Free Republic

THERE THEY were, just below Martha Stewart and Paula Deen and Allure in the magazine rack at the supermarket: the gun periodicals. I bought three. Back at the place where I was staying — this was in upstate New York, a week ago — I pored over the ads and the editorial content, trying to understand what they were saying, and to whom. First, they want you to buy a gun. It will probably not be your first gun; it will be an addition to, and an improvement on, the gun or guns you already own. It may deliver “precision...

Day One of the prosecution's case against two Fullerton cops accused of using excessive force in 2011 to kill an unarmed homeless man had an eerie resemblance to another trial that landed Orange County in embarrassing international headlines a decade ago. In Corona del Mar, three young men--including the son of a wealthy, corrupt assistant sheriff--got a 16-year-old girl highly intoxicated and, after she'd fallen unconscious, stripped her before videotaping themselves sexual assaulting her vagina and rectum with a Tree Top Apple Juice can, pool cue, Snapple bottle and lit cigarette. Defense lawyers put Jane Doe, that victim, on trial...

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Florida Megachurch Pastor Commits Suicide By Heather Sells CBN News Reporter Wednesday, December 11, 2013 News reports indicate that Florida megachurch founder Isaac Hunter has taken his life. Altamonte Springs police discovered Hunter's body Tuesday morning in his home, The Orlando Sentinel reported. Hunter, 36, founded Orlando's Summit Church. The non-denominational church eventually grew to five locations. He resigned from his role as lead pastor last year, after admitting to an affair. Hunter is the son of Joel Hunter, another megachurch pastor in Florida and spiritual advisor to the president. His death marks the second time this year that a...

Yes, selfies have officially become so ubiquitous that "selfie" is Oxford English Dictionary's word of the year. But maybe, just maybe, we're getting a little too comfortable with snapping pictures of ourselves as we go through our day. Case in point: On Tuesday, a woman in New York found occasion for a selfie when she witnessed a man attempting to commit suicide by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, according to the New York Post. The paper took a photo of the selfie in progress, and splashed it on the front page with the headline "SELFIE-ISH!" (The Post reports that the...

Matthew apparently reached out for help on iFunny, a mobile app with comedic photos and videos he often frequented, posting on July 16 that he was going to take his own life. According to Matthew’s mother, a girl named Ana was perusing the site when she saw the teen boy’s post. Ana immediately called the Suicide Prevention Hotline, whose operators said that without Matthew’s address they wouldn’t be able to help him. They advised Ana to find out which city he lived in and call local police. The girl was able to trace Matthew’s iFunny post to his Facebook account,...

Noel Ignatiev, a professor at Massachusetts College of Art, has for years advocated the total elimination of Caucasians. During his final lecture before retirement last Monday, he told his white male students "you don’t deserve to live. You are a cancer, you’re a disease." NOEL IGNATIEV: If you are a white male, you don’t deserve to live. You are a cancer, you’re a disease, white males have never contributed anything positive to the world! They only murder, exploit and oppress non-whites! At least a white woman can have sex with a black man and make a brown baby but what...

A man killed in a car accident on US-223 in Whiteford Township has been linked to a homicide involving his girlfriend whose body was found in the couple’s home outside of Howell the same day. The Monroe and Livingston County sheriff’s offices have been working together on the case that developed Monday afternoon. According to Livingston authorities, the 51-year-old woman was found deceased due to blunt force trauma inside her home in Oceola Township. During the same time frame, her live-in boyfriend, 49, was driving through Monroe County on US-223 east of Memorial Hwy. when his car swerved into the...

SARASOTA - Sarasota Police are investigating the apparent suicide of Anders Ebbeson, husband of former Congresswoman and Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris. Police were called to the scene of the couple's house in the 1400 block of Sarasota's Bay Point Drive around 7:30 a.m. Tuesday. Police and Pastor William Hild of downtown Sarasota's First Baptist Church confirmed that Ebbeson, a 68-year-old Swedish businessman, had taken his own life and asked the community to respect the family's privacy. "On behalf of the family, Katherine's husband took his own life," Hild said outside the home on Bay Point Drive Tuesday morning....

Former Dem nominee for VA-Gov in serious condition. Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Bath, is in critical condition after being stabbed in his home and his son Gus is dead from a gunshot wound, law enforcement sources told the Richmond Times-Dispatch this morning. Deeds is being treated at the University of Virginia Medical Center. Authorities said they are trying to determine the sequence of events at the Deeds home in Bath County early today. Further details were not immediately available.

It’s been 35 years since 918 people, including 257 children, died on Nov. 18, 1978, at the Peoples Temple massacre in Jonestown. The mass murder inside the South American jungle commune in Guyana was engineered by Jim Jones, a murderous cult leader, and was the only time in American history a member of Congress, Leo Ryan, D-Calif., was killed in the line of official duty. Most of the victims were forced to commit suicide by drinking a fatal cocktail of poisoned punch spiked with a Valium tranquilizer. In the days that followed the slaughter of the innocents, Jonestown became a...

Has the world just witnessed its first ever robot suicide? Tedious housework was seemingly too much for one cleaning robot to take, when it apparently rebelled and decided to end it all. The android was given the tiresome task of cleaning up some spilt cereal before it climbed on to a kitchen hotplate where it was destroyed, according to reports in Austria. It had reportedly grown weary of being forced to clean the same house every day and decided to become a martyr to the robot cause. ‘Somehow it seems to have reactivated itself and made its way along the...

An Ohio woman who lived much of her life as an animal lover may have died a dog killer. Sandra Lertzman, 62, was found dead along with 31 of her dogs, many of them puppies, in a running car in the garage of her Moreland Hills home on Monday. Investigators told WOIO that they found a suicide note in the house and several prescription vials in the vehicle. It wasn’t clear how she and the pups died. One of the dogs managed to survive by finding a small opening in the garage where it could breathe, authorities said. Lertzman was...

A man kicked out of his indie rock band shot three of his bandmates to death in their Brooklyn apartment early Monday and wounded a fourth before killing himself on the roof, police said. The band members were all from Iran but had come the United States in the past few years seeking more musical freedom. It wasn't immediately clear why the ex-member snapped, police said. The shooting happened shortly after midnight in a row house in East Williamsburg, an industrial neighborhood home to mostly warehouses where artists can rent cheaper space than in trendier parts of the city.

CHULA VISTA, Calif. - A vigil was held Saturday evening for an Otay Ranch High School student who took his own life. Hundreds gathered at the spot where 16-year-old Steven Liu died Friday night. Police say Liu jumped off the bridge in front of Otay Ranch High School in Chula Vista. "He was just too young," said friend Eric Gonzalez. "He had a lot of things to live for." Friends gathered to pray and remember the teen that loved running cross country for his school and had a passion for photography. "When I see him, he's always happy," said friend...

ARLINGTON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The national non-profit, Stop Soldier Suicide, is asking Americans to stand up for Veterans by taking a seat at the movies on Veterans Day to screen a critically acclaimed film, Happy New Year. This film raises awareness of the struggles Soldiers go through as they transition home and the issues surrounding PTS (Post Traumatic Stress) and suicide. “But if tickets don’t presell, the movie won’t happen, which would send a very sad message to our veterans.” The screenings are hosted nationwide by people who signed up via Stop Soldier Suicide’s Facebook page. One is a mother who lost...

On Friday night, police say Midas, 33, of Weatherly, went to the police station in the small town of Lansford, where he was a part-time officer, and took ammunition and an unmarked police car before he drove to the home of another off-duty officer and took him hostage. Midas then drove Ondrus to nearby Jim Thorpe, where a struggle began in the tourist town of Jim Thorpe, about 70 miles north of Philadelphia. Midas shot himself in the head, police say. He died early Saturday at a hospital, according to Lehigh County Coroner Scott Grim, who ruled Midas' death a...

Fourteen million young people between the ages of 20 and 40 take the prescription drug Adderall, or one like it, to treat Attention Deficit Disorder. Many who take it and even those who prescribe it believe it's helpful, or at least harmless. But that's not always the case. For Richard Fee, his Adderall addiction led to his suicide.

Over the past few years, Washington state’s liberal voters have been on quite a roll. Same-sex marriage? Approved. Assisted suicide? Check. Legalized pot? That too. Strong abortion protections? Those have been in place for decades. Now, though, the state finds itself in the middle of a trend that hardly anyone there ever saw coming: a wave of mergers and alliances between Catholic hospital chains and secular, taxpayer-supported community hospitals. By the end of this year, the ACLU estimates, nearly half of Washington’s hospital beds could be under Catholic influence or outright control. Many of the deals have been reached in...

The news this week of two arrests in the case of a 12-year-old suicide is a reminder of how middle school drama can go awry. When personality clashes move from misunderstanding and conflict to tormenting and bullying, and when there appears to be no safe place -- terrible events can occur. Last month, 12-year-old Rebecca Sedwick, of Winter Haven, Florida, jumped to her death from the top of an abandoned concrete plant. The two arrests this past weekend included a 12-year-old and a 14-year-old who were charged with aggravated stalking. Posts online from the 14-year-old's Facebook account led Grady...