Free Republic

The sister of the gunman was among the nine people who were killed in the shooting at a popular nightlife spot in Dayton, Ohio early Sunday. Connor Betts, 24, killed his sister Megan Betts, 22, along with eight others before he was shot dead by police, authorities said Sunday afternoon. At least 27 others were wounded in the shooting at the Oregon District area of the city. All of them were shot on or near the street where Betts opened fire, Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley said. So far, police have declined to comment publicly on a possible motive for the...

Ronald Reagan famously mocked liberals by saying, "We're from the federal government and we're here to help." Yet Republicans are adopting that same philosophy with various feel good health care bills they're backing, and it could land us with socialized medicine if they're not careful. The new health care issue de jure is "surprise billing," when people who have health insurance end up with large medical bills because they received care from doctors outside of their insurance plan's "network." This often happens from emergency room visits, and it can be especially menacing when hospitals send their sky-high "charge master" prices,...

The father of the 21-year-old man arrested for the El Paso shooting massacre was a drug addict for almost 40 years and is now an energy healer who claims to have had visions of Jesus Christ and his dead grandmother, DailyMail.com can reveal. Patrick Crusius allegedly killed at least 20 people and injured 26 on a gun rampage which began in a Walmart parking lot in El Paso, Texas on Saturday morning before he was arrested by police. His father, Bryan Crusius, 63, revealed in a 2014 memoir details of the broken home his son grew up in, confessing to...

The Dayton mass shooting gunman’s sister and her boyfriend were among the nine victims killed in the slaughter, officials revealed Sunday. Suspect killed after mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio Megan Betts, 22, was shot dead when her brother, 24-year-old Connor Betts, opened fire [cut] Officials confirmed that one of the male victims was Megan Betts’ boyfriend

Mexico's Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said on Sunday that Mexico will take legal actions to protect its citizens in the United States, following a shooting in El Paso, Texas, that left 20 dead, including three Mexicans. "The president has instructed me to ensure that Mexico's indignation translates into... efficient, prompt, expeditious and forceful legal actions for Mexico to take a role and demand that conditions are established that protect... Mexicans in the United States," Ebrard said in a video posted on Twitter. Ebrard said he would provide further details at a news conference on Sunday afternoon in Mexico City. He...

Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe has a history of passionate opposition to President Trump and calling for his impeachment, and he continued the trend Sunday by blaming Trump for a pair of shootings that took place over the weekend in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. Tribe first promoted discussion of impeaching Trump for inciting violent acts, then took it a step further and outright accused the president of the United States of terrorism. "How many more people have to DIE violent deaths at racist hands before impeaching the president for inciting white nationalist terrorism and violence is taken as...

The mass shooter in Dayton, Ohio was identified by police. The suspect, Connor Betts, was shot dead by police but not before he killed nine innocent people. WBNS 10 reported: The suspect in the Dayton shooting early Saturday morning where nine people were killed has been identified as a 24-year-old man. Law enforcement sources told CBS News the shooter was identified as 24-year-old Connor Betts, of Bellbrook, Ohio. The sources said police were searching his home Sunday morning. Police said the suspect was shot and killed by officers in less than one minute. The shooter Connor Betts was pictured with...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is recovering at home after he fell and fractured his shoulder. Officials said McConnell tripped at home on his outdoor patio and suffered a fractured shoulder.

With the hot-button word “socialism” sparking intense political debate as Americans brace for the 2020 presidential election, two U.S. economists have completed a global drinking tour – and a book already at the top of Amazon's "beer" category – warning that the socialist lure could lead to a drastic dry-up of the country’s adult beverages. “Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World,” by Robert Lawson and Benjamin Powell, is billed as a “worldwide tour guide written in plain English” which takes readers on a not-so-luxurious expedition into three countries that have embraced socialism – North Korea,...

MCCARTHY: Taiwan Democracy Watch president Wen-Tsong Chiou says Hong Kong is for Beijing a petri dish to examine the viability of the one country, two systems formula for Taiwan. WEN-TSONG CHIOU: They are testing the solutions - how to handle this type of demonstration in a democracy. So they are learning. They are learning from Hong Kong. MCCARTHY: Patrons of Taipei's Saturday morning flower market seemed resigned to events in Hong Kong, saying it had been absorbed by China two decades ago. Wu Hsueh-Chen (ph), 62, says there's an inevitability to how the protests will end. WU HSUEH-CHEN: (Foreign language...

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Nuon Chea, the chief ideologist and 'Brother Number Two' of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, whose brutal rule in the 1970s led to the deaths of some 2 million people, died on Sunday at the age of 93, a court spokesman said. A U.N.-backed court found Chea guilty of genocide and sentenced him to life in prison last year, almost four decades after the Maoist regime which oversaw Cambodia's "Killing Fields" was overthrown. Chea was among a small clique -- led by 'Brother Number One', Pol Pot -- of mostly French-educated communists who rose to lead a bloody...

As our nation mourns the senseless loss of life in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio and prays for the victims and their loved ones, we must also raise our voices in rejection of these heinous and cowardly acts of hate, terror and violence.... White supremacy, like all other forms of terrorism, is an evil that must be destroyed.

Federal government agencies are investigating alleged campaign finance misconduct by Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's former chief of staff, who abruptly resigned on Friday, according to the New York Post. The probe focuses on two political action committees started by Saikat Chakrabarti, concerns about which were first reported by the Washington Examiner in March. Chakrabarti left his post as chief of staff for Ocasio-Cortez along with communications director Corbin Trent, who is departing for the freshman congresswoman's 2020 reelection campaign. Chakrabarti stirred up plenty of controversy during his tenure as the creative mind behind Ocasio-Cortez's campaign and strategist for...

El Paso County District Attorney Jaime Esparza has vowed to seek the death penalty against 21-year-old Patrick Wood Cruisus, the man responsible for killing 20 and leaving 26 injured during a shooting at an El Paso Walmart on Saturday.The gunman walked into the Walmart with a ".223-high capacity" rifle, extra magazines, eye and ear protection.The FBI, Border Patrol, El Paso Police and Fire and Texas' Department of Public Safety all responded to the scene. The shooter was arrested on Saturday and booked into the El Paso County Jail early Sunday morning, the El Paso Times reported.As of now, no bond has been...

The times, they are a-changin’ . . . Ah, the good ol’ days of . . . April, or so, when conservative critics of the Democratic party could still count on being lectured to about the enduring moderation of Team Blue and chastised for paying so much attention to such figures as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (a member of the Democratic Socialists of America) and Senator Bernie Sanders (a member of the Democratic Socialists of America) and claiming that these self-described socialists are the socialists they describe themselves as being, who want to “abolish capitalism” (the stated mission of the Democratic...

After former Congressman Beto O'Rourke (D) appeared on CNN's "State of the Union" and cited President Donald Trump's alleged racism as the reason behind the "violence in America," host Jake Tapper pressed El Paso Mayor Dee Margo on the issue. Despite Tapper's repeated attempts to get Margo to take a stance on Trump's alleged racism, the Mayor shut him down. "Former Congressman from El Paso, Beto O'Rourke, told me earlier in the show that, in his view, the president's anti-immigrant rhetoric is making things worse and creating an atmosphere of violence. Do you agree? Do you have any concerns about...

+972, a site that misses no opportunity to bash Israel, posted a report about a protest organized by the “queer palestinian community” (hat tip: Uri). Oren Ziv/Activestills.org The queer Palestinian community organized an unprecedented protest in Haifa on Thursday, as approximately 200 demonstrators arrived at the German Colony, a central area in the city, to protest violence targeting the LGBT community. The protest was organized in response to the stabbing of a transgender teen from Tamra, a Palestinian city in northern Israel, outside a shelter for LGBT youth in Tel Aviv last week. The protest was planned by a group...

When asked by CBS's "Face the Nation" host if he supports returning to D.C. for a vote, Sen. Tim Scott (D-S.C.) said he'd "be happy to go back." "I'd leave tonight. I'll go tomorrow, it doesn't matter to me. This is such an important issue," Scott said.

Megan Betts, the sister of Connor Betts, the man who killed nine people at Ned Peppers bar in Dayton, Ohio on August 3, was found dead alongside her boyfriend. She was 22 years old. NBC News’ Pete Williams reported, via, Andrew Blankstein, that Megan and her boyfriend had been found fatally shot in a car. Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl has said that Megan and her boyfriend were not in a car when they were found dead. At the time of writing, Megan’s boyfriend has not been identified. Authorities believe that Conor Betts opened fire on a crowd at a...

Investigators are examining a screed believed to have been posted online by the suspect in Saturday's fatal shooting at a Texas shopping mall an hour before the attack, senior law enforcement officials say. Investigators are “reasonably confident” that the suspect, identified by police as Patrick Wood Crusius, 21, of Texas, posted the diatribe on the extremist online forum 8chan before the shooting. Terrorism experts warn that nothing should be taken at face value in the propaganda material left behind by hate crime suspects, which aim to provide fodder for social media pickup and mainstream media coverage. The screed posted to...