Free Republic

DADE CITY — There's an arms race taking place in law enforcement as weapons manufacturers battle each other for the lucrative right to arm officers. The Pasco County Sheriff's Office is the latest beneficiary of that duel. Last year the agency said goodbye to its old .40-caliber Glock 23 handguns and recently finished equipping its deputies with .40-caliber SIG Sauer P320s. That's because sheriff's officials said SIG Sauer offered to replace their entire arsenal at no cost, sealing the deal. That's a victory for the New Hampshire gun manufacturer over its Austrian rival Glock. Both are among the world's top...

Mail arrives in my inbox all the time, telling me that by going to Mexico I have sold out, fled, abandoned the United States. I’m a coward and a traitor, just like Lord Haw Haw, and Kim Philby, and probably hate America more than Barack Obama does. It is is irrational. They think that just because I went to Mexico, I left the US. They don’t understand. I didn’t leave the United States. It left me. It was a bait-and-switch operation. I signed on to one country, and they slipped another in under me. I want my money back. In...

In the summer of 1925, a woman put her 2-week old son in a shoebox and dropped him off with a neighbor because she couldn’t take care of him. James Gleason has been born prematurely, said his daughter, Barbara Korchak. “He wasn’t expected to live,” Korchak said. But he did, and in summer 1943, he turned 18 during a bloody World War II battle on the island of New Georgia, where he was saving lives as a Navy combat corpsman assigned to a secret unit called the Marine Raiders. Gleason earned the nickname “Doc” during his time with the Raiders....

The reviews are in. Five days after the cable TV/Internet switchover to Frontier Communications from Verizon FiOS in the Tampa Bay market, I'm giving Frontier's performance a "C-" with a strong recommendation to improve. Quickly. I know. Folks and businesses that have no Internet or TV services give Frontier an "F" while those who can't even tell there was any switchover in companies here ask "what's the problem?" while privately expressing thanks for dodging a bullet. For Frontier, spending more than $10 billion to buy Verizon's FiOS businesses in Tampa Bay, and urban parts of Texas and California is a...

Al Sharpton's 1992 Off The Pigs Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpZ0RwtvZmk

Air Force Gen. Lori Robinson will be nominated as the next head of U.S. Northern Command, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced Friday. If approved, she would be the first female head of a combatant command. The U.S. military divides the world into geographic regions that are each overseen by a four-star general or admiral directing military operations across the branches of service. None of those combatant commanders has ever been a woman. Northern Command, or Northcom, is charged with defending the U.S. homeland. The current commander of NorthCom, Admiral Bill Gortney, is also the commander of the well-known North American...

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has revealed that 124 illegal immigrant criminals released from jail by the Obama administration since 2010 have been subsequently charged with murder. A Center for Immigration Studies report on the data from ICE to the Senate Judiciary Committee added that the committee is not releasing the names of the murder suspects. "The criminal aliens released by ICE in these years — who had already been convicted of thousands of crimes — are responsible for a significant crime spree in American communities, including 124 new homicides. Inexplicably, ICE is choosing to release some criminal aliens multiple...

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump will hold a town hall meeting in Tampa today on the eve of the Florida primary. Trump will speak at 2 p.m. at the Tampa Convention Center. Admission are free, but spectators need to register at the Eventbrite website. Security has been beefed up in the wake of protests at recent Trump rallies that have become violent. Trump called off a rally in Chicago on Friday due to concerns about possible confrontations with protesters and supporters, and on Saturday a man was arrested after jumping a fence and attempting to rush the stage while Trump...

Kasich Pledges to Submit Comprehensive Immigration Reform Plan to Congress in First 100 Days VIDEO AT LINK

February was the third-biggest month on record for gun background checks, according to data released Wednesday by the FBI. Background checks, which the FBI conducts every time someone tries to buy a gun from a federally licensed dealer, rose to 2.6 million in February, according to the bureau. February's total falls short of the record set in December, 2015, when 3.3 million background checks were recorded. The second biggest month was in December, 2012, the month of the Sandy Hook school massacre that killed 26, when the FBI logged 2.8 million checks. Background checks, which are conducted by the National...

"With a one-way ticket home to Iraq in his hands and seven months' worth of frustration over intransigent German bureaucracy in his heart, Gazwan Abdulhasen Abdulla gave up on his dreams of a better life in Europe." "I wanted to live in peace with my family as far away from war as possible," said Abdulla, a 37-year-old who had worked as a truck driver in Iraq. "But what I've seen in Europe is not what I dreamed about. It's not what [the smugglers] told me it would be. "The food was terrible, so disgusting that not even animals should be...

Last night, President Obama held a fundraiser in the San Francisco Bay area, where he told presumably wealthy donors to be concerned about inequality and the wave of populism that's sweeping the nation. Oh, and did I forget to mention that one ticket to this event cost $33,400 (via the Hill): Obama has previously expressed surprise by the enthusiasm generated by Trump and Sanders. But he urged donors attending the $33,400-per-ticket fundraiser to understand that populist candidates in both parties are tapping into something real. "Despite all the progress we've made ... what is true is that people are anxious,”...

FBI Director James Comey said Tuesday one of the phones used by the killers in the San Bernardino, California, attacks remains inaccessible to investigators more than two months after 14 people were fatally shot. Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey cited the case as an example of how encryption is affecting counterterrorism efforts. But he said the dilemma of bad guys "going dark" is mostly affecting state and local law enforcement officials who are trying to solve murder, drug and car accident cases. Companies are increasingly making devices such as cellphones with encryption that allows only the people communicating...

Iraqi migrant Rapes A 10-year-old Boy At A Swimming Pool In Vienna And Tells Police It Was A 'sexual emergency' Because He Hadn't Had Sex In Months * - Migrant, 20, arrived in Austria via Balkans in September and was taxi driver * - Raped boy in cubicle of Resienbad pool - then had fun on the diving board * - Told police he knew it was wrong - but he had not had sex for four months * - Said that he was not 'always sick' as he has a wife and a child back in Iraq A 10-year-old...

I half expect Angela Merkel to mutter, "Ive always depended on the kindness of migrants," echoing Blanche Du Bois as she descends into madness after reality blows her delusion and self-denial to smithereens. But that was fiction - this is fact. This policy of rewriting reality is a death sentence for the besieged Europeans and the whole of the continent. The thousands of attackers on New Year's Eve were Muslim migrants. No amount of denial, whitewash and outright lies is going to alter that fact or the catastrophic consequences of such denial. File this story alongside, "the Islamic State is...

Here's an idea. If we can't outlaw guns or confiscate them, tax them. Make it a law to register everyone's guns and then charge a tax yearly for each one of them. Slowly raise the taxes every year (due to an increasing bureaucracy to handle the paperwork) so they become too expensive to own. When and if the taxes are overdue, take out a lien on the guns and foreclose on them. Hold them until exorbitant taxes, storage and lawyer fees (more than the gun is worth) are paid. If not paid in a timely fashion, they will be destroyed....

South Carolina Barber, His Client Fatally Shoot Armed Robber During Stickup: 'I Was Thinking We Had To Keep Everybody Safe' A would-be South Carolina robber who tried to stick up a barber shop was killed Friday when the lead stylist and his client pulled out their concealed weapons and opened fire on the intruder. A second suspect is still on the lam following the raid at Next Up Barber Shop in Columbia, officials said. Store surveillance video caught the harrowing invasion -- and the resulting shooting. The shop was packed with customers -- including young children -- when two gunmen...

The gun control movement's latest hobby horse is the smart gun. President Barack Obama included federal support for smart gun research in his recent executive orders, delighting activists who insist that a locking mechanism capable of preventing criminals from firing stolen weapons would surely be popular with gun buyers -- if only the gun industry would drop its opposition. The bad news for anyone looking to the smart gun as a technological quick fix for gun violence is that, absent a government mandate requiring all guns to be "smart," a robust market is unlikely to materialize. And even if new...

A FRUSTRATED refugee centre worker has revealed shocking incidents of cheating, death threats and demands for a luxury life from migrants. In a searing indictment of the behaviour of some refugees, the woman said her idealism has been eroded and virtually destroyed. At first she said was enthusiastic in her role of helping process tens of thousands of migrants arriving in Germany on a weekly basis. Now, she says she is disillusioned, disheartened and on the verge of quitting due to demands and sexual harrassment. She told Welt am sonntag newspaper she took on the role at the refugee centre...

Why would any rational country import this? It's not just the showers. It's the subway, the refugee centers, etc. INVASION EUROPE Germany to Muslim refugees: 'Please don't poop in showers' Cheryl Chumley, WND, January 20, 2016 Cartoons, posters used in new anti-rape campaign A poster in Germany demonstrates via cartoon image that men shouldn't grope women. In the wake of widespread sexual assaults on women during New Year's Eve celebrations at choice spots in Germany, much of which was alleged to have been committed by recent refugees and migrants, the government has put out some alerts and warnings aimed at...