Free Republic

BOSTON — Massachusetts lawmakers last week took a step toward potentially replacing the official state seal and motto, a victory for activists who have argued for decades that the current versions disparage Native Americans. A legislative resolve creating a commission to recommend a new seal and motto (S 2848) emerged in the final hours of the 2020-2021 lawmaking session, earning support from both branches and landing on Gov. Charlie Baker's desk just after 4 a.m.

A great white shark got its Thanksgiving feast over the weekend. The shark was spotted thrashing around Wellfleet Harbor at high tide Sunday. The predator was apparently devouring a seal off the Cape Cod coast. The animal’s ultimate holiday banquet was caught on camera by fisherman Keith Rose of the “Kimberly Ann” fishing vessel, according to the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy (AWSC), a nonprofit that supports scientific research and tracks shark sightings. “There’s a great white finishing off his seal,” the fisherman can be heard saying in one of two videos the conservancy posted. Rose, stunned, proceeds to tell the...

Retired Adm. William McRaven wrote an op-ed article Monday in The Wall Street Journal saying he held certain conservative viewpoints but also believed in ideas like "Black lives matter." He wrote that he voted for the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, because "we need a president for all Americans, not just half of America." McRaven has been an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump, who he has accused of harming American values and tearing down US institutions.

Delta Air Lines said Thursday that it has banned retired U.S. Navy SEAL Robert O’Neill, the man credited with killing Osama Bin Laden, for allegedly failing to wear a mask during a recent flight. O’Neill, 44, tweeted that he had been banned from the airline “for posting a picture.” Earlier this week, O’Neill posted a now-deleted mask-less selfie while sitting on a Delta plane, with the caption, "I'm not a [expletive]." “Part of every customer’s commitment prior to traveling on Delta is the requirement to acknowledge our updated travel policies, which includes wearing a mask,” a Delta spokesman told FOX...

Judicial Watch recently obtained new documents related to mysterious Mena Airfield in Arkansas...Responding to Freedom of Information pressure from Judicial Watch, the CIA released a highly redacted version of the full Mena Report...The report also considers whether the international drug smuggler Barry Seal was involved with the CIA [huge redactions]...We [Judicial Watch] have asked the CIA to conduct an official declassification review of the Mena Report. We want the full, unredacted report.

Because of our menacing great white shark and the seal overpopulation dilemma, Cape Cod is in an ecological, public safety and economic crisis. The exploding seal population is a consequence of the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act, which allowed for the rapidly growing seal overpopulation. Seals attract great white sharks, which feed upon them and ferociously attack humans. We once had a thriving fishing industry, kept healthy in part by a bounty system of predator control. That ended in 1972 with the passage of the protection act, which not only lifted the bounties on fish-eating predators like seals, but placed...

3 min video Former Missouri Governor and Navy Seal Eric Greitens is exonerated after nearly two years of what some have called "Soros-funded persecution." One America's Chanel Rion has the story.

[Catholic/Orthodox Caucus] Fr. Jan Kobylowicz: Living Martyr of the Confessional Seal The sacrament of Confession has been under attack in Australia since the conclusion of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in December of 2017. Several states have now passed legislation that requires Catholic priests to violate the confessional seal in cases where child sexual abuse is revealed in confession. The Queensland Labor government has announced its intention to table a similar bill in the coming weeks, making it the latest Australian state to openly attack the Catholic Church and her sacraments by use of the...

Former Navy SEAL Robert O’Neill bashed former FBI Director James Comey after the release of the Department of Justice inspector general's report on alleged Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuses by FBI officials during President Trump's 2016 campaign. Inspector General Michael Horowitz released his report on Dec. 9, following his two-year investigation into the FBI's and the DOJ's use of FISA warrants to surveil Trump’s campaign for evidence of election interference collusion with Russian agents. The report outlined 17 "significant errors or omissions" by FBI officials in the FISA applications to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page but determined political bias...

Acting on orders from Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and President Trump, the Navy has formally canceled the SEAL-led review board that would have evaluated if Chief Edward Gallagher would remain a SEAL, Navy officials confirmed to USNI News on Tuesday. “The Navy has canceled the Naval Special Warfare designation review board for SOC Edward R. Gallagher,” read a Navy statement provided to USNI News. “He will retire from active duty. We will not provide additional details due to privacy concerns.”,p> Last week, Trump tweeted that the process should be stopped. “The Navy will NOT be taking away Warfighter and...

Fired Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer lashed out at President Trump in an interview with CBS News on the steps of the Pentagon Monday evening. Spencer, who mutinied against Trump over his order to not kick Chief Petty Officer Eddie Gallagher out of the Navy SEALs, also attacked Trump in his letter acknowledging his firing this past weekend over the Gallagher case. Spencer said of Trump, “What message does that send to the troops? That you can get away with this? We have to have good order and discipline. It is the backbone of what we do. I don’t...

DoD Chief Asks for Navy Secretary Resignation Amid Probe Into Court-Martialed Navy SEAL - Report And that's all folks for the moment. This is Sputnik, after all.

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy Secretary said on Saturday he did not threaten to resign amid a disagreement with President Donald Trump over whether a Navy SEAL convicted of battlefield misconduct should face a board of peers who may oust him from the elite force. “There seem to be rumors out there that I threatened to resign. I have not threatened to resign,” Richard Spencer told reporters at a security conference in Halifax. The New York Times reported earlier on Saturday that Spencer had threatened to quit if Trump subverted the process. Spencer said Special Operations Chief...

Navy Secretary Richard Spencer said Friday that he believes Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher should face a board of his peers to determine whether he should be removed from the force, despite opposition from President Trump. “I believe the process matters for good order and discipline,” Spencer told Reuters. In July, a military jury convicted Gallagher, 40, of posing for pictures with a corpse of an ISIS fighter during a 2017 deployment in Iraq. The conviction resulted in loss of rank and reduction in pay, but didn't include jail time. Gallagher was acquitted on several other charges, including murder of the...

The former Navy SEAL who sent Osama Bin Laden to the grave weighed in on a star witness in the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, and it wasn’t pretty. Robert O’Neill slammed Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman Tuesday for his allegedly partisan motives in the Democrats’ attempt to oust the president. ... O’Neill wrote. “I wish the left wouldn’t use his uniform to make him a saint. He’s an operative with an agenda.” ... The lieutenant colonel even went outside his chain of command, a move that lends weight to the theory he is simply an anti-Trump operative taking the...

President Donald J. Trump has decided to restore convicted SEAL Edward Gallagher’s pay grade to chief petty officer, overriding a decision last week by the Navy’s top admiral, Fox News reports “This president recognizes the injustice of it,” Pete Hegseth said during Fox and Friends after speaking with the president. “You train someone to go fight and kill the enemy. Then they go kill the enemy the way someone doesn’t like, and then we put them in jail or we throw the book at them.”.

Fox News host Pete Hegseth said President Trump is expected to make an announcement in the next week about restoring the rank of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher. Hegseth said on “Fox & Friends” Monday morning that he learned the news during a conversation with Trump over the weekend, and the actions by the president are expected to come before Veteran’s Day, Nov. 11, Fox News reported. “It doesn’t have to be a pardon or a commutation,” Hegseth said. “It could be, but pardons and commutations imply guilt, that you’ve done something wrong and you need to be forgiven for that....

Fox News livestream of DNI Joseph Maguire testifying on the lastest "whistleblower".

The man who created the altered presidential seal that appeared behind President Trump briefly as he gave a speech earlier this week is a 46-year-old graphic designer who crafted the image after becoming disenchanted by Trump and the GOP. “This is the most petty piece of art I have ever created,” Charles Leazott, a former Republican who voted for former President George W. Bush twice, told The Washington Post in an interview. The Post noted that Leazott crafted the fake presidential seal following the 2016 presidential election. But the design grabbed widespread attention on Thursday after news outlets reported that...

Jury finds Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher not guilty of war crimes