Free Republic

In 1965, the aircraft carrier USS Midway was bombing Vietnam. VA-25, an attack aviation unit of the Navy, operated from the Midway. In October, one of the toilets on the ship cracked. The crew planned to dispose of it. Commander Bill Stoddard, the executive officer of VA-25, came up with a novel way to get rid of the toilet. To celebrate the six millionth pound of ordnance dropped by his unit, Cdr. Stoddard had the toilet painted with the "Fist of the Fleet" emblem of his unit. It was then loaded onto his Skyraider. Cdr. Stoddard dropped it on a...

Jan. 26 death death of Jessica Hernandez's who was shot by dead by police was ruled a homicide (deliberate and unlawful killing of one person by another;), Fourty seven shots were fired, Jessica a 17-year-old Colorado girl, was unarmed. http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/death-denver-teen-jessica-hernandez-killed-police-ruled-homicide-n314771 Antonio Zambrano-Montes, 35-year-old Washington orchard worker (Mex) in had thrown rock at (moving) cars. Tonio was fired upon 17 times by Pasco police from less than five yards...

SPANGDAHLEM AIR BASE, Germany — Fighting rages in Ukraine, Leaders in Europe on Wednesday welcomed back a Cold War Hammer. Twelve of the previous one hundred forty, Close-air support A-10 “Warthogs” — designed in the 1970s to knock out Soviet tanks — are back in Germany.

Rudolph Giuliani’s hot off the press comments about President Barack Obama has proven the politician to be a delusional racist. While speaking in front of a New York fundraising crowd, he tried to deliver poignant commentary on Obama’s apparent lack of patriotism, but instead said: “I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America. He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up, through love of this country.” These are...

TUBA CITY, Ariz. (RNS) As I pass through the Navajo Nation on my 4,000-mile drive across America, I catch a disturbing glimpse of a white-power insurgency happening in all regions. White settlement of the Southwest meant dislodging the native population at gunpoint. U.S. Army troops slaughtered the Navajo at will. Whites broke one treaty after another, then forced the Navajo in 1864 onto a “Long Walk” of 300 miles away from their tribal lands. When a pregnant Navajo woman came to childbirth, an impatient Army soldier simply shot her. The Navajo were allowed to return four years later to a...

Death of Andy Lopez continues to outrage some people across the nation... after the 13-year-old was shot down and riddled on Oct. 22 when a sheriff’s deputy...

SANTA ROSA, Calif. (KTVU) -- Sonoma County is poised to establish an independent auditor for its sheriff's department over a year after a teenage (Mex)with a pellet rifle was slaughtered by a(Sanoma)deputy. A 21 member "task force" has been meeting to work through well justiied community rage. "We're going to get something built and then we're all going to work on making it better every single day," declared task force member Amber Twitchell. "My fear is nothing is going to change, " Elaine B. Holtz.. >real American dreamers<<. // snipp // Jeff Westbrook, 57, a Santa Rosa program manager at...

Uncivil Behavior? Judah P. Benjamin served as the Confederate Secretary of War. The 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the United States — Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment in late January 1865 — comes at an fraught moment in the history of race relations. Considering that black men are being killed by police at the same rate as they were lynched in the era of Jim Crow, it can be depressing to reflect on how many promises of 1865, not to mention 1776, have not yet been fulfilled. But it can also be edifying to probe into some...

For years the Progressive left has made the case that the United States should be more like Europe. From the way we consume oil, to our healthcare system, the Progressives are convinced that Europe does it better. But I wonder what the American left would say about a recent article on the National Post, which reports that some on the European left are saying that a video, targeting children, consisting of dancing genitalia, isn’t quite Progressive enough: “STOCKHOLM — In socially liberal Sweden, an educational video for children featuring dancing genitals has become an online hit — and even drawn criticism...

I know there are many angered by the title of this post, but the truth hurts. I cannot tell you the number of times I have been to political events where a politician kisses babies and talks Jesus so the pro-lifers in the crowd get thigh sweats and send the politician to Washington. When the politician takes up with his mistress or pays for an abortion or, as Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC)51% did, undermines the pro-life cause, they are just horrified. But still they return predictable to the GOP for more abuse and disappointment. Maybe it is time for a...

Emily Letts of Cherry Hill Women’s Center had an abortion, which she filmed to show that abortion was easy and positive. She wanted to portray abortion in a good light. She only showed herself in the video, smiling as she aborted the pregnancy. The camera never panned down to see the operation itself. This video shows the WHOLE story. Please watch it to the end, to get the full impact. VIDEO ON LINK

During a Per-RICO hearing on VA construction Cabal, “This is a FUBAR on steroids if I’ve ever seen one. …I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone when I listen to this,” Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) In the latest "construction mismanagement" cost the department hundreds of millions of dollars, delayed major projects by years (a gift that keeps on giving). could end up costing more than $1 billion -- more than the lavish U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Speaking in front of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, Deputy VA Secretary Sloan Gibson said the department is overhauling the way they...

Just a general question - There seems to be a meme among lefties that Al Jazeera is an exceptionally "objective" news source. I haven't read Al Jazeera, but I wondered how the hell it has this reputation, even among the addled Left? I had an argument with my (college-aged) daughter over Christmas break about this. She insisted that it, along with the BBC, is very factual. I find this hard to believe, and suppose I should read it myself, but just wondered what you guys thought. I'm SURE there is no objectivity about Israel, for example.

Black people are too intent on holding on to wrongdoings from the past. Therefore, they keep blaming someone else for their problems.The list of wrongs done to Black people throughout their history in the U.S. that are still resonating in their lives today is extensive and extremely disturbing. As a result of hundreds of years of subjugation in an oppressive, racist system, Black households have one-tenth the wealth of white households in this country. While the Civil Rights Era enabled African-Americans to make great advances in the past 40 years — achieving high school, college and post-graduate degrees at accelerating...

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors make a mockery of the attempts of the Task Force and its Subcommittees to initiate change in response to the killing of Andy Lopez by Deputy Erick Gelhaus... Now they make plans to move forward with a park for Moorland, on the site where Andy was killed, with no mention of Andy Lopez.

One of you is going to watch this, and comment: This is 3 minutes and 44 seconds of my life I’ll never get back. There is so much wrong there, it’s hard to know where to start. Please, don’t hate me for posting this. (VIDEO-AT-LINK)

As we face the new year, the biggest concern for peace lovers is Republican control of the U.S. Senate. While Republican votes don’t reach the key number 60, members of the GOP will still be in a strong position to push their belligerent global agenda. I don’t mean to overstate the danger. After all, the Democrats were hardly better. But those who abhor war will awaken each day knowing that hawkish Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, and their ilk are in control. Peacemongers haven’t had much to cheer about during the Obama years. Barack Obama has gone back...

This video shows an abortion and the bodies of aborted babies. It is extremely graphic and disturbing. There are millions of abortions done every day in the world, and over 3500 in the United States. The first baby in this video appears to be in the second trimester. There are hundreds of abortions a day done at this stage in the US alone. An abortion clinic worker also appears in the video. Her speech on how abortion is a loving and sacred act is contrasted with the reality shown in the abortion video. Here is the video: Viewer discretion is...

A RECENT United Nations report says that nearly half a million Ukrainians have fled the country since April. The fact that families run from a war zone is heartbreaking but hardly unexpected. The disturbing part lies in the details — of the roughly 454,000 people who had fled Ukraine by the end of October, more than 387,000 went to Russia. Most of those who fled were Russian speakers from the east, but this still raises a sobering question: If this is a conflict between Ukraine and Russia, why did so many Ukrainians choose to cast their lot with the enemy?...

There has been no dearth of news stories, reports, and commentary over the past few months on the epidemic of racists, whether in law enforcement or the general population, either inflicting or attempting to inflict, punishment on African Americans for being African Americans. As noted here on Tuesday, “there are certain groups who are adamant that as superior human beings they have authority to mete out punishment for violations of their beliefs that are usually borne of religion.” Despite protections in the U.S. Constitution and federal and state laws, the past six years have seen an increase in religious fundamentalists...