Free Republic

The 19-year-old man charged with attempted murder in the shooting of two young girls attending an end-of-year school picnic had flashed gang signs before gunfire erupted from the Jeep he was riding in, a prosecutor said Sunday. Raekwon Hudson, wearing a torn and tattered green sweatshirt, showed little reaction when Cook County Judge Peggy Chiampas ordered him to remain in jail. “No bail! Take him back!” Chiampas shouted to her courtroom sheriff’s deputies after voicing her disgust. “Young children in this city can’t participate in a picnic without being in fear of their lives because of gangbangers on the street...

A noted art collector and philanthropist has sold a major painting for an eye-popping $165 million to raise money for criminal justice reform. Agnes Gund sold Roy Lichtenstein's 1962 work Masterpiece, reportedly to billionaire hedge fund manager and art collector Steve Cohen. The sale apparently took place months ago; an art industry newsletter reported on the transaction in January, but Gund would not confirm it. On Monday, The New York Times confirmed that the sale was real, noting that the painting becomes one of the 15 most expensive pieces of art known to have been sold. And the newspaper revealed...

Jay Z is continuing his fight against the criminal justice system by helping men who have been incarcerated but can’t get release due to exorbitant bail bonds. In an essay for Time magazine, Hov attacks the “exploitative bail industry” for their practices that he deems are unfair to black and brown people. “If you’re from neighborhoods like the Brooklyn one I grew up in, if you’re unable to afford a private attorney, then you can be disappeared into our jail system simply because you can’t afford bail,” Jay writes. “Millions of people are separated from their families for months at...

HALETHORPE, Md. (WBFF) - A man who was breaking into a car in the Halethorpe/Lansdowne area Sunday morning was found dead after a witness tried to "hold" him until police responded, said Baltimore County police. Police did not immediately clarify if the witness killed the suspect, but the incident is being investigated as a "suspicious death." The witness was in the parking lot of a business on Annapolis Road near Virginia Avenue at about 8:30 a.m. when he saw another man breaking into a car on the lot, said police.

Caitlyn Jenner is facing criticism after joking that 'liberals can't even shoot straight' in reference to last week's gunfire at a Republican baseball practice. The former Olympian made the comment while chatting during a question and answer session on Friday at the College Republican National Committee's convention in Washington, D.C. The event was closed to the press, but a roughly 20 minute portion of her appearance was captured on video and shared to the College Republican Federation of Virginia's Facebook page. The 67-year-old was asked by the moderator during the dinner about the shooting that critically wounded House Majority Whip...

A businessman drove himself to the hospital after a stranger slashed his throat Sunday afternoon in Petersburg. Bill Sizemore said he was visiting the future site of his planned mini-golf and go-kart business on South Crater Road when he saw a man standing in the woods nearby. Sizemore, who prides himself on helping those in need, went to check on the man. "When I get to about within 15 feet of him, I ask him, if he's OK," Sizemore said. "As I reach over, walk over and start pointing to the lake, he reaches behind me and cuts me, cuts...

There has so far been no word from President Trump’s administration on whether the White House intends to host such an event this year. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has reportedly already said the State Department will break with recent tradition and not host a Ramadan reception, as it has done nearly annually for two decades. White House officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

“[I]t’s a delicate thing because everybody is wishing the congressman well and hoping that he recovers, but Steve Scalise has a history that we’ve all been forced to sort of ignore on race,” Reid said. Because he is in jeopardy and everybody is pulling for him, are we required in a moral sense to put that aside at the moment?”

A young man was stabbed and had his throat slit in front of horrified shoppers on a busy west London street Friday afternoon. No arrests have been made so far. “The man was outside walking and somebody came and randomly stabbed him in the side of his back and slit his throat.” A spokesman for the Met Police has said that there was no reason to believe at this stage that the attack was terror related, and that no arrests have been made so far

Bill Cosby's sexual assault case has ended in a mistrial. After six days of deliberation, the seven men and five women selected to serve on the jury were unable to render a unanimous verdict on any of the three counts of felony aggravated indecent assault with which Cosby had been charged. The comedian pleaded not guilty. Kevin R. Steel, the district attorney from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, who brought the charges, has announced he will retry the case.

If you are in a country illegally, breaking the laws of the country you are in, shouldn’t you be afraid of being found and deported? Well that’s what U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief Thomas Homan said Tuesday in response to a growing cry from liberal activists complaining about ICE agents enforcing federal law. Anyone in the country without authorization can be arrested at any time. And those who have been ordered deported by judges and who did not show up for hearings (which happened countless times during the Obama years) must be removed from the country if those laws...

Joy Reid, radical leftist news commentator, went Tweet crazy when President Trump announced on Friday he was rescinding much of President Obama’s order loosening diplomatic relations with communist Cuba. And although most of them amounted to outrage that yet another imprudent Obama administration policy was going by the wayside, there is one President Trump should print out and tape to his office wall. “Trump name checks Assata Shakur (calls her by her former name, Joanne Chesimard) as a dog whistle to his people. #Trumping Cuba,” she tweeted. Reid is angry Trump not only rescinded what he called the “completely one-sided...

James T. Hodgkinson had a violent history involving guns long before he opened fire on the congressional baseball practice. According to police records ... Hodgkinson was busted in 2006 for allegedly punching his daughter's 20-year-old female friend and striking a male friend with the butt of a shotgun. Police say he also fired a shot that didn't hit anyone. Hodgkinson was trying to get his daughter to leave the friend's house ... but when she refused, he got physical. Police say he grabbed his daughter by her hair, and pulled her to the floor.

A Kansas man who robbed a bank last September and told police that he was hoping to get caught so he would get prison time to escape his wife was sentenced Tuesday to six months of home confinement after pleading guilty, the Kansas City Star reported.

“This Russian investigation has gone nowhere, so they’re coming up with new charges,” said Jay Sekulow, one of President Trump’s attorneys. Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, was reacting to a report in Thursday’s Washington Post that says Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating President Trump “for possible obstruction of justice.” The report, based on five anonymous sources, describes the latest (alleged) development in the investigation as a “major turning point.” The newspaper said investigators also are looking for evidence of possible financial crimes among Trump associates. “If this is true that five individuals inside...

Full title - Just One Day Before GOP Congressman Attacked, 'The Wire' Creator David Simon Called For Violence: 'Pick Up A Goddam Brick' "That's all that's left to you." A crazed lefty of the Bernie-variety opened fire on several GOP congressman in Virginia who had been practicing for an upcoming charity baseball game against Democrats on Wednesday morning, wounding House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA), an aide, and several police officers. Did the shooting occur in a vacuum or did the openly violent rhetoric of prominent leftists inspire his malevolent behavior? Just six months have passed since President Trump's ascendancy...

The days of having to remember to grab your travel card on your way out of the house could soon be a thing of the past. SJ Rail, a Swedish rail operator, claims that up to 100 of its customers are embedding microchip implants into their hands to pay for their journey. The creepy technology raises security and privacy issues, as the data generated could be used to track people.

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Black Lives Matter is a movement, not an organization that can be sued by a Louisiana police officer who was injured at a protest after a deadly police shooting, a prominent activist's attorney argued Wednesday. DeRay Mckesson's lawyer, William Gibbens, urged U.S. District Judge Brian Jackson to dismiss a Baton Rouge police officer's lawsuit against Black Lives Matter and the Baltimore-based activist. The judge said he would rule "within the coming days" after hearing from attorneys. {snip} The unidentified officer claims a piece of concrete or "rock like substance" struck him in the face during...

A congressional staffer told WND that the gunman approached the game and asked Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla.: “Are you Democrats or Republicans?” When DeSantis replied, “Republicans,” the gunman walked away and then came back blasting. DeSantis recounted an “odd” encounter he had as he was leaving the field just minutes before the shooting: “There was a guy that walked up to us that was asking whether it was Republicans or Democrats out there, and it was just a little odd,” DeSantis told Fox News. President Trump tweeted that Scalise, “a true friend and patriot,” was seriously injured “but will recover.”...

New Mexico's state land commissioner found a bullet hole in the windshield of his parked pickup truck on Wednesday amid growing fears that elected officials are subject to violent attacks following a shooting in the DC area. Aubrey Dunn said the discovery in Sante Fe, New Mexico, on Wednesday morning was troubling given it came at nearly the same time a gunman opened fire on a Republican congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia. No injuries or arrests were reported in the incident involving Dunn's truck, and the land commissioner said he did not know whether he was being targeted.