Free Republic

I received a text message while I was driving home last week. I sent a quick reply while I was at a stoplight, but then received another message. I was near a country club, so I decided to pull into its parking lot rather than text and drive. (I act responsibly every now and then.) As I texted, I noticed that a young man, who was obviously an employee, drive by in a golf cart. After seeing me, he swung his cart around and parked perhaps 10 feet behind me. He was looking down initially, appearing to type something into...

When the Amerian Rescue Plan was passed, it included a provision setting aside $29 billion for farmers, restaurant owners and other businesses that were heavily impacted by the pandemic. The language of the bill raised eyebrows immediately because the grants and loan forgiveness being made available were to be prioritized for “socially disadvantaged” owners of such businesses. That provision became relevant to Adam Faust, a Wisconsin dairy farmer. Faust has two prosthetic legs but manages to operate his small farm with 70 dairy cows and a couple of hundred acres of feed crops for them. Keeping his business going during...

We really haven’t invested any virtual ink in the story of Jean-Marie Simon, the United Airlines passenger who was bumped from her first class seat in favor of Texas Democratic congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. After all, terrible things happening to people flying on United are pretty much dog bites man stories these days. But the response of both Jackson Lee and the airline to the kerfuffle is turning it into a bit more of a newsworthy item. The explanation for the alleged “mistake” and lack of a formal apology have resulted in United’s customer service department taking another self-inflicted wound....

Rep. Judy Chu on Monday slammed the racial slur used in an ESPN headline about NBA phenom Jeremy Lin, saying she did not believe the phrase “chink in the armor” was an innocent mistake. The California Democrat said on MSNBC that the headline on the Saturday story about the New York Knicks’s breakout star was “appalling and offensive.” The writer’s word choice, Chu said, was intentional. I think that the use of the term is appalling and offensive,” she said on MSNBC. “The ‘c’ word is for Asian Americans like the ‘n’ word is for African Americans.” ESPN Editor Anthony...

After a $6,000 investigation paid for by the Copley-Fairlawn school district, Kelley Williams-Bolar has been brought to “justice” in Ohio for trying to get her children into a better school. Williams-Bolar was tossed into jail for ten days after investigators learned that she had falsified records to indicate that her daughters lived in their grandfather’s district so that they could attend school in his district, action she took to protect her children from the failing schools in her high-crime neighborhood. Voices on the Left and the Right are responding with outrage, but what exactly do those on the Left think...

Blacks have been charged higher auto loan rates than other auto buyers, federal research says. But the gap in loan rates could narrow, and possibly disappear, as the result of recently concluded lawsuits. Blacks paid a typical auto loan rate of 7 percent for new cars, compared with 5 percent for whites in 2004, according to a consumer organization's analysis of the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances. That was the most recent survey available. And blacks were more likely than auto buyers in general to have auto loan rates higher than 15 percent. For used car loans, 27 percent...