Free Republic

Throughout the 2016 campaign, one of the biggest problems facing Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been her apparent inability to gain the trust of voters.Republican Donald Trump has capitalized on this problem and constantly referred to former Secretary of State Clinton as “Crooked Hillary”, and is even giving an entire speech this afternoon to highlight her “failed policies and bad judgment.”Is this an effective strategy? Do young voters know—or care—about Hillary’s past missteps?Campus Reform hit the streets to find out, and the results were fascinating.Nearly every young person we spoke with was shocked to learn that the list of quotes presented...

A police officer who was one of the first to arrive at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando has claimed he was made to wait while Omar Mateen wandered around the club gunning people down. The FBI said this week that police first responders 'engaged the shooter' inside the club at 2.08am but Officer Brandon Cornwell said he had been told to wait for a SWAT team to arrive. It is known that Mateen, who was heavily armed with an AR-15 assault rifle and a handgun and was feared to be carrying explosives, had an exchange of fire with a security...

(CNN published an article which is referenced by this writer; what is stated here is NOT the CNN article.) From the outset our research has pointed in the direction that Omar Mateen was committing an act of Jihad terrorism targeting a facility/venue he knew well, Pulse Nightclub. Nothing about the event, or the preparatory behavior prior to the attack, held the appearance of a pure suicide mission. The possibility of getting caught or killed obviously part of the process – but the preferred objective was to exit and escape. Early on it simply appeared he intended to walk in, shoot...

In commenting on why the Obama administration initially had decided to release redacted portions of the 911 telephone calls made by the radical Islamic terrorist who killed 49 people at an Orlando night club, columnist, author, and former terrorism prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy said it was because the government “is becoming Sharia-adherent.” Sharia is the Islamic law that many Muslims (and governments) throughout the world follow, and it is based on the teachings in the Quran. On Monday’s Bretibart News Daily (SiriusXM), host Stephen K. Bannon asked McCarthy, “The attorney general went on NBC yesterday and she said she’s redacting...

One-time Republican presidential candidate and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio will be running to keep his Senate seat, reversing course on his initial decision not to seek reelection. In an interview with the Miami Herald on Wednesday, Rubio explained what was behind his change of heart. "I think that the point that really drove me to change my mind is that as we enter this kind of new chapter in our history here is, there's another role the Senate plays that I think can be really important in the years to come," he said. "And that's the power given to it...

President Barack Obama plans to make smart gun technology a primary part of his push to control firearms, but an expert warns that the new high-tech weaponry poses a danger to constitutional rights—and he’s not talking about the Second Amendment. In April, Obama posed the question, “If we can set it up so you can’t unlock your phone unless you’ve got the right fingerprint, why can’t we do the same thing for our guns?” Obama released a presidential memorandum requiring three departments to push smart gun research—the departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Defense. The memo also entices the industry...

In the swing of the Trump wrecking crane, President Obama's approval ratings have risen above 50 percent. The media see greater appreciation for his "competence" in office -- but, why? In the wake of the Orlando attack it's easy to ask, "How competent would the media have made President George W. Bush appear if an Islamic terrorist shot up a gay nightclub in Florida eight years ago?" It seemed like every piece of bad news during the Bush years was somehow Bush's fault -- and proof of his incompetence. The media's attitude toward Bush was summed up in Bill Maher's...

Stephen Colbert was angrier than usual with the Senate after they failed to pass any of the proposed gun control bills this week. The Late Show host had a hard time believing that they couldn’t come together on something that so many Americans agree on, saying, “Ninety-two percent of Americans want to expand background checks for gun buyers, and you just ignore them. Since when does 8 percent of the population get to have total control of an issue?”

A man who worshiped at the same mosque as the Orlando gunman says he never heard him say anything particularly hateful or homophobic, but he still reported him to the FBI. “The fact that this person was a Muslin I knew… very disturbing,” Mohammad Malik said. Malik attends the same mosque in Fort Pierce that Omar Mateen frequented.

ccording to CNN, Federal investigators are trying to find out more specifically what Omar Mateen's wife, Noor Salman (profiled here), knew about the planned attack at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando. The intent is to bring evidence before a federal grand jury to determine whether or not charges will be brought against Salman. As US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said today, federal authorities are going back and looking at all of the contact with Omar Mateen, as well as those around him in order find out if there is anything that was missed.However there is one rather large problem with...

We've all heard former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's admonition that "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." Yet the public debate about guns in America takes Moynihan's warning to the next level: Each side not only has its own facts, it has its own language. For instance, take the rush after the recent Orlando shootings to ban "assault" or "military-style" weapons like the AR-15 rifle. Gun control advocates immediately jumped to regulate sales of "automatic weapons" and "assault rifles" like the AR-15, which they deem too deadly for one individual to need. Scary stories about...

The media has desperately tried to blame anything and everything for the Orlando Muslim massacre. The bloodshed by a Muslim terrorist has been attributed to guns, homophobia, family problems and mental illness. By next week, the media may be blaming global warming and UFOs. But Omar Mateen told his Facebook friends and a 911 operator exactly why he was doing it. Omar killed 49 people as part of the Islamic State’s war against America.

ORLANDO — After an initial burst of fire between Omar Mateen and a security guard at the Pulse nightclub, a group of five or six police officers arrived on the scene within minutes, broke through a large glass window and entered the club as the killing of 49 people was underway inside, according to a Belle Isle, Fla., police officer who was among the first responders. Officer Brandon Cornwell, 25, said the ad-hoc team spent the first seconds in the dimly lit club “trying to locate exactly where the shooter was — we kept hearing people scream and shots fired.”...

Zack Ford of the ThinkProgress blog really ought to invest in a dictionary. As the editor of the left-wing blog's LGBT section, he took the lead in blaming Christians, conservatives, and traditionalists for the deaths of 49 people in Orlando last week while simultaneously braying about conservatives "scapegoating" radical Islam. Note to Zack Ford: it's not scapegoating to blame radical Islam when a radical Islamist shoots up a nightclub. It is scapegoating to blame Christians when a radical Islamist shoots up a night club. Scapegoating, by definition, is blaming the innocent. His revolting article represents everything that's wrong with the...

Orlando terrorist Omar Mateen supported presumptive Democratic nominee for president Hillary Rodham Clinton because he opposed the presidential candidacy of presumptive GOP nominee Donald J. Trump. Mateen’s friend Mohammed Malik revealed Mateen’s support for Hillary Clinton in a Washington Post essay this week. Malik wrote: We talked about the presidential election and debated our views of the candidates that were running – he liked Hillary Clinton and I liked Bernie Sanders. This banter continued through texts and phone calls for several months. My last conversation with Omar was by phone in mid-May. He called me while he was at the...

$9,000 worth of jewelry days before attack Published June 21, 2016 FoxNews.com Facebook487 Twitter276 Email Print The Orlando nightclub terrorist Omar Mateen reportedly brought nearly $9,000 worth of expensive jewelry less than a week before committing the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. According to ABC News, Mateen made the purchase at a Kay Jewelers on June 6 in Jenson Beach. The store is located near the Lotus Gun Shop where Mateen was turned away after seeking to buy bulk ammunition and heavy-duty body armor. Signet, which owns the jewelry store, didn’t confirm Mateen’s purchase but did say they were...

The gunman who slaughtered 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando was a confused, gay man who drank heavily, a man who claims he was his lover for two months told Univision. Omar Mateen, the deranged Muslim shooter behind the massacre, held a grudge against Latino men he met at the popular gay club because he felt used by them, the man told the network. “I’ve cried like you have no idea. But the thing that makes me want to tell the truth is that he didn’t do it for terrorism,” the man told Univision Noticias anchor Maria Elena...

The alleged gay lover of Orlando nightclub gunman Omar Mateen claims he did the shooting as “revenge” against Latino men. “I’ve cried like you have no idea. But the thing that makes me want to tell the truth is that he didn’t do it for terrorism. In my opinion he did it for revenge,” the man who said he was Mateen’s lover for two months told Univision.

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today unanimously reversed a trial court’s ruling dismissing a fraud case brought against the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). The result of the appellate court’s ruling is that CAIR National, operating out of the District of Columbia, must stand trial and allow a jury to hear all of the evidence of the massive fraud and attempted cover up carried out by CAIR and perpetrated against hundreds of CAIR fraud victims. In January of last year, Judge Paul Friedman, the federal judge presiding over a five-year old lawsuit alleging...

Has the shooter’s wife left the state of Florida?" a reporter asked Lynch during her press conference Tuesday. "Right now, I don’t know exactly the answer to that," Lynch candidly replied. "I believe she was going to travel but I do not know exactly her location now."