Free Republic

Some drivers along a busy Fort Worth street on Friday were stopped at police roadblock and directed into a parking lot, where they were asked by federal contractors for samples of their breath, saliva and even blood. It was part of a government research study aimed at determining the number of drunken or drug-impaired drivers. "It just doesn't seem right that you can be forced off the road when you're not doing anything wrong," said Kim Cope, who said she was on her lunch break when she was forced to pull over at the roadblock on Beach Street in North...

PHOENIX - It's called the Great Shakeout Earthquake Drill. Even though earthquakes are not common here in Arizona, they do happen. And today the Red Cross wanted to make sure everyone is ready just in case. Kids are learning to drop to the floor, cover themselves and hold on at Tumbleweed Elementary. "There are three steps, one you drop to the ground, number two cover, get under your desk, and three hold on to your desk," says student Thomas Harris. "You hold on to your desk until the principal announces over the intercom that we're all clear," says student Erica...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Police in Washington are reviewing the use of officers' deadly force in the killing of a woman who tried to ram her car through a White House barrier, a shooting her family says was unjustified.

Some miners in Alaska want the feds to start digging for answers. A task force including members of 10 state and federal law enforcement agencies descended on a gold mine in the tiny town of Chicken (pop. 17) last month, in what locals described as a raid. “Imagine coming up to your diggings, only to see agents swarming over it like ants, wearing full body armor, with jackets that say "POLICE" emblazoned on them, and all packing side arms,” gold miner C.R. Hammond told the Alaska Dispatch. “How would you have felt? You would be wondering, ‘My God, what have...

Power grid vulnerabilities are finally garnering some attention by government officials. An electrical grid joint drill simulation is being planned in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Thousands of utility workers, FBI agents, anti-terrorism experts, governmental agencies, and more than 150 private businesses are involved in the November power grid drill. The SHIELD Act, which is stalled in Congress, is the first serious piece of legislation in many years to attempt to address the vulnerabilities of the power grid in.

ROSSFORD, Ohio - A training exercise this Rossford Wednesday morning left students literally hanging on to the edge of their seats. In the scenario: A school bus is en route to an event when suddenly it's hijacked! A camera inside the bus captured the whole thing while an audience of school teachers, administrators and transportation directors watched it all unfold on a live feed.

Teachers in rural Oregon are stunned after the local Sheriff’s Department attempted to test their school’s emergency readiness by sending two masked gunmen into the Pine Eagle Charter School, wearing hoodies and wielding handguns. The event, which took place last Friday during a staff meeting of teachers, was part of a surprise drill conducted by the Sheriff’s Department, aimed at testing “Pine Eagle’s preparation for an assault by ‘active shooters,’ who were in reality volunteer staff members of the school.” The volunteers fired blanks at everyone in the room, “killing” all but two of the teachers. According to local media,...

Friday, April 19, 2013, during a manhunt for a bombing suspect, police and federal agents spent the day storming people's homes and performing illegal searches. While it was unclear initially if the home searches were voluntary, it is now crystal clear that they were absolutely NOT voluntary. Police were filmed ripping people from their homes at gunpoint, marching the residents out with their hands raised in submission, and then storming the homes to perform their illegal searches. This was part of a larger operation that involved total lockdown of the suburban neighbor to Boston. Roads were barricaded and vehicle traffic...

Natural News has now confirmed that at least five private military contractors were operating on scene at the Boston marathon, and that they all carried black backpacks which look very similar to the backpack carrying the pressure cooker bomb (see pictures below). The mainstream media is completely censoring any mention of these "Craft" operatives, pretending they don't even exist. Only the alternative media is conducting real investigative journalism on these bombings. The mainstream media isn't interested in the truth; they only want to spin the attack into a new way to somehow blame conservative Americans for something they had no...

University of Mobile’s Cross Country Coach, who was near the finish line of the Boston Marathon when a series of explosions went off, said he thought it was odd there were bomb sniffing dogs at the start and finish lines.

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- The sight of Army helicopters and the sound of gunfire created a lot of concern Monday afternoon in one Houston neighborhood. We received a lot of phones calls, Tweets and Facebook posts from worried neighbors, wondering what was going on. SkyEye 13 HD was over the south side where at first look, it appeared there was a massive SWAT scene happening. With military helicopters flying above her southeast Houston neighborhood, Frances Jerrals didn't know what to think. "When you see this, you think the worst. When you hear this, you think the worst," Jerrals said. And so,...

Cartoon. President Obama clarifies his "all of the above" energy policy. "In order to decrease our dependence on foreign oil..."

Police are looking for a man who attempted to rob a convenience store early Wednesday with an electric drill. A man wearing black jeans, a black sweater and a black mask entered the Kwik Shop near First Street and Cornhusker Highway at 2:49 a.m., Lincoln Police Officer Katie Flood said. He demanded money and held an object concealed under a towel to look like a gun, Flood said. The clerk, however, noticed a drill bit and saw a cord hanging from below the towel and refused to give the man money. After the clerk told the man she thought it...

Mitt Romney revealed a new energy policy today that will hinge on states, and not the federal government, being able to control energy development on federal land, a shift that the campaign says will result in North American energy independence by the year 2020. It includes more offshore drilling options, evoking memories of the slogan introduced four years ago at the Republican National Convention in 2008: “Drill, baby, drill.” “If I’m the president of the United States in a few months here, I will set a national goal of America and North America, North American energy independence by 2020,” Romney...

Israel Navy commando forces carried out their largest drill in a decade last week. Soldiers of the elite Shayetet 13 and the 916 Detachment, together with the Snapir port security unit and the Israel Air Force, practiced "operational scenarios that could arise at any moment," reported Yohanan Levin in the Israel Navy Website. The senior leadership of the Detachment attended the exercise, in which soldiers simulated a number of scenarios. These included neutralization of an enemy force at sea, ship malfunctions, and evacuation of an injured soldier by helicopter – all carried out within severe time restraints. The exercise was...

All over the United States, school children are being taken out of their classrooms, put on buses and sent to "alternate locations" during terror drills. These exercises are often called "evacuation drills" or "relocation drills" and they are more than a little disturbing. Sometimes parents are notified in advance where the kids are being taken and sometimes they are only told that the children are being taken to an "undisclosed location". In the years since 9/11 and the Columbine school shootings, there has been a concerted effort to make school emergency drills much more "realistic" and much more intense. Unfortunately,...

RIPLEY, Okla. — President Obama stood in a red-dirt field before acres of stacked pipeline pieces on Thursday to illustrate his support for expedited construction of the southern half of the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline. But his public declaration of support for the project has pleased neither the industry and its Republican supporters nor environmentalists. Environmentalists nationwide have rallied to oppose the entire Canada-to-Gulf Coast pipeline because its owner, TransCanada, wants to transport what environmental groups consider dirty oil from the tar sands of Alberta. The groups say such oil would hasten climate change, threaten spills and pollute air,...

<p>WASHINGTON — It's the political cure-all for high gas prices: Drill here, drill now. But more U.S. drilling has not changed how deeply the gas pump drills into your wallet, math and history show.</p> <p>A statistical analysis of 36 years of monthly, inflation-adjusted gasoline prices and U.S. domestic oil production by The Associated Press shows no statistical correlation between how much oil comes out of U.S. wells and the price at the pump.</p>

WASHINGTON _ The Senate on Tuesday resoundingly rejected a sweeping measure to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other protected areas to oil drilling, as well as to approve construction of the Keystone pipeline project. Tuesday's vote was the first time in four years that the Senate has voted on a measure including ANWR drilling, and it failed miserably.

The United States can meet President Barack Obama's goal of producing 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022, but it better get moving. That's according to Tom Vilsack, secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. According to a 2010 Agriculture Department report, the agency plans for the U.S. to produce 13.4 billion gallons of biofuels from grasses and sugars. The rest would come from oil seeds, crop residues and wood waste. The EPA is exploring other sources, such as animal fats, municipal solid waste and algae. The push for more biofuels comes as other industries, such as commercial power companies,...