Free Republic

US Supreme Court justices grappled with the mechanics of bump stocks on Wednesday as they weighed whether to lift a ban on the gun accessory. Fitting a bump stock to a rifle enables the weapon to fire hundreds of bullets per minute. The Trump administration banned the devices by classifying them as machine guns after they were used in the deadliest mass shooting in US history. Under the 1986 National Firearms Act, owning a machine gun is illegal. But a Texas resident and gun shop owner Michael Cargill has challenged the ban on bump stocks, saying the government has interpreted...

I am asking all Freepers to contact their federal elected officials, especially if the officials are Democrats and insist that they end the partial federal shutdown right now. After listening to Rush L today, I got fed up with the shutdown and all the media nonsense going on. I agree that the Dem's are starting to weaken. It is time to turn up the heat to HIGH on them. That is why today I contacted "my" entire federal delegation and told them in no uncertain terms to end the shutdown. We all need to participate in the democratic process and...

I was driving home today and listening to the local news on the radio. They had a typical Trump hit piece of an interview with a local Democratic Party Congressman in DC. The Congressman said that the Russian inquiry is at a critical stage where new sweeping revolations are coming every day. In particular he stated that it is now known that Trump Jr. was in touch with Wikileaks and as everyone knows Wikileaks is an agent of the Russian government.

OK CNN is collecting questions for the Presidential debate. Are we as a group going to Freep this? I say Yes!

Assange has said he will release prior to the first debate information on Hillary that will require her to be indicted for criminal offenses. Among Bernie Sanders supporters, there is lots of talk that this included documentation that Bernie and his family were physically threatened with harm if Bernie did not withdraw from the Democratic Party Presidential nomination race. The campaign debates are next Monday and nothing so far?

I wonder if Hillary was in Dallas taking sniper fire during the Black Lives Matter protests? I expect that she will one day believe she was and use that as a reason why all firearms (except for those protecting her and collecting taxes) should be banned. (/sarcasm) Seriously, would anyone be surprised to hear that she adds this sniper fire to that she faced in Bosnia?

"....At a rainy press conference near the crime scene, Commissioner Evans described the man as in "mid 20s", travelling on foot, and carrying a black "military-style knife". Some US media have reported the weapon as a machete. The suspect was taken to hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The two officers are in hospital to be examined for stress, but did not suffer physical injuries, police said...."

President Obama apologized on Thursday to Americans who are losing their health insurance due to Obamacare....after heavy criticism that he lied.... Do you accept?

A Houston strip club is suing a businessman for allegedly not paying a $320,000 tab he racked up in just one month. Big spender James Jay Beckman reportedly ran up the gigantic bill by enjoying numerous private lap dances during 14 visits to Privilege between July and August.

No guns allowed: That’s what Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn would like to happen in businesses in the city. Hizzoner and Washington CeaseFire are encouraging businesses not to allow customers to carry firearms inside their establishments. What do you think? Should businesses keep out customers who carry firearms? Vote in our poll.

Today President Obama told the American people that the US government is not a deadbeat. Depending on the definition used, he is wrong. According to the cambridge dictionary, there are two major definitions of a deadbeat: (1) a person who is not willing to work, does not behave in a responsible way and does not fit into ordinary society (2) a person or company that is not willing to pay debts If we used the first definition, I would contend that the US federal government is both "not willing to work" and "does not behave in a responsible way." Therefore...

If there is one person outside Japan who knows what the crisis workers at the Fukushima nuclear plant are going through now it is 64-year-old Andriy Chudinov. One of the first Chornobyl trouble-shooters to get to the disaster site of the world’s worst nuclear accident in 1986 and a rarity in that he survived, Chudinov looks back on those traumatic events with calmness, sadness and resignation. He generously applauds the workers who are fighting to bring Japan’s quake-damaged nuclear reactors under control. “These are good guys. After all, they have had it even worse than we did. They had a...

A sunbathing session in western Sweden took a sinister turn on Friday when a teenage girl in Lidköping attempted to strangle her cousin with a bikini top. Two cousins, both 17-year-old girls, began fighting with each other on Friday in Lidköping in western Sweden. One girl attempted to strangle the other by pulling her cousin's bikini top up around her neck and pulling it tight. She also reportedly bit and threatened to kill the other girl, according to Nya Lidköpings-Tidningen newspaper. The girl was arrested for attempted murder, but was later transferred to a juvenile facility.

Knives or other sharp objects are the enduring weapon of choice for murderers and robbers, according to yesterday’s crime figures. Fatal stabbings reached a record high in England and Wales last year, despite a government drive to tackle knife-crime in ten “hotspot” areas of the country. More worryingly for the Government, robberies at knifepoint on the street jumped by almost a fifth in the year to the end of September. However, they make up less than one quarter of all robberies. Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, said: “We remain concerned about serious violence, and in particular knife crime. That is...

The export of Swedish jobs is accelerating, according to a new report from Sweden's largest private sector trade union, Unionen. Many firms do not conduct any form of evaluation, the report shows. Thousands lose their jobs at Christmas (29 Dec 08) Redundancies rocket in December (22 Dec 08) Swedish job losses set to soar in 2009 (19 Dec 08) Every third firm has moved jobs out of the country in the last three years and 37 percent of industrial firms have moved operations. The report shows a significant increase on a previous survey, undertaken by Sif four years ago, which...

Former CSIS strategist David Harris says a weekend explosion near the town of Dawson Creek in northeastern B.C. fits the description of terrorism, despite police statements to the contrary. Sometime overnight Saturday, someone detonated a large explosion next to the sour gas pipeline about 50 kilometres from the B.C.-Alberta border. The blast did not rupture the pipeline but blew a 1.8-metre crater in the ground, which was discovered by a hunter on Sunday. "How on earth anyone could declare this was not terrorism at this early stage is beyond me. Terrorism is associated with an attempt by threat or actual...

An Arabic-language Web site hosted on a server located in Tampa, Fla., is apparently offering a new version of software that was designed to help al-Qaeda supporters encrypt their Internet communications. The new encryption tool is called Mujahideen Secrets 2 and appears to be an updated version of easier-to-crack software that was released early last year, said Paul Henry, vice president of technology evangelism at Secure Computing Corp. in San Jose. The tool is being distributed free of charge on a password-protected Web site that belongs to an Islamic forum known as al-Ekhlaas, according to Henry and a blog posting...

If last year’s riots Paris riots were horrific, they weren’t surprising. The banlieue, suburbs like St. Denis, Poissy, and Clichy-sous-Bois, are pockets of concentrated immigrant poverty and faceless, block-style building long regarded as tinderboxes for trouble. Paris has begun building more affordable housing within its borders to reduce social isolation of those outside. Besides offering public-housing tenants an alternative to the banlieue, the move addresses the city’s own growing squatter population, which suffered from a slew of fires in the city’s outer rings at the end of the summer. While approximately eight in 10 lodgings in some peripheral neighborhoods are...

A Russian astronomer has predicted that Earth will experience a "mini Ice Age" in the middle of this century, caused by low solar activity.Khabibullo Abdusamatov of the Pulkovo Astronomic Observatory in St. Petersburg said Monday that temperatures will begin falling six or seven years from now, when global warming caused by increased solar activity in the 20th century reaches its peak, RIA Novosti reported.The coldest period will occur 15 to 20 years after a major solar output decline between 2035 and 2045, Abdusamatov said. Dramatic changes in the earth's surface temperatures are an ordinary phenomenon, not an anomaly, he said,...

The jailed terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal appealed Wednesday to the European Court of Human Rights, saying the eight years he was held in solitary confinement in a French jail violated a European human rights treaty. The Venezuelan, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, complained via his lawyer that the solitary confinement amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment, and that authorities did not follow correct procedure in authorizing it. He is seeking an unspecified amount of damages. Ramirez, 56, was held in solitary confinement from his detention in 1994 until 2002 on grounds of his being dangerous, the...