Free Republic

  Darkness approaches the Clinton campaign. Maybe. Two Inspectors General have asked the Justice Department to open an investigation  into Hillary's handling of classified material on her private server. WASHINGTON — Two inspectors general have asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into whether sensitive government information was mishandled in connection with the personal email account Hillary Rodham Clinton used as secretary of state, senior government officials said Thursday. The request follows an assessment in a June 29 memo by the inspectors general for the State Department and the intelligence agencies that Mrs. Clinton's private account contained "hundreds of...

It’s old news that Jimmy Carter believes Jesus would support gay marriage and some abortion. But Fox News? Well, Carter doesn’t like that. Earlier this week, NY Times reporter Philip Galanes sat down for lunch with the former president and black author Jacqueline Woodson to discuss issues of race and religion, including the confederate flag, black-white relations and same-sex marriage. Galanes pointed out that both Carter and Woodson went “door to door” as Christian missionaries when they were younger. Woodson went as a Jehovah’s Witness, but no longer practices. Galanes understood. “They’re not so hot on gay and lesbian issues,”...

LAFAYETTE, La. — The man who killed two people and wounded nine others at a movie theater was so mentally ill and violent that years ago, his wife hid his guns and his family had him hospitalized against his will before obtaining a court order to keep him away. John Russel Houser, 59, stood up about 20 minutes into the "Trainwreck" movie and fired first at two people sitting in front of him, then aimed his handgun at others. Police said Friday they found 13 shell casings.

Group takes a shovel to Confederate General’s grave Posted 10:18 pm, July 22, 2015, by Eryn Taylor MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A group was fed up with waiting, so they got a shovel and dug up a patch of grass next to Nathan Bedford Forrest’s grave and statue in a public park in the Medical District. The group says they wanted the statue and remains removed for a long time, because he was a Confederate soldier, a KKK leader and a slave trader. “If he’s gone, some of this racism and race-hate might be gone,” said Isaac Richmond with Commission on...

The man identified as killing two people and wounding nine more in last night's shooting is John Russell Houser, 59, of Alabama. He spent time in an East Alabama Mental Health Facility from 2008 to 2009, Russell County, Ga., Sheriff Heath Taylor tells KATC. They're unsure what he was treated for, but will hold a press conference this afternoon to release information about him. Houser was previously arrested for arson in Columbus, Georgia, but Taylor was unsure when that arrest happened. It may have been decades ago. Houser was evicted from his Phenix City, Ala., home in March 2014, Taylor...

The movie theater shooting in Lafayette, Louisiana occurred in yet another place that banned permitted concealed handguns. The shooting occurred at the Grand Theater. It’s “conduct policy” openly bans the carrying of guns, just like where the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting occurred. While The Grand Theatre company owns three theaters in the area, none of the other local movie theaters that are owned by other companies appear to have a similar policy (Lafitte Cinema 4, Crowley Cinema IV, The Queen Cinema). . . .

The Washington Post has rehired Dave Weigel. He is covering the presidential campaign for the paper. In his last stint with the Post, Weigel covered the conservative movement. However, he lost his job due to vicious comments he posted on Journolist about major conservative figures and the conservative movement in general. When Rush Limbaugh was rushed to the hospital with chest pains, Weigel quipped, “I hope he fails,” a reference to Limbaugh’s comment that he hoped the Obama presidency would fail. He described Newt Gingrich as “an amoral blowhard who resigned in disgrace” and who is “now polluting my inbox...

Americans are increasingly convinced that owning a gun makes them safer. A new Rasmussen poll found that an overwhelming margin of Americans (68 to 22 percent) “feel safer in a neighborhood where guns are allowed.” And a series of polls by Gallup, Pew Research Center, and ABC News/Washington Post show similar results. But it isn’t just what people say. They are clearly putting increased stock in self-defense. Since 2007, the number of concealed handgun permits has soared from 4.6 million to 12.8 million. A new study by the Crime Prevention Research Center finds that a record 1.7 million permits have...

The Corner The one and only. ‘You Should Be for Americans’: Victims of Illegal-Alien Sanctuary Policies Tell Their Stories by Mark Krikorian July 21, 2015 7:39 PM @MarkSKrikorian The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing today featuring family members of Americans killed by illegal aliens. The witnesses told the stories of Danny Oliver, Grant Ronnebeck, Kathryn Steinle, Dennis McCann, and Josh Wilkerson – all dead because federal, state, and local governments have abdicated their responsibility to protect American citizens from foreign criminals. The anti-borders activists were sensible enough not to disrupt the proceedings, as they have done so often before....

Have you ever thought of letting someone else manage your finances? If President Obama has his way, Social Security recipients who have trouble managing their finances will be banned from buying a gun. If Social Security were to start classifying these people as “mentally defective,” some 4.2 million Social Security recipients could be affected – about 10 percent of all people 65 and older. But it is a real reach to say those who can’t manage their finances are a physical danger to themselves or others. What is next? Saying that people who can’t drive well or fail a math...

Chattanooga aftermath: Why do major television networks continue to get away with mollycoddling murdering radical terrorists in the very wake of their evil carnage? Within four days of the attack that claimed the lives of four US Marines and a Navy sailors slaughtered in the Chattanooga shooting spree, ABC is portraying poor Mohammod Abdulazeez—not as a radical Islamic terrorist—but as a “disturbed, suicidal young man using drugs, preparing for bankruptcy and facing an appearance in criminal court”. While their loved ones are in tearful mourning, the mainstream media’s crying killer Abdulazeez a river and getting über maudlin with the violins....

Abstract: Since President Obama’s election the number of concealed handgun permits has soared, growing from 4.6 million in 2007 to over 12.8 million this year. Among the findings in our report: -- The number of concealed handgun permits is increasing at an ever- increasing rate. Over the past year, 1.7 million additional new permits have been issued – a 15.4% increase in just one single year. This is the largest ever single-year increase in the number of concealed handgun permits. -- 5.2% of the total adult population has a permit. -- Five states now have more than 10% of their...

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) -- The family of the man who killed four Marines and a sailor in Chattanooga said in a statement that their son suffered from depression and was not the person they knew. "There are no words to describe our shock, horror, and grief," said the statement, provided Saturday to the Associated Press by a lawyer representing the family of Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez. "The person who committed this horrible crime was not the son we knew and loved. For many years, our son suffered from depression. It grieves us beyond belief to know that his pain found its...

Obama is Not in Mourning for Our Dead Marines and Sailor Submitted by Donald R. May on July 19, 2015 - 1:55am Barack Hussein Obama does not seem to be in mourning for the four Marines and one Sailor killed in Chattanooga by the Islamic Terrorist. Many flags across our nation are flying at half-staff, but not by order of President Obama. He did not order flags at the White House and other federal buildings to be flown at half-staff. Obama did make the effort to light the White House in rainbow colors to celebrate the recent Supreme Court ruling...

Donald Trump appears to have gotten under the skin of not only Democrats, but also fellow Republicans and the news media. Has that subjected Trump, a Republican presidential candidate, to unfair and/or inaccurate reporting? An article in the Washington Post today is headlined, “Trump slams McCain for being ‘captured’ in Vietnam.” The article’s lead sentence states, “Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump slammed Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a decorated Vietnam War veteran, on Saturday by saying McCain was not a war hero because he was captured by the North Vietnamese [emphasis added].” Is this report accurate? In fact, Trump’s actual quote...

As it turns out, I was on vacation and out of reach of cable news for the entire week, including during the horrific shooting in Chattanooga. (This no doubt came as a relief to some of our readers, though rumors of my early acceptance to the Mars Relocation Program were exaggerated.) I was still picking up details and some of the mainstream media coverage of the tragedy via social media, though, and I rather wish I hadn’t even had access to that. Upon arriving home and switching on CNN I was treated to Jane Harman talking to Wolf Blitzer and...

Here lays the supreme problem for the National Socialist Left in attempting to exploit every tragedy for crass political gain against their enemies. They often get hoisted on their own petard when their rank hypocrisy is shown in stark relief for all the world to see. Now that we know that the Chattanooga shooter was motivated by radical Islam, will the National Socialist Left have the balls to oppose a REAL enemy instead of one THEY KNOW won’t retaliate against their rank oppressive tendencies? Or will they ‘Cair’? It’s a sure bet that whenever a shooting takes place in a...

In the wake of the latest mass shooting, carried out by Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, an engineer like so many Islamic terrorists, we are seeing the usual scramble to avoid stating the obvious. On CNN, Tom Fuentes ludicrously cautioned that Muhammad is not an Islamic name: SNIPAnother Islamic extremist commits a terrorist act–what a coincidence! Speaking of coincidences, the Washington Post chose this morning to plug the Southern Poverty Law Center’s long-discredited tabulation of “hate groups,” the vast majority of which no one has ever heard of.

Abdulazeez shot his victims in a ‘gun-free zone,’ which is a useful illustration of the absurdity of gun-control laws: we constrain conscientious Americans but offer free rein to killers. [..] Surely, we are in for a new round of emotional pleas for more gun-control laws. And, helpfully, in this week’s Newsweek cover story by Kurt Eichenwald we already have a compendium of muddled and misleading anti-Second Amendment talking points that dominate the Left these days. The confusion begins with headline, which is based on an absurd premise, and bleeds into the lead: Let’s start with an undeniable truth: In the...

A report from a prominent economist finds that the number of permits to carry concealed handguns has skyrocketed by 178 percent in the last eight years, even as the murder rate has dropped. The figures, cited in a study by the Philadelphia-based Crime Prevention Research Center, is evidence that legally-possessed handguns deter crime, rather than contribute to it, according to the center's president, John Lott, an author and Fox News contributor who has held teaching and research positions at Stanford, University of Pennsylvania, Yale and the University of Chicago. He said the huge increase in the number of permits issued...