Free Republic

Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor, who fatally shot Justine Damond last July, is now listed on the jail roster in Hennepin County and county attorney Mike Freeman has scheduled a press conference for 2:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Hennepin County Government Center. According to the roster, he is being held on possible third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter charges. Damond's family issued the following statement: Justine’s family in Australia and the US applaud today’s decision to criminally charge Officer Noor with Justine’s murder as one step toward justice for this iniquitous act. While we waited over eight months to come to...

While not bothering to calculate it down to the precise minute, spring is arriving in the northern hemisphere today. I’ll confess that I’ve been in a bit of a funk lately and this winter has been a particularly trying one for a number of reasons. But this is the time when hope springs eternal, plants begin to bloom, love is in the air and all of that romantic nonsense, right? Why not find something pleasant to focus on even in the midst of far too much depressing news.I’d first like to share with you a column written back in the...

I received today an email with an attached so-called “legal letter” from a senior producer at Al Jazeera Media Network. One need look no further than the letterhead, “Confidential” marking and warnings at the bottom of that attachment to recognize that, quite apart from its content, this email is intended to threaten and intimidate. It asked for my prompt written response to several allegations about me and my organization, the Center for Security Policy. Those allegations are clearly defamatory. These unfounded charges say more about the purported “experts” who have made them than about those they are smearing. According to...

Former FBI Director James Comey, who was famously fired by President Donald Trump in May 2017, is considering selling the option to his hotly anticipated memoir, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, which publishes April 17. Comey’s agents at DC-based Javelin, Matt Latimer and Keith Urbahn, were in Los Angeles last week fielding pitches, according to a source with knowledge of the visit. A film or TV deal wasn’t something Comey even thought about until a flood of people in Hollywood called and expressed interest after the book was announced in early August. Comey is said to be unsure...

A student pulled out a gun and shot two other students at a high school in southeast Maryland Tuesday morning before the shooter was fatally wounded, the St. Mary’s County sheriff says. The student entered Great Mills High School in Great Mills at the beginning of the school day and shot a female student in a hallway, Sheriff Tim Cameron told News4. A male student also was hit by a bullet.

In the wake of the 100% preventable Valentine's Day maniac murders of 17 children, calls for mental health assessments have become popular.  President Trump tweeted a ringing endorsement of mental health checks: the murderer "was a sick person – very sick – and we had a lot of warning about him being sick.  This wasn't a surprise."  The president repeated the mental health mantra the next day at CPAC. This enthusiasm for mental health should be viewed with extreme caution.  It is a classic example of the old adage "be careful what you wish for."  No one ought to realize this better than President Trump himself.  After all, his own mental...

The Great Mills High School student who injured two others Tuesday morning was reportedly stopped by the school’s “armed” resource officer. snip Sheriff Tim Cameron... stated that three students were injured in the incident, including the shooter himself, who was taken down by an armed school resource officer. The SRO reportedly responded without hesitation and exchanged gunshots with the suspect before disarming him. He was not injured in the exchange.

Two education professors recently argued that aspiring K-12 teachers who hold conservative views and resist social justice theories may not be qualified to work with children. Erin Miller and Tehia Stark-Glass, both professors at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, advanced the case in a March 8 article in the journal The New Educator entitled “The Maintenance of Whiteness in Urban Education,” expressing concerns that white conservative teachers will be unable to effectively teach minorities if they do not thoroughly internalize social justice. "Their whiteness seemed to congeal when they perceived the course material as un-American, in contrast with their conservatism."...

A 7-year-old in second grade came home and said, "Mom, Dad, guess what! Our teacher read us the funniest book. It was so silly. It was about a prince who was getting married, but he didn't marry a princess. He married a prince! Isn't that so silly, Mom?" The book read to the confused child to introduce 7-year-olds to same-sex "marriage" is King and King by Linda de Haan. Without parental knowledge or consent, 5-year-old Jacob, entering kindergarten, came home with a "diversity bookbag." Inside was a book introducing kindergartners to same-sex households, celebrating Clifford and her dad's "partner," Henry...

If you're a parent, you've had at least one passing discussion on the closure of Toys R Us. The mega-giant toy chain that ruled the childhoods of many of today's parents is shuttering nearly 200 stores this month. While bankruptcy is the official reason, it isn't the only or perhaps even the biggest reason why Geoffrey the Giraffe is being sent to the big zoo in the sky: Debt. Competition from online retailers like Amazon, as well as cheaper big-box stores like Wal-Mart and Target. Yes, bad customer service, too. All of these are the most commonly cited reasons...

Victor Davis Hanson is a conservative icon, well known and respected; a prolific author of twenty-plus books and current occupant of a chair of historical, military, and agrarian classical studies; a Ph.D. from Stanford; and the founder of classical studies at University of California at Fresno. ;Now he occupies a chair at the Hoover Foundation of Stanford University. I first came to know him reading The Western Way of War (1989), which explained the reason for the lethality and effectiveness of Western armies throughout history. ;This past year, he wrote one of his best books: The Second World Wars: How...

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), an avid open borders advocate, is praised in the latest edition of American Vogue by illegal aliens for being the illegal alien population’s “strongest ally.” Harris’s new profile in Vogue focuses much of its attention on her fight to give amnesty to the 12 to 30 million illegal aliens currently living in the U.S. – especially those who have been shielded from deportation by the President Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Remember the good old days of the Latin American "death squads"? Every liberal chanted with one voice to end these extrajudicial paramilitaries used by right-wing Latin American dictators to do the dirty work that they didn't want the regular armed forces, police, and justice system to do. Liberals invented the term to differentiate between noble lefty revolutionary guerrillas who were good and evil right-wing regime thugs who were bad. As any child could tell. I strongly feel that our liberal friends' devotion to activism, the notion of the marginalized and the oppressed rising up in righteous rage against the ruling...

Displaying the liberal cable channel’s eager anticipation for Saturday’s gun control protest in Washington D.C., the March for Our Lives, on Monday, MSNBC aired a gushing ad celebrating the movement to restrict gun rights. In promo that could just as easily have been created by the Democratic National Committee, a headline appeared on screen declaring: “There’s a movement afoot.” A soundbite followed of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student and gun control activist David Hogg proclaiming: “I don’t want something like this ever to happen again. I want us to take action.” More headlines scrolled across and touted how the...

Second lady Karen Pence and her daughter Charlotte Pence published a children's book this week about their pet bunny Marlon Bundo, who offers readers a glimpse into a day in the life of the vice president. Charlotte penned the poetry in the book, while Mrs. Pence drew the illustrations. I had the chance to speak with them about the project a few weeks ago. They were excited for the opportunity to share their talents and to offer a fun educational lesson on the office of the vice presidency. They also dished on what an honor it is to serve.While bunny...

“They [the NCAA] just got a contract from CBS (and TNT), $8.8 billion, and if you are making that, I think you have to share some revenue. You can’t expect people to continue to work for nothing on a false hope of, well this is about education, we are getting you an education, we will feed you. It sounds a little like 400 years ago, like slavery. Stay in your hut. Stay in that little house. We’ll give you some food. You do all of the work. All of it. And I am telling you that I will take care...

President Donald Trump will host Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for a working lunch at the White House Tuesday afternoon. The two leaders are expected to discuss ongoing threats in the Middle East. Specifically, the expansion of Iranian power and destabilization efforts will be a main focus. “The President looks forward to discussing ways to strengthen ties between the United States and Saudi Arabia and to advance our common security and economic priorities,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said about the meeting. Bin Salman has been in the United States for a number of days and participated in...

IT HAS BEEN nearly 17 months since Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election, yet she can't seem to stop talking about her defeat, or all the culprits she holds responsible.She was at it again in India last weekend. Answering a question about the 2016 election, she portrayed Trump supporters as primitives motivated by racism, misogyny, and hatred of immigrants. "Make America Great Again" was a pitch to American bigots, Clinton said — to voters who "didn't like black people getting rights . . . don't like women getting jobs . . . don't want to see that Indian-American succeeding." That...

On the first day of spring, the fourth nor’easter in a month is barreling toward the Big Apple, where it is expected to dump as much as 10 inches of snow and disrupt travel Wednesday. A winter storm warning is in effect from 12 a.m. Wednesday until 8 a.m. Thursday, with heavy snow and winds of about 45 mph expected, according to AccuWeather. “The wintry mix during the evening commute will change to all snow overnight (Wednesday) as the temperatures fall to the upper 20s,” AccuWeather meteorologist Kristina Pydynowski said. The snow will intensify during the day Wednesday and is...

Well, that is damned inconvenient. A state-of-the-art pedestrian bridge hailed as the inevitably wondrous result of diversity in engineering has collapsed within days of being paraded before the media. Did I say inconvenient? I should have said symbolic. “Diversity Bridge” (that’s not the structure’s official name, but I think it fits) was designed to connect Florida International University to the city of Sweetwater, where many FIU students and staff reside. The bridge, installed (though not yet opened to the public) a mere four days before its failure, spanned a busy Miami highway, and the collapse crushed cars and people underneath....