Free Republic

Oklahoma 16-year-old Nex Benedict died by suicide, according to an autopsy report released Wednesday by the state's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Benedict, a member of the 2SLGBTQ community, died one day after getting into a physical fight with several other students at Owasso High School. Benedict was nonbinary and went by they/them pronouns, according to Benedict's family. 2SLGBTQ includes Two Spirit, an umbrella term used to describe a third gender in Native and Indigenous communities. Sue Benedict, their mother, is a registered member of the Choctaw Nation. [snip] The Department of Education has opened an investigation into Owasso...

Lady Gaga told fans Monday that she prays more Americans will speak up in support of the killing of unborn babies in abortions. The 36-year-old pop singer has defended abortion for years, backing campaigns for the billion-dollar abortion chain Planned Parenthood and using her massive influence to sway fans on the issue. During a stop on her new Chromatica Ball tour Monday in Washington, D.C., Lady Gaga brought up abortion again, Billboard magazine reports. “I would like to dedicate this song to every woman in America,” she said before playing a piano rendition of her 2011 song “The Edge of...

Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley defended President Trump as "truthful" and said she never questioned the president's fitness for office during a combative interview with Today's Savannah Guthrie. Haley, 47, has been defending the president on her media tour to promote her new book, With All Due Respect: Defending America with Grit and Grace, which was published on Tuesday. "I am way over time, but let me just quickly, because it’s been out there and you worked in this administration. Did you ever have any doubt about the fitness of this president?" Guthrie asked Tuesday morning. Haley, who alleged...

Republican candidates for the presidential nomination claim that Democrats kill babies and harvest their organs to sell them, insist the U.S. is at war with an "evil state of consciousness," compare Muslims to rabid dogs, and call for closing mosques and registering Muslims. These are not fringe candidates. They are the front-runners. American politics has descended from principle into tribalism. The descent began in 1968. That year's presidential election looked to be a principled fight, with Democrats Hubert Humphrey and Robert F. Kennedy articulating a vision of an inclusive America in which the government expanded efforts to guarantee equality. For...

Six Shooter Junction – A Big D barrister assured his client will get a chance to have the probable cause of the charges against him examined at trial prior to a Grand Jury’s scrutiny. In a favorable ruling on a motion to remove the magistrate who charged Matt Clendennen with the capital conspiracy charge of engaging in organized criminal activity that lead to murder, F. Clinton Broden furthermore assured his client that a new assignment of his case to a court of record for the purpose of an examining trial will be under the control of the Third Judicial Region...

A recusal hearing to address a complaint against McLennan County Justice of the Peace W.H. “Pete” Peterson related to the May 17 biker shooting at Twin Peaks will take place at 10 a.m. Thursday and be presided over by a Bell County judge, legal documents show. The complaint, filed with the State Commission on Judicial Conduct by Dallas attorney Clinton Broden, alleges Peterson violated several judicial ethical canons when he set the initial $1 million bonds for the 177 jailed bikers. Broden has said his complaint is based on comments Peterson made to the Tribune-Herald after the shooting. “I think...

Why is Waco, Texas, fighting to suppress multiple videos of the shootout that killed nine bikers at the Twin Peaks restaurant on May 17? Why are some attorneys in the case now prohibited from talking to the press? And why haven’t Waco officials revealed how many of the nine victims were killed by bullets from police officers’ guns? snip Here are two theories. One is the official explanation. Authorities say that this is a complex investigation that takes lots of time and that suppressing video evidence and issuing gag orders is necessary to prevent prospective jurors from being influenced by...

The city is fighting to keep videos of the May shootout at the Twin Peaks restaurant out of the press, and still hasn’t confirmed how many victims were shot by police. Why is Waco, Texas, fighting to suppress multiple videos of the shootout that killed nine bikers at the Twin Peaks restaurant on May 17? Why are some attorneys in the case now prohibited from talking to the press? And why haven’t Waco officials revealed how many of the nine victims were killed by bullets from police officers’ guns?

Earlier this year, the Texas Legislature passed a law outlawing what is known as the “pick-a-pal system” for grand jury selection. Unlike the trial juries we are all familiar with, in which the jury is picked randomly with attorneys questioning possible jurors for bias or prejudice, many grand juries had been picked by judges by offering friends or associates in the justice system the license of nominating prospective jurors or even serving as grand jurors themselves. Research has shown that probation department employees, police officers, bail bondsmen and even court bailiffs decided who served on the grand jury. The problem?...

The Twin Peaks Massacre has always, clearly, been an ATF or FBI operation gone terribly wrong. The Waco police and most of official Waco have been lying about it since May 17. A couple of pieces of evidence became generally available this weekend that shine a little light into this black hole of deceit. First, it is now absolutely inarguable that at least 182 people were arrested on May 17 and that five of them were “unarrested” by 5:28 a.m. the next morning. In an early morning fax from Waco Detective Sam Key to lay Justice of the Peace “Pete”...

Surveillance video from the Twin Peaks shooting has been leaked. The video from Don Carlos, the restaurant next door to Twin Peaks, was obtained by KCEN late Friday afternoon through an anonymous email sent to various local and national media outlets. The email contained a web link and a password to a section of www.brodenmickelsen.com, the law firm of Clint Broden who represents Matthew Clendennen, a local biker arrested in the shooting. The password takes you to a YouTube page for the law firm. KCEN notified Mr. Broden of the email and password late this afternoon, and hours later, access...

HE designers Carly Cushnie and Michelle Ochs, known professionally as Cushnie et Ochs, have been critical darlings ever since starting their business in 2009, just a few years out of college. They have been prominently featured in WWD and Vogue, have won prestigious honors, like the Ecco Domani Foundation Award, and were one of 10 finalists for last year’s CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Award. But even with that acclaim, they were still having trouble getting some prominent retailers to buy their clothes or even grant them a showing. Then Michelle Obama was photographed in one of their designs: a forest-green crepe...

Addressing rumors that have circulated about her health, Lady Gaga told CNN's Larry King this week that she doesn't have lupus, but has tested "borderline positive" for the condition. It may sound contradictory, but doctors say this can occur with lupus. Like many autoimmune diseases, lupus is a mystifying condition. It's often hard to diagnose because of its vague and varying symptoms. No two cases are alike, according to medical experts. The disease can come and go without explanation, and its severity varies from mild discomfort to death.

According to a recent Rasmussen poll, Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) and President Barack Obama would be virtually tied if the 2012 presidential election were held today. The poll result is perhaps surprising, considering that during Ron Paul's 2008 presidential bid for the Republican nomination the major media cast him as a dark horse with no chance of winning. But that was before the financial meltdown in the fall of 2008, the Obama Presidency, and the Tea Party movement of the past year. Rasmussen surveyed 1,000 “likely voters” by phone over April 12 and 13 to gauge the current public attitude...

I don't believe I can post a link to Huffington Post, but click on their site and read the remarks to this latest revelation and see the magazine cover. President Barack Obama will write the cover story for next week's Newsweek magazine. The Wall Street Journal's Russell Adams reports that Newsweek editor Jon Meacham asked Obama's senior advisor if the President would write for the magazine, and he agreed. The magazine will hit newsstands on Monday. When Newsweek unveiled its redesign in May 2009, the magazine also turned to Obama; Meacham interviewed Obama for that issue. Developing...

Barack emerged as the inverse of everything that had gone before. Michelle ensured his feet were kept on the ground

Few people come as quickly to the defense of George McGovern as McGovern himself. The antiwar senator from South Dakota lost to Richard Nixon in a landslide in the 1972 presidential election, only to see Nixon, caught up in the Watergate scandal, resign in disgrace. For McGovern, though—along with many Democrats who followed him—the damage was done, and the now retired politician has spent decades defending the electability of antiwar liberals, insisting his campaign was undone by dirty tricks and bad luck. In recent years, McGovern, 86, hasn't relinquished the spotlight, condemning the war in Iraq and declaring Barack Obama,...

More than a dozen photographs of a bathing suit-clad President-elect Barack Obama surfaced online Monday showing the shirtless Chicagoan accompanied by his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters on the white-sand beach in front of their vacation home. Reporters, photographers and television camera operators traveling with the Obamas have been banned by the Secret Service from approaching the oceanfront estate in nearby Kailua where the family is vacationing. But an enterprising paparazzi photographer wearing a Hawaiian shirt apparently strolled along the beach, saw the Obamas, took out his long-lens camera and started shooting. The photographer was less than 200...

The subway system in Washington, D.C., is making fare cards featuring President-elect Barack Obama's image to commemorate his inauguration as the 44th president. SmarTrip cards with Obama's smiling face will be available in January, Metro spokesman Stephen Taubenkibel told DCist. Regular fare cards marking the Jan. 20 inauguration will be available in late December. Images of the Obama card were shown at a recent Metro Board of Directors meeting. See the mock-up below, first posted on DCist.