Free Republic

Detroit’s financial mess has put the Detroit Zoo on the endangered list. City council members said their vote was not to close the zoo, but some felt they were being bullied by a state deadline and lawmakers who look down on Detroit. Council member Barbara-Rose Collins said the state’s deadline for the city to sign over zoo operations to the Zoological society boiled down to disrespect. Many council members felt they were being bullied into handing over zoo operations without an agreement they were comfortable with. Some city council members said they were largely opposed to giving $10 million in...

Governor Blanco just said on Fox News Channel that Mayor Nagin does not have the authority to order evacuation of New Orleans, that the authority rests with her....and she doesn't have evidence that it is unsafe!

Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2005 10:59 p.m. EDT Gov. Blanco, Mayor Nagin at Each Others Throats Open warfare appears to have broken out between Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, with Blanco challenging on Wednesday Nagin's authority to order a mandatory citywide evacuation. The mayor certainly has ordered that, but the governor, and that would be me, will have to enforce it or implement it," Gov. Blanco told the Fox News Channel. Story Continues Below The Louisiana Democrat said she wanted more time to determine "whether or not there's an absolute justification for that," saying she feared...

MIAMI — Former Broward County elections supervisor Miriam Oliphant said today she will sue Gov. Jeb Bush, claiming race was a factor in his decision to remove her from office amid allegations of negligence and a botched 2002 primary. "My civil rights have been violated and my constitutional rights have been violated by the state of Florida," Oliphant said. Oliphant and her attorney, Ellis Rubin, announced the plans for a federal lawsuit one day after the state Senate voted 32-7 along racial lines to uphold Bush’s 2003 decision to suspend Oliphant, who is black. Oliphant’s supporters in the Senate argued...

It started with the mind-numbing reading of a 200-page pension overhaul bill, erupted into a remarkably bitter name-calling match between House Republicans and Democrats, and ended with a GOP lawmaker summoning Capitol Police to evict an outraged gaggle of Democratic colleagues from a congressional library. Ultimately, nobody was assaulted or arrested. But the brouhaha that exploded yesterday morning in the Ways and Means Committee marked the most bitterly partisan spat thus far in the 108th Congress, a place already known for unusually angry relations between the Republican majority and the Democratic minority, especially in the House. The Longworth building showdown...