Free Republic

MIDLAND — Michigan’s 60,000 home health care aides will no longer be deemed government employees — meaning they cannot be forced into a government employee union and have dues withheld — as a result of legislation signed today by Gov. Rick Snyder. The next step is for the Michigan Department of Community Health to immediately stop the collection of dues from subsidy payments intended to assist developmentally disabled adults and the diversion of those funds to the Service Employees International Union, said Patrick J. Wright, director of the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation. “Ending this lucrative charade is terrific news for...

CHANDLER, AZ - A teen is in the hospital and another is in custody after a shooting involving a stolen gun in Chandler this morning. Police at the scene, near Ray and Rural roads, said two 18-year-old men were playing with a gun across from a Circle K. One of the teens allegedly shot the other in the arm by mistake. Police said the two ran to the Circle K to get help and left the gun there. They reportedly told police they were walking near the Circle K and got shot, but police realized the story wasn't adding up...

Say goodbye to Martha Johnson. This week, she was forced to resign as chief of the General Services Administration, the federal agency that manages real estate for the government. Somehow Johnson managed to spend an incredible $820,000 for a conference outside of Las Vegas. Among the expenditures she okayed: $31,000 for a "networking reception," $146,000 for catered food and drinks, as well as $130,000 in expenses to "scout" the conference's hotel location. Apparently, Johnson's advance team had to travel to Vegas six times to get a handle on where best to discuss GSA business. Somebody had to do it. In...

FOR the last two months, senior government officials and private-sector experts have paraded before Congress and described in alarming terms a silent threat: cyberattacks carried out by foreign governments. Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I., said cyberattacks would soon replace terrorism as the agency’s No. 1 concern as foreign hackers, particularly from China, penetrate American firms’ computers and steal huge amounts of valuable data and intellectual property.

Check Your Driver's License. Now you can see anyone's Driver's License on the Internet and determine if yours is posted. I just searched for mine and there it was, picture and all! Thanks Homeland Security. Go to the Driver License Check and check to see if yours has been posted. Just enter your name, city, and state to view if yours is on file. After your license comes on the screen, click the box marked "Please Remove." This will remove it from public viewing, but not from law enforcement.

Is there a link out there for this hearing? I'm all over the C-Span website and cannot find any way to watch these worms squirm. It sure would be entertaining ...

JEFFERSON COUNTY, Colo. (CBS4) – Valuable parts have been stolen from restrooms across the Denver metro area and then cashed in for money. Now investigators say they know who is responsible. Donald Allen Citron, 48, faces 18 charges, including burglary and theft. He’s accused of stealing toilet parts from several locations, including Southwest Plaza Mall, University of Denver, and Craig Hospital. Most of the crimes happened in just a few minutes, but police Citron is a plumber and all he needed was a wrench and a screw driver to steal pipes and the plumbing in toilets. The items he’s accused...

Morgan Stanley banker pleads not guilty in cab driver assaultBy Michelle Conlin | Reuters – 1 hr 15 mins ago STAMFORD, Connecticut (Reuters) - A senior Morgan Stanley banker pleaded not guilty on Friday to hate crime, theft and assault charges stemming from an incident last December that police say escalated from a dispute over a $200-plus cab fare to a knife attack on the driver. William Bryan Jennings, who had been co-head of North American fixed-income capital markets at the Wall Street bank until being put on leave following his arrest last month, entered "not guilty" pleas to each...

Did God enlist some creep to steal a religious relic? It wouldn’t be the first time the Almighty used an infidel to do his bidding. Pagan Cyrus of Persia released long-enslaved Jews, enabling them to return to Jerusalem in 537 BC. The preserved 834 year-old heart of St. Laurence O’Toole (AD 1128-1180) disappeared Saturday from Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin, Ireland and one has to wonder if God’s sovereignty was at work behind the scenes of that seemingly dastardly act. The Almighty is known for His slash-and-burn attitude toward icons and idols, knowing that such lifeless items steal the affections,...

Surprise surprise, John Corzine, global elitist financier and flim-flam man will not be prosecuted for his role in the MF Global theft and fraud. It seems that the US Attorneys involved just can’t figure out if any crime was committed. There’s so much paper work for them to review and it’s just too hard. Never mind bringing the entire senior executive ranks before a grand jury to squeeze the truth out of them. Never mind the fact that CME Chief Terry Duffy, the head of a national exchange, testified before Congress that he was told that Corzine was aware that...

Federal law enforcement officials investigating the implosion of MF Global are concluding that sloppy bookkeeping rather than criminal activity is to blame for the firm’s demise that resulted in more than a $1 billion of customer funds that remains missing, FOX Business Network has learned. Though officials haven’t totally ruled out bringing a criminal case against MF Global executives, including former chief executive Jon Corzine, the odds are long that a criminal case will be filed, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. The evidence that law enforcement officials have gathered so far shows that the firm’s sloppy...

NEWPORT NEWS — Kelvin White sometimes gets uncomfortable when strangers approach on the street. But that is not nearly as bad as the dreams he has almost nightly of people out to kill him. Almost four months after White tackled a man accused of posing as an FBI agent in a robbery at Food Lion at Newmarket Square in Hampton and was shot by another man, he is still suffering from excruciating pain from the bullet that shattered his right leg.

When two alleged teenage thieves tried to flee a Best Buy, their escape attempts - dodging cars and wielding a small samurai sword - played out like something from the game systems they were trying to steal. Doug Kennedy and his son were heading toward the store on Independence Boulevard on Wednesday night when he saw two or three youths getting away with merchandise. A store employee was screaming after them. "I just thought, no, you can't do this," Kennedy said Thursday. The Virginia Beach resident tackled one. As he tried to pin him down, one of the teen's hands...

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WCMH, Columbus' NBC affiliate, is reporting that police are investigating a break-in in which approximately 80 firearms were stolen from a Central Ohio shooting range as well as boxes of ammunition. Thieves knocked a hole through a cinder block wall to gain access to The Powder Room, which is located in Powell. According to the report, this wasn't the first time thieves have targeted The Powder Room. In the past, a gun stolen from the shop was later used in a crime where violence against a police officer was involved. Linda Walker is the Ohio chair of the Buckeye Firearms...

The Audit Committee has concluded that a "continuity" payment made to growers in August 2010 of approximately $20 million and a "momentum" payment made to growers in September 2011 of approximately $60 million were not accounted for in the correct periods, and the Audit Committee identified material weaknesses in the Company's internal control over financial reporting. As a result, the Company will restate its fiscal years 2010 and 2011 financial statements," said Robert Zollars, Diamond Foods' Chairman

WASHINGTON (AP) — About 90 District of Columbia workers have been suspended and may be fired after officials determined they received unemployment checks while holding city jobs. The Washington Post reports Monday that another 60 former D.C. workers have cashed unemployment checks they were not entitled to. Lisa Mallory is director of the city's Department of Employment Services. She says the city has paid about $800,000 in unemployment benefits to working city employees since 2009 (http://wapo.st/yEm9Iw ). Mallory says some employees received as much as $20,000. Others received a few hundred dollars. The fraud is not complicated. Mallory says people...

Long before Al Gore "created" the Internet, gun owners were busy perfecting grassroots networking. Today, gun owners have an almost unlimited number of ways to spread information crucial to our community. And, while the Internet is certainly an indispensible tool for protecting our rights, an unfortunate side effect has been the fast and easy spread of rumors. The latest of these, appearing on Internet message boards and in emails, warns of a growing trend of gangsters marking the license plates or wheels of vehicles parked at shooting clubs, gun stores, ranges and gun shows. According to the rumor, the thieves...

Fifty people have been accused of conspiring to sell the identities of hundreds of Puerto Ricans to illegal immigrants on the U.S. mainland in the largest single fraud case ever for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, authorities said Wednesday. Hundreds of birth certificates, Social Security numbers and driver's licenses were sold for up to $2,500 a set as part of a black market ring based in Puerto Rico that operated from since at least April 2009, according to ICE Director John Morton. (SNIP) About 80 percent of the documents involved were sold by Puerto Ricans whose names were on them,...

We Need to Push Our Nominee to the Right, Not the Left! January 10, 2012 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Wayne, Charlotte, North Carolina. You're next. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hi. CALLER: Yes, sir! That's where I am, sir. I -- I -- I am livid with you today. It's the first time I've ever been livid with you in over 20 years, Rush! You know, you're negatively painting Speaker Gingrich when you just perfectly delineated my whole point, or at least part of it. At one point, sir, Newt Gingrich came into this campaign with a...