Free Republic

An F/A-18 fighter jet aircraft has crashed west of Naval Air Station Lemoore. The crash, which happened Monday, was north of Highway 198 in a dirt field just east of the Kings/Fresno county line, about two miles west of NASL, according to Adam Barresi, a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol. The pilot reportedly ejected from the aircraft in mid-air, parachuted to the ground, landed and walked over to emergency responders on scene, according to Kings County Fire Chief Bill Lynch. Lynch said the crash happened around 4 p.m. The pilot's name wasn't immediately available. The parachute was reported as...

Speaker John Boehner's future was on Rep. Henry Cuellar's mind when he was speaking with fellow House Democrats last week. The question they were mulling: Would they throw Boehner a lifeline and save his job if he needed their votes to survive? "Heck yes!" Cuellar said in an interview when asked if he'd consider it. The Texas Democrat is one of more than a dozen House Democrats who told CNN they'd be willing to vote to keep Boehner in place if he faces a rebellion from the tea party wing of his caucus this fall. In interviews, a number of...

Four energy partners formally asked the federal government on Friday for permission to build a 564-mile natural gas pipeline in West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina. The 348-page application was submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The $5 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline is intended to deliver cleaner burning natural gas to the Southeast as utilities move away from coal-burning power plants amid tighter federal rules on pollution that contributes to climate change. Richmond, Virginia-based Dominion Resources Inc. and Charlotte, North Carolina-based Duke Energy would have 45 percent and 40 percent ownership stakes in the pipeline, respectively. Charlotte-based Piedmont Natural...

Police Chief Mike Halstead in Surf City, North Carolina, was forced to retire after posting a statement to his private Facebook page calling the Black Lives Matter movement "an American born terrorist group." Chief Halstead made the post on September 3, and it came to the attention of Surf City Mayor Zander Guy a few days later. The mayor called an emergency meeting of the town leaders on Tuesday and the town told Halstead that if he did not retire, he would be fired. He retired and took 60 days' severance. In his post, Halstead said that the issue is...

Dr. Daniel Fine, associate director of the New Mexico Center for Energy Policy, explains how an oil price war led by Saudi Arabia impacts the prospects for drilling off the N.C. coast

{** By ex-Con & Big Dem Contributor Mayor **} SURF CITY, N.C.(WECT) – Surf City Police Chief Mike Halstead has retired effective immediately following a Tuesday emergency meeting called about a Facebook post he made. Major Ron Shanahan will take over as interim chief. Town leaders and Halstead have agreed on severance pay following his decision to retire. According to Town Manager Larry Bergman, Surf City Mayor Zander Guy called the emergency meeting... ...“I was shocked and disgusted with our Town Council,” said Brandy Cuff, who was part of the protest. “No other words, just disgust.” She said Halstead was...

CHARLOTTE, NC - A Gastonia man has been indicted in connection with an alleged conspiracy to kill members of the U.S. military. Walter Eugene Litteral, 50, was indicted on Thursday for allegedly conspiring to violate federal firearms laws and related gun and drug charges, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina. If convicted of the worst charges, Litteral could spend up to 20 years in prison. Two co-defendants — Christopher James Barker, 41, of Gastonia, and Christopher Todd Campbell, 30, of Mount Holly — were indicted separately on Thursday and indicated...

Duke University will implement a new program designed to train college athletes on how to advocate for gay rights according to a report from The College Fix.The program called “Sports & Social Justice Leadership Initiative” is a product of the Duke University Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity teaming up with “Athlete Ally” to put on the program.The Center’s director Bernadette Brown said in a press release that The Sports & Social Justice Leadership Initiative, “is specifically for student-athletes, recognizing that they are in an influential position to advocate for social justice and inclusion with respect to sexual orientation, gender...

SURF CITY, N.C.(WECT) – Surf City Police Chief Mike Halstead has retired effective immediately following a Tuesday emergency meeting called about a Facebook post he made. Major Ron Shanahan will take over as interim chief. Town leaders and Halstead have agreed on severance pay following his decision to retire. According to Town Manager Larry Bergman, Surf City Mayor Zander Guy called the emergency meeting in reference to Halstead’s post he made to his personal page on Sept. 3. Bergman said he spoke with Halstead about the post after it was brought to his attention. He said he reminded him “that...

A new effort to remove Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) as Speaker of the House is reportedly making the rounds of Congress again. The House Freedom Caucus, which is about 40 members strong, is demanding more fortitude from their House speaker to fight the battles they believe voters entrusted them with when they rewarded them a sweeping GOP victory last November. One of those battles is defunding Planned Parenthood. After the Center for Medical Progress exposed the pro-abortion organization in a shocking investigation into its inhumane practices, defunding became a top priority for hill conservatives. So much so that the group...

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) is bracing for what could be the toughest weeks of his speakership as several dozen conservatives in his party are threatening to topple him unless he is more ferocious with Democrats during the upcoming fiscal showdowns. That internal Republican feud has increased the chances that Washington, for the second time in two years, could stumble into a shutdown of the federal government. The speaker’s lieutenants are openly girding for battle with the small but influential bloc of anti-Boehner conservatives, who have signaled that if Boehner cuts any deal that they don’t like with Hill...

 With Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) job in doubt, House conservatives have been holding internal talks about a new leadership coalition that could includvie Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as Speaker and more conservative members occupying lower rungs on the leadership ladder. The informal discussions among members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus are preliminary and informal, multiple GOP lawmakers tell The Hill.

The John William Pope Center’s Jay Schalin recently published a report detailing the decline of America’s college English departments. More and more, traditional English literature classes and other similar icons of the English language in academia are disappearing. Many of them are replaced, or supplemented by, “digital humanities,” “media studies” and the like. Schalin used the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as an example, where requirements have vastly changed between 1988 and 2014. Four specific literature courses were mandatory prior to graduation, ranging from studying T.S. Eliot to Chaucer to William Shakespeare in the 1988-89 school year. But,...

UNC spokesman claims they "challenge students," and don't "advocate one viewpoint over another." So, will they accept my offer to come debate any professor on the topic, free of charge? Alec Dent, a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, broke the story in The College Fix: An English class offered at UNC Chapel Hill this fall called “Literature of 9/11″ explores the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks from the perspective of radical Islamists and those who view America as an imperialist nation. The course represents virtually everything wrong with American academia today. The reading list consists entirely...

U.S. abortion-giant Planned Parenthood would keep almost 90 percent of its taxpayer revenue if Congress passed a supposed “defunding” bill introduced by NC Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC)52% , a close ally of the GOP’s leadership. Dubbed the Women’s Health Accountability Act, the measure would cut Planned Parenthood’s revenue from the federal government’s Title X rules and also require a paperwork review of the abortion group’s services. But those Title X funds comprise only $60 million of the $500 million that the group gets from the federal government each year.

Henry McCollum and Leon Brown served more than three decades behind bars for the 1983 murder of an 11-year-old Red Springs girl that DNA has proven they didn't commit. McCollum spent most of those nearly 31 years on death row. Just over a year ago, on Sept. 3, 2014, the mentally impaired half-brothers emerged from prison as free men. Earlier this month, the state of North Carolina awarded them $750,000 each for the time they spent wrongly incarcerated - the maximum payout allowed under state law. That payout, awarded Sept. 2 at a hearing in Raleigh, averages out to roughly...

full title: New South Carolina Poll – Trump Dominates With 37% – While 78% Of Voters Telling Lindsey Graham: “Drop Out”… South Carolina is the home state of candidate Lindsey Graham where 8 in 10 voters are asking him to drop out of the race and only 3% support his presidential bid. Meanwhile the GOPe and the Salem Media network keep pushing Ben Carson in their efforts to fracture the Trump vote and create space for Jeb Bush to bounce back. (Via PPP) The campaign has generally hurt Graham’s image in the state. When we polled South Carolina in February,...

More than 30 North Carolina magistrates so far have refused to perform weddings since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriages in all 50 states. But they’re not likely to suffer the fate of Kim Davis, the Tennessee county clerk who was recently jailed for her refusal. It turns out that taking this position is legal in North Carolina, according to CBN.com. Shortly after the Supreme Court’s June decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which held that same-sex marriage is a constitutionally guaranteed right, the North Carolina legislature passed a law enabling officials to opt out of performing marriages altogether. The...

Not only is jailed Kentucky clerk Kim Davis citing her religious beliefs for denying marriage licenses to gay couples... In other states, according to USA Today:  In Alabama, as many as 10 counties have stopped issuing licenses altogether as of Wednesday. State law says that probate judges "may" issue the licenses rather than "shall."And in North Carolina, more than 30 county magistrates have refused to perform gay marriages under a law that says officials can refrain from conducting marriage-related activities.

MORGANTON, North Carolina — Speaker Rep. John Boehner’s worst nightmare is on the rise here in rural North Carolina. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) is gaining steam as a clearly coordinated, highly orchestrated effort to remove Boehner as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives—and fix a broken Congress that no longer represents the wishes of the American people—comes into much clearer focus. Meadows invited Breitbart News to accompany him on a district visit, and the concerns he discussed with his constituents offer a microcosm of the issues America wants Congress to address. Everyone here agrees: John Boehner needs to...