozens of police officers had to break up fights and restore order at a local mall while shoppers were waiting for an overnight sale of a popular tennis shoe. The disturbance started inside Carolina Place Mall just after 5am. Witnesses said as mall officials opened the mall doors, crowds of people pushed their way in. "They almost took the door off the hinges," one shopper who didn't want to be identified said, "there were women with babies in their hands and they on their backs." Shoppers were in line waiting for the re-release of the Air Jordan XI Concord tennis...

A well-informed, interested public is often hailed as the 'ideal' of democracy. But a new Princeton study suggests that the opposite could be the case - and that people who have no interest at all could be vital to the working of a democratic society. The uninformed are essential to democracy because their apathy helps to dilute the effect of powerful minority interests - for instance, highly educated elites - who would otherwise dominate public life.

PHILADELPHIA - A North Philadelphia shop owner said he had no words to describe his emotions upon returning from India, where he had attended his mother’s funeral, to discover his store had been looted and vandalized. Bhupinder Cheema had operated a small convenience store near Germantown Avenue and West Cumberland Street, and had invested thousands of dollars into the business. Over the course of trip to Indian, which lasted several weeks, word spread through the neighborhood that the store had been left unattended.

The Obama amnesty plan officially begins this week, according to a mainstream newspaper that obtained internal Homeland Security documents outlining “sweeping changes” in immigration enforcement that will halt the deportation of illegal aliens with no criminal records. Much has been reported about the administration’s intention to implement a stealth amnesty plan if congress doesn’t act to spare the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal aliens, but this is the first confirmation that it’s come to fruition. Beginning this week the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will review all deportation cases and start a nationwide “training program” to assure that enforcement agents...

As cities across the nation clean up after the Occupy Wall Street peeps they are coming across all sorts of rubbish and filth. Needles, human feces, garbage, and now disease have all been found at the park where the occupies have been encamped. Now tomorrow the are threatening violence? I am more concerned with them associating with the public. Time to bring back leper colonies.

New poll numbers show that President Obama has suffered massive erosion in enthusiasm among voters under 30, dropping from 81 percent in November 2008 to 48 percent this month. Young voters, who were crucial to Obama’s election and are even more crucial to his re-election, have unemployment rates sharply higher than the national average. Obama rode into the White House in 2008 on a wave of hopeful young voters under 30. Three years later, though, that hope has waned and Obama must figure out how to again galvanize the youth vote if he expects to win re-election in 2012. The...

While I can't imagine why, some New York City residents are just sick and tired of the Wall Street Occupiers -- and would prefer they pack up their Zuccotti Park tent city and head on home, wherever home might be. NBC New York reports: Downtown residents and business owners are organizing a protest of the protest after two months of Lower Manhattan being occupied by the Wall Street demonstration.Angry over all-day drumming, people urinating and defecating on the streets and verbal attacks from protesters, organizers say they will rally at City Hall Monday to send officials a message. …Businesses have...

A new book by Hoover Institution fellow Peter Schweizer details the startling extent of the cronyism that has pervaded President Obama’s “green jobs” push. According to Schweizer, 4 out of every 5 renewable energy companies backed by the Energy Department was “run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers.” Those companies’ “political largesse is probably the best investment they ever made in alternative energy,” Schweizer explains. “It brought them returns many times over.” Such is the inevitable consequence of large government interventions in private markets. Leaving aside the losses associated with transfers of funds from self-sustaining industries to ones...

How very curious:   A sign that the Occupy Wall Street movement isn’t the best long-term vehicle for Democrats to connect themselves with: A new Quinnipiac poll, showing a plurality of voters viewing the group unfavorably.  The poll, released today, show 30 percent of voters surveyed view the movement favorably, 39 percent unfavorably, with an additional 30 percent not hearing enough to have an opinion.  It’s one of the first national polls to suggest voters are growing skeptical of Occupy Wall Street- and it comes as police have clashed with protesters in several cities.  Previous national polls have shown a plurality of...

(VIDEO AT LINK) OAKLAND, Calif. - A protest that shut down the Port of Oakland to show the broadening reach of the Occupy Wall Street movement ended in violence when police in riot gear arrested dozens of protesters overnight who broke into a vacant building, shattered downtown windows, sprayed graffiti and set blazes along the way. --snip-- Protesters also threw concrete chunks, metal pipes, lit roman candles and molotov cocktails, police said....

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Police said a woman accused of trespassing after panhandling complaints told police that she wasn't panhandling, she was trick-or-treating. According to arrest records, officers were dispatched to a Dairy Mart in the 1300 block of Dixie Highway on Monday on reports of a woman panhandling. Police said that 44-year-old Michelle McGill had been warned preciously that day to stay away from the business, which has signed a trespassing waiver against her. When officers approached McGill, she became irate and began screaming at the officers and ignoring their commands to stop, police said. When asked why she had...

Keller’s Store is, I think, a gun store, or gun dealership. The owner, Crockett Keller, is also a realtor. Crockett Keller has an ad running in his local area of Mason, Texas. Keller’s is offering an all-day beginner’s workshop to prepare you for your “concealed carry” license.

Welcome to Occupy Phoenix, the latest violent embarrassment to American society. This group of occupiers is asking, "When should you shoot a cop?" Pamphlets asking this question and laying out justifications for doing so were left at the Occupy Wall Street location in Phoenix, Arizona and found by a Maricopa County Sheriff Deputy. That's right folks, according to the OWS crowd, changing society "almost always requires" killing law enforcement officers. Law enforcement officers in the Grand Canyon state have been placed on high alert and the Arizona Counter-Terrorism Information Center has published a safety memo in response to the threats...

Three men are wanted for threatening to kill a 24-year-old Occupy Wall Street protester because she was pressing charges over an assault at the group's Zuccotti Park encampment. The young protester was roughed up at the Downtown sit-in by a man named Garfield Leslie, 19, police said Tuesday. Leslie offered to sell the woman drugs, and when she declined that offer and his romantic advances, he punched her in the face and dished out more blows to two friends who had come to her defense, police said. The woman filed a complaint with police, and Leslie was arrested at Zuccotti...

Good God! So this is what Obama and Pelosi are supporting? Occupied Wall Street zombies chant “You can have sex with animals” at Zuccotti Park. Urban Infidel braved the odor to catch this grotesque display in New York. VIDEO More video and unbelievable photos at Urban Infidel.

While the professional Left trashes Wall Street, they might want to consider how their current President got elected.  The Sunlight Foundation reports that Barack Obama didn’t just win the Wall Street sweepstakes in 2008 over John McCain — he’s done better at getting Wall Street cash than any other President in the last 20 years: Despite his rhetorical attacks on Wall Street, a study by the Sunlight Foundation’s Influence Project shows that President Barack Obama has received more money from Wall Street than any other politician over the past 20 years, including former President George W. Bush.In 2008, Wall Street’s largesse accounted for...

I returned a bit ago from getting photos and video of the Obama fundraiser protest in St. Louis. It was hosted by Tom Carnahan, owner of the Wind Capital Group, an alternative energy group which received around $100 million in stimulus funds. That Carnahan’s brother is Democratic Representative Russ Carnahan surely helped change Wind Capital Group’s fortunes. (Snip) I’ve been to a lot of protests–both conservative and progressive–and only one other time have I witnessed such a level of hostility and outright inappropriate behavior. It’s a shame some individuals allow themselves to get so partisan and emotional that they make...

President Barack Obama's latest economic plan could save or create up to 400,000 education jobs, the White House said on Tuesday as Obama pushed his $447 billion plan to revive the economy. Obama's proposed American Jobs Act would provide $30 billion for state and local efforts to retain, rehire and hire educators, supporting 392,400 jobs, according to projections released by the Education Department and White House Council of Economic Advisers. That money would last one to two years and states would have to sign agreements they would not use the funding for other purposes. "We know that putting hundreds of...

Two men were arrested in St. Cloud after police say they dialed the wrong number and attempted to buy a pound of marijuana from a police officer. According to St. Cloud Police, a uniformed St. Cloud patrol officer received the call at 11:33 p.m. Sunday. After the officer received multiple phone calls from the suspect, a meeting was arranged on the 1100 block of 15th Avenue South. Police say the men fled when they met with uniformed officers, but were quickly apprehended and taken into custody. The two men have been identified by police as 21-year-old Kewon Donte Johnson of...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Protesters who have camped out near Wall Street for two weeks marched on Friday on police headquarters in Manhattan over what they viewed as a heavy-handed police response to a previous demonstration. The Occupy Wall Street movement, whose members have vowed to stay through the winter, are protesting issues including the 2008 bank bailouts, foreclosures and high unemployment. More than 1,000 people marched past City Hall and arrived at a plaza outside police headquarters in the late afternoon. Some held banners criticizing police, while others chanted: "We are the 99 percent" and "The banks got bailed...

DOJ says Mexican cartels operating in over 1,000 U.S. cities By Nicholas Ballasy - The Daily Caller 12:12 PM 09/29/2011 ADVERTISEMENT Mexican-based transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) were “operating in more than a thousand U.S. cities during 2009 and 2010, spanning all nine Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) regions,” according to the U.S. Justice Department’s National Drug Threat Assessment of 2011. According to the report, the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) assesses with “high confidence” that Mexican-based TCOs “control distribution of most of the heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamine available in the United States” and production of these drugs in...

Rep. Waters: Obama ‘got carried away’By Alicia M. Cohn, Daniel Strauss and Mike Lillis 09/26/11 09:19 PM ET Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) on Monday tried to downplay friction between the black community and President Obama but warned the president might have gotten “carried away” in remarks made over the weekend. Waters, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), appeared in a number of media interviews on Monday following Obama’s speech to the CBC Gala on Saturday, where the president told the audience to “stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying.” Waters said that there was room for improvement in the...

NEW YORK (AP) — Two Americans held for more than two years in an Iranian prison on accusations of spying returned to the U.S. on Sunday, ending a diplomatic ordeal that began with what they called a wrong turn into the wrong country. Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer arrived at Kennedy Airport in New York City at about 11 a.m. (1500 GMT). The two were released from prison last week. They arrived Wednesday in Oman under a $1 million bail deal and were embraced by relatives.

Watch this nothing more to say.

Ridiculously false choices and rhetoric ruled the evening when the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers hosted a closed-media conference call with Vice President Joe Biden to inform their members about the latest government school and teachers’ union bailout. In a recording obtained exclusively by PublicSchoolSpending.com, Biden explained the administration is seeking to spend $30 billion to create a “Teacher Layoff Prevention Fund.�  He also said that many schools today are “deciding whether or not to heat the school or keep a teacher.� Like school stimuli-past, Biden said schools would not be able to bank the money,...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Amid a still struggling economy, more Americans fell below the poverty line last year, according to new census data released Tuesday. The nation's poverty rate rose to 15.1% in 2010, its highest level since 1993. About 46.2 million people are considered in need.

Solyndra - The Obama connection I wrote about the solar panel manufacturer Solyndra last week; "Government Investment Disaster in the Works" I highlighted all of the negatives that the company was facing. It was pretty clear to me that that company was facing trouble. But I had no idea that they would file Chapter 11 the very next day. (Sometimes you just get lucky) I also made note of some scuttlebutt that George Kaiser (Oklahoma oil billionaire) was involved with Solyndra. I have been looking for a confirmation of this. Kaiser is an important link in this story. He is...

http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_18851389

Thug. (TPM) — Teamsters union president James Hoffa would say it all again if he could, he told TPM Monday. Hoffa riled up Fox News and the right wing Monday with a Labor Day speech in Detroit in which he called Republican members of Congress “sons of bitches” and said union workers are ready to “go to war” with the tea party next year and “take out” Republicans at the ballot box. Hoffa said he’d say the exact same words all over again. “I would because I believe it,” he said. “They’ve declared war on us. We didn’t declare war...

As the nation gears up for the 2012 presidential election, Republican officials have launched an unprecedented, centrally coordinated campaign to suppress the elements of the Democratic vote that elected Barack Obama in 2008. Just as Dixiecrats once used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting, a new crop of GOP governors and state legislators has passed a series of seemingly disconnected measures that could prevent millions of students, minorities, immigrants, ex-convicts and the elderly from casting ballots. "What has happened this year is the most significant setback to voting rights in this country in a century,"...

The most dangerous Muslims in America may be black converts to Islam, according to a shocking new poll by the Pew Research Center. African-American Muslims tend to hold the most violent views among U.S. Muslims surveyed by Pew in a poll released this week. Fully 28 percent of U.S.-born black Muslim respondents said "suicide bombings and other violence against civilians" can be justified sometimes or at least in rare cases. That compares with 9 percent of foreign-born Muslims who hold the same view. Pew also found that 11 percent of black Muslims living in the U.S. have a favorable opinion...

It’s an Obama World. Not only do illegal aliens not have to worry about being caught and deported – they even get billions in tax credits. The Washington Post reported: The Internal Revenue Service allowed undocumented workers to collect $4.2 billion in refundable tax credits last year, a new audit says, almost quadruple the sum five years ago. Although undocumented workers are not eligible for federal benefits, the report released Thursday by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration concludes that federal law is ambiguous on whether these workers qualify for a tax break based on earned income called the...

Disturbing new YouTube videos have surfaced allegedly showing notorious New Black Panther Party member King Samir Shabazz teaching “black survival” training to a small audience — with children sitting in the front row. In each of the three videos, uploaded June 6, 2011, the man identified as Shabazz graphically demonstrates self-defense tactics using a variety of weapons, including a handgun, a machete and a baseball bat: Shabazz first takes the audience through the basics of holding a weapon. Wearing black militant clothing and a red bandana, he crouches down and aims his gun.

Complete title: JW Uncovers Documents from DHS Detailing Obama Plan to Impose DREAM Act by Suspending Illegal Alien DeportationsRecords Show Obama Administration Began to Implement Provisions of the DREAM Act Rejected by Congress; DHS Official: “And we wonder why ppl [people] FOIA us.” Washington, DC -- September 1, 2011 Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has obtained documents from the Obama Department of Homeland Security (DHS) detailing behind-the-scenes efforts by the Obama administration to bypass Congress and grant amnesty at least one million illegal aliens by suspending immigration deportation proceedings...

Black voters remain defiantly loyal to Obama, despite suffering from his mishandling of the economy and Maxine Waters' complaints about his focus on wooing white independent voters for his reelection. But of course, Democrats have long taken blacks for granted. This loyalty in the face of bad treatment is reminiscent of battered wife syndrome (BWS).

Two American hikers who were detained in Iran have been sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of "illegal entry" and "espionage," the state TV website says.

Palm Bay, Florida -- A 19-year-old Palm Bay woman faces charges after police said she beat a man with a wooden nut cracker, then slapped and bit him following an argument over messages left on her cell phone. Brianna Del Rio was charged with battery after police were called to a residence in the 1800 block of Plantation Circle to investigate a disturbance. Police officers arrived to find a man identified as Del Rio's boyfriend with cuts on his face and a bite mark on his side. Del Rio will have an Aug. 24 hearing on the charge. Police said...

We keep hearing from the usual suspects on the Left that voter fraud is virtually non-existent, a figment of the collective imagination of racist vote-suppressing Republicans. And yet more evidence of voter fraud keeps surfacing. In Wake County, North Carolina, Shelia Ramona Hodges, Kierra Fontae Leach, Brandon Earl McLean, and Lela Devonetta Murray have been charged with voting twice, a felony. According to TV station WRAL McLean and his fiancee Leach admit to participating in early voting in the 2008 election. Unsure about the process on Election Day, they said they went to the polls to make sure their vote...

The healthy growth of mankind depends on continuously decreasing the cost of water and energy everywhere.Nice thought. Why mention it?Its a mission statement.For who?Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett — and through them America’s billionaires. Why Bill Gates? Why Warren Buffett?As to Bill Gates, his passion; According to a recent interview Understanding science and pushing the boundaries of science is what makes me immensely satisfied. What I’m doing now involves understanding maths, risk-taking. The first half of my life was good preparation for the second half.’ Now in the context of the interview he was...

Wake County Voters Arrested For Voting Twice In 2008Three Raleigh residents apparently thought casting one ballot in 2008 wasn't enough. Posted: 9:16 PM Aug 11, 2011 **SNIP** Authorities said Kierra Fontae Leache, Shelia Romona Hodges and Brandon Earl McLean each cast early ballots in the 2008 presidential election, then voted again on Election Day. They are charged with voter fraud and are free on $10,000 bond apiece. Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby said six more arrests are pending. Republicans leapt on news of the arrests Thursday to bolster support for a GOP-backed bill to require voters to show photo...

Verizon Communications Inc. reported a dozen cases of sabotaged cable lines and warned of delays in repairs and customer service on the second day of a strike involving 45,000 employees. The telecommunications company said there have been 12 acts of sabotage to telephone lines, Internet and television services in Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey and New York since the strike began. Fiber-optic lines were intentionally cut in Tewksbury and several other cities on the East Coast, the company said. Stolen equipment in Cedar Grove, N.J. affected service to a local police department and a heat system was tampered with at a...

WEST ALLIS - Witnesses tell Newsradio 620 WTMJ and TODAY'S TMJ4 of a mob of young people attacking innocent fair-goers at the end of the opening night of State Fair, with some callers claiming a racially-charged scene. Milwaukee Police confirmed there were assaults outside the fair. Witnesses' accounts claim everything from dozens to hundreds of young black people beating white people as they left State Fair Thursday night. "It looked like they were just going after white guys, white people," said Norb Roffers of Wind Lake in an interview with Newsradio 620 WTMJ. He left the State Fair Entrance near...

The unemployment situation across America is bad, no doubt. But for African-Americans in some cities, this is not the great recession. It’s the Great Depression. Take Charlotte, N.C., for example. It is a jewel of the “new South.” The largest financial center outside of New York City, it's the showcase for next year’s Democratic National Convention. It was a land of hope and opportunity for many blacks with a four-year college degree or higher. According to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, in Charlotte, N.C., the unemployment rate for African-Americans is 19.2 percent. If you add in people who...

To put it lightly, the economy is a disaster, but for African-Americans, is it the Great Recession or the Great Depression? It could very well be the latter, according to newly-released data revealing widespread unemployment in the black community. (Fox News) - Take Charlotte, N.C., for example. It is a jewel of the “new South.” The largest financial center outside of New York City, it's the showcase for next year’s Democratic National Convention. It was a land of hope and opportunity for many blacks with a four-year college degree or higher. According to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute,...