Free Republic

Texas could be on the hook for more than $4.5 million as part of its failed legal battle to defend its 2013 abortion restrictions, which the U.S. Supreme struck down as unconstitutional in June.

WATAUGA (KRLD-AM) — The Masjid Al-Sahaabah mosque in Watauga is on edge after someone left a threatening message on its answering machine. “If you think you’re going to establish Sharia Law in my neighborhood in this country in Texas, you’re very wrong,” the caller, who claims to be a U.S. Army veteran from Watauga, says in the message that he left for the Masjid Al-Shahaabah mosque on July 30. [snip] The caller sounds more and more threatening during his two-minute expletive-laced rant. “We will cut all of your heads off. You understand me? All of you!”

DALLAS (KRLD) – He didn’t write the letter as a lawyer or State Senator….Royce West says he poses questions as a black man in today’s world. West asked the questions in an open letter titled, “Questions from a Black Man.” Questions included “are you afraid of me because of the color of his skin?” West says the questions are what many black Americans feel. For instance, West asked the National Association of Blacks in Criminal Justice if they have similar feelings?

The owner of online dating site ChristianMingle.com has agreed to let gay and lesbian users search for same-sex matches under a judge-approved settlement of discrimination claims. Two gay men filed class-actions claims against Spark Networks Inc. in California courts in 2013 alleging that ChristianMingle.com and several other sites in the company’s portfolio of niche dating services excluded users looking to meet singles of the same sex. ChristianMingle, billed as the largest online community for Christian singles, required new users to specify whether they’re a man seeking a woman or a woman seeking a man. The lead plaintiffs, two gay men...

DENTON (CBSDFW.COM) – There is a large police presence at the Denton County Courthouse after the arrest of a “suspicious” person who allegedly wanted to get inside the building to deliver a copy of the Koran. Officials with the Denton Police Department say the incident began before 8 a.m. when officers with the University of North Texas Police Department made contact with the man. Later police received a call about the same man acting suspiciously in the 200 block of Bonnie Brae. The unidentified man reportedly continued on and made another stop near the Denton County Courthouse in the 1400...

Nine House Members, headed by Rep. Billy Long (R-Mo.), sent a letter to the Appropriations Subcommittee for Homeland Security asking them to continue the increase of H-2B visas that was approved in the omnibus spending bill last year. The H-2B visa is a non-agricultural guest-worker program for low-skilled foreign workers for temporary or seasonal work. The visas are most commonly requested by the hospitality, food service, and landscaping industries. The omnibus spending bill, which was scored by NumbersUSA, quadrupled the number of H-2B visas for 2016. There is an annual cap of 66,000 for H-2B visas but the omnibus excluded...

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) - For the second time in less than three months, "NCIS" star Pauley Perrette is alleging she was accosted by a transient. In a message posted to her Twitter page early Wednesday morning, Perrette said she was headed home from work on Cahuenga Boulevard when she saw a homeless man "asking for money from drivers." Pauley - who wrote she keeps $1 bills in her glove box "for this very reason" - said she got the man's attention by holding up a dollar bill and the man approached her vehicle.

AUSTIN (AP) - Austin police say an unarmed nude teenager was fatally shot by an officer in an altercation partly captured by patrol car video. Police on Tuesday identified the person who died as 17-year-old David Joseph. (snip) Joseph was black, as is the officer.

NAIROBI, Kenya--A passenger who boarded a commercial plane in a wheelchair may have been a suicide bomber responsible for an explosion that tore a hole in the side of the jet as it took off from Somalia's capital, a Western diplomat briefed on the investigation said. Investigators' theory is that the man was able to use the wheelchair to bypass rigorous security screening in Mogadishu and then detonated a bomb that ripped a hole in the fuselage but failed to down the plane. The force of the blast ejected the alleged bomber from the cabin and his body fell to...

Federal officials around the world today are urgently trying to track the backgrounds and contacts of the newly-married parents of a baby girl who killed 14 people in California last week in a suspected ISIS-inspired attack, as a new photograph emerged showing the future terrorists entering the U.S. together for the first time last year.

Police say three people who were heavily intoxicated in a vehicle near the Pentagon have been arrested. Pentagon Police noticed the vehicle about 7:20 a.m. Sunday near a Pentagon parking lot. Police say the vehicle had a wire protruding from the driver's door, and three people in the car were not responsive to officers.

A California company called Alternative Ballistics has developed an easy-to-install accessory for hand guns that promises to make bullets non-lethal allowing law enforcement to incapacitate a suspect without causing life-threatening injuries. The most important feature of the accessory, called The Alternative, is that it doesn’t interfere with the operation of a handgun in any way once it’s clipped onto the muzzle. The weapon’s sights still work, and other accessories like flashlights can still be attached.

DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – Groups representing the local Latino community gathered in downtown Dallas on Monday for a rally against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Organizers referred to the event as ‘Un Dia Sin Trump,’ or ‘A Day Without Trump.’ [snip] The release called Monday’s rally “an angry response by the Mexican community in particular, Latinos in general, to the racist hate-based message aimed at the Mexican immigrant community promoted by Donald Trump.” Rally leaders seek to organize Latino voters in a war against Trump at the polls next year.

COSTA MESA, CA – Political commentator and author Ann Coulter was signing copies of her new book Adios America: The Left’s Plan to Turn our Country into a Third World Hellhole at a Barnes and Noble Tuesday night when the calm was shattered by protesters inside the store. As dozens of fans waited their turn to have a book signed, several people rose from the tables in the adjacent Starbucks and began bellowing slogans: “Undocumented, unafraid!” they yelled. “Ain’t no power like the power of the people ’cause the power of the people don’t stop!”

DALLAS -- A group of protesters gathered outside Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas for a silent protest Thursday. The group said its mission was, in part, to demand justice for Dallas' first Ebola patient, Thomas Eric Duncan. About 20 people, dressed in red and black clothing, attended the protest on the front lawn of the hospital. The group said there are simply too many questions when it comes to the care that led up to Duncan's death on Oct. 8th.

The senior senator who once told New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand not to lose "too much weight" because he liked his girls "chubby" was the late Hawaii Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, the New York Times reports. In a memoir published earlier this month, Gillibrand revealed that some of her male colleagues in Congress felt free to comment about her weight. “Don’t lose too much weight now," one "of my favorite older members of the Senate" told her, squeezing her waist. "I like my girls chubby!”

Supporters of Mireille Miller-Young cite the "cultural legacy of slavery" and even the effects of pregnancy to explain why the feminist studies professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara would accost a teenager spreading a pro-life message on campus.

Some of the nation's leading businesses are prodding lawmakers to act on immigration legislation as the issue enters a critical phase on Capitol Hill. In a letter to be released Tuesday, the chief executives of Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Loews Hotels, Tyson Foods, Cargill and a half-dozen other national and regional companies write that without action to overhaul ineffective immigration laws and allow lower-skilled workers into the country legally, their businesses cannot ensure the workforce they need.

A prominent advocate for transgender and women’s rights in the tech world has been charged with raping her wife, The San Francisco Examiner has learned. Dana McCallum, a senior engineer at Twitter who speaks and writes about women’s and transgender rights and technology issues, was arrested Jan. 26 and booked into County Jail on suspicion of five felonies, according to the Sheriff’s Department.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Police on Tuesday were investigating the physical and sexual assault of a transgender teen who said he was attacked in a bathroom at a suburban San Francisco public school where another transgender student had reported being the target of bullying. The 15-year-old student assaulted Monday, who is biologically female but identifies as male, told officers he was leaving a boy's bathroom at Hercules Middle/High School when three teenage boys pushed him inside a large stall and assailed him, Hercules police Detective Connie Van Putten said.