Free Republic

The state Supreme Court will hear arguments on Nov. 14 in the closely watched case involving the families of victims of the Sandy Hook massacre who are suing the gun manufacturer that makes the weapon used in the shootings. The families of 10 victims filed the lawsuit in January 2015, seeking to hold the Remington Outdoor Co. liable for the massacre because it marketed a gun to the public it knew was made for military use. Adam Lanza shot his way into the Newtown school on Dec. 14, 2012, and fired 154 bullets in about five minutes from a Bushmaster...

After the Massachusetts Legislature sped restrictions on bump stocks, a tool to increase the firing rate of guns, through the legislative process, senators opened the issue up to a public hearing. No members of the public showed up. "I was not going to ask most of our people to take a day off and come to the Statehouse to talk about something that already happened," said Jim Wallace, executive director of Gun Owners' Action League of Massachusetts.

At the end of their lengthy editorial regarding the new Uranium One revelations -- "Team Obama's stunning coverup of Russian crimes" -- the New York Post editorial board writes: Until September 2013, the FBI director was Robert Mueller — who’s now the special counsel probing Russian meddling in the 2016 election. It’s hard to see how he can be trusted in that job unless he explains what he knew about this Obama-era cover-up. I'll go the Post one better. Virtually whatever Mueller has to say about his involvement or non-involvement in this metastasizing scandal, he must recuse himself immediately for...

Far-left actress and talk show host Chelsea Handler announced in a Wednesday night statement on her Twitter account that her eponymous Netflix show would be cancelled at year’s end so she could devote her full attention to being a radical leftist advocating for pro-abortion women. Handler placed blame on President Trump, but she maintained that she’ll stay with Netflix for a future documentary on discussions with people she disagrees with. She began the letter by stating that the 2016 election and life under the Trump administration “have galvanized me” and “[f]rom the national level down to the grassroots, it’s clear...

“No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.” Richard Nixon’s 1994 post-war observation remains as prescient as ever. With the release of the Ken Burns/Lynne Novick epic 10-part PBS documentary on the war last month, it is safe to say that the misreporting and misremembering have only been compounded and exacerbated. For those among us who expected favorable treatment for the American effort to halt the spread of communism and a serious look at our South Vietnamese allies beyond the recycled shibboleths of their leaders as corrupt...

Emma Stone, Melissa McCarthy, and Sheryl Crow are among a number of celebrities urging Americans to “reject the NRA” and concealed carry of firearms in the wake of the shooting at a Las Vegas country music concert this month. Laura Dern, Bill Hader, and Adam Scott are also taking part in the anti-gun campaign, as is noted gun control advocate Julianne Moore. The celebrities are part of the Michael Bloomberg-funded Everytown for Gun Safety PSA against the NRA specifically, and against gun rights generally. In typical Everytown fashion, the PSA does not present real solutions to the attack in Vegas–after...

Excoriated as cold-hearted for his (reported) comments to the widow of a fallen soldier, President Trump responded to his latest critic -- a Florida Democrat -- via Twitter on Wednesday morning: "Democrat Congresswoman totally fabricated what I said to the wife of a soldier who died in action (and I have proof). Sad!" Trump wrote. Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) says she was listening on speakerphone to part of Trump's conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, who was one of four American soldiers killed during a recent ambush in Niger.

In the wake of the Vegas shooting, Hollywood actors are urging people to “call Congress” and ask them to oppose any gun measures backed by the National Rifle Association. In a video for Everytown for Gun Safety, Emma Stone, Bill Hader, Melissa McCarthy, and others voice support for gun control legislation and ask viewers to text Everytown for Gun Safety so that they can be connected with their congressmen. “The mass shooting in Las Vegas has all of us grieving, scared, and angry,” Stone begins in the video. “Knowing what to do about it can be confusing,” Bill Hader continues....

The British National Health Service (NHS) has provoked a firestorm by temporarily banning surgeries on people who smoke, and those who are obese. Patients who smoke must quit for at least 8 weeks before non-urgent surgery and obese people must lose weight before the NHS gives the go ahead. The Telegraph: In recent years, a number of areas have introduced delays for such patients - with some told operations will be put back for months, during which time they are expected to try to lose weight or stop smoking. But the new rules, drawn up by clinical commissioning groups (CCGs)...

I realize that it must be intensely humiliating for members of the Obama foreign policy team to see President Trump making good on his promise to eliminate ISIS. The rapid fall of the Jihad Caliphate is showing up the bloody fecklessness of the Obama administration, which, after the President ridiculed ISIS as the jayvee, was forced to lamely account for its failure effectively dispatch it. But Marie Harf has gone the extra mile into absurdity in dealing with the shame, actually trying to credit her former boss, President Obama, with the victory. She was, in other words, “harfing.” The Urban...

In liberal billionaire Tom Steyer’s ideal world, his taxes would be raised, the coal industry would be no more and President Donald Trump would be impeached. “I am strongly opposed to even one more penny in [tax] cuts for rich people and corporations,” the prominent Democrat donor and activist declared in an Los Angeles Times op-ed Oct. 5. Instead, he wants the government to “raise taxes on the rich and use the money to invest directly in the American people.” Steyer is the founder of Farallon Capital Management, a hedge fund that made money through coal investments until 2014. He...

Did you happen to catch CNN’s latest smear? Anderson Cooper’s show recently featured a “two-part exclusive” that claims Donald Trump’s EPA director had conspired with the CEO of a mining company to “withdraw environmental restrictions” so the company could dig “the largest open pit mine in the world in an extremely sensitive watershed in wild Alaska.” The report was enough to horrify any caring person. CNN showed beautiful pictures of colorful salmon swimming in Bristol Bay, and the reporter intoned dramatically, “EPA staffers were shocked to receive this email obtained exclusively by CNN which says ‘we have been directed by...

Politicians exploit public ignorance. Few areas of public ignorance provide as many opportunities for political demagoguery as taxation. Today some politicians argue that the rich must pay their fair share and label the proposed changes in tax law as tax cuts for the rich. Let’s look at who pays what, with an eye toward attempting to answer this question: Are the rich paying their fair share? According to the latest IRS data, the payment of income taxes is as follows. The top 1 percent of income earners, those having an adjusted annual gross income of $480,930 or higher, pay about...

October 13, 2017 | David F. Coppedge Ring Around the Dwarf Planet Says ‘I’m Young’ You can’t declare something old just because your worldview requires it to be old. New Scientist declared in bold print, “Distant dwarf planet near Pluto has a ring that no one expected.” Reporter Ken Croswell, however, never explains why it was unexpected to find a prominent ring around the dwarf planet Haumea, located about 2 billion miles beyond the orbit of Pluto. When surprised by something that shouldn’t last for billions of years around a body smaller than Pluto, one strategy astronomers employ is to...

The University of Mississippi is replacing a Confederate statue on campus which was damaged by a pickup truck last month. Now, students are outraged after learning that the Confederate statue on the Oxford campus will be rebuilt. Ole Miss student groups are coming together to protest the forthcoming restoration. The University of Mississippi NAACP chapter released a statement in collaboration with the Students Against Social Injustice (SASI) in which they lambasted Ole Miss for their decision to fix the damaged statue instead of retiring the controversial artwork. “The repair and continued display of this monument by the University of Mississippi...

But then in September, the EPA truly infuriated the biofuel industry by floating the idea of bringing the proposed total even lower, and of revisiting other renewable fuel requirements for 2018 and 2019 finalized under the Obama administration. The proposal is in line with what the oil and gas industry want (those energy producers think the RFS adds to the cost of refining petroleum and wants to see Congress rewrite the underlying 2005 law). “Until Congress acts to address the structural flaws with the RFS,” Frank J. Macchiarola of the American Petroleum Institute wrote in a letter to the EPA...

Much of the ground for advocating Second Amendment freedoms has been covered in the media, but at times like this, when a major tragedy places the second amendment under intense scrutiny, the basic point bears repeating. The Second Amendment to the Constitution is not about granting rights to citizens to carry guns; it is about denying to government the exclusive monopoly on the use of force and ensuring the preservation of our freedom. Though much-debated, the Constitutional text is simple. "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and...

Jimmy Kimmel deserves credit for frankness, if nothing else. In an interview over the weekend, the ABC late-night host said he doesn’t care about losing Republican viewers. We’re a long way from Johnny Carson, whose “Tonight Show” was a national institution that enjoyed a broad audience — and was conducted like one. Carson steered clear of politics and kept his views to himself because delving into divisive politics would “hurt me as an entertainer, which is what I am.” Kimmel may be an entertainer, but he has no such inhibitions. He is willing to say “not good riddance, but riddance,”...

History Channel Origin of Taps includes the history of Taps and a look at the Broken Note at John F Kennedy's funeral in 1963

President Donald Trump expects to nominate a total of four Supreme Court justices, claiming that three seats will likely become vacant during his first term, anonymous sources told Mike Allen of Axios. Trump expects to fill the seats of Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Sonia Sotomayor in addition to nominating Neil Gorsuch, who Trump nominated to fill former Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat earlier this year. Scalia died in 2016, well before Trump took office.