Free Republic

In a recent panel discussion on poverty at Georgetown University, President Barack Obama gave another demonstration of his mastery of rhetoric — and disregard of reality. One of the ways of fighting poverty, he proposed, was to "ask from society's lottery winners" that they make a "modest investment" in government programs to help the poor. Since free speech is guaranteed to everyone by the First Amendment to the Constitution, there is nothing to prevent anybody from asking anything from anybody else. But the federal government does not just "ask" for money. It takes the money it wants in taxes, usually...

Nine people have been killed and 18 hospitalized in a shoot-out between rival biker gangs at a recruitment event in a Texas restaurant on Sunday afternoon. What started as a physical fight in the bathroom spilled out into the bar and rapidly escalated to involve chains, clubs, knives and gunfire across Twin Peaks Bar and Grill in Waco, local media reports. Diners, including young children, scrambled and many took shelter in the freezer as hundreds of gang members ran rampage around the booths, according to KXXV.

Jacksonville FL---Duval County Public Schools confirmed that two female students were shot in a school bus at 118th Street and Ortega Farms Boulevard on Thursday afternoon.

A Maryland man faces a long recovery after he was brutally beaten by a group of teens.

The University of Maryland, Baltimore and numerous downtown businesses closed early Monday, citing concerns about potentially violent activity in the area. Lexington Market, a city courthouse and businesses including T. Rowe Price and Venable LLP said police warned them of large gatherings and protests downtown. According to widely circulated flier, a high school "purge" was to take place at 3 p.m., starting at Mondawmin and ending downtown. Such memes have been known to circulate regularly, but today's has led to bolstered police presence around the city. The flier includes an image of protesters smashing the windshield of a police car...

Barry Hammer didn’t know what hit him. A night out at a Celtics game with his wife and twin boys on Tuesday turned into a nightmare when he was punched in the face by a total stranger for no apparent reason. “I’ve never been punched in my life,” said the 38-year-old Auburn dad who’s still stunned by what happened in the mezzanine area of Boston’s TD Garden during his kids’ first Celtics game. Hammer said he believes he was likely the victim of a so-called “knockout game.” The game has been seen around the country and involves attackers who sucker...

A middle school teacher in Hempstead, New York, is recovering from a beating after a student's mother attacked her inside the classroom. Police say she put the teacher in a chokehold, then her 14-year-old niece punched the teacher in the face.

A Christian missionary is critically wounded after being shot in the head in Karachi, Pakistan, in an apparent terrorist attack.Fifity-five year old Debra Lobo was hit twice when four men fired shots from motorbikes as she was leaving work. Lobo has lived in Pakistan for thirty years and is married with two children. She serves as vice-principal of Jinnah Medical and Dental College. Lobo has been hospitalized with two bullet wounds, one in the chin and one in the arm.According to police, "The initial investigation suggest that this was a pre-planned terrorist attack and was made over the lady because...

Customer Mary Fuller was so scared by the unruly teens flashing gang signs and raising a “ruckus” in the parking lot of the BP gas station in Memphis, Tennessee, that she expressed her fears to a complete stranger, who offered to walk the elderly white woman outside to her car. “I said, ‘I don’t know if I ought to walk out of here or not, because they’re still fighting,’” Fuller told WMC-TV. “He said, ‘It’s not a problem. I’ll take care of this.’” The man she confided in was Orrden Williams, who had gone to the gas station to use...

Shocking surveillance footage shows a mob using a hammer, a rocking chair leg and Mace as they beat a homeless man into a coma during a suspected act of revenge. The video taken in the forecourt of the Sunoco gas station on North 5th Street in Philadelphia shows five people, including two children, storming out of a minivan and attacking the helpless 51-year-old. One of the group takes out Mace as the man is brought to the ground. They then stamp on his head and continue punching him as he lies motionless.

HANCOCK COUNTY -- A family gathering to celebrate a child's birthday turned deadly Sunday when a fight between two brothers-in-law led to a fatal stabbing, officials said. Hancock County Sheriff's Investigator Glenn Grannan said that at 12:30 a.m., deputies found Kenneth Fanning, 29, suffering from multiple stab wounds in the front yard of a rental home on the 5000 block of U.S. 90. The suspect, Clinten Michael Dryer Sr., 32, injured his knee during the fight, Grannan said. He was treated at Memorial Hospital at Gulfport and was charged shortly before 8:30 p.m. Sunday with murder.

All bets were off after a chair-hurling brawl broke out Friday night at the grand opening of a Fat Tuesday New Orleans-style daiquiri bar inside the Resorts World Casino in Queens, officials said.

The man accused by New Orleans police of murdering Domino's delivery driver Michael Price late last month has a history of armed robbery and weapons charges in Houston and New Orleans.Michael Portis, 24, is facing a possible first-degree murder charge after his arrest Wednesday morning (April 1) in the 4900 block of Pauger Street. His arrest came a little more than a week after police found Price's bullet-riddled body inside his car shortly before 1 a.m. on March 24 in the 6100 block of North Roman Street in the city's Lower 9th Ward.Details of Portis' arrest and alleged involvement in...

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A 4-year-old girl has grabbed her purple raincoat, slipped out of her house at 3 a.m. and hopped a Philadelphia bus in search of a snack. Bus driver Harlan Jenifer says the girl swung her legs in a seat as she chanted, “All I want is a slushie.”

FAIRCHILD, Wis. (WEAU) - An Amish family in Fairchild now has a sign on their home ordering them to leave. The court order for Amos and Vera Borntreger, along with their four young children, is for violating Eau Claire County building codes. The family claims those codes go against their religious beliefs. The county put up the sign, Thursday, around noon. The penalty for not obeying that sign by leaving their home could be $2,000 dollars for every day they stay or jail time. A group of about ten from the Amish community were gathered when the county delivered the...

An Amish family faces eviction from their home after being found in contempt of court for refusing to comply with building codes on the grounds that doing so would violate the religious community’s ban on modern technology. At a Monday hearing, a Circuit Court judge ordered the Eau Claire County sheriff’s office to evict Amos and Vera Borntreger, a farming couple with four children under the age of six, from their home in the Old Order Amish community of Fairchild, Wisconsin.

A complaint over a malfunctioning photo booth at an Ohio Chuck E. Cheese’s escalated into a terrifying attack involving a dozen birthday party-goers on Sunday — an incident that left two employees seriously injured, according to police. Police say a female patron complained to Chuck E. Cheese’s employees in Parma, Ohio, about the photo booth not working, and that a manager told her she had to wait. Then, police said, one of the male party attendees followed the manager into the kitchen, threatened to kill him and began to attack. “I’m characterizing this as an attack on the employees of...

Robinson’s mother, Andrea Irwin, said that, “My son has never been a violent person. And to die in such a violent, violent way, it baffles me.”Robinson, pictured above, was arrested last April following an armed home invasion at a Madison residence, according to police records. Cops were called to the scene around 6 AM by a neighbor who “spotted several men, one of them armed with a long gun, entering an apartment building,” according to a police report. Police arrived at the home “just as the armed robbery was ending” and a group of suspects was fleeing “with electronics and...

A dispute over a handicapped parking space at a Walmart in Greenfield, Wisconsin last month sent a seventy-one year old to the hospital for emergency hip and leg surgery after she was attacked by a younger, larger, heavy-set woman who accused her of stealing a parking space, WITI-TV reported. The February 3rd assault was captured on security camera footage that was released to the public. The video shows the attacker trying to maneuver her dark-colored car so that she can park in a handicapped spot, though it may not have been clear that the spot was her intended parking place...[Snip]...She...

A 5-year-old boy was “screaming his lungs out” Sunday as he came “flying out of the door” of an SUV during a botched theft of a flat-screen TV from a Falmouth Wal-Mart by his mom and her boyfriend, according to police reports released yesterday. Eyewitnesses said they ran to help as the crying boy fell “out of the car onto the ground” and then got up and started to chase the SUV.