Free Republic

. . When store employees in the red shirts realize what’s happening, they block the doors to stop the young thieves from leaving. But the kids physically struggle to get out and even appear to hit the store manager who then swings back. After the brief altercation, many kids dash out the door. . . After reviewing the surveillance video, the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s office opted not to pursue criminal charges in the case saying not every conflict warrants them. . . A bill to toughen the punishments for this kind of crime failed to pass in Maryland’s last...

Walking home this morning, I saw a frizzy-haired mother with a lefty vibe and Savonarola expression. Her young son ran in front of her, chasing pigeons. I listened, awestruck, as she admonished him thusly: "In your next life, I hope you come back as a pigeon, so you know what that feels like." Confused, the boy said, "What?" She repeated her wisdom in sterner tones. I'm dazzled by her genius at packing several soul-crushing blows into one sentence: 1) You're going to be reincarnated as punishment 2) Your mother eagerly awaits your eternal punishment 3) Walk robotically by my side...

It was all Occupy Wall Street all the time in Sunday's New York Times, with no less than four favorable references to the left-wing sit-in scattered throughout the paper. The Tea Party movement certainly hasn't permeated the pages of the Times in such friendly fashion. Meanwhile, the paper continues to downplay or ignore violence committed by the Occupy movement. The Times did not cover the riot by Occupy LA the night of July 12, where four officers were injured and 17 protesters arrested after protesters tried to transform a monthly "Artwalk" event into a "Chalk Walk" protest and begin hurling...

The Bombing of Sterling HallText and photos copyright © 2000 Leemark Communications The doors to the old part of Sterling Hall, as seen from Charter Street. Early on August 24th, 1970, a van loaded with six barrels of explosives blew up just outside the East Wing of Sterling Hall at the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison. The bombing was carried out by four men in protest of America's involvement in the Vietnam War. The bombing was directed against the Mathematics Research Center, a U.S.-Army-funded facility, which was located in the East Wing of Sterling Hall along with the...

Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo, after raising suspicions at a Killeen, Texas, gun shop where he purchased six pounds of gunpowder and several boxes of shotgun shells, was in police custody in Killeen on Thursday, accused of plotting to kill fellow soldiers in a frightening reprise of the November 2009 massacre at Fort Hood. Abdo, 21, who grew up in Garland outside of Dallas, was close to pulling off a "terror plot" in which the intended target was troops based at Fort Hood, said Killeen Police Chief Dennis Baldwin. "We would probably be here today giving you a different briefing had...

CONCORD, Mass. -- Concord became the first town in the country to ban the sale of single-serving PET bottled water on Wednesday night, our news partner Wicked Local/Concord reported. After close to two hours of debate, Warrant Article 32, the Drinking Water in Single-Serving PET Bottles Bylaw, narrowly passed by 39 votes during Wednesday’s session of Town Meeting. The official teller count showed 403 voting in favor, and 364 opposed. The bottled water bylaw passed at this year’s Town Meeting bans the sale of non-sparkling, unflavored drinking water in single-serving polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles of 1 liter (34 ounces) or...

Religion is very good at telling you what to do and how to live. Your leisure time, if you so choose, can be completely absorbed in matters of ritual, practice and belief. Nobody stops you. I’m biased, but I believe the Jewish faith has a particular genius for this. There are morning prayers and evening prayers, complex dietary laws, 613 commandments direct from God covering every aspect of life, plus an ancient language to master, enormous books of commentary to study and debate. You do get to sleep, however. Don’t get me wrong; other faiths will keep you busy, too....

Boston Phoenix writer Chris Faraone wants to make one thing very clear: He didn’t want Andrew Breitbart dead, although the two exchanged some very ugly words just days before the conservative attack dog was felled by a heart attack. “Hell, no,” the author of “99 Nights with the 99 Percent: Dispatches from the First Three Months of the Occupy Revolution” told the Track. “I won’t miss Breitbart’s rhetoric, but I’m also not dumb enough to think that it will end with him. If anything, I found his hustle inspirational.” A few days before his death yesterday, Breitbart, 43, a rabid...

A succession of high profile left wing decisions and initiatives of recent weeks drive home the extent to which the left is changing the face of America. Notable among these are the decision of a federal appeals court in California to uphold a prior court decision finding California’s Proposition 8, defining marriage as between a man and a woman, unconstitutional; the reversal of a decision, due to a tsunami of left wing pressure, of the Susan G. Komen Foundation to withdraw its funding to Planned Parenthood; and the Obama administration rulemaking refusing to grant a religious exemption from the new...

‘The Western world no longer aspires, as did the Western Europe of Dante’s day, to be a place of a single faith,” A.N. Wilson writes confidently in his recent book, Dante in Love. Really? It doesn’t? Has Western society given up that dream? Because many in the United States’ particular corner of civilization seem not to have gotten the memo. Maybe it’s the scientist in me, but I’m always looking for what Einstein called the “Theory of Everything” — one formula that explains the world, and clinging to the hope that society will someday be populated entirely by your co-religionists...

The FBI said it searched eight addresses in Minneapolis and Chicago as part of a terrorism investigation Friday. Warrants suggest agents were looking for connections between local anti-war activists and terrorist groups in Colombia and the Middle East. FBI spokesman Steve Warfield told The Associated Press agents served six warrants in Minneapolis and two in Chicago. "These were search warrants only," Warfield said. "We're not anticipating any arrests at this time. They're seeking evidence relating to activities concerning the material support of terrorism." The homes of longtime Minneapolis anti-war activists Mick Kelly, Jess Sundin and Meredith Aby were among those...

The two most talked about scandals this week have a lot in common. The sexual harassment allegations being made against Herman Cain expose a peculiar phenomenon also present in the scandal of Penn State icon Joe Paterno. Although both of these men are being accused of despicable behavior, people have rallied to their sides as if they are unfortunate victims. The revelation that Paterno, an icon in the sport of college football, had knowledge that his former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was allegedly sexually abusing boys should have been devastating to the students at Penn State. These students should have...

The War Against the Poor: Occupy Wall Street and the Politics of Financial Morality by Frances Fox Piven. Tom Dispatch: We’ve been at war for decades now -- not just in Afghanistan or Iraq, but right here at home. Domestically, it’s been a war against the poor, but if you hadn’t noticed, that’s not surprising. You wouldn’t often have found the casualty figures from this particular conflict in your local newspaper or on the nightly TV news. Devastating as it’s been, the war against the poor has gone largely unnoticed -- until now. The Occupy Wall Street movement has already...

Both the protesters and the police are at fault for the violence yesterday. I'm not clear on what happened in Oakland last night, except that it was bad. The police are saying that they had to deploy beanbags and maybe tear-gas because people started throwing bottles, plates, and rocks when they tried to clear out the encampment at Occupy Oakland. I don't find this entirely implausible. The protesters are saying that when their authority was challenged, the police reacted with overwhelming and inappropriate force, which I also don't find entirely implausible. Since the police and the protesters seem, to date,...

"Don't touch me!" the man in the wheelchair shouted to stop me from placing my hand on what used to be his left arm. "I'm sorry -- I was just -- " "I know what you were doing," he said calmly. "You were showing me you care. I get it. But you have no idea how much pain I'm in. Don't feel bad. People are always touching me -- and because my left arm is gone and most people are right-handed, well ... Doctors, believe it or not, are the worst -- always touching me there. You'd think they of...

NPR Host/Occupy Protester Says She's Been Fired By Tim Graham Created 10/20/2011 - 10:56am AP is reporting NPR host/Occupy protest leader Lisa Simeone has been fired: "A freelance broadcaster who works for music and documentary programs has been fired from a job after NPR questioned her involvement in a Washington protest." Lisa Simeone said Thursday that she was fired from "Soundprint," a documentary show that is not produced by NPR, but by Soundprint Media in nearby Laurel, Maryland. "Simeone says she was fired Wednesday in a phone call during which NPR's code of ethics was read to her." Simeone is...

KKKolumbus no hero: He's a murderer who caused the genocide of the Indigenous people! “It has been said of the Spanish Conquistadors, that first they fell on their knees, and then they fell on the aborigines.” Eric Williams - Columbus to Castro. Annually, on the 2nd Monday of each October, most of the United Snakes of Amerikkka celebrate the anniversary of when Cristoforo Colombo discovered that the planet wasn't as flat as all of Europe then thought.  At the same time, many so-called Indians across the U.S. publicly protest the holiday, demanding that it be renamed ‘Indigenous American Day'.

A loose coalition of left-leaning groups like Adbusters and Anonymous are beginning their "occupation" of Wall Street today at noon. Their goal is to "see 20,000 people flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades, and occupy Wall Street for a few months." According to the protest's website, a "leaked bulletin from the New York Police Department reveals that they expect at least 5,000" to show up today, and ask participants to being "warm clothing" along with other provisions due to the recent cold snap. Mayor Bloomberg told his eponymous news organization, "People have a right to protest,...

Law enforcement officers arrested the owner of BoCoMo Bay yesterday after firearms and a large amount of synthetic marijuana were found at his south Columbia home, they said. Approximately 100 firearms along with a large amount of substances believed to be synthetic marijuana were discovered at the home of Kevin E. Bay, 47, at 400 E. Old Plank Road, according to a Boone County Sheriff’s Department news release. Bay operates BoCoMo Bay at 1122 Wilkes Blvd. ***** Bay was arrested on the outstanding warrant from Stoddard County that charges him with six counts of delivery or imitation of a synthetic...

Despite an instant, commanding lead in the polls, newly-minted GOP presidential candidate Gov. Rick Perry is already being viewed as “unelectable.” The panel of reporters on Sunday’s The Chris Matthews Show reached a general consensus that Perry’s loose talk and extreme views will eventually lead the Republican establishment to choose the more moderate, more electable Mitt Romney to challenge President Obama in the general election. Barely a week into his campaign, the Texas Governor has talked himself into trouble, and not just with liberals and Democrats. While John Heilemann sees Perry’s smashmouth certitude as an advantage over Mitt Romney, The...