Free Republic

One of the funniest headlines I've ever read.

AUSTIN – The fatal shooting of a pet dog by an Austin Police Department officer over the weekend is sparking outrage near and far. As of Monday evening, close to 22,000 people had hit the "Like" button on a Facebook page called “Justice for Cisco,” the name of Austinite Michael Paxton's dog, which was killed by an officer.

Media Response to Anita Li, from the Toronto Star Since you took the time to email us with your requests like we asked, I’ll take the time to give you an honest follow-up response. You’ll have to forgive me for doing so publicly though; again I want to be sure my words are portrayed the way I actually say them, not cut together to make entirely different points. Your questions were: Q: Why did you decide to reprimand your daughter over a public medium like YouTube? A: Well, I actually just had to load the video file itself on YouTube...

Attacks continue after Grad rocket directly strikes home in Be'er Sheva on Saturday night, killing one person and seriously wounding four. The escalation in southern Israel continued Sunday morning when six rockets and a barrage of mortars hit near the city of Ashkelon. The Iron Dome system successfully shot down three rockets. Earlier, a Grad rocket directly struck a home in the southern city of Be'er Sheva on Saturday night, killing one person and seriously wounding four. 26 people are being treated for shock.

No amount of family counseling is going to help here. A Washington State man had to be airlifted to the hospital after his daughter shot him with a hunting bow because he took away her cell phone, authorities said. The 15-year-old girl refused to let her father use the phone to call for help Wednesday evening, forcing him to crawl to a neighbor's house for help, KOMO-TV reported. When officers arrived at the house in Tahuya, Wash. - about 35 miles west of Seattle - the girl fled into the woods with the bow and 35 arrows. A SWAT team...

DETROIT – A gunman opened fire inside a Detroit police precinct on Sunday, wounding four officers including a commander before he was shot and killed by police, authorities said. The gunman walked in through the precinct's revolving door around 4:20 p.m. with a pistol grip shotgun and opened fire, Sgt. Todd Eby, who was sitting at his desk in the precinct at the time of the shooting, told the Detroit Free Press. He said officers shot back at the gunman, killing him.

WICCOPEE — In a stunning reversal, the frequently lauded and taxpayer-funded SpectraWatt Inc. has told the state it will close its solar cell plant starting in March and lay off 117 workers. The announcement was startling because in the past two months, the company, which had been promised about $8 million in tax dollars, planned to train more workers and changed its work shifts to enable a 24-hour operation. In a news release, the company said it hopes to reverse the situation that led to the decision, but SpectraWatt officials did not respond to requests for details.

A Clayton County mother of six said the family dog did what he always did when he saw someone. He barked. But when "Boomer" started barking and running toward a police officer Saturday morning, the officer shot the dog and killed it, Lawrene King told the AJC Sunday night. “He’s a golden retriever," King said. "He barks, but he’s never bitten anyone.” A Clayton County police officer was on foot patrol on North Shore Drive when the dog jumped off a porch and started barking and running toward the officer, Capt. Tina Daniel said. The officer ordered the dog to...

Of the more than $2 billion the federal government has given out to boost the economy and create green-energy jobs, more than three-quarters has gone to foreign-owned companies that dominate the global wind-power industry. This latest finding by the Investigative Reporting Workshop, a nonprofit at American University in Washington, D.C., is illustrated clearly in San Diego County, where about a dozen commercial wind developers have offices. La Jolla is the headquarters for Eurus Energy America, the subsidiary of a Japanese firm that received $91 million in federal stimulus money for a wind farm in western Texas. It plans to apply...

ROSEVILLE, Calif. (AP) - A driver whose SUV plunged into a Northern California creek after he was startled by his hands-free cell phone device escaped the sinking vehicle by blasting out the window with a handgun. The 28-year-old man, whose name wasn't immediately available, is an armed security guard at Thunder Valley Casino, north of Sacramento. He sustained minor injuries in Sunday's accident.

At 12:30 Donna Jackson woke up to her dog barking like someone was in her backyard. She went to to her backdoor and sure enough she was face to face with a man trying to break in. “Oh he’s getting ready to break the window,” said Jackson to the dispatcher. Jackson immediately went and got her shotgun, hoping an officer would get there so she didn’t have to use it. But the man trying to break in had other plans, he then grabbed some patio furniture and broke the back door. “Dear god hurry. I haven’t shot yet. Hurry,” said...

Days ago she was on the verge of death after losing half the blood in her body during a furious shootout with the Fort Hood gunman. But as she sits smiling in her hospital bed, Sergeant Kimberley Munley looks as if she has made a miraculous recovery. The slightly built policewoman was the first on the scene after army psychiatrist Major Nidal Malik Hasan went on a murderous rampage, killing 13 of his fellow soldiers. Fort Hood Hasan was finally brought down by four shots, fired by Sgt Munley despite being wounded in both legs. One of the shots cut...

ublished: August 24, 2009 TABOR CITY, N.C. — A sheriff says a North Carolina state senator shot one of two intruders at his home and hospital officials say the man is in fair condition. Multiple media outlets reported that Columbus County Sheriff Chris Batten said that 74-year-old Sen. R.C. Soles of Tabor City shot Kyle Blackburn late Sunday afternoon. A spokeswoman at Loris Community Hospital in South Carolina said Monday that Blackburn was in fair condition. Batten says the shooting occurred when two men went to the senator’s house and tried to kick in his front door. No charges have...

It's a terrible mistake to confuse the momentary solvency of the financial sector and the long-term health of our economy. While we have addressed the credit collapse, we have not begun to tackle the far more daunting, and more significant, structural problems in the economy. Instead of focusing on the green shoots, let's examine the macro data that will determine our national prosperity in the next generation. These data are terrifying. Start with the job front. Long term, nothing is more fundamental than good jobs to creating the middle-class wealth that must drive the economy. The creation of true middle-class...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – An Iraqi soccer fan shot dead a player of the opposing team as he tried to score an equalizing goal in the final minutes of a match, police said on Monday. The shooting on Saturday in Hilla, 100 km (60 miles) south of Baghdad, during a match between local teams, underscored the country's propensity to lawlessness even as violence by militant groups falls to lows not seen since mid-2003. "As soon as Haider Kadhim (the player) was alone in front of the goalkeeper and close to equalizing, a fan in the crowd fired a pistol at him,"...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – In his first television interview, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke predicted that America's worst recession in decades likely will end this year, and that the economic recovery would gather steam next year. In the "60 Minutes" interview broadcast by CBS late Sunday, which the network said was the first by a sitting Fed chairman in 20 years, Bernanke said the "green shoots" of economic revival were already evident. Predicting that no more big banks will fail, Bernanke also called on Washington's squabbling politicians to show the will needed for recovery as he spelled out just how close...

The digital transition has left some confused, but a Joplin man was down right frustrated with the switch. So frustrated, in fact, that he peppered his television set with gunfire. Police responded to the man's house Wednesday after reports of shots being fired inside. Turns out the 70-year-old gunman was livid over losing cable and could not get his digital converter box to work. Police took Walter Hoover into custody after a brief standoff and charged him with unlawful use of a firearm. Hoover's wife told police that he had been drinking before the incident.

http://reason.com/blog/show/129620.html

A 52-year-old man was being held without bail on suspicion of shooting at a traffic light in Westwood and having more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition in his van and a storage locker late last week, UCLA police said Monday. Gene Bush allegedly began firing at a traffic light at Broxton and Le Conte avenues shortly before midnight Thursday. Campus police responding to the shooting reported that they found Bush on the sidewalk, empty-handed but wearing a holster. They said that when they ordered him, at gunpoint, to get on the ground, he responded: "Not until everyone else gets here."...

CARCASSONNE, France (AFP) — President Nicolas Sarkozy promised swift and severe punishment Monday after a soldier shot and wounded 17 people, including a three-year-old boy and both his parents, at an open day at an army barracks. The sergeant opened up with an assault rifle, firing live rounds instead of blanks into a crowd of hundreds of visitors watching a hostage-taking exercise Sunday at the base near the southwestern city of Carcassonne. A man who witnessed the shooting told AFP that "suddenly, people were falling, we thought it was part of the exercise, and then we saw blood."