Free Republic

US AMBASSADOR to Australia John Berry has married his long-term partner of 17 years in a private same-sex ceremony in Washington D.C. The 54-year-old former head of the Office of Personnel Management - which oversees the US public service - is the first openly gay US ambassador to serve in a Group of 20 nation and the highest ranking openly gay man in United States history. In a short statement, Mr Berry confirmed the nuptials, telling news.com.au, "John Berry and Curtis Yee, partners of 17 years, were formally married on Saturday August 10, at St Margaret's Episcopal Church in Washington...

Five D.C. Council members will decide whether Marion Barry should be dealt sanctions in addition to a fine he was issued as punishment for accepting gifts from city contractors. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson on Friday appointed an ad hoc committee that will investigate Mr. Barry’s actions. The committee is comprised of council members Yvette M. Alexander, Ward 7 Democrat; Anita Bonds, at-large Democrat; Mary M. Cheh, Ward 3 Democrat; David Grosso, at-large independent, and its chairman is Kenyan McDuffie, Ward 5 Democrat. The District’s Board of Ethics and Government Accountability on Thursday censured Mr. Barry and imposed a $13,600 penalty...

Leadership: If Washington, D.C.'s local politicians have their way, three new Wal-Marts planned for the troubled city will not be built. Oh boy! Just what the capital's struggling residents need: fewer jobs and higher prices. ngaclThe extraordinarily unwise politicians who run the nation's capital have decided to pass a law that would require so-called "big box" retailers — Wal-Mart, in other words — to pay their workers a "living wage" of at least $12.50 an hour. Wal-Mart employees nationwide average just under $9 an hour. Wal-Mart is already building three stores in D.C., and has plans for three more. But...

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, whose immigration reform proposal would grant far-reaching powers to the secretary of Homeland Security and other top administration officials, says he does not trust Washington to make critical decisions about the nation’s future. Rubio made the comment Wednesday during a debate on the budget and the debt limit. He opposes including an increase in the debt limit in the new budget and wants to make sure that no increase comes out of a House-Senate conference committee. The problem, Rubio said in an impassioned floor speech, is that there has been in the past a bipartisan consensus...

Marion Barry, best known as the mayor who starred in an FBI surveillance video smoking crack, recently updated his extensive criminal resume by accepting a gift from a “prohibited source” that does significant business with the District of Columbia’s government. Barry has for years been a fixture on the D.C. Council and currently represents Ward 8, a predominantly black and notoriously crime-infested area. He served four terms as mayor before getting convicted on drug charges and serving jail time. He’s also pleaded guilty in federal court for failing to pay city and federal taxes and got in trouble for stalking...

People in the area reported a man driving erratically and yelling from a black Honda Civic with signs and stickers -- some referencing Sept. 11, 2001 -- about 3 p.m. Monday, News4’s Jackie Bensen reported. One sign read "Death to Capitalism," bicyclist Jen House told News4...... Several of what appear to be gas cans and propane canisters are visible inside the car, which prompted police to close several streets in the area and evacuate Ross Elementary School and an apartment building as a precaution, Bensen reported.

The Washington area's housing market is the strongest in the country, according to a report which showed housing prices rising nationally. That's the good news. The bad news is this has started talk about another housing bubble. According to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, home prices rose by 7.7 percent from March 2012 to March 2013 in the D.C. area. The region's current index value is 189.70, which means a typical home in the area has appreciated by a 89.7 percent rate since January 2000. As other parts of the country suffered from the recession, (most of) the D.C. metro...

This story would be disconcerting, nonsensical and puzzling if it took place in any but a handful of cities in this country, but when you hear that it unfolded in Washington D.C., you just think to yourself - “yeah, I get it”. Picture this in your mind. You hear a child crying out in horror and pain and you step outside to see what is going on and what you see is a boy, about 11 years old merely riding a bicycle, being attacked by 3 pitbulls. You decide not to go pick up the phone, call 911 and possibly...

Parks was once half of the “Grandy and Andy” morning show on WMAL (630), working with former TV actor and ex-Congressman Fred Grandy. More recently, he partnered with the Washington Times newspaper to create a daily radio show based in its newsroom, and carried on a regional network around Washington DC that included Metro Radio’s WTNT (730 plus a translator at 102.9). DCRTV.com recently reported the end of Andy’s deal with Metro and now says Parks’ radio show will be re-positioned from afternoon drive (3-6pm on WTNT) to middays (11am-1pm) on Salem’s conservative talk WWRC (1260). Andy will be sandwiched...

In a stunning sign of the political resurgence of bankers, Wall Street lobbyists not only have the ear of lawmakers, they have their pens as well. Rather than leaving it to members of Congress to draft legislation that softens financial regulations, bank lobbyists are helping to write it themselves, emails reviewed by The New York Times show. One bill that sailed through the House Financial Services Committee this month was essentially written by lobbyists for giant Citigroup. After the House committee drafted a bill that would force regulators to exempt trades of certain types of derivative trading from the new...

WINEP told the Washington Free Beacon multiple officials are trying to trying track him down currently. It remains unclear where in D.C. he may have gone, or if he is even still in the city.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism has learned that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi headlined a Democratic Party fundraiser with leaders of Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood front groups in May of this year. The invitation-only fundraiser was sponsored by Reps. Keith Ellison, D-Minn.; Andre Carson, D-Ind.; and Steve Israel, D-N.Y., chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and took place on the evening of May 16, 2012, at the W Hotel in Washington D.C. In attendance were about 20 members of a Syrian dissident group and 10 officials representing Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas front groups. Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)...

The Land of Lincoln and home state of President Barack Obama has become nothing short of a fiscal and economic disaster. The Illinois labor market continues to weaken and the State government loses money by the truckload every day. If you think the nation's economic and fiscal conditions are bad, and they are, then pull up a chair and consider it could be worse...you could live in Illinois. Illinois has a population of about 12.8 million, making it the fifth largest state in the Union. It has oustanding debt of more than $153 billion or nearly $12,000 per citizen of...

When the state-imposed manager of Detroit, Kevyn Orr, starts the job on Monday he will wade into a city of crumbling neighborhoods where police fail to respond to some calls, arson fires burn out of control and residents scour charred buildings for scrap metal to sell. Except for the business district and a cultural area including a university, museum and some theaters, the city of Detroit, population 700,000, is in bad shape. Orr, a Washington, D.C.-based bankruptcy lawyer, will have the official title of "Emergency Financial Manager." But his remit as an unelected administrator will range far beyond money. His...

Politicians and basketball coaches know that you never answer the question a reporter asks you; you answer the question you want to answer. So it was with an opinion piece in the March 17 edition of The Washington Post titled “Is Capitalism Moral?” The newspaper assigned Steven Pearlstein, a business columnist who doesn’t seem to care much for businesses, to answer that question. But Pearlstein didn’t seem to want to. Instead, he made his piece broader, writing about the broad problems in American politics today. “Careening from debt-ceiling crisis to sequestration to a looming government shutdown, the nation is...

The Washington, D.C., region has long been considered recession-proof, thanks to the remorseless expansion of the federal government in good times and bad. Yet it’s only now—as D.C. positively booms while most of the country remains in economic doldrums—that the scale of Washington’s prosperity is becoming clear. Over the past decade, the D.C. area has made stunning economic and demographic progress. Meanwhile, America’s current and former Second Cities, population-wise—Los Angeles and Chicago—are battered and fading in significance. Though Washington still isn’t their match in terms of population, it’s gaining on them in terms of economic power and national importance. In...

The Senate will vote Wednesday afternoon on whether to force the White House to start allowing public tours again — one of a series of high-profile showdowns senators have scheduled as they push to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year.

(CNSNews.com) – The municipal government of Washington, D.C. received a $1.8 million federal Community Transformation Grant in 2012 to promote healthy lifestyles in the city.Among the things the city would do with the money, as listed on its application, was increasing the "availability of fruit and vegetables to employees in their workplaces."Administered through the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the grant was awarded in September 2011, which is the beginning of fiscal year 2012.According to the CDC, the grant is intended to target “approximately 445,000 residents living in the District of Columbia, focusing on racial/ethnic minority, low-income, medically underserved, and...

The finger pointing and the blame game of Washington gets old, but a messy representative democracy is better than an efficient dictatorship. This past weekend, I toured Washington with my 5th-grade son, Robert, his classmates and their mothers. I've been to Washington more times than I can remember, but each visit fills me with hope and inspiration. It's not just the city, which in the summer is hot, humid and buggy and in the winter can be bone-chilling (as it was this weekend), but it's what the city stands for: a city created to house the federal government of...

A poet laureate comes to Washington. Yawn. In the world capital of the sound and fury that often signifies not very much, the disciplined sentiments of a poet sound as alien as a tax cut for millionaires. We live in a city of argument, one-upsmanship, and winners and losers playing a power game where rhetoric rules without eloquence. Pragmatism trumps poetry every time. We have no majesty, none of the grace notes of language and no call for a poet to memorialize events, celebratory or tragic. But wait. Natasha Trethewey, the newest poet laureate, wants to change that. By moving...