Free Republic

Rep. Ed Royce, California Republican and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the United States should try to have productive relations with a Vladimir Putin-led Russia — with qualifications. “At the same time, we should be pointing out that Putin is using social media right now to recruit every skinhead and malcontent around Russia and get them into eastern Ukraine,” Mr. Royce told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “We know these separatists were taken into Russia to be trained in how to use these SA-11s and they’re poorly trained, so they now shot down a jetliner.” .... “We should have...

(LONG BEACH, CA.) -- They came to the wrong house to do a B & E (break and enter) that night and they most certainly frightened and roughed up the wrong 80-year old man. For one of the invader-robbers that night, a woman, it was indeed a fatal error in the victim selection process. Tom Greer, an 80-year-old retiree arrived at his home in Long Beach Tuesday night to find a man and a woman in the middle of a late night break in, ransacking the place. Greer told L.A.'s KNBC-TV as soon as he got inside both robbers tackled...

California is going beyond being one of the 19 states currently allowing same-sex "marriage" by revolutionizing the sacred institution even further with Gov. Jerry Brown's (D) signing of Senate Bill 1306, which eradicates from state laws references to "husband and wife." Progressive media outlets are heralding this change as necessary and overdo. "California's same-sex couples may now be pronounced spouse and spouse after Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed a bill [last] Monday eliminating outdated 'husband and wife' references from state laws," Huffington Post reported. "Senate Bill 1306 was introduced by state Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) to eliminate confusion and...

In this strange incident, little is said about why the intruder tried to force his way into the shooters home.   All that we know is that the homeowner drove into his garage, and the intruder drove a car behind the homeowner to prevent the garage door from closing.  A verbal altercation followed, then warning shots were fired, then the  intruder was shot. The authorities are investigating the incident, which they say stems from the rather ambiguous term "road rage". From the marinscope.com: The homeowner, a 71-year-old man, drove into his garage, and the other man tried to drive in behind...

San Francisco politicians love to opine on major national and international issues - even if their stance will have no bearing on anything other than bolstering their own egos. Impeach George W. Bush! End the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan! But this time, City Hall officials have seized on a significant issue - the swell of undocumented children from Central America crossing the U.S. border - that they just might be able to influence in a real way. The Board of Supervisors has voted unanimously to fund relief efforts for children arriving in the city, according to immigration advocates, at...

Muslims advocates gathered at the California state capitol. Photo courtesy of the Council on American-Islamic Relations CA. Sacramento, Calif., Jul 10, 2014 / 04:07 am (CNA).- Proposed California food safety rules for butchering animals have raised concerns among the state’s Muslims, who say the rules would prevent them from practicing their religious beliefs. “Religious freedom is an important issue for all Americans. It is at the core of the freedoms our country was founded on and a value we pride ourselves on,” Zahra Billoo, executive director of the Council of Islamic Relations’ San Francisco Bay Area Office, told CNA July...

We felt it here in the high desert, north of BBL.

Bl. Junípero Serra and the Holy Family Sean FitzpatrickOn September 25th, 1988, Pope St. John Paul II beatified a swarthy, Spanish, asthmatic priest of small stature who was a dazzling scholar, a tireless apostle, and the founder of many missionaries from San Diego to San Francisco—Junípero Serra, who walked the western desert to irrigate souls with the water that becomes a spring welling up to eternal life.Born Miguel Jose Serra Ferrer on November 14, 1730, in Petra, Majorca, Spain, this servant of God and God’s people became a Franciscan after a brilliant career as a scholar of philosophy, taking...

bill that has just passed the California State Senate could effectively make criminals out of many people- just for having sex. The bill, SB 967, would require “affirmative consent” before college-age couples can have sex. This would essentially outlaw sex that is had “while in the heat of passion”. From Breitbart News: SB 967, amended last week by state Sen. Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles), would mandate that college students obtain “an affirmative, unambiguous, and conscious decision by each participant to engage in mutually agreed-upon sexual activity.” ……….. “Obviously, there is a problem,” he said in the report. “SB 967...

While examples of the old media using their power to push for ever more restrictive gun laws are so common as to be the norm, this segment by CBS is a particularly clear example: Newtown families have high hopes for N.J. gun ammo bill Exactly one family was said to be present lobbying for the bill; the father cites a theory with little to no evidence to support its premise.  An emotional father who lost a son is pushing for more gun restrictions that are virtually irrelevant to mass shootings;  the mass shootings are a tiny segment of homicides...

After the shooting at University of California, Santa Barbara on Friday, a rampage that left six students dead from gun or knife wounds, many parents and politicians found the federal government's past responses to similar tragedies to be one of the culprits. “Have we learned nothing?”

Firefighters have known for years that burning small arms ammunition produces a very low level of danger  to firemen.   This is from the SAAMI paper, "Facts About Sporting Ammunition Fires":  Ammunition fired in the open, not enclosed in a gun's chamber, discharges with such inefficiency that the projectile will not even penetrate an ordinary fiberboard shipping container panel at very close range. When not strongly and tightly confined, smokeless propellant powders burn relatively slowly and do not explode as we know they do when fired in a gun. Pressure within a cartridge case must build up to several...

Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow are not laughing over a film critic's op-ed that suggested their movies could have influenced the mass murder in Santa Barbara, Calif.

His parents said they were so concerned that they called police. Officers who showed up at Rodger’s doorstep for a mental health check in April, however, found a well-mannered if shy young man whom they concluded posed no risk. They hadn’t seen the videos, and by the time law enforcement had, it was too late: Rodger had gone on a deadly rampage. The sheriff’s office “was not aware of any videos until after the shooting rampage occurred,” Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Kelly Hoover said. Sheriff Bill Brown has defended the officers’ actions, but the case highlights the challenges...

Only when cops entered Rodger’s nearby apartment did they find his first victims: three multiply-stabbed men whose names were withheld Saturday night, pending family notification. It remained unclear Saturday night if any of the three were Rodger’s two roommates. He had written in the manifesto that he would “have to kill” them so he could turn the place into “my personal torture and killing chamber.” “I will start luring people into my apartment, knock them out with a hammer, and slit their throats. I will torture some of the good looking people before I kill them, assuming that the good...

A gunman went on a drive-by shooting rampage in a Santa Barbara student enclave and at least seven people were killed, including the attacker, authorities said. Investigators believe a gunman driving a black BMW acted alone in the shootings late Friday night near the University of California, Santa Barbara.

On the first of May, the Ninth Circuit ordered  that Appellee William Gore, the San Diego Sheriff, respond to the State of California request to intervene in the Peruta case.  Peruta is the case where the Ninth Circuit ruled that Sheriff Gore had to issue concealed carry permits to the public for general self defense.   The order is on hold because  of the request to intervene.  Currently, the Sheriff only issues permits if the applicant demonstrates a unique need under  “circumstances that distinguish [him] from the mainstream,”.  This is commonly referred to as a "may issue" policy. Sheriff Gore,...

California (Rest of the country is in separate threads, see links below) There are numerous important House Primary Races! And places where we can WIN! PLEASE contribute! And if you can't contribute money ... the least we can do is go to their pages and give them a "like" or a tweet. All of these candidates are involved in primaries that are close (or could be close) against generally more moderate or liberal Republicans. All of these districts are winnable in November. California: Igor Birman, CAL-7, JUNE 3rd .... Sacramento County. DEM incumbent is Bera Endorsed by: Sen. Mike Lee,...

Denisse Rojas earned a biology degree from UC Berkeley and has set her sights on medical school. But one big obstacle stands in her way. To practice medicine in California, doctors must obtain a license from the state, and applicants are required to provide a Social Security number as proof of identity. Rojas, 25, does not have such a number. She is in the United States illegally, having been smuggled into the country from Mexico by her parents when she was 6 months old. But a group of legislators wants to help her — to do for doctors, dentists, nurses,...

The tree trimmer at the center of a federal and state investigation into the destruction of nests and slaughter of baby birds in Oakland said Thursday that he "screwed up" because he allowed his crews to chain-saw trees even as baby birds were falling out. Pulido was the supervisor for a crew of tree trimmers hired Saturday by the U.S. Postal Service's Civic Center Annex in Oakland. The post office ordered trees containing the nests of egrets and black-crowned night herons, species protected by the U.S. Migratory Bird Act, to be cut because the nesting birds were defecating on mail...