Free Republic

I assumed that school boards were cowards if they didn’t have a publicly announced plan to physically defend their students. I was wrong. The issue is more involved. Many of those boards adopted an attitude of “Don’t ask and don’t tell.” There are unresolved issues we face as we protect our kids at school. Our school boards need our help to do the right thing.

Ukraine shows off a sea drone that can wipe out Russian ships and is 'faster than anything in the Black Sea' Ukraine has unveiled its new sea drone to the public for the first time, CNN reported. The quick, deadly drone is packed with explosives and is hunting Russia's Black Sea Fleet. "Russia's equipment is from the 20th Century, and ours is from the 21st," the developer told CNN. Ukraine has publicly unveiled its new sea drone for the first time as it seeks to limit the Russian fleet's operations in the Black Sea, CNN reported. The outlet got an...

I recently observed a class for armed defenders in Colorado schools. These defenders put themselves between a murderer and our kids. There are obvious parallels between strength training and self-defense training. In both cases, we make the most progress when we face the right amount of resistance and risk failure. This is what I saw.

The U.S. economy was much stronger in the first quarter of 2023 than it initially seemed, according to data released Thursday by the Commerce Department. U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an annualized rate of 2 percent in the first quarter, according to revised data released Thursday, far faster than the 1.3 percent annualized growth rate estimated by government officials earlier this year. The first-quarter growth rate has been revised substantially higher from the 1.1 percent annualized rate first reported by the Bureau of Economic Analysis earlier this year. The revision is much bigger than what is normally announced...

I attended a training course for volunteer first responders in Arizona. I’ve met the heroes who train to protect our kids and our neighbors from a murderer who wants them dead. My superheroes are real. This is what I saw.

There are many fierce, hungry tigers living near your home and they are stalking your children. How best to protect your young ones: declaw the tigers, or equip your home with strong defenses so they cannot enter, and if they do they will be stopped dead? This is the essential question tragically raised once again in the bloody wake of the Tennessee Christian elementary school massacre. Anti-gun media talking heads, Democrat legislators, government officials, teachers’ Union chieftain Randi Weingarten, and Democrat gun-haters in general as usual are claiming the only way to stop these horrific attacks is declaw the tigers...

The U.S. Atlantic Coast is becoming a hotbed for rapidly intensifying hurricanes, as climate change fuels wetter and more severe storm systems, a new study has found. A warmer world will likely beget hurricanes that gain strength faster and exacerbate the risk of flooding along the Atlantic Coast, according to the study, published on Monday in Geophysical Research Letters. Hurricane Ian’s recent crash-landing in Florida was among the strongest storms to arrive and is a testament to how hurricanes can suddenly turn severe, the researchers observed. The rates at which hurricanes have strengthened near the Atlantic Coast have surged since...

While speaking in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday President Biden said, “The bullet out of an AR-15 travels five times as rapidly as a bullet shot out of any other gun.” Ironically, on June 30, 2022, Field & Stream did an in-depth look at the “Five Fastest Rifle Cartridges” and the two AR-15 rounds, .223 and 5.56, did not even make the cut.

Consumer goods and services cost Americans 6.4 percent more than a year prior in February, the latest data from the U.S. government showed on Thursday. The personal consumption expenditure price index rose by more than expected and indicated that inflation accelerated from the six percent annual rate in January. This was the fastest rate of price increases since 1982.

President Donald Trump referenced Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) in a series of posts that literally urged the freshman congresswoman to go back to Africa. On Sunday morning, Trump referenced the recent tension between Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the four freshman Democrats who voted against the House version of a border bill — Omar, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA). “So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if...

FASTER Colorado's active shooter training for teachers. Last week I went through the training many of the teachers who are authorized to carry a gun in Colorado schools go through. In the wake of the devastating school shootings in Parkland, Fla., and Santa Fe, Tex., many different solutions have been proposed for how to stop or at least curb the violence inflicted by active shooters. Among the most prominent solutions—thanks in large part to President Trump's advocacy—is arming teachers. Most, however, don't understand how arming teachers works in person or that a number of states already allow certain teachers to...

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) - About 5,500 more people could survive a major tsunami hitting the Pacific Northwest if they just walk a little faster to higher ground after roads are knocked out, a new study shows. The report published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences looked at 73 communities along 700 miles of coastline in Oregon, Washington and Northern California. The area is considered most at risk from the next major earthquake and tsunami in the Cascadia Subduction Zone, where two plates of the Earth's crust come together miles off the coast. Emergency preparedness experts...

CAMP TAJI – More than 3,000 U.S. Soldiers here took advantage of a new program offering fixed-wing flights off this Camp, Jan. 27, significantly decreasing their travel time back home to the States. Traditionally, Soldiers are transported via helicopter to Joint Base Balad or Baghdad International Airport before they departed to Ali Al Salim Air Base in Kuwait, said Staff Sgt. Rufus Brumfield, senior enlisted adviser with the 384th Movement Control Team, 49th Transportation Battalion (Movement Control), 15th Sustainment Brigade, 13th Sustainment Command (Expeditionary). "We are able to move numerous [passengers] straight from here and they don't have to stop...

How might the following seemingly unrelated events have anything to do with the City of Pasadena becoming poorer, and doing so faster? * City acquisition of 20-acres of open lands zoned for 24 housing units in Annandale Canyon for open space preservation * State Assemblyman Anthony Portantino's usurpation of local single family zoning by cto re-designating the homes along the future surface route of the Long Beach Freeway Extension to low income multi-family housing * The continued decrease in enrollment in Pasadena's public schools and continued failure rate * The closure of new car dealerships along Colorado Boulevard * The...

OSLO/BONN (Reuters) – Global warming is likely to overshoot a 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) rise seen by the European Union and many developing nations as a trigger for "dangerous" change, a Reuters poll of scientists showed on Tuesday. Nine of 11 experts, who were among authors of the final summary by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 (IPCC), also said the evidence that mankind was to blame for climate change had grown stronger in the past two years. Giving personal views of recent research, most projected on average a faster melt of summer ice in the...

SIERRA VISTA — The new Veterans Administration Sierra Vista Community Based Outpatient Clinic was officially dedicated Wednesday, adding to the growing number of specialized federal medical facilities throughout the nation. Each week a million veterans are treated in VA medical facilities throughout the nation, with most of them in community clinics, which are seen to be more efficient and effective, said Patricia A. McKlem, director of the federal agency’s Southwest Health Care Network, which is located in Mesa. American citizens have been given the gift of living in the United States, and part of the responsibility they have is to...

WASHINGTON, June 29, 2007 – Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said today he refuses to accept that improvised explosive devices are an uncontrollable challenge, and he urged private industry members today to produce Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, known as MRAPs, quickly and in greater numbers to counter this threat. “We absolutely are not accepting (IED attacks) as a challenge that can’t be defeated,” Gates said during a Pentagon news conference with Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, at his side. The secretary said he was briefed this week on how quickly MRAP vehicles, which...

A development that could advance of the hottest areas of physics research - "spintronics" - has been announced by US scientists. Ultimately, physicists hope that research in spintronics could lead to smaller, faster and less power hungry computers. These machines would operate using logic devices based on manipulating and measuring the spin of electrons, rather than turning current on and off. Now researchers have for the first time shown that they can inject spin-polarized electrons into silicon, manipulate them, and measure them coming out the other side.

WASHINGTON - Parts of New Orleans are sinking far more rapidly than scientists first thought, more than an inch a year, new research suggests. That may explain some levee failures during Hurricane Katrina and raises more worries about the future. The research, being published Thursday in the journal Nature, is based on new satellite radar data for the three years before Katrina struck in 2005. The data show that some areas are sinking — from overdevelopment, drainage and natural seismic shifts — four or five times faster than the rest of the city. And that, experts say, can be deadly....

In an attempt to tackle gun crime in the UK, researchers from Loughborough University are developing an innovative identification system that will use CCTV cameras to spot individuals carrying concealed firearms. Starting in June, the three-year multi-environment deployable universal software application (Medusa) project aims to develop intelligent software that can detect a person carrying a concealed weapon in real time. While it is difficult to predict if someone is carrying a gun before crime occurs, Professor Alastair Gale, head of Loughborough University's Applied Vision Research Centre and leader of Medusa, said there are a number of cues the CCTV operator...