Free Republic

USA Today blames Mexican cartel and Latin America violence on small-time American gun stores, but then says the quiet part out loud. From Nick Penzenstadler’s exclusive article at USA Today: Hacked data reveals which US gun sellers are behind Mexican cartel violenceA massive leak of Mexican military intelligence has exposed for the first time in two decades U.S. gun shops and smugglers tied to 78,000 firearms recovered south of the border – and which types of guns are being trafficked. The nuggets of information are among roughly 10 million records hacked by an anonymous collective known as ‘Guacamaya’ and shared...

Christian activists will show people this Saturday how to turn weapons of violence into instruments of peace using a hammer − and some faith − to forge guns into garden tools. The event, hosted by Delaware and Maryland churches belonging to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is an effort to get people to think differently about guns and how to handle conflict without violence. The "Youtherans," young people who attend Lutheran churches in Delaware and Maryland, are also organizing this free event at St. Mark's Lutheran Church, north of Wilmington. "It's to say that there's a different way," said...

Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana recently wrote an opinion column that was critical of trans athletes and USA Today-owned newspapers deleted the piece without even notifying Kennedy. This is reminiscent of the time in 2020 when Republican Senator Tom Cotton wrote an op-ed for the New York Times that was censored because it sent the paper’s staffers into fits of rage. Cotton had suggested using the military to control the riots in the ‘summer of love.’ Isn’t it fascinating that this censorship always seems to go in only one direction? ... Kennedy commented: “They think they are the speech...

<p>The former top prosecutor in Baltimore, convicted of fraud for lying about financial hardship during the pandemic in order to buy a beach house with money from the federal government, will serve no prison time.</p><p>Marilyn Mosby, 44, was sentenced to 12 months of house arrest, 100 hours of community service and three years of supervised release Thursday, Erek Barron, United States Attorney for the District of Maryland announced.</p>

The Department of Defense has awarded Fincantieri Marinette Marine a contract to build two U.S. Navy frigates, according to the daily Pentagon contract announcements.The contract, valued at more than $1 billion, is for two Constellation-class Frigates, FFG 66 and FFG 67. The Navy selected the company to build the Constellation-class frigate in 2020.“The team at Fincantieri Marine Group is committed to support the U.S. Navy, and the Constellation program will be the centerpiece of our portfolio for decades,” said Marco Galbiati, CEO of Ficantieri Marinette Marine, in a news release.The company received the contract for the lead ship of the...

<p>Kimberly Helmus still gets chills thinking about her first rage ritual.</p><p>Two-and-a-half years ago after her divorce, the cybersecurity engineer embarked on a retreat to Scotland with Mia Banducci − an author and self-described "Spiritual Fairy Godmother," better known online as Mia Magik.</p>

A Marine truck mechanic received a medal typically awarded to more senior service members for saving the Defense Department more than $140 million through work he began as a teenage lance corporal. Cpl. Gage Barbieri, now 21, received the Meritorious Service Medal on Friday from Col. Damon Burrows, commanding officer of 2nd Marine Division’s Headquarters Battalion. Barbieri is only the second Marine corporal to receive the Meritorious Service Medal since at least 2008, Burrows wrote on LinkedIn

A 16-year-old boy spray painted LGBTQ graffiti Wednesday outside of the Central Catholic High School chapel, Lafayette police said. The vandal struck in the early afternoon Wednesday, and school officials covered up the vandalism on the walls with plywood. The vandal returned about 6:10 p.m. Wednesday and spray painted new messages on the plywood covering the earlier graffiti. The graffiti read, "Queer Lives Matter" and "God loves trans kids too," police said. The vandalism included inverted crosses spray painted on the chapel's stained-glass windows, according to police reports.

Six years after Mike Braun came out on top in Indiana's first Trumpian Idol contest and won election to the U.S. Senate, he has coasted to the Republican nomination for governor. It shouldn't have been quite so easy. On paper, Braun faced one of the most competitive statewide fields in Indiana history. At least three Republican contenders — Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch, Brad Chambers and Eric Doden — had plausible cases to make for being stronger candidates than Braun. Braun is an uninspiring U.S. senator who ran an uninspiring gubernatorial campaign. That turned out to be good enough because Braun...

Days after Donald Trump trashed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on social media, a poll released by Florida Atlantic University and Mainstreet Research suggests the 2024 presumptive Republican nominee has some reason to worry about the third party candidate. The national poll showed President Joe Biden leading Trump by a single-point in a statistical dead heat, 47% to 46%, among likely voters. But when RFK Jr. was added as an option, Biden's lead grew to 5 points, 44% to 39%. The survey of 1,046 adults has a 3-point margin of error.

<p>At least nine protesters were handcuffed and loaded into police cruisers at a peaceful, pro-Palestinian protest Wednesday at the University of Texas hosted by the Palestine Solidarity Committee, a registered student group and a chapter of the national Students for Justice in Palestine. And several more were arrested at the university's South Lawn.</p>

<p>Where to begin?</p><p>Well, the film (in select theaters now, expands nationwide Friday) imagines the lives of a family of Sasquatches (aka Bigfoot) over the course of four seasons. The dialogue consists of grunts, moans and howls, and some scenes of Sasquatch sex and scatological pranks. For 90 minutes.</p>

(Live Action) — In an op-ed for USA Today, elections columnist Sara Pequeño admits the real reason that abortion advocates are fighting so hard to stop a prenatal development video from being shown to students in schools. It isn’t the video’s so-called “inaccuracy,” even though they repeatedly claim it will “mislead” people because it tracks the baby’s development from fertilization instead of from the mother’s last menstrual period (an estimated two weeks before the baby’s existence). The specific issue they take with Live Action’s “Meet Baby Olivia” video is that by sharing a realistic look at the development of preborn...

<p>The Florida State Guard ought to be outfitted in brown shirts.</p><p>Ditch the military-style camos and other trappings of a well-supervised, highly trained, federally-authorized professional army that helps keep order in the aftermath of hurricanes and other natural disasters.</p><p>The Florida State Guard is more like a cosplay group of Y’all Qaeda commandos taking full advantage of the Florida taxpayer-provided hand-to-hand combat lessons.</p>

<p>Chrissy Reifschneider had just left rehab to treat her heroin addiction in 2017 when she started taking tianeptine, popularly dubbed “gas station heroin." The 41-year-old from Alabama was struggling with low energy, so a family member who worked at a gas station recommended she try the pills.</p>

<p>In August 2020, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and injured a third. He claimed self-defense. Then, in fall 2021, he was acquitted of criminal accusations in a controversial, heated trial, and became a hero of far-right politicians and Second Amendment advocates.</p>

<p>Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough is overruling plans to ban the famous Times Square kiss photo marking the end of World War II from all department health care facilities, a move criticized as political correctness run amok.</p><p>The ban was announced internally at VA medical facilities late last month in a memo from RimaAnn Nelson, the Veterans Health Administration’s top operations official. Employees were instructed to “promptly” remove any depictions of the famous photo and replace it with imagery deemed more appropriate.</p>

<p>When Attorney General Ken Paxton stopped in Bastrop to stump for a Republican candidate for the Texas House, the state's top lawyer took the opportunity to let voters know he has an election day wish list that has been simmering for years.</p>

<p>For more than an hour, sheriff's deputies, firefighters and other volunteers fought to pull Angela Chao out of a vehicle submerged in a pond on a Central Texas ranch, a picturesque location that complicated the rescue attempt, according to a report obtained Friday by the American-Statesman.</p>