Free Republic

GOP senators attack whistleblower's credibility GOP senators attack whistleblower's credibility BY ALEXANDER BOLTON - 09/30/19 06:00 AM EDT 13,753 Republican senators scrambling to protect President Trump from a formal impeachment inquiry are attacking the credibility of the whistleblower who filed a complaint. GOP lawmakers are asserting the whistleblower did not have firsthand knowledge of the actions detailed in the complaint and question whether the person had a political agenda. “It doesn’t come from a person with personal knowledge. It’s like I heard these people say this, and now I’m reporting it. I think that is pretty bizarre,” said Sen. John...

HONG KONG—Chinese authorities have detained a FedEx Corp. pilot in the southern city of Guangzhou, elevating pressure on the express shipping giant that is already in Beijing’s crosshairs amid a U.S.-China trade war. The pilot, a former U.S. Air Force colonel named Todd A. Hohn, was detained a week ago while waiting for a commercial flight to his home in Hong Kong after flying deliveries throughout Asia from the FedEx regional hub in Guangzhou, people familiar with the matter said. A lawyer for the Hohn family in Niceville, Fla., confirmed that Mr. Hohn had been detained in China. He was...

California announced last week that it has added Iowa to the list of states on its ever-expanding “travel ban” list because of that state’s new prohibition against funding gender-transition surgeries under Medicaid. The announcement by state Attorney General Xavier Becerra means that as of Oct. 4, California will no longer offer taxpayer-funded trips to Iowa for any public employee or student at a state-run university. Becerra’s authority came from a 2016 California law signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown that bars state-funded travel to other states that undercut LGBT rights. The blacklist already included Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma and...

OKLAHOMA CITY - A local news anchor issued a tearful on-air apology to her co-host after she compared him to a gorilla on television. USA Today reported that KOCO morning show host Alex Housden, who is white, made the racist comparison of co-anchor Jason Hackett, who is black, to a gorilla in a segment about one of the animals at the Oklahoma City Zoo. The Washington Post reported that Housden was specifically reporting on Fin, the zoo's baby western lowland gorilla, who was seen taking selfies during an Instagram takeover by one of his caretakers. "As you can see, Fin...

Johnson & Johnson ordered to pay $572M in historic opioid trial. In a landmark decision, an Oklahoma judge on Monday ordered pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson to pay $572 million for its role in the state's opioid crisis.

The Daily Oklahoman, 26 Aug 2008: Trust keeps Powerball winner a mystery. Only Lottery Commission knows who is now $29.3 million richer. A financial planning company based in Oklahoma City received $29.3 million Monday on behalf of the Zorro Trust, which held the winning ticket from the July 2 drawing. There was also a computer malfunction that pre-empted the televised broadcast of the Sunday draw, and instead the drawing was held later and monitored by an auditing firm. The Daily article discloses: Trusts shield the winner or winners from public scrutiny. “We were hopeful that they would come in, but...

Herbert Hoover: Indian Reservation, Engineer, WWI Relief, President, Middle East, Communism, Constitution, the Bible Herbert Clark Hoover was born AUGUST 10, 1874, in West Branch, Iowa. At the age of 6, his father died. Herbert was sent to live on the Osage Indian Reservation in Oklahoma with his Quaker uncle, who was an Indian agent. There he made many Indian friends and attended the "Indian Sunday-School." Herbert Hoover was the only U.S. President to have lived on an Indian reservation. His Canadian-born Quaker mother, Hulda, taught Sunday School and spoke at the Friend's Meeting House. She died when he was...

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — Building on a 2016 ban on city-funded travel to states with anti-LGBT laws, San Francisco officials Tuesday voted unanimously to extend that ban to states with restrictive abortion laws. “It will expand the existing ordinance to states that have waged war on our constitutionally protected right to an abortion,” San Francisco Supervisor Vallie Brown, who introduced the proposal, said at a board meeting Tuesday. Five states — Georgia, Louisiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Mississippi — passed laws this year that ban abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. Missouri also enacted a law banning abortions after eight weeks,...

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and organizations funded by left-wing billionaire George Soros are bankrolling a plan to provide temporary amnesty to Venezuela’s population. Last week, the Democrat-controlled House passed a measure to create a Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program for Venezuela’s population — allowing nationals who are already in the U.S. to remain and incentivizing more to migrate. Thirty-nine House Republicans joined every Democrat to support the legislation, including: Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) Rep. Michael Bost (R-IL) Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) Rep. John Curtis (R-UT) Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) Rep. Brian...

Full title: "Shocking moment a homeowner pulls a gun on teens who attempt to rob him as he waters his lawn - before one of the suspects, 15, is shot by another neighbor while fleeing through their backyard" A group of teenagers terrorizing homeowners in Tulsa are in custody on Friday Three suspects pulled off a slew of robberies until they picked on the wrong man Two of the would-be thieves approached a man on his law demanding his money The man pulled out his own pistol and the two young robbers fled the scene Trio were driving away when...

Police are investigating after a 4-year-old said she was raped by a man in a McDonald's bathroom during a day care center field trip July 16. Brandon Clables, the Midwest City police chief told Fox 25, "Apparently he had gone inside the bathroom where the little girl was, and at that point he had molested the child." Day care employees told police a 4-year-old girl had gone to the bathroom in the play area of McDonald's on the 7000 block of SE 15th St. The care-takers said they noticed the girl was gone for a while and went to check...

Lawmakers are returning to Congress on Monday following a racist series of tweets from President Donald Trump aimed at four Democratic lawmakers, and Republican leaders as well as rank-and-file members are feeling the pressure to weigh in on the President's comments. But many leaders in the party are so far not weighing in publicly -- including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. "If he issues a statement on this we'll be sure to forward," said McConnell spokesman David Popp in response to a question from CNN. While many Republican leaders in Congress have thus far not spoken out, some GOP members...

GUTHRIE, Okla. - Two people were arrested after a traffic stop of a stolen car revealed the two had a rattlesnake, radioactive uranium, and an open bottle of Kentucky Deluxe. Stephen Jennings is charged with possession of a stolen vehicle, transporting an open container of liquor, operating a vehicle with a suspended license, and failure to carry security verification form. Rachael Rivera is charged with possession of a firearm after a former felony conviction. The traffic stop was made at 11 a.m. in a Guthrie neighborhood because the tag was expired. Jennings was in the driver's seat, Rivera in the...

The rise of so-called “abortion reversal” bills has alarmed leading medical groups that say such legislation forces physicians to give misleading, unscientific and potentially dangerous advice to women, undermining the trusted doctor-patient relationship. So far this year, five states ― North Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Arkansas — have passed legislation mandating that physicians counsel women that a medication abortion, a safe and common method for ending a pregnancy before 10 weeks, can be reversed. Similar laws are already on the books in South Dakota, Utah and Idaho. Arkansas expanded an existing law.

She burned herself. An Oklahoma woman was arrested for setting fire to her neighbor’s abandoned home after she was caught by her own surveillance camera in the act. Del City resident Annie Durham, 59, has been charged with second-degree arson in connection with the fire that was started on June 10. “She caught herself on camera setting the fire,” Del City Fire Chief Brandon Pursell told KFOR. Investigators set their sights on Durham after finding out about the feud that she had with her neighbor. They would notice the surveillance cameras that she had and received permission to look...

A fact that is conveniently overlooked by those calling for reparations. The 13th Amendment did not free all slaves in the boundaries of modern-day US. Members of five Native American nations, the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole Nations (known as the Five Tribes), owned black slaves. Located outside the territorial boundaries of the US in a region known as Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma), these sovereign nations were not affected by proclamations or constitutional amendments. Instead, separate treaties had to be made between the US and these Native American nations not only to free slaves, but also to formally end...

Your government, the one your tax dollars fund, is systematically rounding up African Americans and placing them into forced labor. The government is reenslaving a people against their will and in violation of the 13th Amendment. Just hypothetically, what is your response? What would you do? Now presume the government is also rounding up other people and putting them in concentration camps. People are disappearing. What do you do? How do you respond? I assume your response is not to tweet angrily. Consider Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, joined by various members of the Democratic Party and journalists from MSNBC, The New York...

A graduation trip to the Dominican Republic for a group of Oklahoma teens took a turn earlier this month when part of the group became mysteriously ill during their stay in the Caribbean nation, where at least nine Americans have died while vacationing. About 40 seniors, who just graduated from Deer Creek High School in Edmond, traveled to the Dominican Republic on June 8 to stay at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Punta Cana, a parent told KOTV. The all-inclusive resort is the same location where two Americans have died and others have gotten sick. The group ate...

Maine legislators on Monday killed a measure that would have awarded the state’s electoral college votes to the winner of the national popular vote. A bill to enter Maine into the National Popular Vote Compact failed in a 68-79 vote on Monday in the state House. Twenty Democrats joined Republicans in voting down the measure. The bill had been introduced by state Senate President Troy Jackson (D), and it passed the upper chamber in May. It lost a test vote in the House last month, then won a vote last week before sputtering on Monday. Maine is the second state...

A group of fifth graders from Oklahoma arrived at their Washington, D.C. field trip in style, touching down in the nation’s capital on a private Delta Air Lines flight after their American Airlines trip was canceled at the last minute. On June 2, 41 fifth-grade students from Tulsa and their chaperones received the disappointing news that their American flight departing Will Rogers World Airport to Richmond, Va. for their highly anticipated school trip – which has been in the works for almost a year – was canceled, Though the carrier issued the group a refund, there were no alternative flights...