Free Republic

Conservative presidential candidate Ben Carson says the $7.25 federal minimum wage should be raised.“I think, probably, it should be higher than now,” Carson told CNBC’s John Harwood in an interview Friday.Carson added that government assistance often provides more than the minimum wage in several states, allowing people to ignore the long-term benefits of a job."I don't necessarily blame people for saying, 'Look, I can stay home and make this money, or I can go and work this little chicken job that doesn't have many benefits,’ ” he said."However, recognize that if you go and take that chicken job, you gain...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has hit a bump in the presidential race as new candidates have crowded the field, and his national poll numbers have faltered.He was seen as an early favorite to win the Iowa caucuses after taking the race by storm with a well-received speech in January at GOP Rep. Steve King’s Iowa Freedom Summit. Since then, some air has come out of the Walker balloon. A Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday still shows him with a big lead in the Hawkeye State, with 21 percent support. He leads Rubio, the next closest candidate, by 8 percentage...

On May 5, two firefighters with concealed carry permits stopped a man allegedly attempting to shoot kids and firemen at the fire station. According to Fox Carolina, “Children and firefighters” were in the station parking lot when, at about 6:30 p.m. at New Holland, Wisconsin’s Fire Station 2, Chad Barker allegedly pulled up, got out of his car, and opened fire. He allegedly fired in the air and at his own vehicle and “pointed the firearm at individual firefighters for lengthy periods of time.”

On average each day in America, 85 people die from injuries related to guns. Amid a "violent spring in Milwaukee" come new calls for public health approaches to address persistent gun violence, as Journal Sentinel columnist James Causey did in his April 26 column "I'm not satisfied with just enough". are safe; preparing for quick, strong responses to disasters; improving birth outcomes and reducing chronic disease. How does a public health approach work? Public health practice focuses on prevention. We shape programs, policies and products to promote health and wellness, and protect the public from dangerous exposures. And if already...

NBC Terrorism Analyst Evan Kohlmann compared the Mohammed Art Exhibit and Contest and Pamela Geller’s actions to hate crimes, “lighting the Reichstag on fire and then complaining that your fingers got singed,” and accused her of infringing on other people’s free speech rights on Wednesday’s “Hardball.”

Presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) will keynote the Southern Republican Leadership Conference (SRLC) in May, where he’ll appear alongside a number of his potential opponents."Sen. Cruz's recent announcement for president has created quite a buzz among Republican voters. We're excited he'll be joining us for the SRLC, as I know primary voters will want to hear what he has to say,” SRLC Chairman Dave Weston said in a statement.“With the future of Obamacare increasingly in doubt, many have looked to Cruz as the point of the spear in Republican efforts to defeat the president's signature policy."Cruz kicked off...

Scott Walker said in 2008 that the government "needs to do more to give people freedom back" by fighting the "poverty pimps in our society," referring to government officials and community-based organizations that, he said, use poverty for political power. ...

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin lawmakers advanced a set of bills Wednesday that would require food stamp users to buy healthy food and mandate drug screening for state job training program applicants and some unemployment benefit claimants. An Assembly committee on public benefit reform approved the bills almost on party lines Wednesday, with Republicans voting in favor and Democrats against. Rep. Adam Neylon, a Pewaukee Republican, also voted against the measures. The approval clears the way for the full Assembly to vote on the measures next week. But prospects for the bill that would restrict food options for food stamp...

A Racine correctional officer, who works with criminals every day — is now on the wrong side of the law. This, following an incident that occurred in Racine on Tuesday, May 5th. On Tuesday, police were called out to “Odd Fellows” Food & Liquor on Main Street in Racine for a report of a man in a vehicle pointing a gun at another person. When police arrived, they observed a vehicle in the Odd Fellows parking lot begin to back out of a parking spot. An Odd Fellows employee pointed towards the vehicle — indicating the vehicle’s driver was the...

Exactly two months after the latest Warren Buffett-owned BNSF train derailed near the spot where the Galena river meets the Mississippi, resulting in a huge fire and the evacuation of all homes in a one mile radius, moments ago another of Buffett's BNSF oil trains derailed, this time near the town of Heimdal, North Dakota, resulting in the same outcome. According to the Bismark Tribune, the town in Wells County was evacuated Tuesday morning after a train full of oil tanker cars derailed and burned about a mile and half east of here. ... For those concerned that these countless...

In the 2016 presidential race, a new poll shows New Jersey Republicans prefer a governor who isn’t theirs. Their choice would be Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. According to a Monmouth University poll released today, in a matchup between Walker and Gov. Christie, 44 percent of New Jersey Republicans would pick Walker, while 30 percent would go with their own governor. Three months ago, the state’s Republicans had favored Christie over Walker, 51 percent to 30 percent.

Gov. Scott Walker wants to make the most public fight of his administration a national issue should he run for president. In an interview with Radio Iowa, the Wisconsin Republican made the case for a national “right to work” law: “As much as I think the federal government should get out of most of what it’s in right now, I think establishing fundamental freedoms for the American people is a legitimate thing and that would be something that would provide that opportunity in the other half of America to people who don’t have those opportunities today.”Currently, twenty-five states have right-to-work...

The speed limit on some Wisconsin highways would rise to 70 mph, under a proposal coming before the state Senate on Wednesday. The bill would end Wisconsin's status as a lone island of 65 mph limits in the Midwest by increasing the maximum speed on stretches of interstates and some other four-lane highways that have overpasses, underpasses and ramps instead other roads that directly cross traffic on the highway. If passed by the Senate, the proposal would return to the Assembly, which passed a different version of the bill on a bipartisan vote in March. The proposal would mean that...

Patience Roggensack said Tuesday there is no doubt she is the Wisconsin Supreme Court's chief justice and that she didn't want to fight with any of her colleagues — in the process, taking jabs at how the court has been run. The justice told conservative WTMJ-AM (620) radio host Charlie Sykes she had been meeting with top court staff in recent days and planned to allow them and other justices to have more input than they have in the past. ~snip~ Roggensack did not respond to interview requests from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last week and did not immediately respond...

We have a plethora of black history courses in primary, secondary and post-secondary institutions of learning throughout the United States. Yet and still, there are indications that quantity does not necessarily equal quality. “As the NRA and other groups started to want to use me as a symbol of the Second Amendment — a black voice — I started reading up,” Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke told National Review’s Charles C. W. Cooke. “I became fascinated.” “What really struck me was the black tradition of arms. . . . I thought, Wow. This isn’t the black history I grew up reading...

For a quarter of a century, Republican presidential candidates have uttered variations of George H. W. Bush’s high pitched pledge: “I want to be the education president.” It has gotten them exactly nowhere. So far, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is trying a different approach, one that dovetails interestingly with some surprising changes in how colleges run themselves. Simply put, Governor Walker urged universities in the badger state to teach more and spend less. Now, universities far from badgerland are actually trying, in their academic way, to do just that. For example, just about every issue of the GW Hatchet at...

In a recent meeting with the Journal Sentinel Editorial Board and reporters and editors, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett noted that shooting incidents in Milwaukee have been rising every year since the concealed carry law was passed in 2011. Fellow columnist Christian Schneider wrote in the Journal Sentinel's April 5 Crossroads section: "Yet nearly four years later, nearly 250,000 concealed carry licenses have been issued, and one would be hard-pressed to notice any difference in the state," at least in terms of crime statistics for violent crimes and murders. I have no reason to doubt either statement, but the fact is...

While conservatives in Indiana and Arkansas were explaining last month why their new religious objections laws weren’t invitations to discriminate against gays, the leaders of Wisconsin’s capital city were busy protecting the rights of another group: atheists. In what is believed to be the first statute of its kind in the United States, Madison banned discrimination against the non-religious on April 1, giving them the same protections afforded to people based on their race, sexual orientation and religion, among other reasons. It’s hardly surprising that such a statute would originate in Madison, an island of liberalism in a conservative-leaning state...

Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke (D) declared the charges brought against six police officers in the death of Freddie Gray “George Zimmerman and the Duke Lacrosse case all over again” and said “these cops are political prisoners,” offered up as human sacrifices, thrown like red meat to an angry mob” on Friday’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto” on the Fox News Channel. Clarke said of the charges, “it’s a miscarriage of justice. This neophyte prosecutor stood up there and made a political statement, Neil, and I say that because she’s chanting or voicing some of the chants from this angry...

Governor Scott Walker and the GOP-controlled state legislature freed government employees from involuntary forced union membership, enabling them to choose or not choose to pay dues. The results have shown that roughly two-thirds have not chosen union membership when given the opportunity. And that has meant big cutbacks for the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), one of the most left wing and biggest political contributors to Dempcrats among American unions. Steven Verburg of the left wing Wisconsin State Journal of Madison, attempts to soft sell the bad news for lefties: Wisconsin’s three AFSCME councils are merging...