Free Republic

As debates over firearms simmer and President Obama mulls sweeping firearm restrictions via executive orders, media personalities like Piers Morgan dismiss guests defending gun rights with contempt. You’d think resistance to disarmament amounts to culpability for the Sandy Hook slaughter. Yet, as John Lott’s bestseller, More Guns, Less Crime, highlights crime rates have tumbled while gun ownership has soared, including permits to carry concealed weapons. America has more murder than many similarly advanced countries, but overall violent crime, save inner-cities plagued by family breakdown, remains below peer nations. The streets in Mr. Morgan’s England are far more dangerous.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal immigration agents were prepared to arrest an illegal immigrant and registered sex offender days before the November elections but were ordered by Washington to hold off after officials warned of "significant interest" from Congress and news organizations because the suspect was a volunteer intern for Sen. Robert Menendez, according to internal agency documents provided to Congress. The Homeland Security Department said last month, when The Associated Press first disclosed the delayed arrest of Luis Abrahan Sanchez Zavaleta, that AP's report was "categorically false." Sanchez, 18, was an immigrant from Peru who entered the country on a...

SAN ANTONIO -- A man is dead and another is recovering in the hospital after police say they were shot while trying to steal an SUV from outside a home in an affluent neighborhood. San Antonio police said the shooter, who was visiting family at a home in the 600 block of Lightstone Drive in Stone Oak, heard the men breaking into his Toyota 4Runner around 1:30 a.m. Tuesday. The 25-year-old man stepped outside with a gun, confronted the men who were rifling through his vehicle and opened fire, according to a police report. He later told police that he...

VERNAL — When George Burnett first set up shop in Vernal, he knew he had to find away to connect with his adopted community if his custom seat cover business was going to survive. So, armed with a sandwich board emblazoned with the phrase "Honk If You (Heart) Drilling!," Burnett took to the corner of 500 East and Main Street and began his one-man crusade to boost the spirit of a community that was getting its first glimpse of another oil and gas bust. Fast-forward nearly five years and Burnett — now a local celebrity for his tireless support of...

Male members of a jury are more likely to find a defendant guilty if the accused person is an overweight female. According to a recent study by Yale University psychologists, male – and not female – jurors are also more inclined to believe that a fat woman is a repeat offender who had malicious intent. The researchers gathered a group of 471 pretend peers of varying body sizes and described to them a case of check fraud. They also presented them with one of four images—either a large man, a lean man, a large woman, or a lean woman—and identified...

A cleaning lady managed to commandeer a Stockholm-area train early Tuesday morning, eventually crashing it into a house in the upscale suburb of Saltsjöbaden. She has since been ordered detained on suspicion of allmänfarlig ödeläggelse

CNN media critic Howard Kurtz is being accused of pressuring an editor at the Daily Beast, where he is a columnist, to kill a story that would have outed CNN's Anderson Cooper as gay -- an accusation Kurtz strongly dismisses. "These suggestions are offensive and absurd," Kurtz told POLITICO Monday night. In an interview with Capital New York about Jodie Foster's acceptance speech at the Golden Globes, BuzzFeed reporter Kate Aurthur, a former Daily Beast editor, said that in 2011 Kurtz had "interfered with a story" about Cooper in order to protect him from being outed. "[This] was less than...

No, you are not a felon or a 2nd Class citizen if you call a "magazine" a "clip." It IS something you might as well get figured out, though, and correct if you want to have respect within the shooting community. It's just a fact, many will judge you as someone who doesn't know much about firearms if you call them "clips." I might still love you, but many won't. :-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoSNHe413rY

After two years of failing to pass a bill in Colorado that would have allowed illegal immigrants to pay tuition lower than out-of-state rates but higher than in-state rates, Democrats — now in control of both chambers — are pushing new legislation to allow the students to go to college at the in-state rate. "What we're looking at is a simpler, more equitable approach to tuition," said state Sen. Mike Johnston, D-Denver, one of the lawmakers leading the effort. Johnston and state Rep. Crisanta Duran, D-Denver, are are holding a press conference Tuesday with supporters of the bill.

s it relevant that the man who helped craft Obamacare’s regulations on insurers will now make lots of money by suing insurers based on those regulations? The firm that hired him seems to think so. Here’s the press release: KEY OBAMACARE ARCHITECT JOINS MEHRI & SKALET, PLLC Former HHS Director, Longtime Insurance Regulator Jay Angoff to Lead Firm’s Insurance and Healthcare Practice as PartnerWASHINGTON, DC (January 14, 2013)—After nearly three years at the Department of Health and Human Services—as the first Director of Obamacare insurance implementation, as Senior Advisor to the Secretary, and as a Regional Director—longtime insurance regulator and...

As the worst drought since 1956 gripped the nation last year, lakes and ponds slowly receded, revealing decades worth of dropped and discarded fishing tackle, pop cans and all sorts of flotsam. At Oak Lake in Lincoln, the debris included at least two guns. A person walking along the edge of the lake last summer spied a suspicious item and called Lincoln police, who found a handgun rusted beyond recognition. “That thing could have been in there for 50 years for all we know,” said Sgt. Ben Miller. After that gun turned up, officers Kevin Hinton and Jen Mullendore couldn’t...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvaZwPPd7m0

Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a Name which is above every name; That at the Name of Jesus, every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2: 9-11

At least two burglars broke into a house in White Plains, New York, on Saturday and headed straight for the gun safe. This address and the owner's name, registered on a permit for legally held firearms, had been published on the controversial gun map published by the Journal News on December 23. The burglars couldn't open the safe and the property owner wasn't home. But this incident has led to speculation that the map is now being used by criminals for targeted gun theft.

As right-to-work legislation makes significant victories across the country, allowing employees to decide whether or not they want to join a union, the Maryland teachers union appears to be taking the opposite approach. According to the Washington Examiner, the union is actively planning to make even non-union teachers pay dues in the near future. The Washington Examiner explains: Del. Sheila Hixson, D-Montgomery County, will introduce a bill on behalf of the Maryland State Education Association to require nonunion educators to pay a so-called fair share fee to unions equivalent to about 68 percent of the local dues. Under Maryland law,...

St. Pete cops said that Vanessa Nicole Brooks, 22, stole their cruiser while they were inside an apartment investigating a domestic quarrel, reports the Tampa Bay Times in St. Petersburg. As Brooks backed the car up, she hit another police car before taking off.

.... for several months, rumors have been circulating within the United States defense and intelligence communities that a Chinese anti-satellite test is imminent. It might be conducted on Jan. 11, the date on which China performed ASAT operations in both 2007 and 2010. “Our hope is that getting this out in the open can facilitate a meaningful bilateral dialogue on space security, or, at the very least, get the Obama administration to explain why it refuses to talk to the Chinese about their plans to test,” Kulacki told Space.com. If indeed a China ASAT test is on the horizon, what...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- According to a memo obtained by 2 On Your Side, hundreds of local veterans may have been exposed to HIV or Hepatitis B or C at the Buffalo VA Medical Center, due to a mistake made at the facility. The memo says the agency found some insulin pens that should have been used once, but that may have been used for multiple patients. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, the agency is informing about 550 people in Western New York who may've been infected. The patients are being asked to have a blood test to make...

A 15-year old boy used his father’s AR-15 to defend himself and his 12-year old sister against two burglars at their home just north of Houston, Texas. Their father is a Harris County Precinct 1 deputy constable, and the boy knew what he had to do to keep himself and his sister alive. Around 2:30 PM, two men tried to break in, with one going through the front door and the other in the back. The boy grabbed the AR-15 and shot at them. The two later showed up at a Tomball hospital. The adult was hit three times and...

The second part of the show is very good