Free Republic

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - After a photo surfaced of West Virginia correction officer trainees giving what appears to be the Nazi salute, state officials quickly suspended some employees and the governor ordered the firing of those involved. The image, showing more than two dozen trainees with their arms raised and faces blurred, was released Thursday by the West Virginia Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety. A line of text reading “Hail Byrd” tops the picture, which an agency spokesman said was a reference to the trainees’ instructor. Before the photo was made public, the agency’s secretary, Jeff Sandy, released a...

Politicians just interrupted regularly scheduled programming to bring you a message they’ve been repeating ad nauseum for the last three weeks. President Trump went first. Sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, he read a watered-down stump speech from a teleprompter. Illegal immigrants and a flood of drugs are streaming across the border, the president said in so many words. The shutdown is the fault of Democrats, he continued, and the solution is some variation of a wall. Notably lacking? Fireworks. Trump was presidential in that Trump was unusually low key. He didn’t declare a national emergency, a...