Free Republic

A school cafeteria worker in Idaho says she was fired after giving a hungry middle school student a free lunch. Dalene Bowden, a server at Irving Middle School in Pocatello, told NBC affiliate KPVI in Idaho that she gave the hot meal to a 12-year-old girl with no lunch money whom said she was hungry on Dec. 15.

CORONA: Stinky strategy punishes package pilferers Corona-area residents are setting out prop packages filled with poo to prevent pilfering. They say mail thieves are getting out of control in their neighborhoods. Fed up with thieves stealing their precious packages, Corona-area residents have banded together to teach them a smelly lesson. "They're calling it a movement," said Michaela Roekle, who set a box of her own out a few days ago. In a prop package with a fake address label attached, Roekle placed a special gift from her son, Braven, and dog, Midnight. It's sat on her stoop Tuesday, waiting for...

Back in 2009 the Obama administration gave $535 million in taxpayer funds to the company Solyndra. They claimed at the time that it would create 4,000 new jobs. Instead, the company went bankrupt. It was later learned that the company’s shareholders and executives had made substantial donations to Obama’s campaign. In addition, the company had spent large sums of money on lobbying and Solyndra executives had a number of meetings with White House officials. In 2010, Obama visited the Solyndra factory and cited it as a role model for his “stimulus” program, saying “It’s here that companies like Solyndra are...

Contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders' (S-Vt) effort to solicit donations via an email request hit a snag when the Google gmail software identified the request as a "phishing scam." Apparently, the Sanders' campaign promises of "free college" and "low cost prescriptions" were classified as indicators of "possible fraud." Sanders' campaign manager Jeff Weaver blamed "Google's limited understanding of the difference between real scams and legitimate political policies. The crook's objective is to rob the unwary individual by proffering benefits that can never be attained. Bernie's objective is to persuade voters to elect him so he can...

Man Pleads Guilty to Stealing Human Brains from Medical Museum A 23-year-old Indiana man pleaded guilty on Wednesday to breaking into a medical museum and stealing preserved human brains and other tissue that he then sold online, authorities said. David Charles, of Indianapolis, pleaded guilty to six charges including receiving stolen property, and burglary in a Marion County court where Magistrate Amy Barbar sentenced him to one year of home detention and two years of probation, county prosecutor spokesman Anthony Deer said. Charles on multiple occasions broke into the Indiana Medical History Museum to steal jars of brains and other...

Between 1989 and 2010, U.S. attorneys seized an estimated $12.6 billion in asset forfeiture cases. The growth rate during that time averaged +19.4% annually. In 2010 alone, the value of assets seized grew by +52.8% from 2009 and was six times greater than the total for 1989. Then by 2014, that number had ballooned to roughly $4.5 billion for the year, making this 35% of the entire number of assets collected from 1989 to 2010 in a single year. According to the FBI, the total amount of goods stolen by criminals in 2014 burglary offenses suffered an estimated $3.9 billion in property losses....

Weapons were stolen from the United States Army Reserve Armory in Worcester on Saturday night. The facility -- the Lincoln Stoddard Army Reserve Center is located on Lake Street. The FBI says some weapons are missing as a result of the break-in. According to the Boston Herald, “The FBI is aware that some weapons are missing as a result of the break in at the Army Reserve Center in Worcester, Massachusetts. We have entered those weapons into NCIC, a national database, and alerted our federal, state and local law enforcement partners,” said Kristen Setera, spokeswoman for Boston Special Agent-in-Charge Harold...

A former church secretary was sentenced Wednesday to six years of probation for stealing about $30,000 from the town of Burke church where she worked and had been a longtime member. Her lawyer, Joel Winnig, and Assistant District Attorney Paul Humphrey had agreed to recommend 90 days in jail as a condition of six years of probation, but Circuit Judge Ellen Berz did not order the jail time.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Just days ago, the nearly 1,300-pound, powerful jumping horse with a shiny chestnut coat named Phedras de Blondel arrived at his new home in the U.S., a farm owned by a champion rider in Florida. On Sunday morning, his owner discovered a horrific scene near his stall: the 12-year-old gelding had been slaughtered and butchered, most likely for his meat. Only his head and neck were left intact. Now, detectives are trying to find the perpetrators. “What they did to this horse had nothing to do with his value,” Debbie Stephens, who owns the 27-acre...

Between 2010 and 2014, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) awarded $4.6 billion in Obamacare start-up grants to 16 Democrat-controlled states and the District of Columbia. $1.4 billion of this taxpayer largesse was spent on exchanges, many of which imploded upon launch or operated so inefficiently that enrollees have been left to the tender mercies of Obamacare.gov. The rest of these states also appear likely to abandon their exchanges in favor of federal “marketplaces.” Yet, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), they have kept all but $1 million of the grants. Where’s the rest of our money?...

Proposal, likely to pass due to Muslim majority, would have Kotel renamed Buraq Plaza and made part of Al-Aqsa Mosque. In an attempt to gain international legitimacy for its rewriting of history, the Palestinian Authority (PA) will submit a resolution to UNESCO (UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) next week claiming the Kotel (Western Wall) as its own. The proposal calls to have the Kotel in Jerusalem - which is an outer wall of the Temple Mount that is the holiest site in Judaism - recognized as part of Al-Aqsa Mosque located on the Mount, reports Yedioth Aharonoth on Friday.

If I post incorrectly, please forgive me. I think it is the first one.... A new Go Pro showed up that wasn't ordered from a reputable outfit today. It was addressed to my wife so I didn't open it on arrival. I don't go through other people's mail. Figured it was a typical purchase even though it wasn't from an outfit I would expect. It was a technology dealer and I do that buying. A little while ago she brings in a box with a new Go Pro. She checked her CC and there was a charge from a couple...

Strapped to wooden chairs and burnt alive: Two men are fatally punished by furious Mexican villagers after alleged car theft Angry villagers beat and then burnt two men to death on the streets of Mexico after accusing them of trying to steal a car. The men were grabbed by the 200-strong mob in the town of San Juan Chamula on Monday, according to a civil defense official, and strapped to wooden chairs before they were lynched. The official, who was not authorized to be quoted by name, said the men had been turned over to police in the southern state...

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — The postmaster in Pittsburgh has been arrested on charges of opening mail packages allegedly looking for drugs and threatening employees if they told authorities about it. Officials say Dan Davis is accused of illegally opening express mail packages. According to the criminal complaint, Davis would run Google searches on the addresses on packages. If an address came back invalid, he would open the package. The criminal complaint reports that he claimed he was searching for drugs and money.

 Google webcam privacy risk - this is a real issue.  Your laptop webcam can be hacked.  If you have to make videos, get yourself a cheap outboard web-camera that YOU control by unplugging it. Put tape over the built-in web-camera, find where the microphone is and tape it over too (find your laptop's manual online, look at the parts/features diagram.) I got a cheap web cam to use on my desktop computer. I downloaded Skype. My daughter is too busy to Skype to help me test it. The first thing that happened, "Esther" from Ghana wanted to Skype with me....

A man in Ohio has been arrested for what they are calling a ‘hate crime’ for burning a flag. It wasn't a U.S. flag! It was a GAY PRIDE FLAG! We have Blacks, Mexicans, Muslims and liberal Whites burning and stomping on our country’s flag and it’s not a problem. But if you burn a gay pride flag it’s a hate crime? What about the hate crimes committed against Whites in the so called ‘knock-out game’ where Blacks target Whites and savagely assault and beat the hell out of them? Those aren’t labeled hate crimes because it would be racist....

**SNIP** Overall, only 37 percent of people who called the IRS seeking to talk to a person reached one, the report said. That's the lowest rate over the past decade, by far. For those who got through, the average time on hold was 23 minutes. About 50 million callers reached out to the IRS for help during the tax season. Help lines were so overloaded that the system hung up on 8.8 million callers, the report said. That's a huge jump from last year, when the IRS hung up on 544,000 callers. The IRS calls the hang-ups "courtesy disconnects," because...

Surveillance video, obtained by Channel 9 shows more than a dozen people stealing weapons from a gun show at the Central Florida Fairgrounds in Orange County over the Fourth of July weekend. According to Orlando police, nearly 20 guns were taken from one of the gun show booths after the show closed for the day on July 6. Police said the weapons include handguns and rifles, and those guns are still on the streets. Channel 9's Kathi Belich learned the group of burglars got into the building through a door on the east end of the main building by smashing...

BARNEGAT, N.J. – Teachers unions during the past decade have known their share of scandal. Add the case of Wayne Wedderman Jr. to the list. This Monday, June 29, Wedderman, treasurer of the Barnegat Education Association, pleaded guilty in Ocean County, New Jersey Superior Court to theft from the union. He had been arrested last November for stealing roughly a combined $23,000 from two union accounts in the wake of a county probe begun the previous month. A grand jury in February subsequently indicted Wedderman on two counts of thefts and one count of computer theft. Sentencing is scheduled for...

An abortion rights activist stole the signs of a pro-life group and then threw them over the highway overpass where the demonstration was held. Members of Protest ABQ were attacked on Wednesday, July 1, 2015 in Albuquerque, NM while conducting a peaceful overpass demonstration to educate the public about abortion. The group uses posters of the abortion victims to show what abortion does to the unborn child in the womb. “Protest ABQ conducts weekly overpass protests to peacefully expose the violence that abortion inflicts on pre-born children in the womb,” Bud Shaver, Executive Director of Protest ABQ told Life Dynamics....