Free Republic

At Seattle University, we challenge our students to engage in the difficult issues of the day with an open mind, respect differing viewpoints, discern the moral choices involved and act for the greater good. I took this Jesuit approach to heart after being asked to keynote Seattle’s annual Martin Luther King Prayer Breakfast in January. My instructions were as a white person to speak to white people about the system and culture of white privilege in our country, which oppresses blacks.

Snohomish County sheriff’s detectives say a 19-year-old Lynnwood-area man raped a young woman as she was dying from a drug overdose, texted photographs of her seminude body to friends and then stuffed her body in a box with plans to bury her later, according to a Wednesday report from our online news partner The Seattle Times. The 18-year-old victim attended a party Saturday night at the suspect’s mobile-home park just north of Martha Lake in unincorporated Snohomish County and died that night or early Sunday, according to the statement of probable cause outlining the sheriff’s case against the 19-year-old suspect....

Five people were arrested as fights broke out and at least one American flag was burned Saturday after a college Republican rally in Seattle drew counter-protesters. College Republicans at the University of Washington had invited members of Patriot Prayer, a group in Vancouver, Wash., to speak in the university's Red Square for a "freedom rally," the Seattle Times reported.

A West Virginia bill that would end taxpayer funding for abortions in the state is slated for a public hearing Monday in the state House. West Virginia is one of 17 states that funds elective abortions for low-income women through Medicaid. State House Bill 4012 would end taxpayer funding for abortions except when medically necessary to save the mother’s life, the AP reports. Since 1977, state taxpayers have been forced to pay millions of dollars for tens of thousands unborn babies’ abortion deaths, according to West Virginians for Life. “The federal government limits tax funding of abortions to cases of...

If conservatives don’t coalesce behind a new repeal plan soon soon, they will find themselves bystanders as their Republican colleagues link arms with Democrats. ... a concoction of two bills. The first, championed by Sens. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D., Wash.), would appropriate cost-sharing-reduction payments to insurers. The second, sponsored by Sens. Susan Collins (R., Maine) and Bill Nelson (D., Fla.), would give insurers an additional $10 billion (and perhaps more) in federal cash.

If you’re planning to watch the Super Bowl but you can’t stand the NFL take-a-knee protests, you may want to root for the Philadelphia Eagles. Not a single Eagles player sat or knelt during the national anthem, one of just seven teams with perfect non-kneeling records, in a season that saw 684 such incidents, according to a study released Thursday by Sports Pundit. The other Super Bowl LII team, the New England Patriots, landed in the middle of the pack with 17 incidents of anthem sitting or kneeling, wedged between the Buffalo Bills with 16 and the Cleveland Browns with...

(Washington, D.C.)  – U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) released the following statement.“The American people deserve the truth about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, and they deserve to have confidence that their government is committed to preventing such interference by a foreign power from ever happening again. Sadly, it’s clear the sole intention of this misleading and untruthful ‘memo’ released today— against the wishes of the Department of Justice and the FBI— is to distract the public from these goals. This partisan exercise is not only self-serving and extraordinarily reckless, it’s deeply damaging to the public’s faith in our institutions...

Letter says programs 'being misused to promote biased, one-sided, anti-Israel' views Fourteen advocacy organizations are calling for federal funding to Middle East studies centers to be pulled if the programs do not end their anti-Israel and anti-American "indoctrination." The letter to the Senate HELP Committee charge that the 16 Middle East studies centers receiving funding under Title VI of the Higher Education Opportunities Act are "being misused to promote biased, one-sided, and anti-Israel programming," in violation of a requirement for the programs to "reflect diverse perspectives and a wide range of views." Title VI funding was rolled out in 1958,...

SEATTLE – When President Trump was candidate Trump, he called climate change a hoax. Since taking the Oval Office, he’s said very little about greenhouse gasses and their impact on the planet. But he did issue a statement that he plans to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement, which aims to reduce emissions as a way to stop global warming. But West Coast states are driving in the opposite direction, with designs of erecting a green wall built on taxing carbon. “This is both an economic benefit for the state of Washington and a job creator,” said...

In new letter, 16 Senators urge President Trump to reconsider efforts that would undermine decades of U.S. nonproliferation leadership by building new nuclear weapons, lowering threshold for use Senators: President Trump’s plans to develop new, more usable nuclear weapons “are unnecessary to maintain deterrence and are destabilizing”WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) called on President Donald Trump to reconsider policies outlined in a leaked draft of its Nuclear Posture Review that would lead to the development of new nuclear weapons and reintroduction of Cold War-era weapons systems that would be unnecessary and destabilizing. In...

Many of the minimum wage laws passed in recent years, including in major cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago, include waivers allowing unionized businesses to pay their employees below the minimum. The waivers in effect make unionizing workers a low-cost option for businesses unwilling or unable to pay the new minimum wage, which in cities such as San Francisco and SeaTac, Wash., which also has a waiver, will climb as high as $15 an hour when fully phased in. In those cities, businesses can sign a collective bargaining agreement with a union that sets the wages below...

“I am so grateful for Cecile’s leadership, friendship, and all she has done for women and for our country” WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U. S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), top Democrat on the Senate health committee and the highest ranking woman in the Senate, issued the following statement on the resignation of Cecile Richards as President and CEO of Planned Parenthood.“For over a decade, Cecile Richards has led not just Planned Parenthood, but women across the country in standing strong for a woman’s right to make her own choices about her own body, and against those who would leave our...

The engineer on the Amtrak train that derailed south of Tacoma in December, killing three people and injuring dozens, said he didn’t see or didn’t recognize the signposts and signals indicating a drastic drop in the speed limit, a new report from federal investigators says. It was only the engineer’s second time driving a train in that direction on a newly opened stretch of track, known as the Point Defiance Bypass. The engineer, who was hired by Amtrak as a conductor in 2004 and was promoted to engineer in 2013, said that when the train passed milepost 15.5 it was...

President Trump nominated Alex Azar to replace former Secretary Price after he resigned in scandal and disgrace Senator Murray highlights Azar’s support for President Trump’s ideology-driven agenda and health care sabotage Senator Murray: “We need a voice to reject such damaging ideological decisions and to champion evidence, science, and sound policymaking. I do not believe Mr. Azar is that champion.”***WATCH SENATOR MURRAY’S SPEECH BELOW*** (Washington, D.C.) – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), top Democrat on the Senate health committee, voiced her strong opposition to President Trump’s nominee for Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Alex Azar. In a...

WEAK51 PAAQ 231042 TSUAK1 BULLETIN Public Tsunami Message Number 3 NWS National Tsunami Warning Center Palmer AK 142 AM AKST Tue Jan 23 2018 UPDATES ------- * Revised magnitude ...THE TSUNAMI WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT... ...THE TSUNAMI WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT... Tsunami Warning in Effect for; * BRITISH COLUMBIA, The Juan de Fuca Strait coast, the outer west coast of Vancouver Island, the central coast and northeast Vancouver Island, and the north coast and Haida Gwaii * SOUTHEAST ALASKA, The inner and outer coast from The BC/Alaska Border to Cape Fairweather, Alaska (80 miles SE of Yakutat) * SOUTH ALASKA...

It has been 50 years since she and Luster purchased their big fixer-upper for about $15,000. They’d borrowed money to do expensive major improvements, using their home as collateral. The mortgage crisis that started in 2007 and led to the economic collapse of 2008 couldn’t have come at a worse time.

President Donald J. Trump is set to deliver the State of the Union on January 30. To no one’s surprise, a few Democrats will be boycotting the event. Well, five total—all the typical loudmouths of the Democratic Party.1. Frederica Wilson (D-FL)2. Maxine Waters (D-CA)3. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)4. John Lewis (D-GA)5. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)Lewis thinks Trump is a racist after the “s**thole countries remark”: Lewis, 77, said he cannot go forward with attending the address to Congress, after what President Donald Trump "has said about so many Americans... I wouldn't be honest with myself."He also told NBC News he believes...

SEATTLE - If elected officials get their way, the entire West Coast of North America could be putting a price on pollution by the end of this year. As state legislature sessions opened this month, Washington state Governor Jay Inslee called for a carbon tax and Oregon legislators proposed a “cap and invest” system. Both policies are designed to make industrial emitters of carbon dioxide pay some of the costs of damage caused by growing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and to create incentives for them to reduce emissions. Carbon dioxide emissions are one of the major drivers...

(Washington, D.C.) –Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), top Democrat on the Senate health committee, issued a statement following the news that 3.2 million more individuals were uninsured by the end of 2017 as compared to the end of 2016. “The results are in and they are tragic. After a year of President Trump’s repeated sabotage—from putting up barriers to health care, cutting open enrollment, and expanding loopholes, to trying to throw the entire system into chaos—it’s concerning but unsurprising to learn that fewer families have insurance and the ability to get the health care they so badly need. President Trump’s...

SEATTLE - A longtime activist for illegal immigrants in the Northwest says she herself is now facing deportation. Maru Mora-Villalpando, a native of Mexico City who has been in the U.S. for more than 25 years, said Tuesday that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has given her a notice to appear before an immigration judge. She says she believes ICE is targeting her because of her activism. She leads an organization called Northwest Detention Center Resistance, which was created in 2014 when detainees at the privately run immigration detention facility in Tacoma began a series of hunger strikes to protest...