Free Republic

Los Angeles’ new mayor has vowed to help stanch the flow of film and TV production jobs out of Hollywood, starting with the appointment of a film czar at City Hall. But to make a real difference, Eric Garcetti needs to convince skeptical state pols to combat the lure of rich tax incentives from outside California. Two days after this year’s Oscars, Hollywood’s councilman Eric Garcetti, then running for mayor of Los Angeles, staged a media event at Sunset Gower Studios. Only a smattering of reporters and photographers showed up, perhaps because the gathering was to address “runaway production,” a...

Everyone knows by now, a mastery of social media is a necessity if you want to maintain a successful political campaign or career. Seemingly, social etiquette is absent in some social media as recent months have shown how a miss use of it can draw negative attention to yourself. Former U.S. Congressman, Anthony Wiener, is the most notorious example of how it can ruin a career. In 2011 he resigned his position after sexually suggestive tweets, sent to a 21 year-old woman, became viral and the targets of media fodder. And again, earlier this summer, while campaigning for mayor of...

This week, the State Department announced that, in "an important symbol of our enduring friendship with Benin," construction has begun on a new $178 million embassy complex in the small West African nation, a neighbor of Togo and Nigeria. As is often the case in the construction of new U.S. diplomatic facilities, the plans include a number of "sustainable" features including solar panels, rainwater harvesting, wastewater reuse, and LED lighting. The complex will cover 8.8 acres, and will include: a chancery/office building, a support annex, a residence for the U.S. Marine detachment, a warehouse, a utility building, a recreational facility,...

After the news that the four State Department employees who had been superficially and symbolically ‘held accountable’ following last September’s terrorist attack in Benghazi are now back at work at the State Department, House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa issued the appropriately scathing statement: “Obama administration officials repeatedly promised the families of victims and the American people that officials responsible for security failures would be held accountable. Instead of accountability, the State Department offered a charade that included false reports of firings and resignations and now ends in a game of musical chairs where no one misses a single day on...

The State Department is insisting that secretary of state John Kerry’s decision to reinstate four employees put on administrative leave in the wake of of last year’s Benghazi attack was the right call. A spokeswoman said that Kerry, after revewing the Accountability Review Board’s report on the attack and the “totality of the careers” of the four employees, determined that the the action taken against them was “not warranted.” “These are people with real lives, real careers,” deputy press secretary Marie Harf told reporters on Tuesday?. Asked who should be held accountable for the attack that resulted in the deaths...

The State Department issued a new travel warning Thursday afternoon calling on U.S. citizens to leave Egypt as soon as possible because of the military’s bloody crackdown in the country that has taken the lives of 638 people. Americans who choose to stay should avoid all demonstrations in Egypt, the State Department said, “as even peaceful ones can quickly become violent, and a foreigner could become a target of harassment or worse.” The U.S. embassy near Tahrir Square in Cairo was closed to the public Thursday after the Egyptian government Wednesday declared a nationwide state of emergency and imposed night-time...

The State Department could not say Tuesday whether the Obama administration considers the prisoners it has pressured Israel to release are guilty of any wrongdoing. Israel is set to release 26 Palestinians Tuesday who have been serving jail sentences for murder and terrorism. Asked whether the administration considers the prisoners to be terrorists, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said, “I do not have a position on that.” Asked whether the administration objects to the Palestinian Authority officially designating the murderers and terrorists as “freedom fighters” and “political prisoners,” the State Department spokeswoman answered repeatedly, “I don’t have a position on...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Missouri State Fair on Monday imposed a lifetime ban on a rodeo clown whose depiction of President Barack Obama getting charged by a bull was widely criticized by Democratic and Republican officials alike. The rodeo clown won't be allowed to participate or perform at the fair again. Fair officials say they're also reviewing whether to take any action against the Missouri Rodeo Cowboy Association, the contractor responsible for Saturday's event. The entertainment during the bull riding contest featured a clown wearing a mask of Obama with an upside down broomstick attached to his backside....

State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki issued a press release denouncing the "enemies of Islam " following car bombings in Baghdad that appear to have been timed to target Shi'ite "festivities marking the end of Ramadan." Reuters reported that the bombings consisted of "twelve separate blasts targeting markets, busy shopping streets, and parks." The explosions killed almost 80 people. The August 10 press release on the State Department website reads: The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms the cowardly attacks... in Baghdad. These attacks were aimed at families celebrating the Eid al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of the...

The State Department on Tuesday ordered non-essential personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Yemen to leave the country following the threat by al-Qaida that has triggered temporary shutdowns of 19 American diplomatic posts across the Middle East and Africa. The department said in a travel warning that it had ordered the departure of non-emergency U.S. government personnel from Yemen "due to the continued potential for terrorist attacks" and said U.S. citizens in Yemen should leave immediately because of an "extremely high" security threat level. "As staff levels at the Embassy are restricted, our ability to assist U.S. citizens in an...

The Muslim Brotherhood announced that it held a meeting with an American delegation on Saturday, including the U.S. ambassador reviled among the Tamarod movement for cozying up with the Islamists. “At the invitation of the Assistant Secretary of State William Burns, and in the presence of the U.S. Ambassador in Egypt and the European Union special representative Bernardino León, a meeting with the Anti-Coup, Pro-Democracy National Alliance was held in the Four Seasons Hotel, Cairo, at 11AM on Saturday, August 3, 2013,” Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood said on its official website. “We strongly reject foreign interference in Egypt’s internal affairs, and

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The 95-year-old resident of a Park Forest senior living community who died after a Friday confrontation with police was killed by the bean-bag rounds police fired at him, the Cook County medical examiner's office determined following an autopsy today. The Cook County medical examiner's office said that the cause of death of John Warna was hemoperitoneum – bleeding in the stomach area from blunt force trauma of the abdomen after he was shot with a bean bag gun.

<p>A proposal backed by several Colorado counties to form a new state called North Colorado is getting public support.</p> <p>More than four dozen people showed up Thursday at the first public meeting to discuss a proposal to form a 51st state. Nearly all of them said they support secession. The Greeley Tribune reports people from Weld, Morgan, Logan, Sedgwick, Phillips, Washington, Yuma and Kit Carson counties are included in the discussion.</p>

(CNSNews.com) – The State Department through its Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs is planning to spend $95,000 to provide vocational training to Haitian inmates in textile production and assembly. “The applicant should demonstrate an ability to conduct job training on clothing production (including skills such as sewing, tailoring, and/or clothing assembly) within individual prisons in Haiti’s Ouest Department. This training should be hands-on and allow prisoners to get real practice working with textile materials,” the grant said. The International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) specifically targeted the textile industry, “which is projected to grow in Haiti as...

<p>SANFORD -- After five weeks of trial and 56 witnesses, few legal observers believed prosecutors came close to proving Sanford neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman committed second-degree murder when he shot and killed Trayvon Martin in February 2012.</p> <p>So for many legal analysts, it was no surprise that jurors rejected even a lesser “compromise” verdict of manslaughter, acquitting Zimmerman outright of all criminal charges and deciding he acted in a reasonable way to protect his own life.</p>

This past Friday's jobs report showed continued strength in jobs numbers for state and local governments, led by the latter. This year, local governments have added 45,000 jobs, which may not sound like much, but municipalities had lost jobs in nearly every preceding month going back to the summer of 2008. (Total US nonfarm employment, by contrast, has been growing since February 2010).   But just as stability has returned to the state and local employment picture, borrowing costs have started to climb.  Ben Bernanke's June speech that the Fed is considering taking its thumb off the scales of...

International agreements to lower greenhouse gases like the Kyoto Protocol have proven to be unenforceable, but zoning laws have real teeth. Thus global warming activists have begun to work on the municipal and state level to pass zoning laws that mandate "net-zero" greenhouse gas emissions in new construction, referred to as Net-Zero or "Zero Energy Building" (ZEB) or "Zero Net Energy" (ZNE).

State Department officials spent $630,000 to get more Facebook "likes," prompting employees to complain to a government watchdog that the bureau was "buying fans" in social media, the agency´s inspector general says. The department´s Bureau of International Information Programs spent the money to increase its "likes" count between 2011 and March 2013. "Many in the bureau criticize the advertising campaigns as ´buying fans´ who may have once clicked on an ad or ´liked´ a photo but have no real interest in the topic and have never engaged further," the inspector general reported. The spending increased the bureau´s

From massive NSA spying, to IRS targeting of the administration's political opponents, to collection and sharing of our health care information as part of Obamacare, it seems every day we learn of another assault on our privacy. Sadly, this week the Senate took another significant, if little-noticed, step toward creating an authoritarian surveillance state. Buried in the immigration bill is a national identification system called mandatory E-Verify. The Senate did not spend much time discussing E-Verify, and what little discussion took place was mostly bipartisan praise for its effectiveness as a tool for preventing illegal immigrants from obtaining employment. It...