Free Republic

WINTER HAVEN, Fla. (WFLA) - A Winter Haven man was arrested on Thursday after posting on his Facebook page that he was going to shoot members of Congress and their families, depending on which way the Supreme Court justice confirmation vote went. He also allegedly threatened to shoot any local or federal law enforcement who responded to his home on Jim Keen Boulevard. The man was identified as James Royal Patrick Jr., 53. The sheriff's office received an email tip on Wednesday advising deputies that a man was posting numerous threatening remarks on his public Facebook page. The threats were...

Highlights of Senator Mitch McConnell on the Senate floor (in 2013 I believe) decrying the Democrats' just-implemented "nuclear option" for judicial nominees. My transcript: "Once again, Senate Democrats are threatening to break the Rules of the Senate, break the Rules of the Senate, in order to change the Rules of the Senate. And over what? Over what? Over a court that doesn't even have enough work to do? ... The majority leader promised, he promised, over and over again, that he wouldn't break the rules of the Senate in order to change them. ... If you want to play games,...

For those who don’t understand how and when American journalists got in bed with the country’s spies, it started several years before Trump or Russiagate. ... It got worse when the Obama administration started spying on its domestic opponents during the Iran deal, when the Obama administration learned how far it could go in manipulating the foreign-intelligence surveillance apparatus for domestic political advantage. The purpose of the spying campaign was to help the White House fight U.S. legislators and other Americans critical of the deal—i.e., to win a domestic political battle. A pro-Israel political operative who was deeply involved in...

The rabble can’t be trusted with self-driving cars, and only companies operating fleets of them should be able to use them in dense urban areas. So say Uber and Lyft, as signatories to a new list of transportation goals developed by a group of international non-governmental organizations and titled “Shared Mobility Principles for Livable Cities.”

It's bad out there. 31 days in January, 31 cases of pretty obvious Fake News. This isn't a comprehensive list of everything that anybody might have found somewhere. I'm not trying to step on the toes of the good folks at http://www.newsbusters.com and http://www.finkelblog.com and http://www.twitchy.com. And I'm not including stuff like whether Trump said "shithole" or "shithouse" or neither, or lies from the likes of Rep. Schiff-head that are merely reported. No, these are MSM pratfalls and malpractice so bad that in most cases they had to change or delete a photo, headline, tweet, or article when loudly and...

The press' credibility problem took a turn for the worse this year. Chalk it up to bias, sloppiness, or sheer panic in response to the election of Donald Trump, but the bottom line for 2017 is that there was a shocking decline in the quality and reliability of political journalism. Instead of adjusting adeptly to Trump's easy relationship with the truth and his tendency to abuse members of the news media, a significant number of political journalists and commentators tripped over themselves to repeat every bit of gossip, thinly sourced claim and half-cocked rumor. These stories fell short of the...

SWATARA TOWNSHIP, Penn. — Three teens were arrested after listing a PlayStation 4 for sale on Facebook and attempting to rob the buyers. Police say a Pennsylvania couple thought they were buying the video game console, but instead had what appeared to be a gun pointed at them. “Anytime people go and they buy things from people on these sites, and show up, and often times, you don’t have any idea who you’re dealing with.” said Sgt. Brian Karcesky of the Swatara Township Police Department. The victims had agreed to meet the seller in a store parking lot, but two...

A state senator from Berks County has introduced legislation that would, if enacted, prohibit non-disclosure agreements in the settlement of civil claims for sexual assault or harassment. -- snip -- She wants victims to be fully empowered to speak up about what happened, who did it, and to seek damages for it; and she doesn't want to continue to permit "safe spaces" that keep bad actors' actions hidden. "I believe more and more people are seeing just how harmful these agreements are to women... and how they actually enable sexual harassment to grow like a cancer in workplaces, schools and...

A very emotional female police officer from Puerto Rico’s police department in Guaynabo calls in to a U.S. spanish speaking radio station to tell listeners what is going on in Puerto Rico. The police woman is very upset, crying and sobbing often, and shares how the Mayor of San Juan is politicizing the situation and not offering help. The call and video was recorded September 28th, and highlights the corruption within government within Puerto Rico and the Municipal authority of San Juan. --- snip --- Police Caller (cont.): I am embarrassed, as a Boricua to work for Puerto Rico’s police...

Good causes sometimes have bad consequences. Blacks, women, and other historical out-groups were right to demand equality before the law and the full respect and liberties due to any member of our civilization; but the tactics they used to “raise consciousness” have sometimes veered into the creepy and pathological, borrowing the least sane features of religious evangelism. One very notable pathology is a form of argument that, reduced to essence, runs like this: “Your refusal to acknowledge that you are guilty of {sin,racism,sexism, homophobia,oppression…} confirms that you are guilty of {sin, racism, sexism, homophobia, oppression…}.” I’ve been presented with enough...

It's promising to observe that as Islam plants its roots ever more deeply in the soil of Western Europe, more and more European gays are wising up, breaking ranks with the fools and liars in their midst who preach that the “gay community” and the ummah are natural allies, and casting their ballots for politicians whom they'd previously scorned. In April, for example, Thomas Adamson of the Associated Press reported that although gay rights groups in France had not wavered in their fierce opposition to Marine Le Pen's Front National (FN), the party now enjoyed a higher level of support...

PINE CREEK TOWNSHIP – State police say it was a forced entry followed by a shooting in the overnight hours which resulted in the death of a Jersey Shore man in Pine Creek Township. Police and the office of Clinton County District Attorney Dave Strouse released a mid-afternoon update on the incident that occurred at 1:50 a.m. Wednesday in a trailer home at 925 Fourth Street, just to the east of Avis. For the first time they said a shooting was involved in the death of Cody J. Englert, 30, of Jersey Shore. The updated release: “On 9/13/17 at approximately...

HAZLETON — Congressman Lou Barletta, a Republican from Hazleton, officially announced this morning he will challenge Democrat Bob Casey for a U.S. Senate seat next year. Barletta made the announcement this morning in a campaign video. Barletta has been a U.S. Representative for the 11th district since 2011, last winning re-election in 2016. He was one of the first Pennsylvania lawmakers to support Donald Trump's candidacy for president and he served as Pennsylvania Campaign Co-Chair and was named to the Executive Committee of President Trump’s Transition Team. "I don’t see running for the Senate to represent Pennsylvania as an opportunity....

One of Neil Gorsuch’s sharpest dissents as an appeals court judge came just six months before he was nominated for the Supreme Court. That’s when he sided with a New Mexico seventh-grader who was handcuffed and arrested after his teacher said the student had disrupted gym class with fake burps. Nearly a year later, Gorsuch sits on the nation’s highest court and the boy’s mother is asking the justices to take up her appeal. She’s using Gorsuch’s words to argue that she has a right to sue the officer who arrested her son. The court could act as early as...

SANTA CRUZ — Alix Tichelman, the heroin addict and prostitute convicted of felony involuntary manslaughter of a Google executive in 2015, was detained by Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents after she was released from a Santa Cruz jail on March 29, according to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office. Tichelman has dual citizenship in the U.S. and Canada, according to a Santa Cruz County court documents related to her bail amount.

Slightly after midnight on Monday, police in Bakersfield, Calif., received a call concerning a man thought to be brandishing a weapon in a residential neighborhood. Shortly after police arrived, 73-year-old Francisco Serna - who family members said was suffering from the early stages of dementia - walked out of his home and into his driveway. When Serna, who was unarmed, did not comply with officers' orders to remove his hands from his jacket pocket, one officer fired seven shots at him, killing him. -- snip -- The 911 call came from a household on the block where Serna resided. A...

(Full title: "Trump talks with Taiwan President: Tsai Ing-wen calls Donald, Western media flips out") The subtitles: NEW YORK — President-elect Donald Trump spoke with Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen on Friday in a major departure from decades of U.S. policy in Asia. Trump tweeted last Friday, “The President of Taiwan CALLED ME today to wish me congratulations on winning the Presidency. Thank you!” About and hour later, he then tweeted, “Interesting how the U.S. sells Taiwan billions of dollars of military equipment but I should not accept a congratulatory call.” During an approximately 10 minute phone call, Tsai and Trump...

Polk decided to register earlier this year as a Republican and plans to vote for Donald Trump for president. “I think Trump might get this straightened out,” the white-haired man with a mustache said of this country. When he went to the township building to vote, the poll workers were surprised that was his first time there. “I was taking my sister’s place who was away. He said he wasn’t interested in voting before, but wanted to vote this year,” said Martie Geringer who was serving as a poll worker.

David Michael Ansberry, 64, of San Rafael, California, was arrested this weekend in Chicago after surveillance video captured him at the stores where he bought the cellphones that he expected to trigger the explosive in the town of Nederland [Colorado], investigators said. He was easily recognizable because he is 3 feet 6 inches tall and 100 pounds and wore a ponytail, a ball cap and [was] using crutches. The Nederland police chief told investigators he spotted a man matching Ansberry's description leaving a hotel as it was being evacuated during the Oct. 11 bomb scare.

Today, Gov. Jerry Brown signed SB 443, one of the most important reforms for civil forfeiture in recent years. ... The new law is aimed at closing a loophole that allowed law enforcement to evade state protections. -- snip -- Through a federal forfeiture program called “equitable sharing,” state and local law enforcement agencies may collaborate with a federal agency, like the DEA or ICE, and forfeit seized property under federal law, even if that would circumvent California’s more stringent protections for property owners. But starting next year, [CA] agencies will first need to obtain any criminal conviction before they...