Free Republic

Rep. Dan Crenshaw questioned Monday whether the trip to Puerto Rico by congressional Democrats was a good decision amid the deadlock on border security. About 30 lawmakers traveled to Puerto Rico -- with their families and lobbyists -- for a winter retreat over the weekend despite the partial government shutdown. "It sounds like they had a lot of fun. They've also been talking a lot about the plight that federal workers see themselves in," Crenshaw said on The Story. "They're not wrong about that, but if we're gonna talk about that then I don't know if these excursions to Puerto...

JUNEAU, Wis. (AP) — Two dancers at an exotic club in Juneau have been cited after they allegedly brawled over a dollar bill.A Post-Crescent of Appleton report says one of the women is pregnant.Dodge County deputies say they were called to Silk Exotic last week to break up a fight. They say it started when a customer tried to give a dollar to one of the dancers but the other dancer took it.

Sylvia Calkovska would love to go back to her native Czech Republic for her brother's wedding in the fall. But the 30-year-old exotic dancer at Club Pro in Concord has been in Canada on a work permit for the past four years and she's afraid if she leaves, she won't get back in. She was among about 100 dancers and adult entertainment industry owners and managers who met at Toronto City Hall last night to lobby against Ottawa's proposed immigration law amendments. They say the new policy would ban foreign strippers from coming to Canada and penalize those already here...

NEW ORLEANS — By the wee hours of the morning Tuesday, if you looked past the rotting mounds of garbage on the sidewalk and the fact that most of the customers were carrying firearms, the city — right or wrong — looked a bit familiar again. For a while, it was just another night at a Bourbon Street strip joint, a little exhilarating and a little depressing at the same time. Up on stage was Britni Carrubba, who fled Hurricane Katrina with nothing but the clothes on her back. For three weeks she had waded through hell, shuffling from shelter...

SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- The City Council on Friday approved an ordinance requiring strippers to wear their permits while they are on stage. City Councilman Chip Haass pushed the measure, adopted unanimously by the 11-member council, as a way to make it easier for police to identify dancers. But Jim Deegear, a lawyer for several strip clubs in the city, said it would put strippers in danger by making it easier for an obsessed customer to find out a dancer's real name and where she lives. He said the measure is part of an effort to drive strip clubs out...

TORONTO and OTTAWA -- Ottawa cancelled an easy route into Canada for foreign-born strippers yesterday, effectively killing the controversial so-called exotic-dancer program. But the move by Human Resources Minister Joe Volpe left the door open for strip club owners to apply on a case-by-case basis to bring in dancers from abroad, if they can convince the government there is a dearth of locals willing to do the job. A political scandal has dogged Immigration Minister Judy Sgro ever since it came to light that she granted a temporary-resident permit to a Romanian stripper who came to Canada under the program....