Free Republic

Deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is subbing in for Sean Spicer at today’s White House press briefing, in her first on-camera briefing with reporters.Sanders, the daughter of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and adviser to President Donald Trump during his election campaign in January, landed a job as principal deputy press secretary for the new administration.Spicer will spend the day at the Pentagon fulfilling his Navy reservist duty. He joined the reserve in 1999, and is now a commander.Before joining Trump’s campaign, Sanders worked as a political consultant and staffer for her father’s two presidential bids.During the 2016 election,...

An Arkansas woman is facing a felony charge after pointing a gun at a teenage boy who she says was sexually assaulting her neighbor’s dog. Kerrie Lenkerd told police in Centerton, a northwest Arkansas town, that she looked out a window and saw the teen with "the dog he raped last time." "I got my gun out of my safe and went out my back door," Lenkerd told police, according to a court filing. "I told him to get on the f---ing ground and pointed my gun at him."

Washington (AFP) - A federal judge has ordered the Arkansas authorities to conduct an autopsy on the body of an executed inmate whose lawyer described his death as "horrifying," including jerking and convulsions during his lethal injection. Judge Kristine Baker of the US Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas issued the order late Friday, less than 24 hours after the state executed the 38-year-old convicted multiple murderer Kenneth Williams. He was the last of four inmates put to death in a week -- the first executions by the conservative southern state since 2005.

In this clip dating back to a 2013 meeting of the Arkansas State Board of Education, concerned mother Karen Lamoreaux used a specific math problem to make an impassioned argument against Common Core. [Video at link]

LITTLE ROCK —Arkansas put convicted killer Kenneth Williams to death Thursday night— the last of a controversial series of executions carried out as the state moved to carry out the sentences before its supply of a lethal injection drug expired. Arkansas Department of Correction Spokesman Solomon Graves said that the lethal injection was administered at 10:52 p.m. local time (11:52 p.m. ET) and Williams was declared dead at 11:05 p.m. Williams, 38, was scheduled to die at 7 p.m. local time (8 p.m. ET) via lethal injection at the Cummins Unit, where the state's death chamber is housed, about 75...

A few months after lefty activists crowded Washington D.C. for the Women's March, activists from many of those same organizations went to bat for a serial rapist and murderer. Ledell Lee's victims were all women.  While he was on trial for the rape and murder of Debra Reese, the testimony of three of his rape victims was presented. Lee had made a habit of knocking on doors and asking to borrow some tools to see whether a woman's husband might be home. Debra Reese called her mother and told her that a strange man had tried to borrow some tools....

Sources say Bill Clinton is in rough shape. . Sources close to the Clinton family say that Slick Willy, 40th President of the United States and perpetual cheater, will be lucky to make it through the end of the week. The Clinton family, including extended relatives and members of the Rodham clan, have been filing into Little Rock all week where Bill is reportedly bedridden at the residence attached to his presidential library. The fact that they’re booking rooms and sticking around most likely means they’re expecting to have to stay for a funeral. The Clintons have said that they...

It’s not entirely fair to judge a Supreme Court justice based on his first vote. Urgent matters arise unexpectedly, and the court must sometimes act quickly. Still, it’s worth paying special attention to Justice Neil Gorsuch’s vote late Thursday night to deny a stay of execution for Ledell Lee, an Arkansas man who was sentenced to death in 1995 for murdering a woman named Debra Reese with a tire thumper. After Justice Gorsuch, along with the four other conservative justices, denied his final appeal without explanation, Mr. Lee, who maintained his innocence until the end, was executed by lethal injection....

Two inmates received lethal injections on the same gurney Monday night about three hours apart as Arkansas completed the nation's first double execution since 2000, just days after the state ended a nearly 12-year hiatus on administering capital punishment. While the first inmate, Jack Jones, 52, was executed on schedule, shortly after 7 p.m., attorneys for the second, Marcel Williams, 46, convinced a federal judge minutes later to briefly delay his execution over concerns about how the earlier one was carried out. They claimed Jones "was moving his lips and gulping for air," an account the state's attorney general denied,...

LAST week, the State of Arkansas, which had executed exactly nobody since 2005, put to death Ledell Lee for the crime of murdering Debra Reese in 1993. Why now — 11 years after the last execution, 24 years after the crime? Because the chemicals used for lethal injection were about to expire.Reasonable people can disagree on the death penalty, but everyone should recognize the dark absurdity of an execution timetable set by a drug’s expiration date. And that absurdity provides a useful segue to the latest in my ongoing series of implausible proposals: That our modern way of punishment should...

Former President Bill Clinton trolled President Trump on Sunday, joking that the Clinton Presidential Center "has been bugged." "BREAKING: We just learned that the @ClintonCenter has been bugged," Clinton tweeted with a photo of himself standing next to a statue of a grasshopper.

Johnny Depp (who idolizes mass-executioner Che Guevara) protests capital punishment in Arkansas!“LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Johnny Depp joined death-penalty opponents gathered on the front steps of Arkansas' Capitol here Friday to protest the state's plan to execute seven inmates before the end of the month.”In this week’s “you can’t possibly make this stuff up!” department Hollywood’s “intellectual heavyweight” Johnny Depp showed up in Arkansas to protest the state’s death penalty.This probably strikes some folks as a perfectly well-intentioned and reasonable humanitarian endeavor. Problem is, this same Johnny Depp has made a career of idolizing the mass- murderer and war-monger Ernesto...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - The latest ruling from the 8th Circuit Court has postponed Lee's execution -- originally scheduled for 7 p.m. -- to 8:15 p.m. There are no other legal barriers at this time hindering his execution from moving forward. Thursday afternoon, the Arkansas Supreme Court denied Attorney General Leslie Rutledge's request for reconsideration on the stay that was granted for Stacey Johnson. Johnson's stay will not be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, meaning his scheduled execution will not happen.

(CNN)Six Arkansas death row inmates scheduled to die by lethal injection this month in Arkansas have -- as expected -- asked the Supreme Court to reverse a federal appeals court order and uphold a district court's injunction that temporarily stopped the executions.The district court found that the inmates were likely to show that the lethal injection drug protocol "entails a substantial risk of harm."

It is a plea for mercy -- not out of the Arkansas statutes but from an older and more venerable legal code: Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do. But it's a plea that cannot be made today on behalf of the people of this sovereign state. For we still have the death penalty, still tell pollsters we like it and insist that our politicians bow to it before sending them to Little Rock. We know exactly what we do. And the whole world is watching. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the almighty State of Arkansas -- because...

If budget-cutters in Washington decided to eliminate food-stamp benefits to New Yorkers, the city’s politicians would be denouncing the cruelty of the “Republican war on the poor.” Yet Mayor Bill De Blasio and the city council are already inflicting the same sort of pain on low-income New Yorkers by denying them access to one of the nation’s most effective anti-poverty programs: Walmart.When he was mayor, Michael Bloomberg supported Walmart’s efforts to open a store in New York, but the company faced unremitting resistance from unions and elected officials, and it gave up the fight once de Blasio moved into Gracie...

After barring Arkansas from executing eight inmates in rapid succession because of a dispute over how it obtained one of its execution drugs, Judge Wendell Griffen went to an anti-death penalty rally, where he made a stir by lying down on a cot and binding himself as though he were a condemned man on a gurney. Griffen's participation in Friday's protest outside the governor's mansion sparked outrage among death penalty supporters, including Republican lawmakers who described it as judicial misconduct and potential grounds for Griffen's removal from the bench.

When administered as their manufacturers intend, the three drugs Arkansas could use in lethal injections next week — if courts allow the executions to proceed — are key products of the pharmaceutical industry. They produce amnesia for patients heading into medical procedures, relax muscles to the point that they don’t interfere with knife-wielding surgeons and regulate heart rhythms in cardiac patients. A state judge ruled Friday that Arkansas cannot inject inmates with the muscle relaxant currently on hand until he addresses a complaint that prison officials obtained the drug improperly. He set a hearing for Tuesday; the executions were due...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- Arkansas intends to execute seven death row inmates between Monday and April 27, a pace never seen since the U.S. Supreme Court reauthorized the death penalty in 1976. Gov. Asa Hutchinson initially set four double-executions so the state could use a key execution drug before its April 30 expiration date, but a federal judge stayed one execution, saying prisoner Jason McGehee was entitled to a 30-day comment period following a clemency recommendation. Another federal judge is considering the men's request for stays of execution.A look at the seven men who are scheduled to die and...

The Arkansas General Assembly has declared that “pornography has created a public health crisis,” leading to a broad “spectrum” of public health “impacts and societal harms.” The Assembly also stated that pornography can increase “the demand for prostitution and the sex trafficking and slavery of children and young adults, primarily girls.” The Resolution, HR 1042, is an official recognition by the Arkansas government. It is not a law. It reflects the official view of the legislature and a copy of the Resolution is sent to the director of the Department of Health in Arkansas. Similar resolutuions have passed in South...