Free Republic

A North Carolina officer shot dead a 74-year-old man whose concerned family had called the police and asked to check on him. Officer Josh Lefevers arrived at the home of James Allen just before midnight on Sunday morning and announced he was entering the residence when Allen approached him with a handgun and refused to put it down, police said. Lefevers then shot and killed him.

Leading members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) are lining up to skip a coming speech by the prime minister of Israel. Reps. John Lewis (D-Ga.), the civil rights icon, and G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.), the chairman of the CBC, said they won't attend Benjamin Netanyahu's March 3 speech before Congress to protest Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) decision to invite the prime minister without first consulting President Obama and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill. Butterfield said that move marked an "unprecedented overreach of the Speaker’s authority" that "goes beyond the traditions of his office." "It is baffling that Speaker Boehner, who...

WILMINGTON | As police investigate a spate of recent homicides in Wilmington, the shooter in one incident may not face charges. Saturday evening, the owner of a video poker business at 420 Raleigh St. was walking to his car when men with guns walked toward him, according to police. Bullets were exchanged and one of the alleged robbers, 38-year-old Frankie Stukes of Wilmington, was hit. Police found his body alongside the building about 10 p.m. Wilmington Police Department Detective Kevin Tully said Wednesday the robbery victim ran back inside his business – Bourbon Street Amusement – for safety. Tully said...

Anti-union forces claim UAW ‘stuffed’ ballot box. Workers in Alabama are staging a fourth attempt to kick the United Auto Workers (UAW) out of their plant following claims that stuffed ballot boxes derailed their last vote. Employees at the NTN-Bower Corporation, a ball bearings manufacturer, have unsuccessfully tried to boot the labor giant out of their factory for two years. Workers voted to decertify the UAW in an earlier election, but an Obama-appointed National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) panel threw out the election. Another election was held in January of this year. The UAW prevailed, but it was later revealed...

Conservative lawmakers are officially rolling out a new group aimed at advancing a conservative agenda in the House of Representatives after they expressed discontent with the direction of the Republican Study Committee.“Our main hope is that we can represent the voids and valleys for our constituents back home,” Rep. Raúl Labrador of Idaho told The Daily Signal today. “With a small group that is nimble and able to work on issues that are of importance to our constituents, we can make a difference in Congress.”Called the House Freedom Caucus, the group serves as a conservative alternative to the Republican Study...

Legislators in North Carolina did the right thing in July 2013 when they voted to raise the quality standards for abortion clinics in the state. The hand-wringing response from the abortion industry was entirely predictable, with Planned Parenthood’s vice president for public affairs, Melissa Reed, calling it “the most restrictive access to safe and legal abortions this state has ever seen.” That was then. Inviting the Fox to Guard the Henhouse But now, more than a year an a half later, the North Carolina abortion industry is perfectly fine with the proposed regulations, which were submitted by the state’s Department...

In what has been described as a new front in the battle over same-sex marriage, legislators in several states under judicial orders to confer marital status on same-sex couples have introduced bills to forbid state or local officials from issuing marriage licenses to couples of the same gender. The bills would also strip the salaries of employees who issued the licenses, the New York Times reported Thursday.The bills have been introduced in the legislatures of Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas, with South Carolina also considering a bill that would allow officials to opt out of issuing such licenses if it...

Legislators in North Carolina did the right thing in July 2013 when they voted to raise the quality standards for abortion clinics in the state. The hand-wringing response from the abortion industry was entirely predictable, with Planned Parenthood’s vice president for public affairs, Melissa Reed, calling it “the most restrictive access to safe and legal abortions this state has ever seen.” That was then. Inviting the Fox to Guard the Henhouse But now, more than a year an a half later, the North Carolina abortion industry is perfectly fine with the proposed regulations, which were submitted by the state’s Department...

How is it possible that a president can win re-election by a relatively comfortable margin while receiving fewer raw votes than his first election? Enter Mitt Romney. A simple data comparison is very telling. That comparison is the Romney raw vote vs. all votes for congressional Republicans in a given state. Crunching the numbers, Romney significantly underperformed the Republican congressional vote totals in multiple states. In North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin -- all presidential swing states -- Mitt Romney underperformed the total raw votes cast for all Republican congressional candidates by an average of 3 percent. That means that...

RALEIGH, N.C. – Luke Martin Jr., whose father was an ex-slave and Civil War Union soldier, has died — 179 years after his father was born. Martin was 97 when he died Sunday at his home in New Bern, North Carolina.. ..lived in the house where he was born — a house his father built in the 1890s. Martin had little memory of his father, Luke Martin Sr., who died at age 84 in 1920 when the son was just a few years old, according to Martin-Williams. The elder Martin, who was born in 1836, was married twice, the second...

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Monday that both Nevada and Tennessee have joined the Lone Star state's challenge of President Obama's executive amnesty, bringing the total number of states fighting Obama's unilateral immigration policies to 26. “Texas is proud to lead a coalition that now includes a majority of the United States standing up against the President’s rogue actions,” Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement. “The momentum against the President's lawlessness continues to build with Tennessee and Nevada joining the effort to protect our states from the economic and public safety implications of illegal amnesty. As President...

Blizzard Warning for NYC and Southern NY State Active for next 1 day, 23 hours · National Weather Service This alert has been updated. Posted 3 hours, 18 minutes ago Crippling and potentially historic blizzard to impact the area from late Monday into Tuesday.Blizzard Warning remains in effect from 1 pm Monday to midnight EST Tuesday night. Locations: New York City and surrounding immediate suburbs. Long Island, and most of southern Connecticut.Hazard types: Heavy snow and blowing snow, with blizzard conditions.Accumulations: snow accumulation of 20 to 30 inches, with locally higher amounts possible. Snowfall rates of 2 to 4...

Four men have been charged, after police say they tried to rob a pizza delivery driver this past weekend. Greenville Police say around 2:30 a.m. Sunday, the Papa Johns driver was trying to make a delivery at the Province Apartment Complex on Boxelder Way. The driver told police that two men approached him in the parking lot and demanded money and the pizza. The driver used pepper spray to stop the robbery. A Province employee saw what happened and tried to help, but police say they were assaulted by one of the suspects while attempting to get the vehicle's license...

CHARLOTTE, NC (WBTV) - Members of the North Carolina Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America showed up at Harris Teeter on Providence Road in Charlotte on Saturday. They cut up their Harris Teeter loyalty cards and handed the destroyed cards to management.

<p>Multiple sources within Bakersfield, North Carolina, & on Capitol Hill tell Gotnews.com that Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Renee Ellmers (R-NC) have been carrying on a long-running affair since 2011.</p> <p>The affair is something of an open secret in Washington, D.C. Reporters at other publications, lobbyists, congressional staffers of both parties all know about it. One staffer for a congressman describes it as the “biggest open secret” in D.C. A lobbyist describes Ellmers as a “social climber who has ingratiated herself” with McCarthy.</p>

On a usually happy and even triumphant day, pro-life leaders found themselves angry at a vote in the U.S. House that never happened. Much of the talk today at the annual March for Life, that likely brought close to 500,000 mostly young people to Washington DC, was about how House leaders canned a bill that would have banned abortion after the 20th week of gestation, the point at which an unborn child is said to feel pain. Much of the anger was directed at Republican Congresswoman Renee Ellmers of North Carolina, who, as reported by Breitbart News, organized a group...

Two former University of North Carolina student-athletes have filed a lawsuit against the university and the NCAA claiming that neither entity is doing enough to ensure that student-athletes are receiving a proper education. The suit is seeking damages for all student-athletes affected by UNC academic scandal. According to CNN’s Sarah Ganim, the suit was filed by Michael Hausfeld, one of the lawyer’s in the O’Bannon suit against the NCAA. Rashanda McCants, a former women’s basketball player, and Devon Ramsay, a former football player, are named as plaintiffs, though the lawsuit, which was filed Thursday afternoon in Durham County court, is...

A fraternity at Duke University has been suspended while police investigate charges that a woman was sexually assaulted at an off-campus party, the school announced Wednesday. Alpha Delta Phi has been suspended while Durham, N.C., police investigate what happened at an off-campus house leased by fraternity members. “Duke University is cooperating with the Durham Police Department in the investigation of an alleged sexual assault of a Duke student at an off-campus private residence that is leased to members of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity,” the school said in a statement emailed to reporters. “Pursuant to Duke’s policy, the fraternity has...

A handful of “pro-life” lawmakers have sabotaged a vote House Republican leaders planned for today to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy based on scientific evidence showing unborn babies feel pain in abortions. As LifeNews reported yesterday, Rep. Renee Ellmers of North Carolina along with Reps. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania and Jackie Walorski of Indiana — each of whom have pro-life voting records — objected to a vote on the bill on the grounds that the language in the bill did not do enough to allow women who have been victimized by rape to have abortions. Together, they reportedly...

RALEIGH — When the Love My Life rally began five years ago, 300 teens and their parents attended, a group small enough for the Sacred Heart Cathedral in downtown Raleigh to handle. On Saturday, the anti-abortion event, sponsored by the Catholic Diocese of Raleigh, drew roughly five times that number as middle and high school students packed into a huge heated tent on the Halifax Mall in the heart of the state government complex. Those numbers augmented the annual anti-abortion march later that afternoon that ran the length of a city block. The rally featured contemporary Christian music with a...