Free Republic

Man, when Democrats say they’re done worrying about due process, they don’t mess around. Follow the logic here. Republicans argue that we can’t summarily strip people on a terror watch list of their gun rights because there are too many innocents who land on those lists, often due to simple bureaucratic errors like confusing a law-abiding person with a terror suspect whose name is similar. The GOP plan, from John Cornyn, calls for a temporary three-day hold when someone on a list tries to buy a gun while the government goes to court to try to convince a judge that...

Thoughts on Orlando

Full title: New Homeland Security Records Reveal Top Officials Were Exempted from Strict Ban Placed on Web-Based Personal Email Accounts Despite Heightened Security Concerns Jeh Johnson granted special waiver on first day of official ban. Practice Continued Even After Clinton Email Revelations. (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today announced it obtained 693 pages of Department of Homeland Security records revealing that Secretary Jeh Johnson and 28 other agency officials used government computers to access personal web-based email accounts despite an agency-wide ban due to heightened security concerns. The documents also reveal that Homeland Security officials misled Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA)...

The Mexican government announced they will close their borders to Americans in the event that Donald Trump is elected President of the United States. President Enrique Peña Nieto announced the country fears Americans will flood their country and bring violence and chaos to their streets. “Americans have a well-documented history of violence and we must act to keep our country safe,” President Nieto stated. “Many Americans have expressed a desire to relocate to our country in the event that Donald Trump becomes President. We can not have Mexico flooded with criminals and rapists. They are a violent nation and they...

CIA Director John Brennan delivered (a sobering assessment) this morning, telling Senate lawmakers that ISIS remains a formidable threat when it comes to launching attacks in the West. Brennan said ISIS is likely to use more "guerilla tactics" and launch attacks outside the Middle East, including in the U.S., to compensate for a loss of territory in Iraq and Syria. He said that despite battlefield setbacks, ISIS's ability to carry out global attacks - as it did in Paris and Brussels - has not diminished. And he warned that ISIS is using refugee streams, traditional smuggling routes and legitimate travel...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: "ISIS has a 'large cadre of Western fighters' who could attack in the West and is continuing to inspire sympathizers with no 'direct links' to ISIS to attack on their own as it did in Orlando, the director of the CIA [John Brennan said]. ... Brennan also says despite all the efforts by the US against ISIS, it has not stopped the group. 'Unfortunately, despite all our progress against ISIL on the battlefield and in the financial realm, our efforts have not reduced the group’s terrorism capability and global reach,' Brennan said. ... "'In fact, as the...

Prior to the February 17, 2011, “Day of Rage,” Libya had a national budget surplus of 8.7 percent of GDP in 2010, with oil production at 1.8 million barrels per day, on track to reach its goal of 3 million barrels per day. Currently, oil production has decreased by over 80 percent. Following the revolution, the Libyan economy contracted by an estimated 41.8 percent, with a national deficit of 17.1 percent GDP in 2011. Before the revolution, Libya was a secure, prospering, secular Islamic country and a critical ally providing intelligence on terrorist activity post–September 11, 2001. Qaddafi was no...

Sarah SicardJune 16, 2016 Since the A-10 Warthog, recently seemingly destined for the scrap yard, is now engaging enemy Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Taliban forces in Afghanistan in the form of a new weapon with a badass name - the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System. Manufactured by BAE Systems, the APKWS is equipped with laser-guided rockets, giving A-10 aircraft in Afghanistan a "deep magazine of high-precision weapons," according to Popular Mechanics. One of the biggest advantages to using this system is the minimal collateral damage left when fired, which is a result of its tiny warhead. In addition,...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: This is from a website called Intellectual Takeout. Our show prep knows no bounds here. Once we determine that something is not fake or satire, we'll go with it. "College Kids Can’t Discern Between Fact & Opinion." That's exactly right, and that's how they've been taught. And it's not just recent students. I think many in the media today don't know the difference between fact and opinion. In many cases, opinion can be fact if it's the right opinion. If you can't tell the difference between opinion and fact, then you are incapable of critical thinking, critical...

A British Labor MP has been murdered when she intervened in an altercation between two men, on of whom has been reported to have mental issues.  Witnesses at the scene reported that the gun used appeared “homemade”.  A knife was also used.  The MP was reportedly shot three times and stabbed several times.  From uk.businessinsider.com: An eyewitness report given to the BBC said that Cox was attacked after becoming involved in an altercation between two men. “There was a guy who was being very brave and another guy with a white baseball cap who he was trying to control...

Dayton-based Premier Health is seeking an average 40 percent premium increase next year for the health plans its sells on Ohio's federally-run health insurance marketplace, while the area's largest marketplace insurer, CareSource, has proposed an average rate hike of about 14 percent, based on the latest rate filings with the Ohio Department of Insurance. Of the more than 266,000 Ohioans who signed up for marketplace plans by the end of open enrollment for 2016, about 88 percent, or nearly 235,000 consumers, were eligible to receive premium tax credits, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

After Orlando and San Bernardino and Paris, there is new urgency to understand the signs that can precede acts of terrorism. And with the Islamic State’s prolific use of social media, terrorism experts and government agencies continually search for clues in posts and Twitter messages that appear to promote the militants’ cause. A physicist may not seem like an obvious person to study such activity. But for months, Neil Johnson, a physicist at the University of Miami, led a team that created a mathematical model to sift order from the chaotic pro-terrorism online universe. In a study published Thursday in...

Gun shop owner talks AR-15 NY Daily News BY Seth Moulton SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, June 14, 2016, 8:26 PM I’m a Marine. I carried guns every day in Iraq, guns very similar to the ones used to perpetrate the Orlando murders and many other mass shootings in America. I’ve used guns in combat. On more than one occasion, guns have saved my life.

Someone was shot in Chicago every 150 minutes during the first five months of 2016. Someone was murdered every 14 hours, and the city saw nearly 1,400 nonfatal shootings and 240 fatalities from gunfire. Over Memorial Day weekend, 69 people were shot, nearly one an hour, topping the previous year’s tally of 53 shootings. The violence is spilling from the Chicago’s gang-infested South and West Sides into the business district downtown. Lake Shore Drive has seen drive-by shootings and robberies. The growing mayhem is the result of Chicago police officers’ withdrawing from proactive enforcement, making the city a dramatic example...

<p>Workers at a Florida gun store told authorities before Sunday’s massacre that Omar Mateen tried to buy heavy-duty body armor and a huge cache of ammo from them more than a month ago but that they turned him down because he was acting suspiciously, according to reports Thursday.</p>

House Speaker Paul Ryan talks to reporters at the Republican National Committee headquarters on Capitol Hill on June 14, 2016. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., issued a stern warning Thursday about the rhetoric coming from Donald Trump about the way government should work. “We will lose our freedoms in this country, including all of the Bill of Rights, if we don’t robustly defend the separation of powers,” Ryan said at his weekly press conference inside the U.S. Capitol. Ryan was asked by reporters numerous times about Trump’s recent conduct. Just this week, the presumptive Republican presidential...

At a Fort Pierce home owned by members of the Mateen family, Seddique Mateen — father of the Orlando massacre shooter Omar Mateen — said Omar's wife Noor Salman is "no longer here" and that she was no longer in the area. He would not say where she had gone.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch overruled FBI Director James B. Comey on Thursday, saying the Obama administration does support a ban on firearms sales to those on terrorist watch lists. Mr. Comey last year had told Congress that the ban could end up alerting suspected terrorists that they are being investigated, and that could “blow” the cases his agents are trying to build. But his superiors at the Justice Department rejected that, issuing a statement Thursday saying they want to see Congress approve the “no-fly, no-buy” plan Democrats are pursuing. “The amendment gives the Justice Department an important additional tool to...

As is so often the case, a momentous decision may be triggered by something quite small. Indeed, the future of the western world may come down to this: a squabble over tea kettles. The Brits are riled up by the imminent threat that the EU, driven by its aggressive climate agenda, will outlaw the electric tea pots that the English have relied upon for generations to produce their daily fix of Earl Grey and toast. New “eco-design” regulations governing small appliances have been on the EU shelf for months, delayed by officials correctly worried they might ignite a firestorm of...

Three babies with birth defects caused by Zika have been born in the U.S., the government reported Thursday in its first accounting of pregnancy outcomes involving the virus.