Free Republic

In Washington, high-profile funerals often fall to vice presidents. “You die, I’ll fly” was how George H.W. Bush summed up the frequent funeral part of his portfolio when he was Ronald Reagan’s No. 2 in the 1980s. (Bush attributed the quip to Secretary of State James A. Baker.) But sometimes, the passing of an august figure requires words from the highest political voice in the country, a sitting or former president. President Trump did not attend Saturday’s memorial service for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) at Washington National Cathedral. Nor has Trump spoken at a funeral since moving into the White...

Caltrans will widen striping and increase visibility on 1,027 lane miles of U.S. Highway 101 from the San Benito/Santa Clara County line to the Santa Barbara/Ventura County line, thanks to funding by Senate Bill 1 (SB 1), the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017.“The wider and brighter striping will make it easier for all drivers and truckers to see the lane lines,” said Caltrans Director Laurie Berman. “The highly reflective striping will improve safety for road users, especially during rainy days. The six-inch striping will also take up more surface so it will be more durable and last longer,...

Parkland activist David Hogg is calling for a boycott of Laura Ingraham’s advertisers after the Fox News host made a comment about some of his college rejections, which he openly discussed in an interview with TMZ. “David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA...totally predictable given acceptance rates.)” Ingraham tweeted along with a link to a DailyWire story about the rejections. Hogg was turned down by four University of California schools--Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Barbara and Irvine. The Parkland activist responded by calling on his supporters...

NASA-JPL A large mass of colder-than-normal water across the equatorial Pacific, shown Dec. 7, 2017 in this satellite image, is a classic sign of La Niña conditions, scientists say, which historically have increased the likelihood of dry winters in California. Californians are beginning to wonder: Is the state heading back into a drought? While experts say it’s still too early in the winter rainy season to say for sure, the evidence is accumulating, and the rain is definitely not. La Niña conditions in the Pacific Ocean — the cooling of ocean waters near the equator that have historically increased the...

The so-called Thomas Fire is only 15 percent contained, now threatening the city of Santa Barbara and the nearby coastal town of Carpinteria, and is on track to become one of the worst wildfires in California history. It has already destroyed 583 structures and scorched 173,000 acres, the authorities say. New evacuations were ordered in Carpinteria, which been under fire threat for days. The new evacuation zone extends within two miles of the Santa Barbara Zoo.

A bronze statue of the Roman Catholic priest Junipero Serra at the Old Santa Barbara Mission was decapitated and doused with red paint on Sunday night or early Monday morning. The statue, on the western side of the Central Coast property near the mission's office, has since been covered with a tarp. The Santa Barbara mission has been called the "Queen of the Missions." The statue was vandalized in a similar fashion as another Father Serra statue in Monterey last year. That figure, which was beheaded but not painted, has since been repaired. Another, in Santa Cruz, was vandalized with...

Waiting on a routine flight from Sacramento back to Santa Barbara, Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., discovered he was a terrorist. Or at least that’s what the FBI thought. McClintock was clearly more of a frequent flyer than radical extremist. But a classic case of mistaken identity, not ties to terrorism, landed him on the FBI’s no-fly list. A well-known state senator at the time, McClintock was left stranded at the Sacramento International Airport about 10 years ago. He couldn’t fly home under his own name.

"Find your Safe Space because Milo is bringing the Dangerous Faggot Tour to the University of California, Santa Barbara! The topic: "Feminism is a Cancer" Deal with with it, Darlings! Join us at the Corwin Pavilion on campus by 7PM Pacific."

A 27-year-old man remained behind bars Saturday after he was arrested in the slayings of a Santa Barbara doctor, his wife and their 5-year-old daughter. Pierre Haobsh, a business acquaintance of Dr. Henry Han, was arrested Friday morning, Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said in a statement. Police found a loaded handgun and property belonging to one of the victims in his car when he was taken into custody in San Diego County, Brown said.

The travel time from Earth to Mars using current space flight technologies is estimated to be 9 months. Last week, an innovative concept was proposed which claims to reduce the time that will be spent for Mars travel to merely three days through so-called photonic propulsion technology. But a new proposal threatens to radically shorten this period to an astounding 30 minutes. The idea was revealed by Phillip Lubin, who is a physics professor at the University of California Santa Barbara. Lubin was also responsible for the photonic propulsion technology proposal. This time, however, he identified the use of high-powered...

Its been a hunert years since I red that sentence in the April 1984 issue of National Geographic. Well 31 at least. Today I walked into a facility for the umpteenth time. This time, while waiting, I walked over to a half filled book case and incredibly it held many, many past issue of National Geographic including the April '84 issue. This issue included coverage of Central California and half way thru it they start talking about Santa Barbara. It starts by "If you don't live in Santa Barbara it must be because of a misdeed committed in a prior...

As a speaker was about to begin her lecture criticizing gay marriage Tuesday on the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara, about 30 students seated in the front rows stood with signs, turned to face the rest of the audience and let loose.

An oil spill was reported Tuesday at Refugio State Beach, about 20 miles west of Santa Barbara, spanning about four miles along the coastline. A citizen reported the leak coming from a ruptured pipeline off the 101 Freeway to authorities at about noon. The pipeline, owned by Santa Maria-based Plains All-American Pipeline, was on land, and the oil flowed from land into the ocean.

A Santa Ynez man suffered major injuries Sunday night after being run over by singer-songwriter David Crosby, according to officials. At around 5:45 p.m., Mr. Crosby, 73, of Santa Ynez, was traveling west on Baseline Avenue in his 2015 Tesla sedan, according to California Highway Patrol Sgt. Don Clotworthy. Mr. Crosby, who was driving into the sun, did not see the jogger on the right side of the road. The man, Jose Jiminez, 46, of Santa Ynez, was struck and fell to the ground. At the time of the collision, Mr. Crosby was traveling at a reported speed of 55...

Recent scientific findings date their arrival earlier than ever thought, sparking hot debate among archaeologists For much of its length, the slow-moving Aucilla River in northern Florida flows underground, tunneling through bedrock limestone. But here and there it surfaces, and preserved in those inky ponds lie secrets of the first Americans.For years adventurous divers had hunted fossils and artifacts in the sinkholes of the Aucilla about an hour east of Tallahassee. They found stone arrowheads and the bones of extinct mammals such as mammoth, mastodon and the American ice age horse.Then, in the 1980s, archaeologists from the Florida Museum of...

New details tonight about a secret Pentagon database used to monitor anti-war protests and activists. Recently-disclosed documents reveal that some of the surveillance targets include an organization with ties to the Central Coast. Secret Pentagon documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union provide details of how the organization called "Veterans for Peace" was considered a threat. Every Sunday for the past three years, members of the Santa Barbara Chapter of Veterans for Peace place a cross in the sand near Stearns Wharf for every American soldier killed in Iraq. First started in Santa Barbara, the "Arlington West" display has...

A California newspaper will continue to use the term “illegals” to describe people who enter the U.S. without permission, despite an attack on its building by vandals believed to object to the term. The Santa Barbara News-Press’s front entrance was sprayed with the message “The border is illegal, not the people who cross it” in red paint, sometime either Wednesday night or early Thursday, according to the newspaper’s director of operations, Donald Katich. The attack came amid wider objections to a News-Press headline that used the word “illegals” alongside a story on California granting driver’s licenses to people in the...

One of the most blatant incidents of academic bigotry is going to end up in civil court and potentially cost the University of California, Santa Barbara and Assistant Professor Mireille Miller-Young a lot of money. You may recall that the good professor, enraged by the appearance of pro-life demonstrators in a designated free-speech zone on her campus, assaulted a 16-year-old pro-life demonstrator, whose lawful demonstration offended the professor.

<p>One minute, Emily Miles was walking her dogs in a Santa Barbara County avocado grove, the next, a hulking 300-pound black bear was sinking its teeth into her left thigh after tackling her to the ground..</p> <p>"Looking at him, I knew he could kill me in an instant," Miles, 65, said in an interview aired by KTLA.</p>

A sociopath runs amok—and kills more men than women—and feminists ride their hobbyhorse. Over 77 percent of all U.S. murder victims in 2012 were male; targets of non-lethal shootings are even more disproportionately male. Four of the six homicide victims of Elliot Rodger, the lunatic narcissist who went on a killing spree in Santa Barbara in revenge for female rejection, were male. And yet the feminist industry immediately turned this heartbreaking bloodbath into a symbol of America’s war on women.