Free Republic

Former Baltimore mayor Martin O'Malley said that if he runs for president, he'll launch his campaign in Baltimore: "We haven't had an agenda for America's cities probably since Jimmy Carter ... We have left cities to fend for themselves. ... But look, the structural problems that we have in our economy, the way we ship jobs and profits abroad, the way we failed to invest in our infrastructure and failed to invest in American cities, we are creating the conditions. Please, Speaker Boehner and his crocodile tears about the $130 million, that is a spit in the bucket compared to...

An investigation into the death of Baltimore resident Freddie Gray has found no evidence that his fatal injuries were caused during the videotaped arrest and interaction with police officers, according to multiple law enforcement sources.

A CBS4 investigation has learned that two Transportation Security Administration screeners at Denver International Airport have been fired after they were discovered manipulating passenger screening systems to allow a male TSA employee to fondle the genital areas of attractive male passengers. It happened roughly a dozen times, according to information gathered by CBS4. According to law enforcement reports obtained during the CBS4 investigation, a male TSA screener told a female colleague in 2014 that he "gropes" male passengers who come through the screening area at DIA. "He related that when a male he finds attractive comes to be screened by...

A jury has reached guilty verdicts in 11 of 12 defendants in the Atlanta Public Schools cheating trial. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter read verdicts for 26 counts Wednesday afternoon. Only one person, Dessa Curb, was found not-guilty on all counts. The decision comes 7 years after the first investigation by the Atlanta Journal Constitution. A grand jury indicted 35 educators in March 2013. Twenty-one took plea deals, and another defendant, former APS Superintendent Beverly Hall, died.

Did three Hillary Clinton aides use the private 'clintonemail.com' server while she ran the State Department? Two news outlets say it's soWeekly Standard says State Dept. has evidence Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, Clinton's top two aides at State, used 'clintonemail.com' addresses Gawker claims Abedin had one along with Phillippe Reines, Clinton's top communications strategist while she was in Washington Public records on Nexis show Abedin used her clintonemail.com address but the other two haven't been confirmed Clinton is still embroiled in controversy over admissions that she exclusively used a private, non-government email server while in office At least three...

Catherine Herridge reported on "America's Newsroom" today about ISIS's expansion into Libya, which includes training camps and support networks. Herridge said that a senior U.S. intelligence official confirmed that more than a dozen ISIS members from Iraq and Syria are now operating in Libya, but the U.S. does not have the targeting authority to take them out. Herridge added that counter-terrorism sources have confirmed that the new support base for ISIS in eastern Libya is now providing "tangible assistance" in the form of training camps around the city of Derna, in addition to a growing number of Libyan fighters joining...

On September 30, 2005 a newspaper in Denmark Jyllands-Posten published an article under the headline, "The face of Muhammad" – an article that included 12 cartoons of the prophet. After the cartoons were published there were riots in many cities around the world. On February 7, 2006, the New York Times ran an editorial, explaining why the newspaper of record would not show its readers the cartoons. "The New York Times and much of the rest of the nation's news media have reported on the cartoons but refrained from showing them. That seems as reasonable choice for news organizations that...

What is best in life? Well, experiencing Tuesday night's meltdown at Democratic Underground is certainly nowhere near the top of the list, but it was halfway entertaining--for a Tuesday night. Below are the greatest hits from a night filled with intense rage, frustration, more rage, sadness and confusion among users at the interactive leftist website. FLyellowdog: "This whole election is leaving me with some very scary feelings. And I'm simply sick…physically sick ... and emotionally drained." sammy750: "The GOP is the biggest scandal of the century. Huge voter suppression and fixing the voting machines so they didn't register right. The...

As an atheist, I cannot help wondering when this scrim of pretense and delusion will be finally burned away—either by the clear light of reason or by a surfeit of horror meted out to innocents by the parties of God. It may be true that no faith teaches people to massacre innocents exactly—but innocence, as the President surely knows, is in the eye of the beholder. Are apostates "innocent"? Blasphemers? Polytheists? Islam has the answer, and the answer is "no." But there is now a large industry of obfuscation designed to protect Muslims from having to grapple with these truths....

The nation's health law opens the door for transgender people to gain coverage for gender reassignment surgeries they previously could not afford. Devin Payne had gone years without health insurance—having little need and not much money to pay for it. Then Payne, who had a wife and four children, realized she could no longer live as a man. In her early 40s, she changed her name, began wearing long skirts and grew out her sandy blond hair. And she started taking female hormones, which caused her breasts to develop and the muscle mass on her 6-foot one-inch frame to shrink....

The murder of American reporter James Foley, by an apparently British IS Jihadist brings up a question: If Radical Islam is a cancer on the world, what is the carcinogen? What causes this level of radicalism to foment and metastasize? Until this question can be accurately answered, we will not stop it. It has continued to grow faster than we can "cut it out", it has continued to come back even when we excise it, and and will continue to grow faster than we can cut it out.

CAIR Confronts Allen West

Yityish Aynaw, an Ethiopian-Jewish beauty, was crowned Miss Israel in 2013. Now, it seems she's been summoned for reserve duty. Here's a photo of Aynaw holding a gun in uniform, tweeted by @StandWithUs:

DAYTONA BEACH — A Daytona Beach father who walked in on a man sexually battering his 11-year-old son Friday said he did what he had a right to do and beat the man unconscious leaving him in a puddle of blood, according to a 9-1-1 call. "I just walked in on a grown man molesting ...," the upset father told a dispatcher. "And I got him in a bloody puddle for you officer." Police responding to the Daytona Beach home at 1:07 a.m. Friday after the father called them found Raymond Frolander, 18, of Holly Hill lying motionless on the...

Would subsidize schooling, health care, lawyers for illegal immigrantsPresident Obama’s new border spending request will pay for schooling, health care and lawyers for the unaccompanied illegal immigrant children surging across the border, officials told Congress on Thursday as they pleaded for quick action on the $3.7 billion package. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Congress must approve the money this month, saying that if nothing is done before lawmakers leave for a monthlong August vacation, one of his agencies will have to cut its other immigration enforcement in order to hold and transport the children.

Pretty much everyone hates the Internal Revenue Service. And I realize this is an especially strange time to stick up for the agency, given the suspicious disappearance of a few thousand key e-mails that Congress wants to see. But right now, the IRS desperately needs a champion. Our country’s fiscal future — not to mention taxpayers’ collective mental health — depends on it. The IRS generates way more money than it spends, after all. For every dollar appropriated to the IRS in the 2013 fiscal year, the agency collected $255, according to the national taxpayer advocate’s office. That’s a darn...

THE LOOP — Justin Jedlica has had 140 plastic surgery procedures in the last 15 years. The 33-year-old Trump Tower resident has 12 implants in his torso that mimic shapely arm and chest muscles, 15 silicone injections in his buttocks and 11 in his face. The spate of procedures earned him the nickname "the Human Ken Doll" when he made his first TV appearance on a 2012 20/20 special called "Extreme Plastic Surgery." Mimicking the Mattel doll wasn't his intention when he had his first nose job shortly after his 18th birthday, but he ran with it. Today, Jedlica makes...

Sonja Power is a 17-year-old girl who was told her Aikido class would be divided by gender, men on one side, women on the other, in order to accommodate a Muslim man who enrolled in the class. The class was run out of the Lakeside Community Centre, owned by the city of Halifax. The city and the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission both supported this gender segregation. All of that bugs me, but it was what Sonja and her mother, Michele Walsh, told Sun News was the reaction of the sensei when they complained. "You better get used to it...

The family of an abducted Louisiana woman rescued her and killed her abductor Friday. Bethany Arceneaux, 29, was kidnapped Wednesday by Scott Thomas, 29, as she picked their child up from daycare, police said. Police and family members in Lafayette Parish began searching for her immediately. Her family found her first. Police said the family was searching the area and heard a woman scream. About a half-dozen men kicked in the door of the house and confronted Scott, who began stabbing Arceneaux, police said. What happened next is not clear, police said, but gunfire erupted and police that arrived at...

Illinoisans with a felony on their records will no longer be asked about their criminal past when they apply for state jobs. Promoting the decision to what he calls "Ban the Box," State Rep. LaShawn K. Ford (D-Chicago) says the governor's administrative order doesn't mean private employers will be required to hire ex-cons. It simply means applications for state government jobs will no longer include a box indicating whether an applicant has pled guilty, or been convicted of a criminal offense, other than a minor traffic violation. State agencies would still be allowed to conduct background checks, and request information...