Free Republic

HOUSTON — A veteran Houston police narcotics detective has been temporarily relieved of duty due to ongoing questions about his role in last week’s drug search warrant that ended in a deadly shootout between two suspects and police. A department spokesperson confirmed that the senior police officer, who joined the department in 1996, must temporarily surrender his badge pending the outcome of an internal affairs investigation. “The department has made the decision to relieve the officer of duty while a thorough investigation continues,” the Houston Police Officers Union said in a written statement.

On Monday evening in Houston, a dozen armed men broke into the home of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, a middle-aged couple who had lived in the house at 7815 Harding Street for at least two decades. The first man through the door, who was armed with a shotgun, used it to kill one of the couple's dogs. Tuttle responded to the home invasion by grabbing a revolver and shooting the man with the shotgun, who collapsed on a sofa in the living room. As Nicholas tried to disarm the intruder, his accomplices shot her. Tuttle returned fire, and by...

About 95,000 non-citizens are registered to vote in Texas, and more than half of those have cast ballots in at least one election, Texas Secretary of State David Whitley announced on Friday. Whitley's office, along with the Texas Department of Public Safety, had been investigating possible voter fraud for the last year, according to a news release. Of the 95,000 non-citizens registered, 58,000 have voted in one or more elections since 1996.

This week, President Trump will announce his nominee to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the United States Supreme Court. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has promised to schedule the nominee’s confirmation hearings for this fall, before the midterm elections. If and when McConnell carries through on this promise, Senate Democrats should immediately file a federal lawsuit against him for violating the so-called “McConnell Rule.”.....

After reading Jane Mayer’s piece on Christopher Steele in The New Yorker, it’s “check please.” Trump conspired with Russia during the election and continues to conspire with Russia. Not arguable. Only question: How much longer to allow a compromised POTUS to destroy Democracy?— Rob Reiner (@robreiner) March 5, 2018

Detroit Deputy Police Chief Ulysha Renee Hall will swap one DPD for another this summer when she becomes Dallas first female police chief

By the 1920s the Dallas Morning News had become a formidable and progressive force in Dallas and in Texas, far overshadowing its parent, the Galveston Daily News, which had founded the paper in 1885 to serve the growing North Texas area. Adolph S. Ochs, the Tennessean who rescued the New York Times from virtual bankruptcy in 1896 and converted it into the nation’s most distinguished newspaper, declared in 1924 that he had received his “ideas and ideals” from the Galveston Daily News and the Dallas Morning News. Two years later, a leading national magazine recorded that the News “was, and...

Exclusive: The neocon royalty Kagans are counting on Democrats and liberals to be the foot soldiers in the new neocon campaign to push Republicans and President Trump into more “regime change” wars, reports Robert Parry. The Kagan family, America’s neoconservative aristocracy, has reemerged having recovered from the letdown over not gaining its expected influence from the election of Hillary Clinton and from its loss of official power at the start of the Trump presidency. Former Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who pushed for the Ukraine coup and helped pick the post-coup leaders. (She is the wife...

How easily we forget. That is the overriding message of the new documentary Disgraced, directed by Pat Kondelis, about the 2003 Baylor athletics scandal — the one you’ve probably forgotten about.

181 years ago, March 6, 1836, the Alamo garrison fell, and the fortress that had been a mission became a shrine. Francisco Antonio Ruiz was the Acalde (mayor) of San Antonio. He was an eyewitness to the events of that day. Twenty-four years later, in 1860, Don Poncho (as Ruiz was known), recounted what he had seen for the Texas Almanac. Below is his account in full. Remember the Alamo! Fall of the Alamo, and Massacre of Travis and His Brave Associates by Francisco Antonio Ruiz Translated by J. A. Quintero On the 6th of March at 3 a.m. General...

There is a lot of anger in America today. Theres anger in our colleges, in our congress and in the democratic party. Thats because the DNC believes Hillary is their only chance of winning. As such, they have been stacking the deck against Bernie Sanders and Martin OMalley. Specifically, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the fourth stooge, has been. She cut the number of debates and the few debates they are having are on the weekends when no one watches.

Flashing lights and sirens from a police vehicle interrupted a routine Saturday morning walk in my golf-course community in Corinth.

So now the federal health bureaucrats in charge of controlling diseases and pandemics want more money to do their jobs. Hmph. Maybe if they hadn’t been so busy squandering their massive government subsidies on everything but their core mission, we taxpayers might actually feel a twinge of sympathy.

A news crew, clearly no threat or impediment to the cops, films from a verge in Ferguson, Missouri. A pop and a cloud of white smoke marks the arrival of a tear gas canister at their feet, and the newscrew is forced to flee. Moments later, police pull up in an armored van and hurriedly try to break down the film equipment--until they notice that another crew is still filming them from across the street.

From the Cleburne Times-Review to the New York Daily News to Gawker — it’s been a heck of a week for 19-year-old Kendall Jones, the Cleburne native and Texas Tech University sophomore now known as “The Texas Cheerleader Famous for Killing Animals in Africa.”

The Army private who was tried and convicted as Bradley Edward Manning for leaking U.S. secrets to WikiLeaks is petitioning a Kansas court for a name change, to Chelsea Elizabeth Manning.

NEW YORK (AP) - Joe McGinniss, the adventurous and news-making author and reporter who skewered the marketing of Richard Nixon in “The Selling of the President 1968” and tracked his personal journey from sympathizer to scourge of convicted killer Jeffrey MacDonald in the blockbuster “Fatal Vision,” died Monday at age 71.

FORT WORTH — Wendy Davis has made her personal story of struggle and success a centerpiece of her campaign to become the first Democrat elected governor of Texas in almost a quarter-century. While her state Senate filibuster last year captured national attention, it is her biography — a divorced teenage mother living in a trailer who earned her way to Harvard and political achievement — that her team is using to attract voters and boost fundraising. The basic elements of the narrative are true, but the full story of Davis’ life is more complicated, as often happens when public figures...

COLLEYVILLE — The clinic under construction in Colleyville has all the trappings of an ordinary doctor's office. But Dr. Kevin Wacasey is planning something revolutionary here. He’s offering what he says is truly affordable health care. "It's a cash clinic," Dr. Wacasey said. "That's just like it used to be in the good old days back before managed care took over."

One of the Queen's swans has been found killed and barbecued on the riverbank near to Windsor Castle. The cooked swan's carcass was dumped near Baths Water, and was discovered by Wendy Hermon, 46, a volunteer for charity Swan Lifeline, which cares for sick and injured birds. She described the scene as 'sickening', and admitted she would have been distraught if her young son was with her when she made the grisly discovery after being called out by a council warden last Sunday.