Free Republic

Politicians and others who speak about what taxpayer-supported Planned Parenthood does are contributing to a "negative environment" that encourages some people to target the abortion provider, a Planned Parenthood executive said on Sunday."We've experienced so much hateful language, hateful speech," Planned Parenthood Rocky Mountain CEO Vicki Cowart told ABC's "This Week" with Martha Raddatz. "Such a negative environment has been created around the work that Planned Parenthood does, around the idea of safe and legal abortion."And we've seen that across the country from all sorts of speakers in the last few months. I can't believe that this isn't contributing to...

On the day that a gunman attacked a Colorado Planned Parenthood facility, Mike Adams was in North Carolina. Yet, Adams, a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington notorious for his anti-abortion and Christian views, was on the receiving end of an inquiry from a fellow professor who wondered about Adams' potential involvement with the shooting suspect. "Did you correspond with him Mike? Maybe inspire him a bit to complete his mission of murdering a university officer and 2 civilians?" Richard Greenleaf, a sociology and criminal justice professor at Elmhurst College, a private liberal arts school in Illinois,...

Gazette news partner KKTV has confirmed with family that Ke'Arre M. Stewart was one of the civilians who was shot and killed Friday when a gunman opened fire at a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs. Stewart's wife told KKTV that his children's lives will now never be the same and that what the family wants now is justice. UCCS Police Department Officer Garrett Swasey was also killed in the hours-long standoff at the building on Centennial Boulevard. A second civilian who died in the incident has not yet been identified. Nine others, including five law enforcement officers, were injured....

KEILAR: "I do want to ask you a final question here. Planned Parenthood, almost immediately, even before we exactly knew the facts or anything about the motivation here. We now know that the shooter referenced 'baby parts' when he was arrested. Planned Parenthood is calling this domestic terrorism. Do you agree with that assessment?" HICKENLOOPER: "Certainly it's a form of terrorism, and maybe in some way it's a function of the inflammatory rhetoric we see on all - so many issues now, there are bloggers and talk shows where they really focus on trying to get people to that point...

NEWTON, Iowa -- Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) downplayed the role anti-abortion rhetoric may have played in the fatal shooting of three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado and suggested the suspect was a “transgendered leftist activist" at a campaign stop in Iowa on Sunday. Speaking with reporters following the event, Cruz rejected suggestions that the shooter was part of the anti-abortion movement, taking issue with the “vicious rhetoric on the left blaming those who are pro-life.” Robert Lewis Dear, 57, was taken into custody Friday night after allegedly opening fire inside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs,...

He seemed to have a separate life online. An online personals ad seeking women in North Carolina interested in bondage and sadomasochistic sex showed a picture that appeared to be Mr. Dear and used an online pseudonym associated with him. The same user also appeared to have turned to online message boards to seek companions in the Asheville area with whom he could smoke marijuana. On Cannabis.com, the writer said in December 2005: "AIDS, hurricanes, we are in the end times."

Since his 2000 divorce, Dear seems to have become a loner who lived a quiet life - but he appears to have been much more aggressive online - seeking bondage and sadomasochistic sex online and companions to smoke marijuana with...He also appears to have posted a series of Biblical ramblings on the message boards of Cannabis.com ten years ago under a username apparently linked to Dear.

A voter registration file indicates that the shooter who allegedly killed three in Colorado Springs on Friday identifies as a woman with no party affiliation. The file indicates that Robert Lewis Dear, Jr. of Hartsel, Colo., registered to vote in Park County on Oct. 17, 2014. Dear's party affiliation is UAF, which is used to mean unaffiliated or independent, and selected "female" for gender. The genealogy website "Colorado Voters," which works by pulling public voter lists, has Dear's voter registration file posted online......

It was one of those stunning live-TV moments revealing the seamier side of TV news. Pat Brown is a criminal profiler who has taken a principled stand on media appearances about mass murderers. She will not discuss individual criminals, their motives, etc., believing that to do so pnly increases the number of mass murders. But when Brown appeared on CNN's New Day this morning, co-host Christi Paul immediately tried to engage her in a discussion of Colorado Springs shooter Robert Dear's possible "anti-government" views. Retorted Brown: "I'm a little disturbed because I made an agreement with CNN to appear this...

Garrett Swasey, 44, the University of Colorado Colorado Springs police officer who was shot and killed while responding to a shooting at a Planned Parenthood office, was described by his fellow church members and friends as a courageous man and loving father who drew strength and inspiration from his Christian faith. Continue reading the main story Related Coverage A man was taken into custody outside a clinic in Colorado Springs on Friday. A gun battle there raged for more than five hours. 3 Are Dead in Colorado Springs Shootout at Planned Parenthood CenterNOV. 27, 2015 video Gunfire Exchange in Colorado...

Washington (AFP) - US President Barack Obama denounced the country's epidemic of gun violence on Saturday and renewed a call for tougher controls on military-style weapons after yet another deadly shooting, saying "enough is enough." The latest bloodshed came on Friday when a man entered a family planning clinic in the state of Colorado and allegedly opened fire, killing three people, including a police officer, and wounding nine others. The motive of the suspect now under arrest was not yet known and police were to interrogate him Saturday.

President Obama is commenting on last night’s shooting in Colorado, mourning the idea that over the holidays a group of people were killed by a shooter. The president again turned to gun control as a potential solution to the horrific act, calling for the removal of guns from the streets, reminding Americans that mass shootings should not be accepted as normal. If we truly care about this – if we’re going to offer up our thoughts and prayers again, for God knows how many times, with a truly clean conscience – then we have to do something about the easy...

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz speaks with reporters during an event in Iowa on Nov. 28, 2015. (Photo by Patrick Svitek) LAMONI, Iowa — U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz on Saturday night condemned the fatal shooting of three people at a Planned Parenthood location in Colorado while urging caution regarding the suspect’s motives. “We don’t know ... what those motives were, but whatever they were, it’s unacceptable, and it’s horrific and wrong,” the Republican presidential hopeful told reporters here before a town hall. Cruz is among the first — if not the first — GOP candidate to denounce the shooting, which happened Friday in Colorado Springs and...

(CNN) —Calling the deadly shooting that occurred at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood center the day before "a tragedy that is beyond speech," Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said Saturday that the community "was immersed in sorrow."

The gunman suspected of storming a Planned Parenthood clinic and killing a police officer and two others told the officers who arrested him “no more baby parts,’’ after being taken into custody, according to a law enforcement official. The attack on the clinic was “definitely politically motivated,’’ the official — who has been briefed on the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity because it is still unfolding — told The Washington Post. NBC News, which first reported the comment attributed to suspect Robert Lewis Dear, said Dear also mentioned President Obama in a range of statements to investigators that...

Robert Lewis Dear, a 57-year-old from North Carolina, has been named as the suspected gunman behind a standoff at a Planned Parenthood health clinic in which three people died and nine were injured. After he was named, Barack Obama said on Saturday the US had “to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them”. “Period,” the president added, in a statement released by the White House. “Enough is enough.” Officials speaking off the record gave the suspect’s identity to news outlets late on Friday. On Saturday morning,...

The day after a gunman stormed a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, investigators were working to determine what prompted the shooting that resulted in the death of three people, including a police officer.

Police detained a shooter at a Planned Parenthood building Friday afternoon, according to Colorado Springs police. Four police officers and five civilians were injured in a shooting. Three people died including Police Officer Garrett Swasey. Local media captured video of the shooter being led away in handcuffs.

When last month Ben Carson suggested that people confronted by a shooter should rush him en masse, ABC ran a story criticizing him, claiming that Carson "appears to be second-guessing" the victims of the mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. But on ABC's Good Morning America today, in the wake of the mass shooting in Colorado Springs, guess what an expert suggested? "If you can get other people to go with you, that is extremely important, in fact, that's one of the teaching tools today in schools is everyone at mass start throwing stuff at the shooter and...

On CNN, a reporter played the "But if it is" game on whether or not the shooting at a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs was the result of the shooter targeting the clinic over their abortion practices, calling it the "latest" such incident. "If this was a targeting of Planned Parenthood it would be the latest in a string of attacks on abortion providing facilities or on doctors who work with them." If it was, you see. But this is a very liberal (pun intended) use of the words "latest" and 'string", which imply an ongoing series of...