Free Republic

An Idaho teacher who suggested that Boise’s mayor should “get laid” by Black Lives Matter members is now out of a job, district officials said. Rita Soltesz, who formerly taught music at the Idaho Fine Arts Academy and Eagle Middle School, got axed by the West Ada School district following the sexually and racially charged comment about Mayor Lauren McLean, a spokesman told the Idaho Statesman. Soltesz, whose last day was Friday, came under fire after district officials and parents spotted her July 18 Facebook post referencing McLean’s public condemnation of white supremacists who attended a Black Lives Matter protest...

The manufacturer of the popular American Girl dolls says it is “disgusted” by an online parody that depicted one of its toys as a gun-toting white doll named Karen who refuses to wear a face mask while shopping during the coronavirus pandemic. American Girl, which makes 18-inch dolls portraying female youngsters, responded to the fake image last week after it was posted to Facebook and went viral on other platforms. “I saw a post of an American Girl doll, Karen, who refuses to wear a mask and carried a gun as disgusting,” a Twitter user wrote the Wisconsin-based company....

Martin Gugino — the 75-year-old man who was shoved to the ground by Buffalo police in a video seen by millions — is a long-time peace activist and “gentle person,” according to friends. The resident of Amherst in Erie County is a member of the People United for Sustainable Housing Buffalo and anti-nuclear group Kings BayPlowshares, the Buffalo News reported. “He’s a gentle person who really believes that he must stand up for what he thinks is right,” said Gugino’s pal Terrence Bisson. “That’s why he went to the demonstration. He would never resist physically any kind of orders. He’s...

The Georgia man charged with murdering unarmed black jogger Ahmaud Arbery called cops less than two weeks before the fatal shooting to report a man breaking into a nearby home under construction, according to a report. Travis McMichael, 34, called 911 on Feb. 11 to report a break-in at a construction site just two houses away from his home in Brunswick, according to audio obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We’ve had a string of burglaries,” McMichael told a dispatcher. “I was leaving the neighborhood and I just caught a guy running into a house being built – two houses down...

A Long Island teen was fatally stabbed at a strip mall near his high school as dozens of other students pulled out their cellphones to record the melee rather than to help him, police said. Khaseen Morris, a 16-year-old senior at Oceanside High School, was stabbed once in the chest Monday afternoon during an apparent dispute over a girl. He later died at a hospital after many of the 50 to 70 teens who gathered nearby recorded the bloody attack and made no attempt to stop it, Nassau County police said at a news conference Tuesday. “Kids stood there and...

A lawmaker in Ohio blamed the breakdown of the “traditional American family,” gay marriage and “drag queen advocates” for the Dayton massacre in a since-deleted Facebook rant... Keller’s post goes on to blame “drag queen advocates,” failed school policies, violent video games and children who are raised without fathers as other reasons for the mass shooting that erupted less than 24 hours after 20 people were gunned down at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. The post also claimed that a growing "hatred of our veterans,"...other explanations for the shooting. Keller then criticized state lawmakers for having what she claims...

A Michigan city worker was fired over an anti-Muslim Facebook post about a Sports Illustrated model that he tried to cover up, insisting he was hacked. Bill Larion, 58, was axed Wednesday by Dearborn officials, four days after he denigrated Somali-American model and activist Halima Aden by comparing her to a camel. The part-time surveyor for the city’s engineering division made the degrading remark while off-duty, the Detroit Free Press reports.

Long before Cliven Bundy faced down federal agents in his dispute with the Bureau of Land Management over grazing rights, fellow Nevada rancher Raymond Yowell, an 84-year-old former Shoshone chief, watched as the BLM seized his herd. Adding to that, since 2008 they've taken his money as well -- in the form of a piece of his Social Security checks. Yowell's 132 head of cattle had grazed for decades on the South Fork Western Shoshone Indian Reservation in northeastern Nevada until 2002, when the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) -- the same agency at odds with Bundy -- seized them....