Free Republic

Texas is spending record amounts on transportation, but lawmakers worried it is not enough are considering extending a controversial program that’s helped spread tollways through some of the state’s largest areas. A bill approved this week by a House committee would give the Texas Department of Transportation a chance to add six additional projects, including the widening of Interstate 45 north of I-10 and a long-planned Hempstead Tollway, meant to relieve traffic on U.S. 290 with the potential for a commuter rail corridor. The bill, by state Rep. Larry Phillips, R-Sherman, would also allow TxDOT or regional officials the chance...

Venezuela is no stranger to protests, but the recent uprisings have rocked the country and stirred questions about the nation’s future.This past week, the “mother of all protests” has seen upward of 2 million Venezuelans take to the streets demanding an end to the notoriously corrupt Maduro regime.Beginning on what would be the 207th anniversary of the country’s independence from Spain, frustrated Venezuelans have taken to the streets demanding change. So far, three Venezuelans have been killed in the marches, hundreds have been injured, and 500 have been arrested.In the span of just over 20 years, President Nicolás Maduro, his...

Rebuilding and widening the mammoth Central Tri-State Tollway (I-294) is complicated enough given it's the system's most-used road, with up to 185,000 cars and trucks clogging it daily.Throw in a tangle of towns where officials either hate or love the project, plus churn on the tollway board, and the planned redo gets even gnarlier. The Illinois tollway intends to fix the road between 95th Street in the South Suburbs and Balmoral Avenue in Rosemont. There's no final design or budget yet, but a decision is expected soon.Improvements likely could include extra lanes and new interchanges -- exciting news for anyone...

MPs Jailed, Elected Mayors Removed Ahead of Referendum (Istanbul) – The Turkish government has jailed 13 members of the pro-Kurdish democratic opposition in parliament on terrorism charges and taken direct control of 82 municipalities in the Kurdish southeast region, suspending and incarcerating elected mayors, Human Rights Watch said today. The crackdown on democratically elected officials not only violates their rights to political association and participation, and freedom of expression, but also interferes with the rights of constituents who voted for them and whom they serve in office. The move against the national pro-Kurdish party, Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), and its...

A car bomb exploded in the center of Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, Tuesday night, targeting the car of Givi Targamadze, Russian president Vladimir Putin’s critic.

When Trump was supposedly low in the polls, the establishment was laying low like their ill candidate, Hillary Clinton. Why upset the applecart? Trump has surged. Many of us believed it was much closer before than was being reported, but we also believe Trump has surged. Those who considered him leading would now see him beyond the margin of error out front. Is there proof of this beyond the demographically challenged polls? Yes! There is. The rope-a-dope strategy of the establishment has been set aside and they have renewed their attack with a vengeance. From every corner we're seeing again...

In early 2003, Glenn Carle, an interrogator with the CIA, arrived at a secret detention facility overseas to question a recently captured Al-Qaeda suspect.... The man's dilapidated state of mind was the result of a systematic program of torture inflicted on terrorism suspects by the CIA after 9/11. Nudity, extreme temperatures, sleep and sensory deprivation, dietary manipulation, waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques" were meant to break down detainees' resistance to interrogation. The stress and disorientation induced by these methods, it was believed, would force them to cooperate and release whatever precious information they were hiding. But according to Carle,...

One of Russian leader Vladimir Putin's most high-profile allies has accused the opposition of trying to exploit the economic crisis to destabilize the country, using Stalin-era rhetoric to suggest unnamed individuals be put on trial for sabotage. Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed leader of Chechnya, called the liberal opposition, which has only one lawmaker in the 450-seat parliament, enemies of the people, a phrase recalling language used during the reign of terror unleashed by Soviet leader Josef Stalin in the 1930s. ...

The opposition in Venezuela has won a majority of seats in the National Assembly, overturning nearly two decades of dominance by the Socialists of President Nicolas Maduro. Five hours after polling ended, the National Electoral Council announced the opposition had won 99 seats. The Socialists have gained 46 seats, with another 22 yet to be declared. President Maduro has admitted defeat, saying his party recognized 'these adverse results'. The opposition alliance, made up of centre and conservative parties, is confident of ultimately taking 112 seats after 17 years of socialist rule. According to senior figures in the movement, that would...

Leaders of Venezuela's opposition are claiming victory ahead of official results in Sunday's crucial legislative elections that could alter the country's balance of power after 17 years of socialist rule. Hours after polls closed, several opposition leaders took to the Internet to announce that they had won a majority of seats in the National Assembly for the first time since 1998. But with no official results released and the ruling socialist party not commenting, their claims could not be confirmed. "The results are as we expected. Venezuela won," former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles said on Twitter. "With great humility, serenity...

BAGHDAD: Top Iraqi officials attended a funeral Wednesday for politician Ahmed Chalabi, a controversial champion of the U.S.-led invasion of his country. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, President Fuad Masum, parliament speaker Salim al-Juburi and other officials were among the large crowd of mourners at the ceremony held in Baghdad's heavily-fortified Green Zone, where the government is headquartered. Chalabi, the head of parliament's finance committee, died of a heart attack aged 71 the day before. Living in exile as head of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), which opposed Saddam Hussein, Chalabi became a White House favorite for information he provided which...

TORONTO - The Ontario government has been working on plans for high occupancy toll lanes on three Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area highways since 2013, but has kept most of the details secret. When the NDP filed a Freedom of Information request in early 2014 for detailed information on the work, which includes traffic models, most of the documents were to be blacked out or not released at all, according to a report obtained by the Toronto Sun. Ministry of Transportation staff prepared the note to give senior bureaucrats and the minister’s office a heads-up about the NDP’s “contentious” request....

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is set to officially declare his candidacy for president next Monday and Wisconsinites are ready with a warning to the rest of the nation about the Republican's "dangerous agenda." The rally against Walker will be held at 4 p.m. on July 13 at the Waukesha County Expo Center, 1000 Northwest Road, Waukesha. People For the American Way, Voces de la Frontera, Americans United for Change, We Are Wisconsin, League of Conservation Voters and a coalition of more than 20 local and national grassroots activist groups are involved in planning the event. Their goal is sharing personal...

Last week I joined a bipartisan group of political figures and foreign policy experts in taking two steps to encourage the improvement of US policy toward Iran. The group of nearly forty prominent Americans including former senior US civilian and military officials and governors issued a policy statement urging stronger confrontation of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, regional hostilities, and human rights abuses. That statement also encouraged the US government to reverse its traditional, unspoken policy of remaining at arms’ length from the resistance against the Iranian theocracy. My view and that of the co-signers of the statement is that the...

As noted here, "Immaculate Heart of Mary School of Still River, MA has withdrawn its marching band and float of Saint Patrick from this year’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade after learning that a small homosexual activist group will be allowed to march while publicly identifying its homosexuality. The school is compelled by the teachings of the Catholic Church to pull out. According to the Principal, Brother Thomas Dalton, 'Catholics are forbidden to sponsor or even participate in an event which openly promotes unnatural and immoral behavior. The Church will never accept nor condone same sex marriage and the homosexual life...

MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Milwaukee County officials say they don't plan another mass release of emails collected in the John Doe investigation into Gov. Scott Walker's aides and associates when he was county executive. County attorney Paul Bargren says in a letter Wednesday to The Associated Press that more than 29 gigabytes of documents were released as ordered by a judge between August and December. The AP and other news organizations reviewed hundreds of thousands of documents during that time.....

The leader of a group hoping to improve liberals' fortunes at the state level revealed on Friday plans to start tracking conservative state legislators based on the assumption that "someone’s going to say something about black people" or women. The comments came at the first ever conference of the State Innovation Exchange (SiX), the Left’s attempt to counter conservative policy successes that have followed Republican victories at the state level. “We’re working with David Brock and Media Matters and American Bridge who have trackers that we can send out to monitor the debate on some bills that you all might...

Angry and frustrated voters are planning to use the midterm elections in one month to tell President Obama they oppose his agenda, the highest “no vote” percentage in the last 16 years measured by Gallup. The polling outfit found that 32 percent of voters want to send a message of opposition with their vote, compared to just 20 percent who are sending a signal of support. That is 13 points higher than in 1998 when former President Clinton was headed to impeachment for lying about his sex affair with a former White House intern and even a smidge higher -

"I would not be interested in becoming Russia's president if my country was developing normally..."  It did come as a surprise last December, when Vladimir Putin suddenly signed an early release for Mikhail Khodorvkovsky, who was the richest man in Russia ($15B) when he was jailed for 'tax evasion' (read: challenged Putin) in 2003... Hard to tell for sure what the thought process was there -perhaps feeling strong and aiming to soften his image a bit- but Putin at the time explained 'Ten years in prison is a serious punishment' and signed the form that freed Khodorkovsky from a decade of harsh detention....

The ill-fated talks between befuddled opposition leaders and the Chavista regime have collapsed and the repression of protesters has increased."Dialogue" with ChavistasThe Chavista regime has not engaged in meaningful dialogue with the opposition and will continue to evade it. The regime has also increased its attacks on those who demonstrate against its repression. According to The Devil's Excrement, Venezuela’s Dictatorship No Longer Cares About Appearances. For two and a half months, the Venezuelan Government had been extremely careful with the students and their protests. While it was aggressive and repressive at attacking those protesting in the streets, it had been respectful of the student...