Free Republic

Jackie Evancho, the 16-year-old who sang the national anthem before President Trump‘s swearing in, has criticized the POTUS over his newly announced plans to repeal Barack Obama’s progressive legislation on public school bathrooms for transgender students. On Wednesday the singer — who has a transgender sister, Juliet — wrote, “I am obviously disappointed in the @POTUS decision to send the #transgender bathroom issue to the states to decide. #sisterlove.”

Florida Gov. Rick Scott is now saying that his fellow Republicans in the Florida House are using "fake news" to justify their plan to scrap the state's economic development agency. Scott used his campaign Twitter account on Wednesday to distribute a video critical of House Speaker Richard Corcoran and House Republicans. The video labels Corcoran a "career politician" who wasted money by having the House produce a video that trashed programs championed by Scott.

~ The FReeper Canteen Presents ~ ~ Remembering Our Troops!! ~ UNDERWATER INSPECTION Navy Capt. Kyle Moses, left, and Master Chief Petty Officer Chris Borkenheim conduct pier inspections during International Mine Countermeasures Exercise 16 in Jordan, April 15, 2016. Moses and Borkenheim are the commodore and command master chief, respectively, of Commander, Task Force 56. Navy photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Sean Furey Canteen Mission Statement Showing support and boosting the morale ofour military and our allies' militaryand family members of the above.Honoring those who have served before. BEST RANGER FIRST Army Staff Sgt. Erich Friedlein navigates a...

MOUNT STERLING – U.S. Rep. Andy Barr faced an overwhelmingly hostile crowd in Mt. Sterling on Wednesday during his Coffee with a Congressman event. A standing room only crowd of approximately 100 constituents, many from Lexington and Frankfort, were in attendance at the event often booing and shouting at the 6th district Congressman as he spoke about a number of issues and answered numerous questions. The tone was set early on as Barr was thanking a few people at the start of the event when he was interrupted by Debbie Winslow, of Lexington, who was upset that Barr had not...

WASHINGTON—Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) secretly traveled to northern Syria last weekend to speak with American military officials and Kurdish fighters at the forefront of the push to drive Islamic State out of their de facto capital of Raqqa, according to U.S. officials. The unusual visit, which officials said was organized with the help of the U.S. military, came as the Trump administration is debating plans for an accelerated military campaign against Islamic State, also known by the acronyms ISIS and ISIL. Mr. McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, first traveled to rebel-controlled Syria in 2013, when he met...

Starbucks' brand has taken a beating since the company announced plans to hire 10,000 refugees worldwide in the next five years in response to Donald Trump's executive order intended to prevent refugees from entering the US. The coffee giant's consumer perception levels have fallen by two-thirds since late January, according to YouGov BrandIndex. The perception tracker measures if respondents have "heard anything about the brand in the last two weeks, through advertising, news or word of mouth, was it positive or negative." In Starbucks' case, perception is still overall positive, but significantly lower than it was prior to CEO Howard...

Does the shift toward more data and algorithmic direction for our business decisions assure us that organizations and businesses are operating to everyone's advantage? There are a number of issues involved that some people feel need to be addressed going forward. Numbers don't lie, or do they? Perhaps the fact that they are perceived to be absolutely objective is what makes us accept the determinations of algorithms without questioning what factors could have shaped the outcome. That's the argument Cathy O'Neil makes in Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. While we tend to think...

A parent of a wrestler in Texas filed a lawsuit against a transgender teen to prevent him from wrestling against girls in competitions.Attorney Jim Baudhuin, a parent of a wrestler on an opposing team, argued 17-year-old Mack Beggs should not be allowed to compete with girls, reports Fox 4 News.Beggs, a transgender student at Euless Trinity High School, is in the process of transitioning from female to male. Beggs takes testosterone as part of his transition.The lawsuit argues that Beggs’s presence brings “imminent threat of bodily harm” to the girls competing against him. The lawsuit also maintains that “somewhere in the process of reviewing...

In 1950, physicist Enrico Fermi famously asked, "Where are they?" as a kind of lament about the lack of observational evidence for alien intelligence in our universe. Today, the question is still asked in the context of the always-hoped-for discovery of other worlds like our own, with the thought that maybe, just maybe, we will finally find those aliens. ... The two most fruitful methods for discovering exoplanets (the "transit method" and the "radial velocity method") both give a straightforward way to determine the distance between a star and an exoplanet. That, together with our knowledge of how much heat...

O'Keefe said in a telephone interview with CNN on Wednesday that he has "a few hundred hours" of "secretly recorded material" from inside the network. "We're calling it CNN Leaks," he said, drawing inspiration from WikiLeaks' document dumps. He said "part one" would be published Thursday at about 10 a.m. ET. "This is all legally recorded information," he said, declining to be more specific. O'Keefe, who uses undercover stings to trap his targets, has a reputation for shady tactics and exaggerated statements. Some of his so-called exposés have relied on misleading editing techniques. And an incident in 2010 landed him...

Mexico’s drug cartels earn billions of dollars in profits as they funnel heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana into drug-hungry countries, including the United States. Crime, death and ruined lives flow right along with those drugs to places as varied as New York City, West Virginia coal country, Albuquerque, Española and western Europe. Despite the efforts of law enforcement, the cartels rival international corporations in size and reach. The drugs they peddle are cheaper and more plentiful than ever before, claiming thousands of victims every year. The Albuquerque Journal today begins a six-part investigative report on a criminal enterprise wreaking havoc...

Despite media reports of a massive crackdown by President Trump on illegal immigrants, just a tiny percentage of the nearly 1 million on the government's deportation list have been arrested, according to statistics provided to Congress. The 680 seized in recent sweeps by U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement agents represent just .07 percent of the 950,062 with deportation orders as of May 21, 2016. ... There are an estimated 3 million illegal immigrants with criminal records in addition to their illegal status and the administration has said it will make them a priority for removal. The numbers in the ICE...

Rogue congressional staffers took $100,000 from an Iraqi politician while they had administrator-level access to the House of Representatives’ computer network, according to court documents examined by The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group. The money was a loan from Dr. Ali al-Attar, an Iraqi political figure, and was funneled through a company with “impossible”-to-decipher financial transactions that the congressional information technology (IT) staffers controlled. Imran Awan, ringleader of the group that includes his brothers Abid and Jamal, has provided IT services since 2005 for Florida Democrat Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairwoman.

U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham intends to teach Russia a lesson for its alleged cyber attacks during the electoral campaigns of Western countries. "In 2017, you'll get a kick for what you've done," Graham said at the Munich Security Conference on Sunday, February 19 while addressing representatives from the Russian delegation. "You will face the consequences of what you have caused the Free World," warned the senator.

On Feb. 20, President Donald Trump announced that Army Lt. Gen. Herbert Raymond “H.R.” McMaster will replace retired Army Gen. Mike Flynn as his national security advisor. A career officer, he served during the Persian Gulf War as well as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. McMaster joined the military in 1984, and is still serving on active duty. Prior to accepting this role as national security advisor, he served as the director of Army Capabilities Integration Center and deputy commanding general with U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. In 2005, he commanded 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and secured the...

ANNAPOLIS, Md. – Maryland's ban on 45 kinds of assault weapons and its 10-round limit on gun magazines were upheld Tuesday by a federal appeals court in a decision that met with a strongly worded dissent. In a 10-4 ruling, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., said the guns banned under Maryland's law aren't protected by the Second Amendment.

A first-grade teacher in Washington was placed on administrative leave after urging people on Facebook to report suspected undocumented residents, school district officials said. Cheriese Rhode, 29, allegedly posted a message last week encouraging citizens to inform Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents of those believed to be in the country without proper documentation. Read: Mother of 4 Threatened in Deportation Raids Has Taken Refuge in a Church The reported missive was posted in connection with last Thursday’s “A Day Without Immigrants” boycott, during which businesses closed and children were kept home from school to show the importance of immigrants in...

Is there such a thing as a virtuous pedophile? That’s the claim made in a piece published Monday by Salon. But it’s worth asking just how virtuous the author really is. This Salon think-piece by self-described pedophile Todd Nickerson is written in the form of a redemption story, except Nickerson swears up front he has never done anything at all needing redemption. To confess a sexual attraction to children is to lay claim to the most reviled status on the planet, one that effectively ends any chance you have of living a normal life. Yet, I’m not the monster you...

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA (WWBT) - When a pedophile convicted of molesting five preschool children was released from jail after just four years behind bars, a group of angry parents reportedly took the law into their own hands and beat him to death. Marcelo Fabian Pecollo was arrested in 2007 for abusing a 4-year-old child, reports AFP, which led to six more cases coming to light. Five of those cases went forward in court and he was later found guilty and sentenced in 2010 to 30 years in prison. However, AFP reports he was released in 2014 after his sentenced was...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n8TyTDNM2uQ