Free Republic

Writing for The Telegraph, Damien McElroy notes that: "Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed leader of the 'Islamic State' stretching across Iraq and Syria, has vowed to lead the conquest of Rome as he called on Muslims to immigrate to his new land to fight under its banner around the globe. Baghdadi, who holds a PhD in Islamic studies, said Muslims were being targetted and killed from China to Indonesia. Speaking as the first Caliph, or commander of the Islamic faithful since the dissolution of the Ottoman empire, he called on Muslims to rally to his pan-Islamic state. 'Those who can...

W. Kamau Bell ✔ @wkamaubell Oops. I totally elected President Obama so that he would put his thumb on the scale. #MyBad #Ferguson Shaun Parker @partoftheproblm @wkamaubell I mean, it's not like the scale needs a little help re-balancing or anything... 3:52 PM - 18 Aug 2014 Asked at this afternoon’s press conference if he himself would travel to Ferguson, Mo., President Obama seemed to say “no” after a very lengthy answer to the question. Attorney General Eric Holder will travel to Missouri on Wednesday, but Obama said he couldn’t appear to “put a thumb on the scales” one way...

Famed forensic pathologist, Dr. Michael Baden: “There is a legitimate concern as to whether the shooting was an overreaction.” Anytime someone is shot six times I don’t have a problem with such an observation. However, if a 6'4”, 282 pound man – who moments earlier robbed a convenience store, strong armed the owner and assaulted Officer Darren Wilson in his own car – is charging your position despite continued warnings to stand down, in a violent neighborhood no less, you're likely to shoot repeatedly...especially if the first shots were of no deterrence. Throw in the fact preliminary reports now show...

A woman claiming to be a friend of Darren Wilson is speaking out to say that Michael Brown “bum rushed” the officer before he was fatally shot. The woman, going by the name “Josie,” gave Wilson’s side in a radio interview on Friday with Dana Loesch at KTFK. CNN and other mainstream outlets picked up the story on Monday after verifying that Josie’s claims match what Wilson told Ferguson police happened before the shooting. Loesch noted on Friday that Josie’s rendition had not been verified. Josie said that Wilson confronted Brown and his friend, Dorian Johnson, who were walking in...

...There seems no reason to treat Ferguson as if it were an actual neighborhood rather than what it's become, namely, just another place where civilization goes to die. The current residents have amply demonstrated their "sense of hope and sense of purpose." There's compelling evidence outsiders won't impose another. As with any natural sinkhole, wishing it were some other way is futile. Ferguson's fate seems decided. Businesses which escaped the looting and arson will also be abandoned, never to return. The remaining law-abiding, productive citizens will flee with them. The tax base will collapse. Schools will teach it's all someone...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Each day when the nightly violence in Ferguson, Missouri, subsides, Erma Dupree and other volunteers descend on the tense town's streets to sweep up the broken glass, shell casings and flung bottles. Dupree, 55, has been driving from her St. Louis home to Ferguson every day since last Monday. “I clean up the streets for about three hours during the day. I don’t want to be around that area at night because of the tear gas being fired at the riots,” Dupree said. “It was just horrific. There was more broken glass than I’ve ever seen in my life,” Dupree...

In Ferguson and many towns like it, majority African-American communities most grapple with mostly white county governments. How this leads to dysfunction, racial tension, and a skewed justice system. As we watch Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson bumble his way through press conferences, let’s take a couple steps back and think about how this two-thirds African-American town has retained such a nearly complete all-white power structure. It is partly, as Slate noted, a question of voting power, as whites are more entrenched and vote in greater numbers. But there’s a larger story here about race in America that involves the...

I’m not what you would characterize as a typical fan of opera, be it of the buffa or not-so buffa variety. In fact, when a close friend of mine-who also happens to be a classically trained pianist-asked me whether the opera I intended to see today was dell’arte, I had to make a trip to Wikipedia in order to answer her question. As it turns out, it did include a number of masques, all of which had either practical or symbolic significance, although it didn’t rely upon stock characters, and is not really what you could accurately describe as a...

he California Teachers Association (CTA) has quietly started to prepare its members for life after extortion. It has put together a report titled “Not if, but when: Living in a world without Fair Share,” in which it acknowledges that the days of being able to extort teachers to bribe Democrats may be fast coming to an end. Automatic, compulsory union membership for teachers is being challenged in court and the thugs that run the state’s biggest teachers union can see the outcome will lead to an end of their cushy lives. They have prepared a slideshow outlining the “terrible consequences”...

hey are making their move. With the world busy trying to blame Israel for killing “innocent” Palestinians, Islamist thugs in Sweden are flexing their muscles and starting their attacks. They are threatening Sweden by saying, “Until the day we die, we will engage in war against Sweden and Europe.” Sweden and Europe invited these savages into their midst. They feed them, clothe them, give them free housing and offer them education, yet all the while allow these vicious sub-humans to openly hate their Swedish benefactors and rape their women without lifting a finger to defend themselves. Sweden is in desperate...

By now, probably everybody in America has heard about what happened in Ferguson, Missouri. A racist white police officer, driven by racial animus, chose a random African-American kid to harass, a confrontation which eventually resulted in the police officer shooting this unarmed kid in the back.

CNN Wolf Blitzer: Why Don’t Cops “Shoot to Wound?” By Robert Farago on August 17, 2014 “On Thursday, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer asked guest [lawyer] Jeffrey Toobin why police weren’t instructed to “shoot to injure,” instead of kill,” talkingpointsmemo.com reports. “Blitzer’s questions arose during a discussion on the unfurling conflict in Ferguson, Mo. over the fatal police shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown. ‘They often shoot to kill,’ Blitzer said of police. ‘Why do they have to shoot to kill? Why can’t they shoot a warning shot in the air, scare someone off if they think they’re in danger. Why...

A man and his wife see a neighbor drive up to her house.   The neighbor is in her 60's.   As they watch, a strange man approaches her, speaks to her, then grabs her, drags her from the SUV, throws her to the ground, and jumps in the vehicle.  The wife opens the passenger side door, but is struck by the vehicle and knocked down.   The husband fires several shots from a handgun.   A short while later, the vehicle crashes.   From azfamily.com: The responding officers discovered it was the stolen vehicle and that the driver was the...

Michael Brown’s Raps: Money, Sex, Drugs — And A Vulnerable Side By MATT HANSEN AND KURTIS LEE AUG. 17, 2014 In the neighborhood around the worn Canfield Green Apartments, 18-year-old Michael Brown was known as a young man with some potential. His peers around him struggled to hold jobs and had multiple run-ins with the law, but Brown had graduated from high school and was headed for community college. And he had another ambition: his music. Calling himself Big’Mike, he was a prolific amateur rapper, recording solo and duet tracks and posting them online. He even included a phone number...

Christians persecuted by Muslims in Islamic countries who think they are escaping their fate by fleeing discover that the same treatment awaits them in Europe, which after all has simply imported Islam's barbarism by opening its doors to large numbers of Muslims. The German daily newspaper Die Welt reports on the terrible exclusion and violence suffered by Christian refugees at the hands of Muslims in Germany's asylum centres. Germany is the second country in the world, after the US, for number of asylum applications received, with 13% of them last year, and the first in Europe, with 23.2% last...

The Armed American Radio broadcast with Mark Walters is on every Sunday 8PM Eastern, 5PM Pacific. Coming to you live from the Crossbreed Holsters Studio. Find AAR on your local stationFacebookListen LiveThe AAR iTunes podcasts are usually available the following Monday Are you sad because the GunTalk radio show with the awesome Tom Gresham ended it's last few minutes, and you have to wait a week for another firearms-related radio show to appear so you can listen? Do you crave to hear from the experts across the nation about our current problems regarding twisted politicians inflicting their anti-gun agendas on...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)FERGUSON, MO (KTVI) – Rev. Al Sharpton speaks at the Greater St. Marks Family Church in Ferguson. Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster is in attendance and gave the opening speech. Koster said, “You have lost a member of your community at the hands of one of my community. Not just the Caucasian community. The law enforcement community.” Sharpton tells reporters before the speech that he is not a “drive-by” activist and plans to be in Ferguson until the Michael Brown case is resolved. He is critical of release of surveillance video allegedly showing Michael Brown stealing cigars. During the speech...

THE ECONOMIST has analysed 190,000 profiles of female sex workers on websites where customers post reviews. The data cover 84 cities in 12 countries, with the biggest number of workers in America and most of the rest in big cities in rich countries. According to our analysis, the price of an hour of sex with a female prostitute has been dropping fairly steadily in recent years. In 2006 the average cost was around $340. By 2014 it had dropped to about $260.

On August 12th, a friend of ‘Coach is Right’s’ Kevin “Coach” Collins forwarded an email he had received at random from a pro-Israel advocate named A.G. Benjamin. Of interest was the fact that Benjamin had made reference to the works of Londoner Kevin O’Neil, an accomplished writer and contributor to Coach is Right. As Benjamin approved the distribution of his email, we have posted it here, along with the link to each of Kevin O’Neil’s first rate articles concerning Israel, Islam and the Middle East as they have appeared on CiR. Enjoy! By A.G. Benjamin, All you noble people arise!...

America could literally become energy independent given its vast reserves of energy sources. .....The new EPA standards are expected to be announced in December. We better hope that the November midterm elections put enough new candidates into Congress to reject those standards or the cost of living in America, the capacity to produce electricity, the construction and expansion of our manufacturing sector will all worsen.