Free Republic

Despite setback, TransCanada says it is still committedNebraska regulators on Tuesday shot down a request from TransCanada to reconsider the proposed path of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, the latest in a series of setbacks for the $8 billion project and one that leaves its future very much in doubt. Nebraska’s Public Service Commission (PSC) last month green-lighted a route through its state, but the approved path wasn’t the one TransCanada prefers. The Canadian company, which has been trying to complete the Canada-to-Texas project for the past decade, said it would ask Nebraska officials to rethink their decision and amend...

For the first time in years, there is an emerging consensus that the biggest racket in national politics deserves to end. Earlier this month, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and 10 other Republican senators held a luncheon summit at the White House with President Trump with the goal of drastically reforming the Renewable Fuel Standard, the federal mandate that annually funnels $13.5 billion from the wallets of American fuel and food consumers into the coffers of agribusiness giants. Before the national nightmare of Obamacare, there was the RFS, the most sweeping and intrusive federal intervention in the American economy undertaken in...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — More than a dozen states banded together Monday to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to block a California law requiring any eggs sold there to come from hens that have space to stretch out in their cages. In a lawsuit filed directly to the high court, the states allege that California's law has cost consumers nationwide up to $350 million annually because of higher egg prices since it took effect in 2015. The lawsuit argues that California's requirements violate the U.S. Constitution's interstate commerce clause and are pre-empted by federal law. A federal appeals court...

Lincoln businessman Todd Watson announced Tuesday he will mount a "conservative Constitutionalist" challenge to Sen. Deb Fischer in the 2018 Republican Senate primary election. "Our current U.S. Senate needs a makeover," Watson said in a news release before making his official announcement on Facebook. "Congressional winning from a camp that is corrupted, compromised and lacks conviction on the inside will not happen," he said. Watson was critical of Fischer's role as a member of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's leadership team, arguing that "health care, securing the border, spending cuts, defunding Planned Parenthood and reforming immigration were always impossible" because...

University of Nebraska officials announced Friday that new steps are being taken in relation to an incident involving a conservative student Aug. 25. NU President Hank Bounds said the graduate student-lecturer who called a conservative student a “neo-fascist” for recruiting for Turning Point USA would no longer teach at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

OMAHA, Neb. - 6 News has learned an illegal immigrant set to be deported has now been accused of sexually assaulting Metro children. He's also accused of trying to intimidate his alleged victims from behind bars. Victor Garcia-Fuentes is already in custody at the Douglas County Jail on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement hold. Now he faces 4 counts of child sexual assault. Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine told 6 News: "3 of them are contact charges. 1 is a penetration charge. So these are very serious charges." Kleine said the children range in age from 5 to 12 years-old....

If all the world’s a stage, Creighton University students in this semester’s Theatre for Social Justice course are learning ways art can help them leave that stage a little brighter, cleaner, better. Amy Lane, PhD, assistant professor and coordinator of Creighton’s theatre and dance programs, is teaching the Theatre for Social Justice class focused on climate change. It culminates in a performance of plays penned by internationally renowned playwrights and the students themselves. From sustainability in agriculture to ministering to climate refugees, the planned performances aim to touch on several different aspects of the crisis. Lane said students in the...

Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse issued a statement asking President Trump is he is “recanting” the oath he took to defend and uphold the Constitution after Trump suggesting revoking the “licenses” of network news organizations. “Mr. President: Words spoken by the President of the United States matter,” the Republican senator wrote in a statement. “Are you tonight recanting of the oath you took on Jan. 20 to preserve, protect, and defend the 1st Amendment?” Sasse’s tweet came after Trump sparked backlash from both conservatives and liberals by saying he should censor certain news outlets. “Network news has become so partisan, distorted...

TEKAMAH, Neb. — A Tekamah man went missing early Monday morning and family members said they have been searching for him since 9 a.m. Police were notified around 11 a.m. that Rolland Metz, 75, was gone from the Tekamah Health and Rehabilitation Nursing Home located near M and 9th streets. Advertisement Family said Metz has Parkinson's and dementia has missed two rounds of medication already and is deemed incompetent. They said Metz was last seen wearing blue jeans, black tennis shoes, a black vest puffy, a cream button up long-sleeved shirt and a blue ball cap. Anyone with information is...

When you have a student-on-student shouting match, the First Amendment may be stretched to the breaking point. When professors join in the fun, as happened recently at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, it may well tip the balance, for better or for worse. "On August 25, University of Nebraska–Lincoln sophomore Kaitlyn Mullen set up a literature table outside the student union to promote Turning Point USA, a libertarian/conservative campus-based organization," David Moshman writes on the academe blog maintained by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). "PUSA proclaims its support for free speech but maintains Professor Watchlist, a blacklist...

This year’s homecoming royalty at Lincoln High assumed their respective thrones through a gender-neutral voting system that school officials hope is more inclusive. “It was a simple way we could be more inclusive to all our students and still bridge that with some traditions that we and other schools have in terms of homecoming,” said Principal Mark Larson. Lincoln High is the first LPS high school to make such a change. But Lincoln High joins a growing number of high schools and colleges across the country moving to gender-neutral roles for homecoming royalty. Those include the University of Nebraska at...

A Catholic priest has been dismissed from his parish in Nebraska after asking middle schoolers if they've ever masturbated or watched pornography during weekly confession. SnipDeacon Tim McNeil, chancellor and spokesman for the Archdiocese of Omaha, said the 26-year-old is an inexperienced priest who went overboard in his questioning and was probably just 'trying to be too helpful.'

Sixty years ago, a 1957 Chevy moved slowly down U.S. 77 near the Nebraska 2 intersection guided by wire coils buried in the highway. It was the first real highway demonstration of a system its inventor and promoters believed would allow cars to be guided by signals from electronic wiring buried in the highway, rather than by human drivers. Promoters hoped the Nebraska experiment would usher in an era of “electronic chauffeurs,” which would eliminate accidents caused by driver drowsiness or carelessness. The experiment took place because of the persistence of one man, a state traffic engineer, Leland Hancock.

After simmering on social media and conservative news sites for a weekend, images of University of Nebraska-Lincoln employees protesting a student recruiting for Turning Point USA drew to a full boil by the following Monday. The email inboxes of NU's top administrators began filling with indignation and disgust Aug. 28, messages aimed at a handful of university employees who protested the conservative student organization. Thursday, UNL said it had reassigned Courtney Lawton, a graduate teaching assistant in the English department, to nonteaching duties following the school's internal investigation and external reaction to the event. Video and photographs taken by student...

The NFL opened the 2017 season Thursday night to its lowest television ratings in eight years. NBC’s broadcast of the Kansas City Chiefs’ stunning 42-27 upset of the New England Patriots drew an overnight rating of 14.6. That’s down nearly 12% from the 16.5 posted by the Denver Broncos-Carolina Panthers season kickoff from a year ago. That’s bad news for the NFL since the ratings had also dropped for the 2016 opener, down approximately 7% from the 17.7 rating posted the previous year, when the Patriots and Pittsburgh Steelers played in the first game of the season.

Kaitlyn Mullen was back at her table in front of the Nebraska Union on Tuesday, pushing “Socialism Sucks” and “Big Government Sucks” fliers and stickers into the hands of interested students passing by. Mullen, a sophomore from Highlands Ranch, Colorado, became a star in conservative media circles after video of her confrontations with University of Nebraska-Lincoln employees went viral over the weekend. Mullen's fame was not limited to the internet. On Tuesday, her exploits were enough to lure some UNL students to hear what she was pitching. "Do you like free markets?" she begins, turning the conversation to Turning Point...

The Nebraska Board of Education is debating whether to include climate change in public school science classes and you can probably guess who is weighing in on its behalf. "Climate change is happening," David Harwood, a geology professor with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, told the board. "It is caused by human activity." What's he going to do when his next global warming protest gets cancelled because of a snow storm, in the middle of April?

LINCOLN — Female recruits for the Nebraska State Patrol were required to undergo “medically unnecessary and sexually invasive” medical examinations as part of their pre-employment evaluation, a state trooper alleged Tuesday in a federal lawsuit. Trooper Brienne Splittgerber also alleged that leaders of the State Patrol, over almost three years, failed to adequately investigate the “outrageous” exams of female genitals done by a male Lincoln doctor, and then worked to cover up the matter. Her lawsuit, filed by Omaha attorney Tom White, asks for unspecified damages for creating a hostile working environment for female recruits and causing emotional distress. A...

Seven times. A prosecutor said Tuesday that Nemias Garcia-Velasco, 32, charged in the death of a passenger in a fiery July 5 crash, has been removed from the United States a total of seven times — five “voluntary returns” in 2005 and following two deportation hearings, one in 2009 and another in 2011. Garcia-Velasco, who is from Mexico, also once was convicted of making a false claim to U.S. citizenship, Ryan Lindberg of the Douglas County Attorney’s Office said in court.

After refusing to rule out a potential 2020 primary challenge to President Donald Trump, “Never Trump” Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) spoke to about 200 Republicans in Story County, Iowa on Friday evening. Sasse’s excuse was that he was in Iowa because he lost a college football bet and his kids were participating in a triathlon this weekend in the state.. In an interview before his Iowa trip, the insufferable and sanctimonious Sasse would not rule out a potential 2020 presidential run. When CNN asked about his potential presidential ambitions on Sunday, Sasse punted in a way that would have made...