Free Republic

You can see why California Governor Gavin Newsom had to go beyond California to find a fitting replacement for the late Dianne Feinstein in the United States Senate. He put a lot of thought into it. He conducted an extensive search. Before Feinstein’s body was cold, Newsom was ready with his announcement. He had found the compleat Democrat: Laphonza Butler of Silver Spring, Maryland. It’s almost funny. But consider, to borrow a Shakespearean formulation, she is the perfectest herald of joy, Democrat style. She combines identity politics and ideological rectitude with institutional networking. Let us pause to admire her perfection....

Maryland police are searching for a lone suspect after three men were stabbed during a mass attack Tuesday inside a McDonald’s restaurant. The stabbing incident was reported around 6:45 a.m. in the 8400 block of Colesville Road in downtown Silver Spring, FOX5 DC reported. The three victims suffered what appeared to be non-life-threatening injuries, the station reported as per Montgomery County Police Department (MCPD).

Name: Kate Perelman Age: 33 From: Silver Spring, Maryland Job: Federal contractor and social media specialist People think depression is just feeling sad, but that’s not it at all. Depression makes you feel nothing. And in late 2018, after years of battling the disease, feeling nothing replaced my love for running. So my brand new pair of silver and blue Asics sat in the corner of my apartment, laced for a run that I thought would never come. My couch became my safe harbor. It’s where I made several impulsive internet purchases one day in late November, which included, for...

Toll lane plans for parts of the Capital Beltway and Interstate 270 are set to move forward next week, including plans for improvements to the American Legion Bridge. Maryland’s Board of Public Works — Gov. Larry Hogan, Treasurer Nancy Kopp and Comptroller Peter Franchot — is set to formally designate the planned toll lanes as a public-private partnership on May 8 and to support plans for separate phases of construction. Once the public-private partnership designation is approved, the state expects to quickly issue a request for qualifications from private companies so that a short list of the private firms or...

A U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant and self-identified white nationalist was arrested after federal investigators uncovered a cache of weapons and ammunition in his Maryland home that authorities say he stockpiled to launch a massive domestic terror attack targeting politicians and journalists. Christopher Paul Hasson called for “focused violence” to “establish a white homeland” and dreamed of ways to “kill almost every last person on earth,” according to court records filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland. Though court documents do not detail a specific planned date for an attack, the government said he had been amassing supplies and weapons since...

SILVER SPRING, Md. (ABC7) — MS-13 members held a Purple Line construction worker at gunpoint inside of a seemingly vacant building slated for demolition, police say. The two-story single-family house, which has since been torn down, was located at 807 University Boulevard East in Silver Spring - roughly a quarter-mile south of Piney Branch Road. The Maryland Transit Authority purchased the property to make way for the 16-mile light rail system that will link downtown Bethesda with the New Carrollton Metro station. According to Montgomery County Police, the Purple Line employee entered the abandoned structure around 8 a.m. on Tuesday,...

A man murdered earlier this year by the MS-13 street gang was stabbed more than 100 times, decapitated and had his heart torn out of his chest and buried with him, Maryland authorities said Wednesday. Montgomery County Police said one of the alleged killers, 19-year-old Miguel Angel Lopez-Abrego, was arrested Nov. 11 in North Carolina. Lopez-Abrego, known as "Timido," has been charged with first-degree murder and was ordered held without bond after his first court appearance. According to court documents, which cited interviews with a gang informant, up to ten MS-13 members planned to lure the victim to the Silver...

A black man on a Metrobus attacked a 52-year-old disabled, homeless passenger, spitting in his face, and blaming the victim, who is white, for decades of slavery in the United States, police say. The incident occurred on a Q1 bus, which had departed the Silver Spring Transit Center and was headed for the Shady Grove Metro Station. It was around 5 p.m. on Sunday, September 24. According to court documents, Marquis Evans-Royster, 27, approached the disabled, homeless man, looked directly into his eyes and stated, "You owe me for making my grandmother a slave." The victim remained calm and did...

The Planned Parenthood abortion facility in Silver Spring, Maryland, permanently closed on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2017, after the property’s management team realized that abortion is bad for business. Pro-life activists, led by Lauren Handy, persuaded the property management company not to renew Planned Parenthood’s lease using a narrowly-targeted educational campaign. Planned Parenthood had occupied the same office, located at 1400 Spring St. in Silver Spring, Maryland, for over 20 years, conducting surgical abortions.“The men and women who ministered at that Planned Parenthood for two decades deserve a lot of credit for their perseverance and tenacity,” said Troy Newman,...

Two people have been killed and more remain missing after a large explosion ripped through an apartment building in a Maryland suburb of Washington. At least 34 people, including three firefighters, have been injured. Residents are reported to have suffered burns from the blaze and fractures from jumping out of windows. Montgomery County Police Assistant Chief Russ Hamill announced two people were killed in the blast in Silver Spring during a media conference on Thursday morning. The explosion was also declared a 'mass casualty incident', and added the building is still in 'extremely dangerous condition'.

If Silver Spring Township officials and a local real estate developer didn't know that an old stone house on Route 11 is the reputed birthplace of the U.S. Bill of Rights before they started demolition there last week, they definitely know now. On Jan. 6, workers began demolishing a two-story stone house at 7086 Carlisle Pike in Silver Spring Township that most recently was the site of Stone House Auto Sales. This just isn't any stone house, however. Built in 1780 as the James Bell Tavern, the structure hosted the Stony Ridge Convention on July 3, 1788, a meeting of...

Dashing Baltimore's hopes for an east-west light rail line, Gov. Larry Hogan said Thursday that he will not build the $2.9 billion Red Line. "The current proposal makes no sense whatsoever," the governor told a State House news conference. But Hogan, making his first appearance since announcing Monday he has cancer, gave mass transit advocates a limited victory by giving the green light to construction of a slimmed-down version of the Purple Line light rail project in the Washington suburbs. During his campaign last year, Hogan had said the state could not afford either project. After he took office, however,...

Gov. Larry Hogan announced Thursday the state will move forward with the Purple Line. The Republican governor made his decision after months of speculation about whether he’ll kill the $2.45 billion light-rail project. Hogan said the state will fund the project with $168 million, “a fraction” of the cost of what could have been up to a $700 million state investment. The governor said he will ask Montgomery County and Prince George's County to increase the size of their investments. “The Purple Line is a long-term investment and will be an important economic driver for Maryland,” Hogan said. “It will...

A Montgomery County couple says they’re being investigated for neglect for allowing their two children to walk home from a park by themselves. Danielle and Alexander Meitiv say the county’s Child Protective Services began investigating them after police stopped their 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter about half-way through a mile-walk home on Dec. 20 in Silver Spring. Police say they stopped the children and drove them home after someone reported seeing them. …

It was a one-mile walk home from a Silver Spring park on Georgia Avenue on a Saturday afternoon. But what the parents saw as a moment of independence for their 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter, they say authorities viewed much differently. Danielle and Alexander Meitiv say they are being investigated for neglect for the Dec. 20 trek — in a case they say reflects a clash of ideas about how safe the world is and whether parents are free to make their own choices about raising their children. “We wouldn’t have let them do it if we didn’t think they...

U.S. Rep. John K. Delaney said Thursday that toll lanes might be needed to ease traffic and congestion on Interstate 270, a corridor vital to the future of Montgomery and Frederick counties. Leaders in the region must make sure the highway operates as efficiently as possible, Delaney (D-Dist. 6) of Potomac told legislators and business leaders from the two counties Thursday in Frederick at a meeting on the I-270 corridor. Del. Michael Hough (D) of Brunswick, an incoming state senator from District 4, said Virginia has done a good job of combining ideas such as high-occupancy toll lanes and private...

Lee Boyd Malvo, who was convicted along with John Allen Muhammad in the 2002 D.C. sniper shootings that left 10 dead and three wounded, says he remembers the killings vividly but can't explain why he did what he did. "I was a monster," Malvo told the Washington Post in a recent interview from a Virginia prison where he's serving six consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. "If you look up the definition, that's what a monster is. I was a ghoul. I was a thief. I stole people's lives. I did someone else's bidding just because they said...

ROCKVILLE, Md. - There are major flaws with the way the concrete was poured in the $101 million Transit Center in the heart of downtown Silver Spring. During a news conference Monday, Montgomery County Council President Roger Berliner outlined the issues, calling the situation a "serious problem." He also hinted at the possibility of legal action against the contractor. "Specifications for the project called for there to be 10 inches of concrete. The analysis that has been done has shown that for significant portions of the second floor and the third floor, there's only eight and a half inches," Berliner...

NOTE The following text is a quote: Pakistani National Indicted in Scheme to Illegally Export Restricted Goods and Technologies to Pakistan BALTIMORE—A federal grand jury has indicted Nadeem Akhtar, age 45, of Silver Spring, Maryland, on charges related to a scheme to illegally export items that are used directly or indirectly in activities related to nuclear reactors and the processing and production of nuclear-related materials. The indictment was returned on March 11, 2010 and unsealed today. Akhtar had an initial appearance today at noon, before U.S. Magistrate Judge Mildred Methvin, in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. Judge Methvin ordered Akhtar...

Here is link to live stream: http://interactive.foxnews.com/livestream/live.html?chanId=4