Free Republic

In Orlando on Thursday, President Obama again called on Congress to do something about these mass public shootings. But the dirty secret about the four different bills that the Senate will vote on Monday is that everyone knows that none of them would have stopped the Orlando massacre. Indeed, none of the bills would have stopped any of the mass public shootings since at least 2000. Everyone wants to do something to stop these attacks, but the one thing that we know does matter -- ending gun-free zones – are being completely ignored in the legislation. Since at least as...

...Police found the unidentified teenager unresponsive with several gunshot wounds and he was pronounced dead at the scene. Based on shell casings found at the scene, Guglielmi said investigators believe the teen was shot with a "high-capacity assault rifle." "It's certainly unusual," Guglielmi told the Chicago Tribune. "This is not the typical weapon used in a lot of shootings...'

What’s super sad is that when I started counting all of the mainstream media reporters I respect I didn’t run out of fingers. Most of them are just what Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds memorably labeled “Democrats with Bylines.” And that’s literally true – something like 90% of them are, in fact, Democrats. And they act like it. So when Trump refuses to play nice with them, or I hear about another round of lay-offs, the best I can summon up, if I’m in a generous mood, is a half-hearted “Meh.”The MSM, of course, wants to have it both ways. It wants...

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's closed-door meeting Tuesday with 900 top evangelical and social conservative leaders will be a time of questions and answers on issues such as the Supreme Court, sanctity of life and religious freedom, according to an organizer, who said a similar meeting is being discussed also with Trump's rival Hillary Clinton. "Of the more than 50,000 questions that came in, many of them focused on those three issues. Others focused on issues related to leadership, national security, and faith," Johnnie Moore, the spokesperson for My Faith Votes, a non-partisan organization focused on engaging the 25...

If you’ve been worried that there isn’t an easy enough way to help your kids understand the thorny issues of overt racism championed by presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Netflix — as it often does — has a show for you. The Emmy-winning Netflix original show “All Hail King Julien,” based on the popular DreamWorks movie-series “Madagascar,” debuts its third season Friday. And there’s an episode about Trump. Although the King Julien character was not originally intended to be a Trump parody in the “Madagascar” universe, the show’s creators decided the royal lemur could be a perfect teaching tool...

...In a normal world, Trump would be booed off the stage. Instead, he is applauded (by some) for adding the Post to his list of journalistic organs denied access to his campaign. The applause is disheartening, and is evidence that newspapers are little understood or appreciated. This is owing in part to a few notorious fabricators, who were duly punished, as well as a vast array of alternative news sources. But mostly to blame for the demonization of the media broadly are faux news media outlets, Republicans and their cohorts...

Almost exactly a century ago at the great naval battle at Jutland, David Beatty said "There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today" after two of his battleships exploded under German gunnery and incompetent seamanship by his sailors. Well, there seems to be something wrong with our bloody newspapers today as well. The New York Times runs an editorial on "The NRA's Complicity in Terrorism," but the Orlando mass murderer Omar Mateen isn't a member of the NRA. He is a member of the Democratic Party, who voted for Obama twice, and worked as a subcontract security...

New York Times editor Andrew Rosenthal denounced Donald Trump‘s proposed policies Wednesday, arguing in an op-ed that Trump’s rhetoric and positions towards Mexicans and Muslims could precipitate a genocide. “Trump never bothers to talk about what he would do about the millions of Muslims already living in the United States. Would he round them up and deport them, as he is proposing to do with the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the country?” he aksed.

Donald Trump's favorite nickname for the news media is the "dishonest press." He swaps in "disgusting press" from time to time. And sometimes, he puts it all together: "disgusting, dishonest human beings." The presumptive Republican presidential nominee has a whole menu of takedowns for individual reporters and news organizations. In recent weeks, he's used his microphone and his tweets to label them "third-rate," ''not nice," "disgraceful," "phony," "low-life," "very unprofessional" and "bad people." Or, for extra emphasis in a tweet, "BAD." [Snip] Trump seems to be perpetually mad at the press, but there's a method to his madness. He sees...

Some day, in a far off, idealistic future, we may yet live to see a time when the media reports on a story involving guns and gets the details right. But that day has apparently not yet arrived. After the news of the Orlando shooting broke, the focus of the anti-gun press immediately settled on the long rifle legally purchased by the ISIS aficionado for the terror attack. (He wasn’t on the terrorist watch list at the time, Hillary, just in case you were wondering.) It was immediately announced that an AR-15 was once again at the center of the...

"It feels like a bazooka - and sounds like a cannon." How do we know AR-15s are the single most lethal weapon on the planet? Because they're SO LOUD. LOUD, YOU HEAR ME?! LOUD!!!! This is one of those things that must be read to be believed, and no, this was not found in The Onion, amazingly. New York Daily News reporter Gersh Kuntzman set out to test shoot an AR-15. “It feels like a bazooka — and sounds like a cannon,” he writes. A cannon. And Bazooka? The same bazooka also known as a "recoilless rifle"? I would like...

Houston prosecutors have dropped one of two charges faced by pro-life investigator David Daleiden, stemming from his investigation of Planned Parenthood. County Court at Law Judge Diane Bull threw out a misdemeanor count of trafficking in human organs. “Judge Diane Bull’s swift dismissal of the bogus charge against CMP founder David Daleiden of trafficking human organs is the latest confirmation that the indictments from a runaway grand jury in Houston were a politically motivated sham all along,” the Center for Medical Progress said in a statement. “The dismissal of the first indictmen [on Monday] sends a strong message to Planned...

Donald Trump said Monday that he is pulling The Washington Post’s credentials to cover his campaign events because he is upset with the newspaper’s coverage of his candidacy. “Based on the incredibly inaccurate coverage and reporting of the record setting Trump campaign, we are hereby revoking the press credentials of the phony and dishonest Washington Post,” read a post on Trump’s Facebook page.

On Friday singer Christina Grimmie’s was murdered in a gun-free zone in Orlando. Early this morning, at least 50 people were fatally shot at an Orlando night club — also a gun-free zone. Since at least 1950, only slightly over 1 percent of mass public shootings have occurred where general citizens have been able to defend themselves. Police are extremely important in stopping crime, but even if they had been present at the time of the nightclub shooting, they may have had a very difficult time stopping the attack. Attackers will generally shoot first at any uniformed guards or officers...

National Security Adviser Susan Rice doesn’t like it when you imply she’s a liar. Truth hurts? Friday morning CNN’s Jim Acosta tiptoed around the real question and asked Rice if she was “being guided by talking points too much.” Way to give her an out as you throw the softball, Jim. Rice was defensive and careful, muttering something familiar about “the facts as we know them.” When she relays wrong information that is given to her, she said, it doesn’t actually make her a liar.

"White House should have waited to call Trump racist; look who got sued for forcing a judge to recuse herself!" The White House jumped on comments House Speaker Paul Ryan made in order to characterize Donald Trump as a racist. But using the Obama administration’s exact same logic, Obama would also be a racist. Just last year the United States Department of Justice was sued after it forced an immigration judge to recuse herself from “all immigration cases involving Iranians,”according to the Daily Caller. Trump has long been critical of U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is hearing a...

Thursday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 7-4 decision that Americans don’t have a right to carry concealed handguns for protection. Since California bans people from openly carrying guns, their decision amounted to prohibiting people from carrying guns at all (whether openly or concealed). It is clear that a judge’s political affiliation determines whether he thinks that people have a right to defend themselves. Democratic judges are now moving to overturn recent Supreme Court decisions that struck down bans on guns. Last year, about 0.24 percent of adult Californians had a concealed handgun permit. In the rest...

Police Apprehend Suspect in Ohio After Shooting Sheriff's Deputy, 1 Other By BRIAN MCBRIDE Jun 10, 2016 Police apprehended a suspect this morning after allegedly shooting a sheriff's deputy and at least one other person Thursday night near Cincinnati, Ohio, police said. Lt. John Faine of the Warren County Sheriff's Department identified the suspect as Mohammed Abdou Laghaoui, age 19. He was described as armed and dangerous. The arrest took place at a location close to the shootings, Faine said. Authorities responded to reports of an active shooter near a Kroger grocery store in Deerfield Township.

Women’s rights leader Victoria Woodhull, though not especially well known today, once attracted more media attention than just about any female in the United States. A jack-of-all-trades, Woodhull alternately tried her hand at stockbroking, newspaper publishing, lobbying, public speaking, clairvoyance and philanthropy, and even ran for president long before women won the right to vote. Her unconventional lifestyle and radical political views helped her make powerful friends and equally powerful enemies. On the 175th anniversary of her birth, here are nine things you should know about one of the most controversial figures of her time.

The death certificate for the father of the controversial Mexican judge confirms that Curiel’s parents were not U.S. citizens when he was born. Death records from Indiana records confirm that Salvador Curiel died a Mexican citizen in 1964… not as the New York Times’s Alan Rappeport reported in an anti-Donald Trump article. But Rappeport claimed that the elder Curiel had died a U.S. citizen. He didn’t. Here’s what Rappeport wrote: Judge Curiel, 62, was born in East Chicago, Ind., to parents who had emigrated from Mexico. Raul Curiel said their father, Salvador, arrived in Arizona as a laborer in the...