Free Republic

Times Square is quickly becoming the costume capital of the world. They seem to be everywhere. City officials have said they want to crack down, but now the people who wear the costumes also want to take action and organize to protect their jobs. You know them as Elmo, Cookie Monster and Woody, but the people who wear these costumes decided to take on a new name: Association of Artists United for a Smile New York City.

Couples marry, hundreds gather at Equality Fest in York The inaugural event, held at the city's Cherry lane, was a celebration of equality for all, its organizers said By Ted Czech tczech@ydr.com @TedCzechYDR on Twitter Updated: 08/03/2014 05:50:22 PM EDT Carey and Michele Jenkins clasped hands, gazed in each other's teary eyes, and whispered things to each other, as they became legally married at York's first-ever Equality Fest on Sunday. The Jenkinses, along with five more lesbian couples, were married by York Mayor Kim Bracey before several hundred who attended the event. After Bracey married the couples, the crowd erupted...

Immediately after he ousted the York County Republican Committee's incumbent chairman Saturday, Alex Shorb vowed to ensure that Tea Party supporters are heard in the party's political deliberations. Yet Shorb, a financial services firm owner from York, said he did not regard his election as chairman as some sort of conservative coup. "I don't see it as a tea party takeover at all," he said. "I'm not a tea party member." Shorb's election and the tandem victory of his running mate, Lower Windsor Township Committeewoman Allison Blew, who is the party's new vice chairwoman, followed a push by conservative opponents...

People complain about negative advertising, but campaigns do it because it works. Well -- at least it works when it's done well. Here are five examples where negative ads backfired. 1 In the current Pennsylvania gubernatorial primary, Rob McCord recently released an ad attacking the frontrunner, Tom Wolf, for his support of former York Mayor Charlie Robertson. last decade, Robertson was charged (and acquitted) for his role in York's 1969 race riots, during which Robertson had been a policeman. Since the ad came out, Wolf's numbers have actually spiked and he's considered the easy favorite to win next Tuesday. [WATCH...

The bones of a foetus and its heavily pregnant mother have been found in a chamber of All Saints church in York, where three men were found “shoved” into a tomb with grave markings designed to ward off evil spirits during the early 13th century. Ancient serviceable drains, pottery fragments dating from Roman times to the 18th century, entrenched Viking pottery and Anglian pieces with possible links to the baptism of St Edwin, the 7th century King of Northumbria, have also been discovered in the Lady Chapel, where a medieval-style tile pavement has been laid in an English parish church...

March 19, 2014 Tea Partier wins write-in race for Pennsylvania state Senate seat Mark Tapscott York is a modest little city in Southern Pennsylvania not too far from Baltimore and right in the heart of Dutch country. It's not the sort of place where political revolutions are found. But Republican state Senate nominee Ron Miller may think differently this morning because he just lost a special election to a write-in Tea Party candidate, Scott Wagner. "With 100 percent of precincts reporting Tuesday night, write-in votes totaled 10,595, or 47.7 percent, to Miller's 5,920, or 26.6 percent. Democrat Linda Small of...

In what appears to be an unexpected victory for a conservative businessman who had made s point of bucking his own party, Republican Scott Wagner is presumed to have won a write-in campaign to defeat party nominee Ron Miller for an open seat in the state Senate. The closely watched, hotly contested face-off ended in disappointment for the Republican mainstay and a first major victory for the tea party in York County. With 100 percent of the precincts reporting Tuesday night, write-in votes totaled 10,595 or 47.7 percent, to Miller's 5,920 or 26.6 percent. Democrat Linda Small of New Freeedom...

The York County Sheriff's Office released dash cam video from a traffic stop in which a deputy shot an elderly man reaching for his cane. WARNING: Video includes some graphic material and language.

The Department of Defense announced today the death of two soldiers who were supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. They died Feb. 12, in Kapisa Province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when they were struck by enemy small arms fire. Killed were: Spc. John A. Pelham, 22, of Portland, Ore., and Sgt. First Class Roberto C. Skelt, 41, of York, Fla. Pelham and Skelt were assigned to 2nd Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne), Fort Bragg, N.C.

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In March 2012, York's Republican Committee Chairman, Bob Wilson, made the following comments regarding the local "tea party" group, the York 912 Patriots: If the leadership of the York 912 group wanted to make a positive impact in York County and in Pennsylvania, they would be focusing their efforts on defeating Barack Obama, Bob Casey and Eugene DePasquale. Each year, the Liberty Index compiles a score for Pennsylvania's legislators based on how well they advance an agenda of limited government and economic freedom. Each earns a grade based on his voting record, and is ranked in order from best to...

Either New York Times writer David Kirkpatrick is ignoring his own colleagues’ work, or the Hillary Clinton supporters are laying out early foundations to combat what will be the biggest criticism of her tenure as Secretary of State if she decides to run for the Oval Office. The New York Times' assertion that Al Qaeda’s involvement in the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi is particularly questionable considering the preponderance of evidence that shows otherwise. In his piece, Kirkpatrick writes, ”But the Republican arguments appear to conflate purely local extremist organizations like Ansar...

Bill De Blasio is a political insider who worked on campaigns of Bill and Hillary ClintonGrew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is a lifelong Red Sox fanTraveled to Nicaragua as a student in the 1980s and became supporter of the socialist governmentMarried Chirlane McCray in 1994 after meeting at City Hall McCray wrote a seminal 1979 magazine article declaring that she was a black lesbian Bill De Blasio, the first Democrat elected mayor of New York City in a generation, is a Massachusetts-raised former supporter of the communist Sandinistas who married a lesbian poet. And he's a lifelong Boston...

Memo: Administration bungled Obamacare long before GOP had power to obstruct BY BYRON YORK | NOVEMBER 3, 2013 AT 8:52 AM An emerging theme from Democrats struggling to explain the Obamacare fiasco is that stubborn Republican opposition has hobbled the administration's efforts to implement President Obama's complex national health care scheme. If you want the particulars, just glance at "The Obamacare sabotage campaign" by Politico's Todd Purdum. But a memo revealed in a new Washington Post examination of the rollout shows the administration was already on a disastrous path in May 2010, just two months after Obamacare was signed into...

Tropical Storm Karen dumped varying amount of rain all over the South Central, tri-county PA area, ranging from 5.6" to 10.2", but the "official" tally is 9.11"; all of it causing widespread flooding and misery. Multi-million-gallon retention ponds and containment areas overflowed quickly, wiping-out travel on roads and streets for much of Friday. I recorded 14.7" at my Condo's Weather Station, in East York, as of Saturday morning, at 6:45am. If you have pics of your area Compared to 2011's TS Lee, which dumped 13" over an even wider area, it's hard to tell much difference from the pictures coming...

In a clear attempt to woo largely establishment conservative commentators who have loudly opposed the GOP’s current government shutdown strategy, President Obama held an off-the-record meeting with the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer, the Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot, National Review’s Washington editor Robert Costa, syndicated columnist and former CNN co-host Kathleen Parker, and Byron York of the Washington Examiner.

The New York Times editorial board ripped the Obama administration in a scathing editorial Thursday afternoon, writing that it has “now lost all credibility” after revelations that the administration has been collecting the phone records of millions of Verizon customers. It came as something of a surprise, considering the board’s normally friendly view toward the administration. But in the editorial, the Times’ board criticised the Obama administration in much of the same way it scrutinized the Bush administration. It wrote that the Obama administration’s justification for the program —

A brutal beating of a Buffalo, N.Y. senior was caught on video. WGRZ-TV was given a video of a Buffalo man who was brutally beaten by a group of high school student. The incident happened in North Buffalo at Shoshone Park two weeks ago as James LeGrand, who is a part of Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown’s Impact Team, was in the park’s parking lot when he noticed two girls arguing with a bunch of student who surrounded them and were encouraging them to fight. He tried to break up the fight several times and then got a camera and started...

'A mosque has been praised for serving tea and biscuits to English Defence League supporters after the far-right group arranged a demonstration there. About six people turned up to protest at the mosque in Bull Lane, York, on Sunday and were invited inside to play football with worshippers. More than 100 supporters of the mosque had gone there after learning of the planned EDL protest. Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu said the mosque's response was "fantastic". He said: "Tea, biscuits, and football are a great and typically Yorkshire combination when it comes to disarming hostile and extremist views."'

Two New York Times columnists embarrassed themselves over the weekend, betraying anti-gun ignorance in the paper's Sunday Review. Frank Bruni went hunting for the first time (with the chef of a ritzy Manhattan restaurant), and remarked "what an unfair fight" hunting is, as if he was the first person to think that up. After lamenting "how thoroughly a weapon can be romanticized and fetishized," he pivoted to easy access to guns in "this country of ours." "I could forget, when not aiming at a bird, to keep the gun pointed toward the sky or the ground. Or my pivot as...