Free Republic

The state uses gun-related hashtags the most in the U.S., according to a study by the insurance company NetQuote. The company combed through more than 6 million Instagram posts from 2013 to 2015 to find about half a million posts on the photo-sharing app with gun-related hashtags and location information. Nevada posts more than 200 gun-related hashtags for every 100,000 residents, according to the study. Hawaii, Florida, Arizona and Oregon trail Nevada to make up the top five states using the most gun hashtags such as #2a, #firearms, #girlswithguns, #gunporn and #pewpew. The study also lists Paradise, a designation for...

Morse Arberry Jr. never made good on the $121,545 he promised to pay back in 2011 after illegally funneling campaign contributions from a Nevada Assembly run into his personal bank account. The North Las Vegas Democrat struck a deal in October 2011, pleading to a misdemeanor charge of fraudulent appropriation of property. In exchange, six felony charges were dropped and he avoided jail. As part of the deal, Arberry agreed to pay the state the same amount as restitution, plus a $1,000 fine. The disgraced former assemblyman is again running for public office. Last week he filed as a candidate...

Cliven Bundy’s family is using social media to plan a rally outside the federal courthouse on Thursday before his arraignment on felony charges stemming from the April 2014 armed standoff with law enforcement near Bunkerville. The defiant Nevada rancher, who is in federal custody, is to appear before U.S. Magistrate Judge Bill Hoffman at 2 p.m. Thursday. On its Facebook page, the Bundy Ranch says it’s “planning on filling the sidewalks” outside the courthouse at 333 Las Vegas Blvd. South from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and “then filling the courtroom.” A reference to the notice was also posted on...

Almost four months after University of Missouri professor Melissa Click became an international spectacle by calling for some “muscle” to have a student journalist removed from where he had every right to be, she was fired today by the university’s curators. But not necessarily for the way she tried to infringe on the student’s First Amendment right to record, but for another video that surfaced recently showing her cursing at a police officer during an earlier protest.

The leaders of a six-week armed occupation at a U.S. wildlife refuge in rural Oregon are to be arraigned on Wednesday on charges of conspiring to impede federal officers policing the compound during a fight over federal control of land in the West. Ammon Bundy and other anti-government protesters arrested in connection with the takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon were set to appear in U.S. court in Portland on Wednesday, Bundy's attorneys said in a statement. Four of the 16 protesters facing one conspiracy charge each have asked the court to wave their appearance at...

ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - A Swedish teenager rescued from Islamic State militants in Iraq has said life in the so-called caliphate was "really hard" and that she was duped into going there by her boyfriend. In her first interview since Kurdish special forces recovered her in northern Iraq, the 16-year old told a Kurdish TV channel she had met her boyfriend in mid-2014 after dropping out of school in Sweden. "First we were good but then he started to look at ISIS videos and speak about them and stuff like that," she told Kurdistan 24 in a brief interview, using...

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Two veteran Los Angeles Police Department officers have been charged with repeatedly sexually assaulting four women while on duty, the L.A. County District Attorney's Office said Wednesday. James Nichols, 44, and Luis Valenzuela, 43, worked as partners for the LAPD's Hollywood Division. Both men are accused of sexually assaulting women in various locations, including their police vehicle, between December 2008 and March 2011.

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, Inc. turned down the FBI’s demand using a 1789 federal ordinance to build a “backdoor” into iPhones allowing law enforcement to defeat encryption as he explained in a “Customer Letter” this morning posted to the company’s website. Apple’s letter kicks off the highest profile defense of the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment we are likely to see in our lifetimes

A Nevada lawmaker known more for her controversial comments than political prowess has again thrust herself into the national spotlight. Assemblywoman Michele Fiore, R-Las Vegas, traveled with two other Nevada lawmakers to Portland, Oregon, on Wednesday to talk to attorneys for Ammon and Ryan Bundy. A day before her trip, Fiore told the Review-Journal the she wanted to stand up to the federal government and defend people from its overreach. Instead, she worked with federal agents to defuse the standoff. Even before her plane landed Wednesday night, Fiore, 45, was on the phone with the last four protesters holed up...

A six-count criminal complaint was filed Thursday in Las Vegas against Bunkerville rancher Cliven Bundy stemming from the April 2014 armed standoff with federal law enforcement officers. Bundy, 69, who was arrested in Portland, Oregon, late Wednesday, was charged with leading a "massive armed assault" against authorities outside his ranch to force them to abandon roughly 400 Bundy cattle they had rounded up. He had "trespassed his cattle" on federal public lands for more than 20 years, refusing to pay for required permits and thwarting federal court orders, the complaint alleges. "Bundy was the leader, organizer and chief beneficiary of...

The city of Cleveland wants the family of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy who was fatally shot by police 15 months ago, to pay for his ambulance ride. According to a creditor's claim filed Wednesday in Cuyahoga County Probate Court, the city is asking to be reimbursed $500 "for emergency medical services rendered as the decedent's last dying expense." An itemized bill from Cleveland EMS includes $450 for "ambulance advance life support" and $50 for mileage, according to an invoice filed with the claim. "The callousness, insensitivity, and poor judgment required for the city to send a bill — its...

Cliven Bundy, the father of the man who helped start the protest at a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon, was arrested by the FBI late Wednesday night in Portland. Details of the arrest, including charges and location, were not immediately available. The FBI said those details would be released Thursday morning. Reached early Thursday at the Bundy ranch house near Bunkerville, Cliven Bundy's daughter Bailey confirmed that Cliven had been arrested but wouldn't provide details. "That's all we know at this time and we're not commenting tonight," she said. Meanwhile, federal agents closed in on the four remaining militia occupants...

The jailed leader of the occupation of a wildlife refuge in Oregon has called on elected officials from mostly Western states to voice support for free speech and civil disobedience and to visit their constituents in federal custody. At least one Nevada lawmaker , state Assemblywoman Michele Fiore , is answering the call. "It is your duty to hold federal agencies at bay, protecting the people in your state," occupation leader Ammon Bundy said according to the transcript of a telephone call he made Saturday from jail and released by one of his lawyers Monday.

In a speech that lasted almost 30 minutes, Judge Vonda Evans of Detroit laid into 47-year-old William Melendez, the former Inkster, Michigan, police officer caught on video beating an unarmed black man in January 2015. Melendez was sentenced to 13 months to 10 years in prison Tuesday for his role in the attack on Floyd Dent, a 58-year-old black auto worker, that occurred during a late night traffic stop in the struggling Wayne County suburb last winter. "The one image [from this trial] that stood out to the court was looking at Mr. Dent in his cell, shaking his head...

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) A Heinz Field police officer accused of assaulting a fan while making an arrest in November has been cleared of all charges. Police say Sgt. Stephen Matakovich was working a uniformed, off-duty secondary employment detail at a WPIAL football championship game at Heinz Field on Nov. 28, when he arrested a man for a number of charges, including public drunkenness and aggravated assault

Ammon Bundy, the rancher who led an armed occupation of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon, abruptly reversed course Tuesday and withdrew a request to be released from custody as he awaits trial on a felony conspiracy charge, court papers showed. Bundy had initially been scheduled Tuesday to ask a federal judge in Oregon to release him on electronic GPS surveillance, his attorney Mike Arnold said. But now Bundy will resubmit that request at a later time, his attorneys said in court papers. He will stay incarcerated "to gather further evidence of his statements and actions encouraging a peaceful protest...

Zika has been sexually transmitted in Texas, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday. It is the first known case of the virus being locally acquired in the continental United States in the current outbreak. The case, announced by Dallas County health officials, involved a patient who had sex with someone who had recently returned from Venezuela infected with the mosquito-borne virus. In a statement to CNN, the CDC said it confirmed the test results showing Zika present in the blood of a "nontraveler in the continental United States." They stressed that there was no risk to a...

CHICAGO (AP) — Officials with Chicago Public Schools said Tuesday they're ready to cut $100 million from school budgets and force teachers to pay more pension costs after their union rejected the latest contract offer, ratcheting up the tone of contentious negotiations that have lasted over a year. Schools CEO Forrest Claypool called the union's rejection "disheartening" and cost-cutting efforts — including potential layoffs of support staff like teachers' aides — necessary without a deal. Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis shot back, calling the announcement the "latest act of war" and saying teachers in the nation's third-largest district would...

For 26 days, armed occupiers have been holed up in a lonely federal wildlife refuge headquarters in rural Oregon. Dismissing the exhortations of the governor, ignoring the inconveniences of the residents, the occupiers stood their ground, saying they were protesting federal land policies. The government waited patiently for an opportunity to end the situation peacefully. A break came Tuesday night when Ammon Bundy, the group's leader, was arrested along with six others. An eighth person turned himself in. The group's spokesman, LaVoy Finicum, was killed. Here's a look at what happened -- and what happens next:

Mountain biker Damian Hiley was hours into a Saturday ride on a West Sycamore Canyon trail in Scripps Ranch — one he’s been excited to try out for some time — when he and his cycling group came upon a man standing in the middle of the trail, a gun at his hip.