Free Republic

The Village of Shorewood Hills is an upscale bedroom community on the shore of lake Mendota, surrounded by Madison, Wisconsin, Lake Mendota, and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. On 23 February, 2018, Jonathan M. Fitzgerald showed some parental concern. Jonathan, who is a 35 year old graduate student in a Ph.D program of molecular and cellular pharmacology, was buzzed into the school and calmly walked to his child's classroom. There he handed a piece of cardboard with the word "Gun" written on it to the teacher. From madison.com: Shorewood Hills Police Chief Aaron Chapin said Jonathan M. Fitzgerald, 35,...

It’s time for my monthly sunspot update. On Sunday NOAA posted its monthly update of the solar cycle, covering sunspot activity for February 2018. Below the fold is my annotated version of that graph.Sunspot activity in February continued the low activity seen in November, December, and January, with November 2017 still the most inactive month for sunspots since the middle of 2009. In fact, the low activity we are seeing now is somewhat comparable to the low activity seen during the ramp down to solar minimum in the first half of 2008.

The Nauseating, Obscene Hypocrisy of the Left Regarding Children By Bryan Fischer For the left, it’s all about the children. At least, that’s what they want you to think. But my assessment is that they simply use children to shamelessly advance their regressive agenda. They try to bludgeon us into silence by accusing us of hating children if we disagree with them. The reality, I suspect, is the other way round. I believe it is the left that does not truly care about children. Children are simply a manipulative tool they can use to bulldoze Americans into accepting their radical...

Congressman Thomas Massie has proposed repealing the controversial federal ban on guns within a thousand feet of a school. From cnsnews.com: Massie said the solution to school shootings is putting more than one armed guard at school or allowing teachers to be armed, adding that “98 percent of mass public shootings happen in a gun free zone.” “And we’ve labeled all of our schools as gun free zones. We need to take those labels off, and put our kids in that two percent category of being safe, instead of being in that 98 percent vulnerable category,” he said. Massie...

Broward County sheriff Scott Israel rebuffed criticism of the decision to order his deputies to “form a perimeter” rather than enter Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in order to confront Nikolas Cruz as he shot 17 students and teachers to death. “It’s a simple calculation of risk vs. reward,” Israel argued. “Anyone I might’ve sent in ran the risk of being shot before he could take any useful action to neutralize the threat. Each of my deputies is a highly trained and valuable asset to the community. The loss of any one of these men would be a significant loss...

"For everyone who knows something of the story of the space telescope and its travails, this book provides a fascinating look behind the scenes. An excellent contribution to the history of technology." --Robert P. Kirshner, author of The Extravagant Universe

As with all historic tipping points, it seems inevitable in retrospect: Of course it was the young people, the actual victims of the slaughter, who have finally begun to turn the tide against guns in this country. Kids don’t have money and can’t vote, and until now burying a few dozen a year has apparently been a price that lots of Americans were willing to pay to hold onto the props of their pathetic role-playing fantasies. But they forgot what adults always forget: that our children grow up, and remember everything, and forgive nothing. Those kids have suddenly understood how...

Cool image time! Yesterday the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter team released 460 images taken by the spacecraft’s high resolution camera, HiRISE, as part of their normal and routine image release program. As I am want to do, I like to scan through these new images to see if there is anything interesting hidden there that will show up eventually in a press release...Sometimes however I find images that might never get a press release but probably deserve it....

I finally watched it today. It is not a hilarious comedy as the trailer suggests. It is a very very black comedy as everything in this movie really happened and the atmosphere it hints at without going too dark is very real. Perhaps this is a good way to teach this part of the history so far often neglected. The kids and adults will see this movie and think it was over the top and then will seek more information only to learn that this is how insane that horror really was and the movie was basically the exact retelling.

The advocates of disarming the American people have always used emotional arguments to pass legislation before calm and rational discussion can take place. It is used for two reasons. It has worked in the past and it subverts an honest discussion. When there is an honest discussion on the merits, Second Amendment supporters win. A standard ploy, so common it has become a joke is: "Its for the children". This is used for every possible policy prescription. It is the standard call, and has become meaningless, because anything and everything can be construed as "for the children". Now the...

The events since the Parkland shooting have convinced me that we need to change the Constitution to eliminate an ill-considered amendment that has done more harm than good. We need to repeal the 26th Amendment and raise the voting age back to 21. That’s the opposite of what a lot of people are advocating. Seeing Parkland students go on television and agitate for gun control has people on the Left excited at the prospect of lowering the voting age to 16. That is, they’re excited about the small subset of Parkland students opportunistic talk-show hosts have paraded in front of...

The head of the largest fully accredited sheriff's department in America would never jeopardize his own children's safety. Had Sheriff Scott Israel's three children been inside Stoneman Douglas HIgh School on February 14, 2018 everyone would have been safe- busy exchanging valentines with their friends. Make no doubt about it, a threatening menacing student -a walking time bomb would never have been tolerated had the Israel kids still been there. The bloody massacre that took 17 lives and injured so many in Parkland never would have happened -two years ago. It would have been impossible because Sheriff Israel's three kids...

A bunch of teens in Florida skipped school and went to Tallahassee to demand more of the same gun control that failed to save their classmates. Like petulant two year-olds, they whined and screamed when they weren’t given what they want when they want it.* In short, they failed their civics class. OK, kids. Here’s the down and dirty on what your teachers should have taught you about how the legislative process works… David! Take the Tide Pod out of your mouth! First, you were likely told (if told anything) that a citizen tells a legislator what he wants, the...

Much of the world’s political troubles are centered on the question of Israel in the middle of the Middle East....I have just returned from spending two weeks in Israel, a trip I do somewhat regularly to see family. Each of these visits has given me an on-the-ground close-up look at the situation there, something that is difficult to get from the typically shallow media coverage of the region. And from each of these visits comes at least one essay, something I think is required because of Israel’s significance in much of the world’s political turmoil.... This year, we took a...

Last week the nation watched in horror as the body count of Broward school children and staff doubled by the minute. The very next day the FBI admitted they had failed to act on a vital lead that explicitly detailed the mass murderer's intentions to kill people at his school. Immediately, Florida Gov. Rick Scott called for FBI Director Christopher Wray to resign in the wake of the Parkland school shooting. While the FBI apologized and issued a standard vague statement, Gov. Scott said Wray must resign, saying acknowledging a mistake “isn’t going to cut it..” "An apology will never...

Another bombshell in a stunning series of law enforcement failures An armed officer stood by at the Parkland Florida school shooting and did “nothing” while 17 people were slaughtered, reported Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel on Thursday. Deputy Scot Peterson resigned after a surveillance video surfaced, which showed him standing outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School for nearly four minutes during the six-minute massacre. And this is just the latest in a growing list of failures and missed signs that could have stopped the school shooter before he ever had the chance to take 17 lives. Here’s what we’ve learned...

Because I don’t have cable television, I didn’t watch the CNN “town hall” on gun violence last night. Following the social media commentary, I am glad I didn’t see it. From the descriptions, it seemed all heat, no light. Several thoughtful conservatives I follow on Twitter said the whole thing played like a dream advertisement for the NRA, in that it played right into the fear among gun owners that the Left despises them and is eager to take away their guns. Cards on the table: I am in favor of a significantly greater degree of gun regulation than many...

Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) It’s all fake news all the time at @CNN – But then, you already knew that, didn’t you? One of the kids who survived the school shootings in Parkland, Florida last week has revealed that his appearance at a CNN townhall with Senator Marco Rubio and others was actually scripted. He was invited to participate in a panel and told he would be able to ask his own questions, but once the fake journalists at CNN realized his question did not fit the anti-gun narrative the fake news channel is pushing, he...

Last week’s mass shooting at a Florida high school reminds us yet again that to live well—to live free—requires men with chests. That is a fundamental requirement of free government. One young man in particular, Peter Wang, died with his chest out for all to see. As the Daily Mail reports, Wang was killed while “holding the door for classmates, dressed in his grey ROTC uniform.” For his heroism, the Army posthumously awarded Wang with the JROTC Medal of Heroism. In addition, the United States Military Academy appointed Wang to West Point’s class of 2025, as it was his dream...

Back in the day, there was no school shootings. We were warned back in 2000 by Dr. Peter Breggin, M.D. when he testified in front of the House Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Not only about the damage that prescribed narcotics can cause in children that really don't need them but also the nefarious politics pushed by the pharmaceutical industry in concert with lazy parents and educators that would much rather drug kids as to avoid any kind of education reforms that would require accountability.