Free Republic

This 44 Magnum's got a sensitive trigger. . . and, oh yeah. . .he meant to do that.

Amy Schumer’s highly anticipated stand-up special for Netflix is getting overwhelmingly negative reviews from users who are tuning in and rating it. “Amy Schumer: The Leather Special” hit Netflix last week, and as the streaming service’s subscribers are starting to watching it, less-than-stellar reviews have been pouring in. “I made it 10 minutes into this and shut it off,” one viewer review read. The user gave the special one-star out of five. Another viewer added, “SO BAD!! I did stay and watch the whole show in hopes that it would get better, and it didn’t.” Yet another one-star user review...

A heroic security guard has been caught on camera shooting a bank robber dead after the criminal threatened customers and tellers with a gun. Serial armed robber Laurence Turner, 34, walked into Alpine Bank in Rockford, Illinois, armed with a gun and wearing a ski mask. As he pointed his pistol at staff behind the counter, Brian Harrison whipped out his gun and shot the criminal dead - all of which was caught on security footage.

Sen. Lindsey Graham on Wednesday said Congress will “flex its muscle” if the Department of Justice doesn’t come forward with answers about President Trump’s claims that former President Obama wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower. “We’ll issue a subpoena to get the information. We’ll hold up the deputy attorney general’s nomination until Congress is provided with information to clear the air as to whether or not there was a warrant issued against the Trump campaign,” Graham (R-SC) said on NBC’s “Today.” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on Tuesday evening his panel will delay...

During the September 26, 2016 presidential debate, Democratic presidential nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speculated that one reason Donald Trump might not have released his tax returns is that “he doesn’t want the American people, all of you watching tonight, to know that he’s paid nothing in federal taxes.”   Clinton said, “So you’ve gotta ask yourself, why won’t he release his tax returns? And I think there may be a couple of reasons. First, maybe he’s not as rich as he says he is. Second, maybe he’s not as charitable as he claims to be. Third,...

The ideology of Progressivism rests on the notion that “experts” should be given free rein to guide the populace in proper behavior, by persuasion if possible, but by governmental law and regulation if necessary. These “experts” could inform the disinterested administrators of a state powerful enough to impose itself on the behavior of the masses too ignorant to chart a personal course for themselves. The folly of this view is nowhere exposed more nakedly than in the matter of personal eating habits. The advice of the “experts” has been so frequently wrong that the federal government’s dietary guidelines have repeatedly...

The Board of Regents on Monday eliminated a requirement that aspiring teachers in New York State pass a literacy test to become certified after the test proved controversial because black and Hispanic candidates passed it at significantly lower rates than white candidates.

Ken Langone, co-founder of Home Depot, said Monday on CNBC that he thinks President Donald Trump could go down as “one of our greatest presidents ever,” and has “guts,” and “great people around him.” “[T]his guy has got guts,” Langone said on “Squawk Box.” “And he’s got great people around him.” He added that White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway’s husband is one of his lawyers. Trump has the potential to “go down as one of our greatest presidents ever,” Langone later argued.

A facial recognition app that can identify strangers from a photograph has been created by a British entrepreneur.Facezam can identify people by matching a photo of them with their Facebook profile. All users have to do is take a picture of someone on the street and run it through the app, which will tell them who it thinks the person in the photo is.

Leader of France's Front National, Marine Le Pen, flipped the script on a French reporter who accused her of encouraging people to read news on the internet that "may not be verified". Le Pen shot back, saying, "It could never be worse than what you guys are saying." Le Pen went on to tell the reporter that "French people have no confidence in the media whatsoever". Le Pen's party has been surging in polls leading up to the country's elections, with Front National polling at 26%, ahead of the country's socialist and conservative alternatives. Watch the video of Le Pen...

President Donald Trump told reporters that a “big fat beautiful negotiation” was underway on the proposed house health care bill, after a growing number of conservatives have voiced dissent with the effort. “We’re negotiating with everybody,” Trump said. “It’s a big fat beautiful negotiation and hopefully we’ll come up with something that’s going to be really terrific.” Trump made his remarks during a meeting with his cabinet at the White House — although four of them have yet to be confirmed by the Senate. During remarks to reporters, Trump thanked Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for working “around...

The author of a children’s coloring book has invented a character named “Toni the Tampon” to instruct children that men can menstruate. Cass Clemmer, the author of The Adventures of Toni the Tampon, has been using her coloring book character to “destigmatize” menstruation. Now, however, she also wants to “de-gender” the female biological process and to persuade children that men get periods too. Clemmer’s latest adventure of Toni the Tampon is one aspect of the progressive campaign to blur the differences between male and female, and to ultimately create a “genderless” society which bars the commonplace civic distinctions between biological...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMN6cCWqUBo

IBM Q isn’t vaporware. It’s a project years-in-the-making that could help quantum computation reach its massive potential. The future of quantum computers may arrive sooner than you think. When news arrived of IBM’s move to offer the first commercially available universal quantum computer last week, it was characterized as a “handoff” from IBM Research to IBM Systems. According to the company’s CTO and vice president of quantum computing, technical strategy, and systems, Scott Crowder, that’s not entirely the case. “It’s not quite a ‘handoff,’ it’s really a partnership,” explained Crowder. “This is definitely a transition point from it being pure...

Terrified talk in US national security circles that WikiLeaks is going to publish many CIA or NSA intercepts of Merkel tonight or tomorrow.

One Chicago kindergartner wanted to feed the homeless instead of throw a birthday party. Armani Crews, who turned 6 earlier this month, had been begging her parents for "a few months" to feed homeless people in her community, but her parents thought "she was joking," her mother, Artesha Crews, told ABC News. "I said, 'OK, we'll make some sandwiches,' to which Armani said, 'No. I want the same thing we'd have at my birthday party,'" her mother recalled. Even when her father, Antoine, informed her that if she wanted to go through with this, she wouldn't get a birthday...

The broadcast network evening newscasts, which didn't care in 1993 about the Clinton administration's decision to ask for the resignation of all 93 U.S. attorneys, went apoplectic Tuesday night in leading with the "controversy," fed by the media, over the Bush administration for replacing eight U.S. attorneys in late 2006 -- nearly two years after rejecting the idea of following the Clinton policy of replacing all the attorneys. Anchor Charles Gibson promised that ABC would "look at all the angles tonight," but he skipped the Clinton comparison. Gibson teased: "New controversy at the White House after a string of U.S....

With rain pouring down and crowds of festival attendees hopping from party to party, RideAustin and Fasten, two popular ride-hail apps in town, went totally dead for at least portions of the evening. Fasten, a small startup from Boston that paid to be the "official" ride-hail service of SXSW, experienced a 12-times increase in demand Saturday night that forced it offline for at least an hour. RideAustin, a nonprofit that's especially popular among locals, was down for "several hours," it said in a Facebook post, after its database was overloaded. The local ride-hail apps still have a week to try...

Recently, a reader of Raptureready.com wrote to Todd Strandberg and copied me about the atrocities happening in his country of South Africa. The writer of the email gave me permission to publish it in this piece: “On the 22nd of April the Christians of all race groups are coming together to pray for our country. God has given Angus Buchan a number of one million people who will be going. For South Africa this is a great number considering that we are 40 million people in the country. Already most places of accommodation have been sold out in the Bloemfontein...

Yet again this weekend, “Saturday Night Live” trotted out Alec Baldwin doing a Donald Trump impression for its cold open. And yet again, that wasn't even close to its harshest political sketch. That distinction this week was reserved for “Complicit,” a faux Ivanka Trump perfume ad that is liable to really ruffle some feathers. The conceit is pretty clear: As the most outspoken woman closest to Trump, she is complicit in the things he does — and for not doing something about it.