Free Republic

On Saturday, the police say, parolee Michael Morris dragged his ex-girlfriend halfway across the county – twice putting a gun to her head and threatening to execute her – before he crashed a birthday her family was holding and shot a half a dozen people, wounding some of them severely. This was in Syracuse, New York, at an Irish bar in the old Irish neighborhood known as Tipperary Hill. Twenty-two years old, out of prison in December after doing five years for a crime at 17 he committed while toting a stolen handgun. On the plus side, the bar was...

ISIS members marched into a Syrian town Friday evening demanding that all crosses be removed from the churches or have the buildings be completely destroyed, according to the Assyrian Patriotic Party. Two trucks carrying 20 armed ISIS members stormed into the predominantly Assyrian town of Tel Hormizd in Hassakeh and forced the residents to remove the cross from the main church tower. Hassakeh, an area made up of five Assyrian villages, is locatedd on the Khabur River. ISIS militants threatened to bomb the church if the cross was not removed. “We are calling on the world to stop this next...

The Obama administration is unusually petty and sophomoric. The attacks leveled against Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, are part of a troubling pattern in which officials in the Israeli government–including and especially Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu–are vilified. No world leader has been treated by President Obama and his administration with the contempt they have shown Prime Minister Netanyahu–from this snub in 2010 to being called a “coward” and “chickens*** prime minister” by senior administration officials. But the problem goes much deeper than a personality clash. President Obama is, quite simply, anti-Israel. In every conceivable situation and circumstance,...

At the Modern Language Association (MLA) convention in Vancouver, Canada, the degree to which many professors are divorced from reality was brought into sharp focus. Few panels at the conference that draws thousands of English professors from around the world actually dealt with literature but no matter what issue was discussed in the hundreds of panels at the MLA, professing panelists kept a safe distance from the real world: o When the MLA gets through with children’s literature, neither the kids nor their parents will recognize it. Apparently, there are books and illustrated guides, praising the likes of Marx and...

During Barack Obama's recent State of the Union speech, he told America he had no more campaigns to run. But it seems that statement flies in the face of reports that an organization known as “One Voice” has brought in what has been called a "five-man Obama team" to defeat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Included in that five-man team is Jeremy Bird, the national field director for Obama's 2012 campaign, Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director of the Independent Media Review and Analysis, said Monday, citing a report at Haaretz. That group, Dr. Lerner added, will run the anti-Netanyahu effort out...

Yesterday, while in Las Vegas, Governor Palin said "of course" she was interested in running for president in 2016.  Naturally, this got quite a response from the mainstream media.As such, she arrived in Iowa last night and greeted many supporters, fellow commentators, and other perceived hopefuls for the nomination where she was asked to clarify her statement:As Bob Costas reports: Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin told The Washington Post in an interview Friday that she is “seriously interested” in running for the White House in 2016.“You can absolutely say that I am seriously interested,” Palin said, when asked to clarify her thinking about a...

I like to refer to Islam as equivalent to the Manson Family on a global scale. Just how accurate is that? Let’s take a look. Ali Sina is a renowned ex-Muslim author, and founder of FaithFreedom.org. He writes, “I see Muhammed as a psychopath and Allah was nothing but his own alter-ego. He invented this bugaboo deity to fool people and ride them. Allah is no god and even if he was, Muhammed did not receive any revelations from him. Muhammed was a deranged man. He concocted this whole lie to fool people. He was no different than Jim Jones,...

In the question and answer portion of one of the many panels at the 2015 Modern Language Association convention in Vancouver, Canada, one professor claimed he was being politically persecuted. David Anshen, who works at Texas Pan American University as an associate professor in English, said, “I believe I’m being politically persecuted, but I cannot prove it.” He claimed that a book he helped co-author, which talked about how the CIA has infiltrated college campuses, put him in a blackbook of sorts with the state of Texas and its provost. The book, entitled, “The CIA on Campus: Essays on Academic...

Recently, Fox News was shamed into apologizing for one of their anchors talking about "no go" zones in Europe, where non-Muslims aren't welcome and even the police feel reluctant to enter. For the record, there are no "official" no-go zones anywhere in Europe.  What government on planet Earth would willingly admit that it doesn't control its own territory?  But in France, there are 751 neighborhoods the French government believe they don't fully control.  Daniel Pipes explains: They go by the euphemistic term Zones Urbaines Sensibles, or Sensitive Urban Zones, with the even more antiseptic acronym ZUS, and there are...

It’s not the first time we’ve heard this, so treat this report from Iraq with a healthy dose of skepticism. In fact, it’s not quite clear what’s being reported. According to one Iraqi news source, an Iraqi air strike killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi earlier today, but further information supposedly sourced from Iraqi PM Haidar al-Abadi upgraded al-Baghdadi’s status to wounded. Gateway Pundit flagged the initial tweet: URGENT: #ISIS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi was killed by a coalition airstrike in #Gwer area a few hours ago. Source. #Kurdistan— Rudaw English (@RudhoeEnglish) January 19, 2015 A few hours later, al-Baghdadi...

Seth Rogen took quite a bit of heat for this tweet about “American Sniper”: Seth RogenVerified account ‏@Sethrogen American Sniper kind of reminds me of the movie that's showing in the third act of Inglorious Basterds. 11:05 AM - 18 Jan 2015 Apparently, he finally started feeling the burn. This afternoon, he’s trying to walk it back: Seth RogenVerified account ‏@Sethrogen I just said something "kinda reminded" me of something else. I actually liked American Sniper. It just reminded me of the Tarantino scene. 2:55 PM - 19 Jan 2015 Seth RogenVerified account ‏@Sethrogen I wasn't comparing the two. Big...

Say all you want about The National Enquirer, but Democrats of all people should know the scandal rag is one of the few places that does any honest investigative journalism anymore — or even can afford to. Don’t believe me? How do you spell John Edwards? The folks at the New York Times are still trying to get that one right. Now the Enquirer has another hot story: “Bill Clinton Underage Sex Lawsuit Shocker!” It begins in the mag’s inimitable prose: Bill Clinton has been identified in a sex lawsuit involving underage girls – and the sleazy scandal threatens to...

2014 Saw the public exposure and admission by Progressives of the true natural of the philosophy of Government. Progressive Professor Jonathan Gruber was caught on Video and Audio mocking the alleged ignorance of the American masses. (You review this here: We've been Grubered). Essentially Progressive Jonathan Gruber openly and brazenly exposed our Progressive Government's belief system. That belief system being that "Progressive Educated Elites have the right and duty to lie to the American Public because rank and file Americans are allegedly too stupid to know what good for them." This writer exposed that Progressive belief system in this article...

And those of us on the other side of the Second Amendment divide might just thank you for it. Eugene Volokh makes the case: A commenter on a recent thread asked — seemingly from a pro-gun-control perspective — “Why can’t guns be treated like cars, regulated and available, only to those who demonstrate competence and compliance with laws?” That is a perfect excuse for me to reprise my analysis of the guns-cars analogy. Cars are basically regulated as follows (I rely below on California law, but to my knowledge the rules are similar throughout the country):

Weather.com reported: Yes, there are blizzard warnings on Christmas Eve in Hawaii, where the two highest mountain peaks on the Big Island will see a White Christmas. Lower elevations will see thunderstorms and heavy rain and are under flash flood watches through this evening. There is also the risk of mudslides in steep terrain. Up to 7 inches of snow possible on Hawaii summits http://t.co/oJffrB28Ax

Remember when Valerie Plame was the poster girl for Bush and Cheney-haters? A desk jockey at the CIA with some flowing blonde hair claim to glamour (in terms of image exploitation, a Wendy Davis-like figure), Plame was supposedly endangered when her name was supposedly leaked by someone in the Bush administration, supposedly in retaliation for her husband Joe Wilson’s criticism of Iraq War policy.

UPDATE: (Jazz) Police Commissioner William J. Bratton identified the slain officers as Wenjian Liu, a seven-year veteran of the force, and Rafael Ramos, who has been an officer since 2012. UPDATE: (Jazz) As is so often the case, the readers here at Hot Air had identified the killer at least an hour before the media put it out, but they have now confirmed what you already knew.

Obama has evidenced a preference for authoritarian regimes. His preference is why he did not force concessions from Cuba, concessions that would have fostered democratic reforms and given hope to those languishing in Castro’s Stygian domains. He appears to be more interested in sanctioning and weakening Israel, our sole democratic ally in the Middle East, than he is in enforcing the current embargo against Cuba. He seems to be more interested in sitting down at the bargaining table with Iran than he is in strengthening relations with America’s Western allies. The president’s actions have enormous implications.

Only eight days prior to the horrendous slaughter of children and school staff in Pakistan, Barack Obama released Pakistani Taliban leader, the second in command of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). This is the exact group claiming responsibility for today’s massacre in Peshawar, leaving 141 dead.

Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, says whites do not understand the protests about the deaths of young black men. CNN's Anderson Cooper cited polls that reveal white people do not view the issue the same way as black people. "It's not happening to them, so they don't quite get it," Fulton told Cooper in an interview that aired Friday on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360." "They don't quite understand. They think that it's a small group of African-Americans that's complaining: 'Oh, what are they complaining about now?'" Cooper asked: "You hear that from people?" "Oh yeah," Fulton said. "The...