Free Republic

The active duty soldier who had his guns confiscated by the District of Columbia two years ago will have his property returned by Memorial Day. It took the help of a high-powered lawyer, two U.S. Senators, a member of Congress and national publicity to force the obstinate District to show some respect for the Constitution. It should never happen again. On Friday, D.C. property clerk Derek Gray determined the city would finally return 1st Lt. Augustine Kim’s “dangerous articles” because the Army national guardsman fulfilled the plea agreement arranged with the U.S. attorney’s office a year earlier. The Metropolitan Police...

Tampa Police have announced two of four suspects wanted for the vicious beating of a Tampa soldier have been arrested. According to detectives, Army soldier Johnny Aparicio, 24, was walking east on Iowa Avenue in South Tampa on Sunday when he was approached and asked for a dollar. When Aparicio replied, three suspects hit him in the face and upper body, knocking him to the ground. A fourth suspect came running and joined in the beating. "The detective interviewed one of the suspects the very next day after the robbery and he told him to do his job and investigate,...

Tampa, Florida -- Police want your help finding four men who teamed up to beat a young U.S. Army soldier in a South Tampa street. It was an awful welcome to Tampa Bay for a young soldier. Police say the victim of a violent beating caught on camera is 24 years old and has lived in Tampa for less than a month. He's a U.S. Army soldier assigned to MacDill Air Force Base and lives not far from the base at Dale Mabry Hwy. and Interbay Blvd. Police say Sunday morning, at around 3 a.m., the soldier's car broke down...

The District grabbed the guns belonging to 1st Lt. Augustine Kim and won’t give them back. Two years ago, the South Carolina Army national guardsman had been injured on his second tour of duty in Afghanistan. Now he’s fighting to restore his constitutional rights. Before deploying overseas, the soldier drove his collection - which included an AR-15, a Beretta 9mm and several .45 caliber pistols - to his parents’ house in New Jersey for safe storage. Upon his return to the states and recovery, Lt. Kim wanted to bring his weapons back to his home in Charleston. On the way,...

KABUL -- A man wearing an Afghan National Army uniform opened fire on coalition troops in eastern Afghanistan on Friday, killing an American and wounding two others, officials said. "An Afghan Army soldier turned his weapon against US soldiers inside an Afghan-US military base in Kunar Province, killing one US soldier and injuring two others," provincial police chief Ewaz Mohammad Naziri told AFP. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. http://www.myfoxny.com/story/18306795/man-wearing-afghan-army-uniform-shoots-dead-isaf-soldier

Left: now famous photo of a very short NK soldier escorted back to his land by large U.S. and SK soldiers Right: N. Korea's photoshopped version

Houston Herald news@houstonherald.com Houston Herald | 0 comments Patriotic area residents lined U.S. 63 in Houston on Friday as a hearse carrying the body of U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Tyler Smith passed through the Texas County seat. Traffic was halted in both directions as a large procession passed through. The convoy started at the Vichy airport, traveling to Bradford Funeral Home in Summersville. Numerous citizens and dignitaries lined the street to view the procession, many holding American flags of varying sizes. As the dozens of law enforcement vehicles, motorcycle-escort bikes and other vehicles carrying members of the Smith family and...

A Texas National Guard soldier has filed an official complaint and a freedom of information request regarding an incident where the Border Patrol wrongfully detained him, harassed him, made fun of the National Guard, and even took his cell phone and deleted the video of the incident before setting him free after determining that he had done nothing wrong. David and James Bellow with Congressman Ted Poe The individual filing the complaint is my brother, James Bellow. He has served with the Border Patrol on the Texas border in the Army National Guard. He completely supports securing the border and...

John Henry Browne, the attorney for Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, the man accused of single-handedly massacring 17 Afghan villagers, is now accusing the United States government of “an almost complete information blackout” which is blocking him from preparing a proper defense for Bales. Browne alleges that he and his legal team has been prevented from being able to interview the witnesses to the tragic incident as well as the injured civilians in southern Afghanistan. ... “We are facing an almost complete information blackout from the government, which is having a devastating effect on our ability to investigate the charges preferred...

A British soldier who picked up and threw away a live grenade before it could kill him and his men is among 131 members of the Armed Forces whose heroics are being officially honoured. Serjeant Deacon Cutterham was wading through an irrigation ditch knee-deep in water on patrol in Helmand province, Afghanistan, when the grenade came flying over a high wall to one side and landed in front of him. He reached down to grab it and "posted" the grenade into a parallel irrigation channel to get it out of his hand as quickly as possible.

WASHINGTON (AP) - An Afghan soldier shot to death a 22-year-old Marine at an outpost in southwestern Afghanistan last month in a previously undisclosed case of apparent Afghan treachery that marked at least the seventh killing of an American military member by his supposed ally in the past six weeks, Marine officials said. Lance Cpl. Edward J. Dycus of Greenville, Miss., was shot in the back of the head on Feb. 1 while standing guard at an Afghan-U.S. base in the Marja district of Helmand province. The exact circumstances have not been disclosed, but the Dycus family has been notified...

Right now, our troops are being used as props in a campaign year, as pawns by dull-witted generals who just don’t know what else to do, and as cash cows by corrupt Afghan politicians, generals and warlords (all of whom agree that it’s virtuous to rob the Americans blind). What are our goals? What is our strategy? We’re told, endlessly, that things are improving in Afghanistan, yet, ten years ago, a U.S. Army general, unarmed, could walk the streets of Kabul without risk. Today, there is no city in Afghanistan where a U.S. general could stroll the streets. We may...

Cpl. T.J. Conrad, who grew up in the Roanoke Valley and graduated from Northside High School, was killed in Afghanistan on Thursday, his father said this afternoon. Conrad, 22, was one of two American troops who was shot and killed by a man wearing Afghan military or police fatigues during a protest over the burning of Qurans on a U.S. air base, according to Tim Conrad. “It was basically an ambush,” said Tim Conrad. T.J. Conrad leaves behind a wife and 7-month-old son.

Oren Almog says he serves in the IDF “like everyone else.” There are a few differences: Terror cost him his eyesight – and five relatives. A suicide bombing attack at Haifa’s Maxim restaurant in 2003 killed 16 people in addition to Oren’s father, brother and other family members. He went blind while being treated for his wounds. He obviously is exempt from the draft but insisted on enlisting in the armed forced and being like most other Israelis – and now he is a soldier n the IDF. He is a volunteer soldier in an intelligence unit, the name of...

SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) - The family of a U.S. soldier held captive by the Taliban for over two years said on Wednesday they were optimistic about the possibility of talks between the Afghan insurgent group and countries including the United States. They expressed hope that Bowe Bergdahl would be freed "as soon as possible" in a statement issued a day after the Taliban said they had reached a preliminary agreement to set up a political office in the Gulf Arab country of Qatar. "We are optimistic about the possibility of diplomatic discussions between Taliban officials and government officials from other...

Fox News is the latest news organization to pick up on the revelation, first reported by AIM, that Ron Paul had praised WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning as a hero and patriot. Directly referring to WikiLeaks and Army soldier Bradley Manning being held in detention, Paul said, “Should he be locked up in prison or should we see him as a political hero? Maybe he is a true patriot—who reveals what’s going on in government.” The comment drew strong applause from Paul supporters. Video of the event, officially posted by Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty organization, also shows the Republican presidential...

LOS ANGELES -- A soldier on leave from Afghanistan was shot and seriously injured Friday night in San Bernardino, Calif., during a welcome home party in his honor, police said. Christopher Sullivan, 22, was on leave from the Army for the holidays and attending a party when his brother and another man began arguing over football a little before midnight, San Bernardino Police Lt. Gwendolyn Waters said. The gunman, a man in his 20s, punched Sullivan's brother, Waters said. Sullivan stepped in and the other man pulled a gun from his waistband and fired at least three shots. Two shots...

The year was 1919, one year after the end of World War I, and the people of Atlanta, Georgia were celebrating the Christmas Season.

A piece I quickly whipped up for my OMG! For America project. We're still finalizing the operational site, so we posted this on our Facebook page, and have been VERY pleasantly surprised to see how well received it has been. It is by far our most liked/shared post to date.

Sergeant Winkowski says they didn’t have an ammo carrier to lug the extra bullets and there was a lull when they had to reload. He says they’d seen ammo carriers in movies and decided to gather up some spare parts to build their own. They took an old rucksack frame and stripped it down, welded together a couple of ammo cans and added a speed loading shoot. “We took it out to the range and gave it some testing and it worked out pretty good for us,” Winkowski says, “And so we took it into combat, and we got into...