Free Republic

Former San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor took $2 million from a nonprofit foundation to feed a gambling addiction in which she lost more than $1 billion over a nine-year period, federal prosecutors said Thursday. O’Connor, 66, appeared in federal court and pleaded not guilty to a money laundering charge as part of a deferred prosecution. Under the arrangement with federal prosecutors, she has two years to repay the $2 million taken from the R.P. Foundation, a nonprofit set up by her late husband, Robert O. Peterson. Peterson was co-founder of the Jack-In-The-Box restaurant chain and later Southern California First National...

FR CANTEEN MISSION STATEMENT Showing support and boosting the morale of our military and our allied military and the family members of the above.Honoring those who have served before. Fabulous FRiday FAVORITES Tell us about your favorite War Movie. Apocalypse Now (1979) Saving Private Ryan (1998) The Hurt Locker (2008) The Dirty Dozen (1967) All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) Platoon (1986) Patton (1970) We Were Soldiers (2002) (Beachy's Fav) Remember, the Canteen is a family friendly place. We welcome the military, our allies, and their families.Continued prayers for the success and completion of your mission. Prayers for...

ROSWELL, N.M. (KRQE) - Sheriff's deputies said a gunshot victim wasn't really a victim after all. In fact, they said he's quite the opposite. According to investigators, the man who pulled the trigger was an 87-year-old hero. Investigators believe the gunshot victim was in the process of chasing down and attacking a woman when the shooting happened. The incident happened Sunday at a property in north Roswell in the 6100 block of Old Clovis Highway. A woman was doing laundry when she claims her neighbor, Larrell Stell, 49, took off his shirt and started talking. "She reports being accosted by...

THIS IS AN ORGANIZED NATIONAL EFFORT FOLKS…… This is not a coincidence. It is a concerted effort. Missouri Democrats are pushing a bill to confiscate guns giving gun owners 90 days to turn in their weapons. Minnesota Democrats are pushing the same bill. Missouri Democrats introduced an anti-gun bill which would turn law-abiding firearm owners into criminals this week. Gun owners will have 90 days to turn in their guns if the legislation is passed. Dana Loesch has more details. Here is the language: 4. Any person who, prior to the effective date of this law, was legally in possession...

Freepers! Marco Rubio is just great and what a sense of humor. This is exactly how to respond to liberal hubris and their synthetic, hibrow, intellect. You need this water bottle if only to get Marco notice from now on. He is going to be Yuge and you need to support him.

Wednesday night on The O’Reilly Factor, Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, broke a series of previously unreleased US Department of Agriculture Videos featuring required “Cultural Sensitivity Training.” The program required employees to chant, “The pilgrims were illegal aliens,” never to use the word “minorities” and to replace it instead with “emerging majorities,” and other similarly leftist tripe. The sensitivity training sessions taped here were held on USDA premises, and is part of what Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack termed the department’s “new era of Civil Rights” and “broader effort towards cultural transformation at USDA.” The training sessions were created by...

Public records show Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, who is known for being stingy with concealed-weapons permits in an anti-gun jurisdiction, may be giving out permits disproportionately to his friends and political supporters and donors. L.A. Weekly obtained public records for all of the 341 active concealed-weapons permits in addition to the 123 applications for permits that were denied over the last 18 months. The records show that of all the people who were denied a permit, only one had contributed to Baca. Baca's friends and campaign donors disproportionately make up the list of those who have active permits....

Ferrocene 'hooks' (yellow) fit into cucurbituril 'loops' (grey) to hold the two sheets of silicon together © Wiley-VCHSouth Korean scientists have developed a chemical velcro that shows promise as a strong and reversible underwater adhesive. The team suggests it could have many applications that require controllable adhesion in aqueous environments.Previous efforts to create underwater adhesives have mainly focused on biomimetic catechol-based polymers that are secreted by marine organisms, including mussels. However, these require curing agents and work by covalent crosslinking, which results in permanent adhesion.Now, Kimoon Kim and colleagues at Pohang University of Science and Technology, have developed a reversible...

This comes as no surprise to Hot Air readers, who learned about the value of the Obama administration’s $150 million subsidy investment of LG Chem last fall. After furloughing its workers at their Grand Rapids plant without having a single one of their batteries installed in a consumer vehicle, the local NBC affiliate produced this report on the way taxpayer money got spent:

After Mabel Muñoz was stopped by police while driving to her college dormitory, the honor student was

Obama with his “we can’t wait for Congress to act” ... there is one man who wields more power than Obama: CIA appointee John Brennan. ... recently discovered that Brennan, running something akin to a fiefdom with his drone assassination program, has the power to decide who lives and who dies and doesn’t have to provide evidence to any entity that the “target” presents any threat to America—even if they are an American—even if the American is living in the United States ... the United States, leading up to the 2011 Libyan civil war had been flooding Libya with literally...

Former San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor acknowledged in federal court Thursday that she took $2 million from her late husband's charitable foundation to pay for her addiction to video poker — and lost $1 billion wagering over the course of a decade. O’Connor, the mayor of California’s second largest city from 1986 to 1992, pleaded not guilty to money laundering as part of a deal with prosecutors that will defer the charges for two years as she attempts to repay the debt. An attorney for O’Connor, Eugene Iredale, told reporters outside the courthouse that his client had severe health problems,...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that she opposes a cut in congressional pay because it would diminish the dignity of lawmakers' jobs. "I don't think we should do it; I think we should respect the work we do," Pelosi told reporters in the Capitol. "I think it's necessary for us to have the dignity of the job that we have rewarded." The comments were made in the context of the looming sequester, which would force across-the-board cuts affecting most federal offices, including Congress. With lawmakers nowhere near a deal to avert those cuts, federal agencies are bracing...

CNN) -- An ex-girlfriend of slain murder suspect Christopher Dorner said the former L.A. policeman worked in a pressure cooker and she was afraid he would target her after she heard he was the object of a manhunt. "It was very scary, and, you know, I made a decision to speak out because if anything had happened to me, I'd want my family to at least have an idea about maybe who it was," Arianna Williams told CNN on Thursday. ~~SNIP~~ "He would come over to my house and sometimes there would be firearms laying around. I just attribute that...

Raleigh, NC --(Ammoland.com)- How much is your profit margin worth? Lenin famously said that “capitalists will sell us the rope we use to hang them.” Should firearms manufacturers sell guns to the police who will enforce gun control laws? Should they sell arms to the states that do not respect the rights of their residents? LaRue got the ball rolling. Olympic Arms came out strong. EFI appears to have added New York to the list they already maintained of locations they simply wouldn’t support. Templar Custom has joined in. And York Arms not only joined, they cancelled actual New York...

Obama’s former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel might make a go for 2016, two well-connected Democrats tell Lloyd Grove—as long as Hillary doesn’t. And the potty-mouthed Chicago mayor could win.Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is said by well-connected Democrats to be considering with the idea of running for president if Hillary Clinton opts out of the 2016 race. It’s unclear who raised the subject—Emanuel or the donors—and the mayor’s press secretary didn’t offer any clarity on who said what to whom. However, Tarah Cooper sent a photo of Emanuel's scrawl on yellow legal paper vowing "not ever" to run for "for...

This afternoon, President Obama participated in a Google-sponsored, Google-approved video roundtable with a range of normal folk who moonlight as bloggers, entrepreneurs, and authors (including a certain one named John Green). The hangout hit on the usual issues — the economy, immigration, gun control — with questions and answers moving like a town hall of the future. This meant there was time to talk about patent reform (thanks, red-headed kickstart advocate Limor Freid) and shots of Obama looking at a screen featuring his face looking at America. Jackie Guerrero wanted to talk about immigration: Would the President continue to execute...

Charred remains found in a burned out California cabin have been positively identified as that of fugitive ex-cop Christopher Dorner, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Office said Thursday. San Bernardino County sheriff's spokeswoman Jodi Miller said the remains were identified through dental examination in the autopsy. Authorities said other personal effects were found in the cabin, including Dorner's license. Miller did not give a cause of death. The search for Dorner began last week after authorities said he had launched a deadly revenge campaign against the Los Angeles Police Department for his firing, warning that he would bring "warfare" to...

Buxton, ME --(Ammoland.com)- Based on the recent legislation in New York, we are prohibited from selling rifles and receivers to residents of New York. We have chosen to extend that prohibition to all governmental agencies associated with or located within New York. As a result we have halted sales of rifles, short barreled rifles, short barreled shotguns, machine guns, and silencers to New York governmental agencies. For “civilian” customers residing in New York: At your choice, we will: •Complete your order and ship to a dealer of your choice outside of NY. •Refund your payment in full. •Hold your items...