Free Republic

See if you can spot what these two stories have in common. Saratoga County Woman Killed After Turning into Wrong Driveway – Albany Times Union 84-Year-Old Is Charged in Shooting of Black Teenager Who Went to Wrong House – New York Times The media, by which I mean the Left, has with utter racist predictably begun waving the bloody shirt about the second case. The tawdry movement is cheerfully organizing a lynch mob for an 84-year-old man, not on the merits of the case, but because of the racial identity markers in that headline. Had the races been reversed or...

Playing Risk while drunkFor too long Washington has refused to think strategically about some of the major foreign policy issues of our time. In the rare instance where Washington’s policymakers do think strategically, the strategies they concoct seem less like realistic attempts at applying state power and more like they were conceived over a game of Risk while under the heavy influence of alcohol.Such is the case with the current American preoccupation in Ukraine.The Russians have invaded Ukraine. They’ve committed their entire society to the war. In the words of popular geopolitical analyst Peter Zeihan, this is “Russia’s last war.”...

EXCLUSIVE - A coalition of 12 states is suing President Biden's administration over a climate executive order that they claim has the potential to have a serious economic impact across the country through the expansion of federal regulatory power.The suit, which is being led by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, was filed on Monday. State attorneys general from Arkansas, Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah also joined the action.It alleges that Biden’s Executive Order 13990, titled “Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis,” does not have the...

Rep. Liz Cheney’s vote to impeach President Trump put her political future in jeopardy back home in Wyoming, revealed a state GOP official. Doubts quickly surfaced about her viability in the 2022 GOP primary after she announced her support of impeachment and then led nine other House Republicans on Wednesday in voting to impeach Mr. Trump for inciting the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. “She couldn’t win a primary today for dog catcher,” said Martin Kimmet, chairman of the Republican Party in Park County, Wyoming. Ms. Cheney, the No. 3 House Republican leader and the daughter of...

During their set at the Punk Rock Bowling & Music Festival in Las Vegas on Sunday, NOFX made jokes about the horrific Route 91 Harvest Festival shooting on October 1 that left 58 people dead, Billboard reports. “I guess you only get shot in Vegas if you’re in a country band,” said guitarist Eric Melvin. “At least they were country fans and not punk rock fans,” frontman Fat Mike responded. Stone Brewing Co.—the San Diego Brewery behind NOFX’s beer and music festival both called Punk in Drublic—has now distanced itself from the band, The Blast reports. “We at Stone Brewing...

A Boise State University professor recently learned what happens when you challenge left-wing social narratives on college campuses. Scott Yenor, a tenured professor, has been under siege on campus after publishing articles with The Heritage Foundation and The Daily Signal about feminism and the transgender movement. In those articles, Yenor explained the similarity in philosophy between the early feminists and modern transgender movement and how they aim at undermining traditional family values. He wrote in a Daily Signal article on Aug. 2:

Psychologists understand the strength of what they call The Backfire Effect. It explains the phenomena of people closing their ears to refutations of their positions. An article that discusses this subject acknowledges the difficulties and discomfort that comes with changing our beliefs. We respond by, “paying less attention to information that contradicts our present convictions and more to that which confirms them.” “Once something [like the intention to vote or vote for a candidate of the Party you have always voted against] is added to your collection of beliefs, you protect it from harm. You do this instinctively and unconsciously...

How bad was the backlash against CNBC after Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate? Bad enough that producers at its sister networks were reportedly told to tone down their coverage of the controversy. As CNN’s Brian Stetler reports, CNBC itself originally covered the debate normally, but later abandoned coverage entirely. “As the day went on, there was less and less talk about the debate on CNBC. According to one of the employees, producers were given internal guidance to move on.” Apparently, similar instructions were given to CNBC’s sister networks. “At CNBC’s sister news outlets MSNBC and NBC News, producers were advised not...

Is "The Donald" in for the long hall, or is he going to "Pull Out" at the last minute -- like he has done so many times before? http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/16/donald-trump-us-presidential-race I don't think he has demonstrated that he is in for the long haul. Therefore I have taken the liberty to give him the handle of Trumpus Interruptus! I confess that I was excited (as was his collective base) when he announced in 2012 that he was considering a run for the republican nomination for President of the United States. I was thus willing to overlook the fact that he was...

Mexican authorities said Wednesday they found six tigers, seven baboons, four camels and three dromedaries abandoned in cages without food, water or adequate care in the southern Mexico state of Yucatan. The passage of laws forbidding animal acts in circuses has raised fears that the exotic species might be abandoned once they could no longer pay for their keep by performing. The Attorney General's Office for Environmental Protection said a total of 20 animals were found near the city of Merida, many missing claws, teeth or fur.

On June 6, a 16-year-old Baltimore girl named Arnesha Bowers went to a house party in West Baltimore where she met Donay Dixon, 23, and John Childs, 20. Later that night, Dixon and Childs followed Bowers to her northeast Baltimore home. Once there, police allege, the duo kicked in the basement window, sexually assaulted Bowers, strangled her with an extension cord, and then set her and the house on fire. Dixon and Childs — purportedly members of the Bloods street organization — made off with $40, a laptop and an iPad. According to reports, the pair committed the heinous crime...

Rosetta's lander lasted just 60 hours on a comet after it bounced into the dark shadows of a cliff, where its solar panels couldn't power the vehicle. Why didn't it carry a more reliable power source, say a nuclear battery like one that's unfailingly fueled Voyager for decades? It's a simple question with a fascinating answer, one that begins with the Cold War and ends with the future space exploration. When it comes to space travel, plutonium-238 is the perfect fuel: long-lasting and, as I'll explain later, relatively safe. Without it, we have no hope of going much further than...

The Obama administration is scrambling to assess the impact of an unprecedented data breach involving the agency that handles security clearances and employee records. According to the Washington Post, Chinese hackers breached the Office of Personnel Management in December and gained access to personal information of up to 4 million current and former employees. A congressional aide familiar with the situation, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to discuss it, says the OPM and the Interior Department were hacked. A second U.S. official who also declined to be identified said the data breach could potentially affect...

The CIA should be abolished. After a trial run of 67 years, the agency has proven a sorcerer’s apprentice. The director and his subordinates have became insufferably arrogant Platonic Guardians hiding behind secrecy in the belief that the rest of us are too stupid or naive to judge what risks to accept to preserve liberty and the rule of law. The CIA has made Americans less safe. Its incorrigible anti-democratic ethos was epitomized by legendary chief of counterintelligence James J. Angleton. He voiced contempt for the Church Committee’s investigation of chronic agency abuses, i.e., the “Family Jewels.” As reported in...

In the first week of public comments on a federal proposal to encourage male circumcision in the U.S., most people are telling Uncle Sam to leave the foreskins alone. “His body, his choice” and “Foreskin is not a birth defect” are among the hundreds of negative comments in the Federal Register against a proposed policy by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to advise that males of all ages be circumcised for health reasons. The strongest objections were for infant circumcision, since it is a “human rights” violation for a male to permanently lose a piece of his body...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)ST. LOUIS -- The locations of demonstrators who descended on the St. Louis area over the weekend to push for national reforms regarding police brutality led to some heated confrontations with area residents. The "weekend of resistance" known as "Ferguson October" was in response to the death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown, who was shot by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson while walking down the middle of a street in the St. Louis suburb in August. Protesters, who are calling for Wilson's arrest, spread out across the region, organizing protests in venues ranging from public buildings and a university...

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) on Wednesday evening lashed out at “un-American” rush to judgment over the military record of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, following an all-senators briefing on the prisoner swap that led to the soldier’s release. One of the last senators to leave the two-hour meeting with administration officials, McCaskill said she hopes that eventually all the facts surrounding Bergdahl’s service are declassified “in fairness to the soldier and his family.” “What’s unfortunate is that many people have spoken out about this episode without having all the facts,” McCaskill said in an interview. “I’m not going to make a judgment....

A prominent evangelical charity is reversing a policy change announced two days ago to hire Christians in same-sex marriages. The humanitarian relief agency World Vision said in a letter to supporters Wednesday that the nonprofit had made a mistake by changing its policy for the U.S. The aid group’s leaders said they were broken-hearted over the pain the decision had caused. …

**SNIP** Rebecca Stewart of Covington, Ky., told the president she has had “a really panicked experience” trying to learn whether her 10-year-old son can continue with his specialist physician. “I cannot keep my plan, which I like,” Mrs. Stewart told the president. “I’ve spent weeks with days on the phone getting confidently delivered wrong answers, conflicting information, and it’s becoming quite obvious to me that a lot of agencies, almost every one I’ve talked to, is having a lot of trouble figuring out the new rules.” Mr. Obama, taking part in the online chat from the White House, promised to...