Free Republic

It’s been just over a year since the world was introduced to Rachel Jeantel, the friend of Trayvon Martin’s who testified on behalf of the prosecution in the George Zimmerman murder trial, but may have ended up doing more harm than good. CNN caught up with Jeantel this week, asking her if she blamed herself when Zimmerman went free. “A little bit,” she replied. Asked if she should have said something different or acted differently on the stand, she answered, “Act different.” Jeantel said the jurors in the case didn’t take her seriously as a witness, judging her for...

The U.S. Department of Justice has finally found something to do. Since investigating multiple “fake” scandals like the White House Benghazi cover-up and IRS targeting of conservatives seem so petty, Holder’s crew have been itching for something worthy to investigate. A controversial float in the Norfolk Independence Day parade is just the ground-breaking case they were hoping for. “One of the floats included a zombie-like mannequin standing near an outhouse labeled ‘Obama Presidential Library,’” Omaha World-Herald reported. According to the World-Herald : "The department sent a member of its Community Relations Service team, which gets involved in discrimination disputes,...

The “ugly American” has gotten a lot uglier over the past few weeks, from the streets of California to the halls of Congress and state houses around the country. A growing number of our fellow Americans have taken on grotesque features, in looks and sounds, in reaction to the thousands of children from Central America who have crossed our borders as they flee poverty and violence in hope for something better. Sadly, the arrival of these youngsters has been greeted by flag-waving, sign-carrying, Bible-thumping and Constitution-quoting citizens demanding that they not be received here and that they be returned immediately...

A 17-year-old boy has been sentenced to 23 years behind bars for fatally shooting a retired police dog during a burglary. Ivins Rosier was convicted in May for breaking into the Florida home of a trooper and shooting the officer's five-year-old German Shepherd two years ago. Drake, a former drug-sniffing dog, was euthanized five days later. Rosier, who was 16 at the time of the incident but tried as an adult, was sentenced on Friday on charges of animal cruelty, armed burglary and shooting into an occupied building.Palm Beach Post reported Circuit Judge Robin Rosenberg said she handed Rosier a...

And most is consumed by a minority of daily users. About 9% of Colorado’s population consumes marijuana, according to a market demand study conducted by the state department of revenue’s Marijuana Enforcement Division and the state’s Marijuana Policy Group. And those users, it’s estimated, will get through about 121.4 metric tons of pot every year. According to the report, that consumption — calculated through survey results, demographic data and source data — is “31 percent higher than a recent department of revenue assessment, 89 percent higher than a study by the Colorado Futures Center, and 111 percent higher than an...

Miami, Florida, residents are being told to buy an attack dog and "some firearms" in light of pending budget cuts slated to reduce the police force by "250 police officers." The cuts are part of a budget proposed by Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez. According to 7 News WSVN, the budget cuts will eliminate "close to 650 county jobs to fill a $64 million hole in the general fund." While Mayor Gimenez says he wants "the same number of patrol officers on the street... [as] today" once the new budget goes into effect, he also admits it could eliminate the jobs...

Deep in the bowels of Mount Doom, a little known federal agency is about to get top billing in the “border wars”.  The Office of Refugee Resettlement is the heavy hand and hammer of Obama’s apparent strategy to flood the USA with illegal immigrants and let them disappear into every small town in America. ORR is a 1980 reaction to Jimmy Carter’s infamous Mariel boatlift, in which Castro emptied his jails into south Florida.  Like all government viruses released into the wild, it multiplied over the years, building up to a budget of $1.489 billion in 2014.  That includes an increase of nearly a...

Instead of leaving with the drugs and weapons they were sent to find, a Minnesota SWAT team executing a “no-knock raid” left with the bodies of a family’s two dead dogs. “The first thing I heard was ‘boom,’” Larry Lee Arman told KMSP, recalling the raid which occurred in St. Paul at 7 a.m. on Wednesday. “Bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. Right in front of us.” Equipped with a warrant for drugs and weapons, the SWAT unit barged in while Arman was asleep on a mattress with his two children, shooting Mello and Laylo, the family’s two pit bulls. “One...

MESA, AZ (CBS5) - The mother of a fallen Mesa officer is writing President Barack Obama regarding illegal immigrants in the U.S. Mary Ann Mendoza's son, Sgt. Brandon Mendoza was killed after an illegal immigrant was driving the wrong way on the road and hit Mendoza's vehicle head on. Mary Ann Mendoza released the following letter: "President Obama, "I am writing this letter to you regarding illegal immigrants. "As a tax paying, law abiding citizen of the United States, I WANT my voice heard on this issue. My son, Sergeant Brandon Mendoza, an officer who was with the City of...

Suddenly it's a possibility that experts are contemplating: marriage equality could be the law of the land all across the United States within one year. On Wednesday, Utah asked the Supreme Court to resolve its dispute with the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals which two weeks ago became the first U.S. circuit court to declare that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. Legal experts say the Supreme Court is likely to accept the case. With lawsuits piling up, and gay marriage on an undefeated legal streak since the Court axed the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013, the...

Dubai is already home to the tallest tower in the world, so it was just a matter of time until the glitzy emirate planned another record-breaking construction. Its next project involves building the largest shopping mall on the planet, complete with climate-controlled streets, the world's largest indoor theme park and 100 hotels and apartments. In fact, the ambitious emirate has dubbed the project a 'temperature-controlled pedestrian city'. Occupying 48 million square feet, the Mall of the World will also contain health resorts, theatres, a Celebration Steet modelled on the Ramblas boulevard in Barcelona and 'retail streets network' that will stretch...

Deirdre M. Daly, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, announced that JOSE DE LA CRUZ AJQUI, 27, a citizen of Guatemala last residing in Willimantic, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Alvin W. Thompson in Hartford to 12 months of imprisonment for illegally reentering the U.S. after he was deported. According to court documents and statements made in court, DE LA CRUZ AJQUI entered the U.S. illegally in 2005 and settled in Willimantic. In September 2007, he was charged and subsequently convicted in Connecticut state court of sexual assault of a minor in the second degree. DE...

Immigrant-rights groups filed a class-action lawsuit against the Obama administration for failing to provide legal representation to illegal immigrant children in deportation hearings Wednesday. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, American Immigration Council, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, Public Counsel, and K&L Gates LLP, it is an injustice that many illegal immigrant minors appear before immigration courts without an attorney. "If we believe in due process for children in our country, then we cannot abandon them when they face deportation in our immigration courts," Ahilan Arulanantham, senior staff attorney with the ACLU, said in a statement, pointing out that the...

The missing in action Geraldo Rivera is stricking! (Rush made me think of this when he asked what would the reaction be if the media/politicians/etc were denied access to the Katrina victims and the Superdome). Rivera is on a long overseas trip Maybe I've missed something. Has O'Reilly interviewed him? When was Geraldo Rivera reluctant to get in front of the camera and give his opinion? What gives? Geraldo melting down (crying) over the little babies!! "I don't know man, let them out of here, let them walk out of here - you have thousands and thousands of people in...

This legislation is pretty scary. In Massachusetts you have to have either a License To Carry or a Firearms Identification Card to own a firearm. The H.4121 legislation would make the issuance of both of those items totally discretionary. The police chief can deny your request and simply declare you "unsuitable" for any arbitrary reason. If they can get this to pass, then plan on seeing the same approach attempted in other states. How Massachusetts H.4121 Would Abolish The Second Amendment

Howdy folks, I attended / observed / participated in the protest in Murrieta near the Border Patrol station yesterday. Thought you might find a couple of observations about the nature of the resistance to detainee dumping of interest. One thing that floored me was the stark reality that the narrative the network media present, in which minorities - especially Hispanics, are all of the same mind concerning Open Borders, enforcement, amnesty, etc. - is so false that it is laughable. I suspected this all along, but it was still somewhat surprising the extent. A quick teaser. I detail how the...

Multiple deportations are not stopping Central Americans from vowing to try again to illegally enter -- and remain -- in the United States. Illegal immigrants who have been deported and those that were caught before they made it to the United States are thinking of even more creative approaches they can use to enter the United States. According to NBC News, "nearly every mother" interviewed at a repatriation center in Honduras that expects to receive about "10 buses a week" of people who were caught making the journey to America "said they would leave Honduras again until they were permanently...

Why spend so much time commenting on Detroit? Because the city of more than 700,000 people is bankrupt, turning the water off on over one hundred thousand water customers, and now axing the contracts of nonprofit human service groups that have been providing safety net services for Detroit’s legions of poor people residing in devastated neighborhoods. Is there any hope? Inell Byrd, a 41-year-old home health aide still living in Detroit’s North End, told New York Times writer James Eligon, “I know the city is coming back.” That was the concluding sentence of Eligon’s moving portrait of residents of the...

Last September, I noted how Deacon Scott Colley, the administrator (at least at the time if not still so) of the Facebook page for the North Quabbin Catholic Community, which includes several parishes in and around Athol, Massachusetts, banned me for taking issue with the applause which often breaks out during Holy Mass at Our Lady Immaculate Parish in Athol. See here. And back in 2011, I disagreed with Father Krzysztof Korcz when he blamed parents as being the sole cause of the lack of vocations and the exodus of young people from Catholic life. See here. Lastly, I noted...

On Friday, Vice President Joe Biden used an Independence Day celebration and speech in Philadelphia to compare gay marriage to the Civil Rights Movement and push for more gay marriage. According to The Hill, "[Biden] said he was reminded of two Philadelphias, one where the Declaration of Independence was signed 238 years ago and the other in Mississippi where civil rights workers were murdered in June 1964, two weeks before President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act." After saying that the two Philadelphias helped give meaning to the words “all men are created equal," Biden reportedly said that gay...