Free Republic

Connecticut officers who drew their stun guns on the job last year were more likely to fire when the suspect was black or Hispanic, according to a first-of-its-kind set of statistics that could stoke the nation's debate over race and police use of force. The raw, preliminary data was obtained by The Associated Press ahead of an official analysis expected in the coming weeks. While police and state officials cautioned against passing judgment until then, at least one criminal justice expert said he would not be surprised to see similar findings elsewhere around the country. Some civil rights groups said...

The First and Second Amendments protect and reinforce each other.In a free society, there is always pressure to expand the power of the government to suppress freedom of speech.  Those in power, for the last 100 years, have been infringing on our right to bear arms, and claiming that those who support the Second Amendment are kooks, in an attempt to suppress our First Amendment rights. With the voice provided by the First Amendment and the Internet, brave activists have been rolling back those attacks on the First and Second Amendments, and have been winning important victories. Michael Picard...

Listen Live: Sound Off Connecticut with Jim Vicevich 9 a.m. to noon ET (Daily Thread)Sound Off Connecticut is a popular conservative/libertarian call in talk show hosted by Jim Vicevich weekday mornings from 9 a.m. to noon ET. Although based in Connecticut, the show welcomes callers from all over the United States! This is your chance to sound off America! Call into the show toll free (800) 966-9842! Listen to the LIVE AUDIO STREAM at http://wtic.com - it's free and NO registration is required! If you're in southern New England listen over the air to WTIC 1080 AM, the 50,000 watt...

Passengers arriving at Kennedy Airport on an international flight were allowed to exit the busy hub without going through Customs -- for at least the second time in recent months, the Daily News has learned. Bumbling airline and security officials let travelers on American Airlines Flight 1223 from Cancun, Mexico, out of the airport on Monday morning without having their passports or bags checked, sources told The News. The security lapse mirrored a similar incident involving another American Airlines flight in November. A 34-year-old man who had been in Cancun to attend three Phish concerts told The News he was...

ANSONIA, Conn. - A Connecticut high school student was pulled out of classes and reported to police for substituting "ISIS" for the "United States of America" during the Pledge of Allegiance. The incident occurred before Christmas break, according to the Connecticut Post. Lt. Andrew Cota said the 15-year-old student at Ansonia High School wasn't charged, but the case was turned over to the Department of Homeland Security. Police said there is no danger to the community. Federal officials declined to comment.

<p>ANSONIA, Conn. - A Connecticut high school student has been pulled out of classes and reported to police for substituting "ISIS" for the "United States of America" during the Pledge of Allegiance.</p> <p>"ISIS" is a term commonly used for the Islamic State group.</p>

A pistol carrier in Connecticut was asked by a police officer to produce a permit.  He asked the officer what the reason was for the officer asking for the permit.  The officer replied with an expetive.  From fox61.com: Brown told FOX 61 what happened next: "Well, you have a gun. So then he said, 'do you have a permit?' And I'm like why? He said 'because I (expletive) said so." But, according to the newly written law, police may only request a permit if there is reasonable suspicion of a crime.The officer did not arrest or detain Brown.I did...

The nation's capital is now under a blizzard watch, the first watch of its kind issued in advance of Winter Storm Jonas. Now is the time to prepare for Winter Storm Jonas, which is expected to kick into high gear Friday and pummel parts of the East through the weekend with heavy accumulations of snow and ice. Strong winds will likely add to the threat of power outages and may also bring serious coastal flooding along parts of the Atlantic coast. The National Weather Service issued the blizzard watch late Wednesday morning for Washington, D.C., and nearby Baltimore. The watch...

A new study shows Connecticut is in the top ten for paycheck-to-paycheck living. People everywhere have to pay rents or mortgages, groceries and utilities. But those bills vary from state to state. When everything's paid, a study by the website GoBankingRate shows, not a lot is left in Connecticut. Moving from Maine, Sandra Champlin said she learned quickly that her money doesn't get her as far in Connecticut as it did there. “Rent is higher in Connecticut,” said Champlin, who now lives in Rockville. She added that rent a few hundred more in Connecticut than Maine. Champlin said she wasn't...

Listen Live: Sound Off Connecticut with Jim Vicevich 9 a.m. to noon ET (Daily Thread)Sound Off Connecticut is a popular conservative/libertarian call in talk show hosted by Jim Vicevich weekday mornings from 9 a.m. to noon ET. Although based in Connecticut, the show welcomes callers from all over the United States! This is your chance to sound off America! Call into the show toll free (800) 966-9842! Listen to the LIVE AUDIO STREAM at http://wtic.com - it's free and NO registration is required! If you're in southern New England listen over the air to WTIC 1080 AM, the 50,000 watt...

-snip- One "Amigo" is in the Bush camp -- and another is being courted. Sen. Lindsey Graham endorsed Jeb Bush this past week, calling him best-prepared among the Republican candidates to be commander in chief. Graham's own presidential campaign didn't get very far, but Bush is hoping his endorsement helps in the senator's home state of South Carolina. And now, the former Florida governor is trying to enlist Graham's help in winning another high profile endorsement: that of Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain. McCain, of course, was the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, and traveled often with Graham and then-Sen. Joseph...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau remains "the most out-of-control, unaccountable, and nontransparent agency in the federal government... And we can say that without reservation because this is one of the only agencies that literally operates outside of congressional oversight," added Wise, whose Virgina-based organization "works to protect consumers' right to access free-market goods and services." The CFPB, created under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, is funded largely by fees banks pay to the Federal Reserve. While its director, Richard Cordray, has bragged that his bureau has levied more than $141 million in fines used for CFPB education programs or reparation to...

A group of masked men attacked a driver stopped at a red light and stole his car in a carjacking in Hartford Saturday afternoon. The victim told police he was stopped at a red light when about five men in black hooded sweatshirts and ski masks approached his vehicle and dragged him out of the car. They hit him multiple times and then drove off in his car, police said.

But a big dose of free-market optimism can save the once great state. GE's decision to leave Fairfield for Boston is another sad marker in the downhill slide brought about by Connecticut's high-tax, high-regulation, anti-business policies of the last 25 years. Gov. Dannel Malloy accelerated the state's economic free-fall with another huge tax hike passed last summer. Despite his 2014 reelection promise of no new taxes, Malloy signed a $2 billion tax hike that falls heavily and businesses and individuals. This came only a few years after his near $1.5 billion tax hike. Does anyone doubt that massive tax hikes...

General Electric, the nation's largest industrial company, makes products like jet engines, locomotives and gas turbines. Its corporate reputation is tied to producing big, heavy equipment - atoms by the ton, not the ephemeral bits of software. Yet Jeffrey Immelt, the chief executive, predicted last September that G.E. would be a "top 10 software company"' by 2020. In recent years, the company has steadily built up its software business, and its industrial products are increasingly loaded with digital sensors, all part of an effort to be a leader in the "industrial Internet." Now, in its latest step to remake itself...

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A wacky Florida college professor who has long insisted the Sandy Hook school shooting was staged by the government was fired Tuesday, just a month after the parents of a child killed in the 2012 Connecticut attack accused him of taunting them. James Tracy, a tenured associate professor of media history at Florida Atlantic University has made headlines by claiming on his blog that the school shooting, in which 20 children and six adults were killed by a mentally ill gunman, never happened. He made similar claims about the movie shooting rampage in Aurora, Colo., later that year, the 2013...

A senator who spent New Year's Eve tweeting every shooting that had multiple victims in 2015 is at the White House today to help President Obama craft his gun-control executive order. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) -- who tweeted as the San Bernardino terrorist attack unfolded, "Your 'thoughts' should be about steps to take to stop this carnage. Your 'prayers' should be for forgiveness if you do nothing - again" -- told MSNBC today that he didn't know what Obama had planned, but he's sure it will be legal. "My belief is that he is well within his powers, the executive,...

Good Morning And WELCOME To Sound Off CT With Jim Vicevich.

<p>As Wilbur Ross so eloquently noted, for Puerto Rico "it's the end of the beginning... and the beginning of the end," as he explained "Puerto Rico is the US version of Greece." However, as JPMorgan explains, for some states the pain is really just beginning as Municipal bond risk will only become more important over time, as assets of some severely underfunded plans are gradually depleted.</p>