Free Republic

BALTIMORE —Amid an unrelenting streak of violence, Baltimore's mayor said current gun laws miss the mark. The number of homicides in Baltimore reached 211 on Wednesday, matching the number for all of last year. The 211th homicide was recorded when police found the body of a man who was shot in a vacant house in the Penn-North neighborhood of west Baltimore, the same area hit by riots in April. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's political career may depend on getting the violence under control. She gave credit Wednesday to city police officers because arrests are back up to a normal pace. She...

New measurements show that CPT symmetry holds true for light nuclei such as deuterons -- a hydrogen nucleus with an additional neutron -- and antideuterons, as well as for helium-3 nuclei -- two protons plus a neutron -- and antihelium-3 nuclei. Pictured: The ALICE detector on CERN's Large Hadron Collider. A Saba/CERN Days after scientists at CERN’s Baryon-Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment (BASE) measured the mass-to-charge ratio of a proton and its antimatter particle, the antiproton, the ALICE experiment at the European organization reported similar measurements for light nuclei and antinuclei. The measurements, made with unprecedented precision, add to growing scientific...

If you look on the surface, one might think that the polls indicate that Donald Trump is the best candidate to go up against the Democrats in the general election. As history has shown, the ability to get support within one’s own party is not always an indicator of ability to win in the general election. In fact, one can argue that either Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich were more likely to defeat President Obama in 2012, though we’ll never know. Before we get into the list of candidates, let’s look at general election “winning attributes” that work in...

Princess Victoria, 38, and Princess Mette-Marit, 42, spent the day together Both visited a woodlands in Norway and then a church service in Sweden Took part in UN climate change initiative to highlight environmental issues

Earlier today, I noted that Los Angeles Times reporter Maria L. La Ganga compared the heroic undercover work done by investigators at the Center for Medical Progress to the 2004 efforts of the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth. She meant it as a negative, claiming that the Swift Vets' assertions about Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's service in Vietnam and his antiwar activities after he returned home are "considered by many one of the ugliest, most unfair attacks in recent political memory." She even claimed — knowingly engaging in falsehood, in my opinion — that "the Swift boat claims...

The Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky, one of the shrewdest political observers on the center left, recently laid out the key clue by which to solve the biggest riddle of the 2016 race: “The Republican Party has unleashed furies it can no longer remotely control. … The Tasmanian Devil candidate [Donald Trump] who’s obviously tapping into deep right-wing anti-establishment anger and the two other most extreme candidates [Ted Cruz and Ben Carson] combine for 47 percent. The two who in my view you can reasonably call quasi- or comparatively moderate, Kasich and Bush, combine to hit 9 percent. Add Rand Paul’s...

According to the Washington Traffic Safety Commission, an exponential increase in the number of deaths involving marijuana-impaired drivers occurred between 2013 and 2014, reports KOIN. Marijuana was legalized in the state of Washington in 2014; between 2010 and 2013 the number of marijuana-impaired drivers involved in fatal crashes ranged from 32 to 38 per year. But in 2014, after pot became legal, that number skyrocketed to 75. In half of the 2014 cases, the drug-addled drivers tested above the state’s legal limit for being under the influence of the drug while driving. Many of the heavily-drugged drivers also tested positive...

More bad news for climate alarmists: methane released by the thawing permafrost just isn’t looking like the deadly threat it was supposed to be. For years it has been an article of faith among climate doommongers that methane is the ‘you ain’t seen nothin’ yet’ of greenhouse gases. Man-made CO2 is a big enough problem on its own, the theory runs. But just wait till you see what happens when rising temperatures lead to the melting of the Arctic permafrost. That’s when your real troubles begin because then all that trapped methane will be released – and methane is around...

"The East West conflict continues as long as there is general acceptance of the unspoken but nevertheless operational assumption that the there isn't any underlying ideology of the post Cold War Kremlin and that hardly anybody - even among the Russian ruling elite - believes in anything. This assumption leads to subsequent assumption that Kremlin rulers and their entourage had thereby changed to such an extent that it no longer subscribes to any attributes of communist system."

Back in the day, when bosses and CEOs got a little too attentive to detail, we would wryly note that they were “micromanaging.” Today, students actually want university administrators to micromanage free speech, putting the First Amendment at risk. “Two terms have risen quickly from obscurity into common campus parlance,” Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt write in the latest issue of The Atlantic. “Microaggressions are small actions or word choices that seem on their face to have no malicious intent but that are thought of as a kind of violence nonetheless. For example, by some campus guidelines, it is a...

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush said Tuesday that encryption makes it harder for law enforcement to track down “evildoers” — and called for a “much better, more cooperative relationship” with Apple, Google, and other tech companies that are building uncrackable private communication apps into their new products. “If you create encryption, it makes it harder for the American government to do its job — while protecting civil liberties — to make sure that evildoers aren’t in our midst,” Bush said in South Carolina at an event sponsored by Americans for Peace, Prosperity, and Security, a group with close ties to...

John Feinblatt, president and gun-grabbing propagandist extraordinaire for Everytown for Gun Safety, has published an adorable little fable in the The Hill about Senator Cornyn’s (R-TX) bill known as the “Mental Health and Safe Communities Act.” The op-ed is titled “Don’t let the NRA set policy on guns and mental health.” Mr. Feinblatt opens with the question: “Do we really want to make it easier for people with dangerous mental illness to get guns?” He goes on to claim that the Cornyn bill “backed by the NRA” will do just that. (The bill is also backed by American Jail Association,...

On August 20, the Essex News Daily ran a story in which Mark Kelly and Gabby Giffords claimed they “actually do not support ‘gun control’ in the traditional sense of the phrase,” but “gun responsibility.” This comes after they have spent nearly three years supporting new gun trafficking laws, new laws on gun show sales, new laws on internet sales, limits on ammunition magazine capacity, expanded background checks, and gun control ubiquitously under the guise of domestic violence prevention. Yet they say they are not for gun control.

The investigations and the scrutiny will have their effect. A resignation here, a candidate choosing not to run there. But no one will go to jail or be punished in the legal sense for the violations of law in Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server for official State Department business. Washington DC, just like Wall Street, seems immune to punishment for the violation of law. Once a perpetrator has been nailed to the political wall, the issue decided, the political power shifts and the political maneuvers result. Political capital is acquired by one group, lost by another. But do...

Hundreds of people are expected to participate in a protest at a St. Paul Planned Parenthood this weekend.Pro-Life Action Ministries, as well as other pro-life organizations, elected officials and concerned citizens will protest at the St. Paul Planned Parenthood, 671 Vandalia St., Saturday, from 9-11 a.m. The protest is part of a day of protests at Planned Parenthood offices across the country.The planned demonstrations follow the recent release of undercover videos that abortion opponents claim show the trafficking of body parts harvested from aborted children. Last month, hundreds protested outside the St. Paul facility, calling for the government to cut...

Ted Cruz got a big boost in Iowa this week when the influential social conservative activist and radio host Steve Deace endorsed him. To call it a sought-after endorsement would be an understatement. Deace says prospective 2016 GOP campaigns began contacting him well before the 2012 election. (All just assumed that Mitt Romney was going to lose.) The recruitment efforts picked up in 2013 and 2014. When few people were paying any attention to the still-forming Republican race, Deace was hard at work. "For me, this vetting process has been going on for a couple of years," he says. "In...

‘These comments reflect prejudice, racism or plain ignorance,’ Mexico’s foreign ministry says of Trump’s plan to make Mexico pay for a border wall.Mexico’s government on Wednesday slammed US presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s proposals to deport undocumented immigrants en masse and make Mexicans pay for a wall separating the two countries as absurd, racist and ignorant. Launching his bid for the Republican presidential nomination in New York in June, Trump accused Mexico of sending “rapists and drug runners” across the United States’ southern border and pledged to build a wall to keep illegal immigrants out. Over the weekend, Trump said he...

City officials have confirmed to News 5 the location for Donald Trump’s pep rally in Mobile on Friday night has been moved to Ladd-Peebles Stadium. It’s the same venue used for the Senior Bowl and University of South Alabama home games. “It’s due to an overwhelming response,” said Kayla Farnon, spokeswoman for the Alabama Secretary of State’s Office. “More than 30,000 people have been confirmed to attend. “

Pornography and the Decline of a Culture John Stonestreet | BreakPoint | Friday, August 07, 2015 In June, I told you about the dangers of unfettered Internet use for kids over the summer. The damage to young minds from pornography is long-lasting and measurable. But a recent gathering of experts pointed out that the harms from pornography are far worse than they’ve ever been, and the damage is not just impacting children, but spilling into all of society. Speaking to a standing-room-only crowd in the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center in mid-July, Dr. Gail Dines dispelled the myth that pornography today...

I don't imagine children in Georgetown or Chevy Chase would have similar reactions to the same sound. The episode is evidence of glaring disparities in safety and gun violence in Washington, D.C. This city the seat of international power and influence, yet parts of it, particularly the poorest parts, are being terrorized by gun violence. We desperately need solutions to this crisis. As the world watches, what will we do about it? Gun violence is on the rise in Washington, D.C. and the perpetrators are emboldened with violence spreading across the city. Those who pull the triggers are largely young...