Free Republic

Today's post is in honor of Cpl. Christopher G. Singer, who was killed during combat operations in Afghanistan's Helmand province on this day in 2012. The 23-year-old from Temecula, Calif. was assigned to the 3rd Combat Engineer Battalion, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force. [...] 1954: (Featured image) First Lady Mamie Eisenhower christens USS Nautilus (SSN-571), the world's first-ever nuclear submarine, at General Dynamics' Electric Boat Division in Groton, Conn. Nautilus then launches into the Thames River, and in just under a year will cast her lines and ship out under nuclear power. Her Submarine Thermal Reactor obliterated anti-submarine...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) defended placing Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn) on the House Foreign Affairs Committee despite her anti-Semitic and anti-Israel views, calling it “a small step toward achieving a balanced perspective. You know, we have several Jews already on the Committee. Bringing aboard a Muslim who is not afraid to speak out against the Jewish drive toward world domination fills a vacuum that needed filling.” Pelosi admitted that “for years the Democratic Party has been hypnotized by Jewish propaganda. Given the very small population of Jews in America and the world compared to the rapidly growing number of...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer rejected an invitation from President Trump to participate in a lunch meeting that would discuss a possible compromise to partially fund a border barrier and reopen the federal government. "We saw the fast food spread he bought for the college football champions," Schumer pointed out. "If he treats star athletes like that I shudder to think what he'd have on the menu for us. He likes football. He hates us. There's no way I'd go without seeing a menu first." Pelosi was even harsher in her assessment of the...

Today’s post is in honor of Lt. William T. Costen and Lt. Charles Turner, whose A-6 Intruder was shot down on this date in 1991 during Operation DESERT STORM. Costen (27, from St. Louis, Mo.) and Turner (29, of Richfield, Minn.) had just finished their mission of mining the naval base at Um Qasr and were returning to their aircraft carrier when their plane was hit. They were assigned to Attack Squadron 155 (VA-155), on board USS USS Ranger. 1911: During the San Francisco Air Meet, exhibition pilot Eugene B. Ely lands his Curtiss Pusher Model “D” aircraft on the...

In 1865, the Civil War ended and the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution officially abolished slavery. That same year, a group of Democrat ex-Confederate soldiers formed the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). They were domestic terrorists that sought to overthrow the Republican state governments in the South during the Reconstruction Era by using violence and intimidation against freed former slaves and their white supporters. They prevented African-Americans from voting, getting an education, competing for jobs, or owning property. A year later, the Civil Rights Act conferred citizenship and equal rights, guaranteed due process and equal protection under the law...

Sir Winston Churchill: “Lee was the noblest American who had ever lived and one of the greatest commanders known to the annals of war.” During a tour through the South in 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt told the aged Confederate veterans in Richmond, Virginia, “Here I greet you in the shadow of the statue of your commander, General Robert E. Lee. You and he left us memories which are part of the memories bequeathed to the entire nation by all the Americans who fought in the War Between the States.” Saturday January 19, 2019, is the 212th birthday of Robert E....

President Donald Trump recognizes a primary function of the federal government involves protecting us from external threats. Our state governments protect us from internal threats, but only the federal government can deal with threats coming from other countries. He recognizes that Mexico and other Latin American countries like Guatemala have significant crime problems. Dingbat Democrats are oblivious to the difficulty the Mexican government is having with the drug cartels that operate from there. The government has had to use the Mexican army in its war with the cartels. Many of those coming to the United States want to get away...

Today’s post is in honor of Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher, a Naval F/A-18 aviator who was shot down by an Iraqi MiG on this day in 1991, becoming the first American casualty of Operation DESERT STORM. For years the fate of the 33-year-old from Kansas City, Mo. was unknown until Marines managed to track down his remains in 2009, which had been buried by Bedouins after being shot down 100 miles west of Baghdad. Speicher served with Strike Fighter Squadron 81 (VFA-18), the “Sunliners,” flying out of USS Saratoga (CV-60). 1781: Continental Army forces — including infantry, cavalry, dragoons...

Is Indonesia the missing link in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (between India, Australia, Japan and America) created as a response to the rise of China? Do Free Republic readers believe reaching out in friendship to Indonesia is in the interests of The West?

Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday asked President Donald Trump to reschedule his State of the Union address — or deliver it in writing — as long as the government remains shut down. "Sadly, given the security concerns and unless government re-opens this week, I suggest that we work together to determine another suitable date after government has re-opened for this address or for you to consider delivering your State of the Union address in writing to the Congress on January 29th," Pelosi wrote in a letter to Trump.

A sniper that shoots an exploding bullet, sounds far fetched out of a James Bond movie. Exploding rounds have been around since World War II. The Germans made an 8mm rifle ammunition which exploded upon impact. Though the round was banned by the Hague Convention this didn’t stop the usage of it. During World War II both Russia and Germany were firing exploding bullets from sniper rifles. These vicious projectiles were used horrifically on human targets during the war. Originally these exploding rounds concepts were used for sabotage operations which were left behind for enemy forces, generally insurgents, to find...

Today's post is in honor of Sgt. Jayton D. Patterson, who was killed by enemy action on this day in 2005 in Iraq's Babil province. The 26-year-old from Sedley, Va. was assigned to 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force. 1815: Like Andrew Jackson's victory at New Orleans earlier in the month, the Americans and British clash again before word that the War of 1812 is over can cross the ocean. The frigate USS President, under the command of Commodore Stephen Decatur, breaks out of the British blockade at New York Harbor, but is soon...

President Trump can build a wall as a military training activity. In a combat area concrete walls may be needed as part of a bunker to protect personnel or supplies. A wall can protect buildings from a truck bomb on a nearby road. Thus military personnel need to know how to construct concrete walls The southwestern states provide a good location to train personnel to construct concrete walls in the Middle East because it has a relatively close match in terrain, climate and soil. Training benefits would include practice in moving personnel, equipment and supplies into an area and learning...

Perhaps the only thing that outrages Russian defenders of Stalin more than the obvious parallels between his regime and Hitler’s is any reference to the alliance the two dictators formed in 1939 with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, one that opened the way to war in Europe and lasted until Hitler turned on his former ally in June 1941. But now there may be something even more offensive to such defenders of Stalin and his system: the discovery of documents which confirm that the NKVD cooperated closely with the Gestapo well before the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed and that may have paved...

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md) used the deferral of paychecks for federal employees due to Congress’ failure to approve the appropriation of funds to cover this expense as an inspiration to liken Trump to a pre-Civil War slave driver. “Back in 1860 millions of people were forced to work without being paid,” Hoyer observed. “We called that slavery. Now, with President Trump refusing to compromise by accepting our Party’s refusal to budge an inch on his request for $5 billion to fund border security as a precondition for Democrats to approve funds for ending the government shutdown, federal employees...

Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif), chairperson of the 55-member Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), the most numerous in our nation’s history, has set the Caucus’ sights on “reversing the trauma inflicted on people of color by the Trump Administration over the past two years. We will use our tremendous power and influence to undo Trump’s evil plan to force millions of voters off of welfare and into the labor economy.” “The notion that a job is the answer to curing poverty and improving one’s life is a myth,” Bass contended. “Curing poverty has been the task of government since the 1960s’ Great...

After an evaluation of the country's armed forces showed that the German Army would not be ready for combat operations until 2031 at the earliest, Chancellor Angela Merkel made an impassioned plea to the global community to postpone any planned attacks on Germany until 2032 or later. "We are in worse shape than the bourgeois democracies that were crushed by the blitzkrieg Germany sprung on them in 1939," the Chancellor confessed. "It would be unsporting for others to emulate the underhanded tactics that enabled our army to overrun most of Europe in the early stages of World War II." Merkel...

Since Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, Russians have been obsessed with “one aspect of Russian ‘unity,’ territorial,” Vladislav Inozemtsev says; but “the unity of the Russian nation is not only about the inviolability of state borders but about much else and the neglect or suppression of these other aspects threatens Russia’s future. In a column, the Moscow economist says that the unity of any nation, including the Russian, involves a recognition of common tasks and goals, a shared vision of the world, and sufficient confidence in society of these “elements of solidarity” that there can be debate about...

It has long been noted that the leftist movement had transformed into a kind of religious cult – the Cult of victim seekers.Like any other cult, the leftists have their dogmas, their worldview, their taboos, and their idols. The list of “victims” of this cult is impressive. Well-known recent “victims” are nature (destroyed by evil capitalists), domestic animals (evil capitalists mock them), climate (the temperature of the air is warmed up by all the same evil capitalists), and sexual minorities. It is not surprising, therefore, that the numerous left-wing “green” parties in all countries are often compared to watermelons: they...

On 31 December 2018, our XP-82 Twin Mustang flew for the first time since 14 December 1949. Although it wasn’t supposed to fly yesterday, all that was planned to do was the last FAA required runway high-speed taxi test, lift off for a second or two and then back down, deploy full flaps and brake to a stop. It accelerated so fast after the planned lift off that Ray, our test pilot, realized that getting it back down and stopping it in the remaining runway would be marginal. So he pushed the power back up and flew for about five...