Free Republic

A 30-year-old mother is lucky today after the quick-thinking of a stranger helped save her from a mugging. The mother of two who was dragged across a Texas shopping center parking lot this week, clinging to her purse while two suspects in a sedan tried to snatch it. That’s when the stranger, who was armed, stopped the would-be thieves and forced them to lie on the ground while they waited for the police to arrive. ( The stranger who helped the woman retrieve her purse, pointed a gun at the suspects while he made them lie on the ground, waiting...

Wielding pipes, iron bars and clubs, Kremlin-backed activists broke up a pro-Ukrainian rally in the city of Donetsk on April 28, leaving at least 10 people injured. Journalists reported that the pro-Russian men were dressed in military fatigues, and armed with baseball bats and threw firecrackers while attacking a “United Ukraine” demonstration as police failed to stop the one-sided violence.... [....] Polls show that the vast majority of residents in southeastern Ukraine, including in Donetsk, do not want to join Russia or break away from Ukraine.

CHICAGO (CBS) — While out on an unrelated assignment, CBS 2 investigative reporter Dave Savini decided to stop by a South Side Subway sandwich shop for a meal. Savini was struck by the fact that the counter of the store at 116th Street and South Halsted was encased in bullet-proof glass. Such a sight would be common at crime magnets like gas stations or currency exchanges, but a Subway?

...police continue to investigate a brutal attack against music professor Marc Magellan. The professor appears to have been specifically targeted, and it was not a robbery — none of his personal items were taken. As Magellan was leaving campus last week, a man called out “Professor Marc,”...When Magellan turned around, he was sucker-punched in the face. That unexpected blow knocked Magellan, 31, to the ground of the campus parking garage. From there, the attacker continued beating the professor “unmercifully,” according to police. At one point, Magellan says, the assailant “was powerfully punching the side of my head against the concrete...

Two people were shot Monday afternoon near the National Zoo, marking the second time in three years that an annual Easter Monday event has ended with violence. The shooting, near the zoo during its annual African American Family Celebration, came as a large number of officers were already in the area. "We were not expecting this, but we had a heavy police presence," Cmdr. Reese said in an evening press conference. The Easter Monday event for black families across the region grew out of a grassroots community tradition more than 100 years ago.

Activists with the radical pro-affirmative action group, By Any Means Necessary, staged a protest on Tuesday featuring a black Detroit high school student who was denied admission to the University of Michigan. The student, Brooke Kimbrough, claimed UM rejected her because of her “morals,” and not her below-average ACT score of 23. (The average U-M student has a score between 28 and 32.) “I believe that I have been rejected because of the morals that I stand for,” said Kimbrough, according to Fox 2 news. “I will take back my freedom as a tool to help others. I have...

In what some call "crunch time" others a worst case scenario, Ukraine Announces Full-Scale Army Operation on Pro-Russian Militants in Seized Buildings. Ukraine's president says a full-scale operation involving the army will be launched in the east after pro-Russian militants seized government buildings. Acting President Oleksandr Turchynov said he would not allow a repetition of what happened in Crimea which was annexed by Russia last month. His live televised address from parliament came after pro-Russian forces targeted half a dozen cities. An urgent meeting of the UN Security Council will be held in New York. The meeting, at 20:00 New...

“The Last Hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews. The Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: ‘Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him.” Sahih Muslim, Kitab al-Fitan wa Ashrat as-Sa’ah, Book 41 of Koran, 6985 The Islamic group “Ask a Muslim” is running “Jesus is Muslim” billboards in Columbus, Ohio. Mohammad, the founder of Islam, was born 500 years after Jesus’s death. The Christian Post reported, via Free Republic:

The other night we reported how a mob of 200 teens went on a rampage in downtown Louisville, Kentucky last Saturday night, assaulting people and mob-robbing stores. There was surveillance footage from a store that was mob-robbed that showed the teens to be black – a detail left out in the reporting of the story. One of the women attacked was reported to be in her car with her children in the backseat. She has come forward to explain what really happened and it’s a situation none of us would want to find ourselves in, especially with 5 children in...

President Obama warned young people that if they don't sign up for Obamacare by March 31, they will face a penalty -- if they can afford it. During an interview with radio host Ryan Seacrest, Obama explained that young people might be charged a fine if they don't get insured. "If you can afford it — you just decide you don't want to get it because your attitude is 'nothing's ever going to happen to me' — then you'll be charged a penalty," Obama explained. Obama was careful to specify that people who can't afford Obamacare will not suffer a...

LANSING -- The Service Employees International Union will pay almost $200,000 to settle alleged campaign finance violations from a failed 2012 ballot proposal seeking collective bargaining rights for home health workers. The settlement was announced Monday by Secretary of State Ruth Johnson, whose office investigated a complaint that the union skirted campaign finance laws. The complaint was filed by political advocacy group Michigan Freedom Fund The complaint accused the principals behind Home Care First and Citizens for Affordable Quality Home Care of intentionally delaying required filings with Johnson's office to conceal that SEIU had made substantial contributions to support the...

Jermalle Brown and Douglas Bufford were gang members hired to combat violence on the South Side through a program hatched by Gov. Pat Quinn’s administration. Paid with taxpayer funds to hand out anti-violence pamphlets, the teens were part-time foot soldiers in the governor’s $54.5 million Neighborhood Recovery Initiative, a program described as “a comprehensive and concerted effort to keep our young people safe, off the streets and in school.” Quinn launched that program a month before his 2010 election as an answer to gun carnage in the city — even though murders that year dipped to a nearly 50-year low....

Unions are finding sneaky ways to exact dues — but workers are fighting back. Two Michigan teachers will finally be allowed to end their union membership in the Michigan Education Association and will be refunded any dues they paid during this school year, according to a settlement agreement signed this week. William “Ray” Arthur, a teacher and wrestling coach at Petoskey Senior High School, and Miriam Chanski, a Coopersville kindergarten teacher, tried to quit the teachers’ union after Michigan adopted legislation to become the 24th right-to-work state in the U.S. Both Arthur and Chanski wrote letters informing the MEA that...

A smaller and smaller percentage of adults are working to support the entire state population. Why does this matter? Because a booming economy provides the benefits of opportunity and upward mobility. But not only that. Growing the number of taxpayers is essential for funding core government services and pension bills. The only other tools legislators have are tax hikes, which have done more to chase away taxpayers than to fund the government. The percentage of the working-age population that is employed fell by 5.6 percentage points, from 65 percent in January 2008 to 59.4 percent in December 2013. This percentage,...

HOUSTON, TX – The nation’s leading labor union will plan to spend $300 million in 2014 trying to unseat Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and four other Republican Governors. More: AFL-CIO to Target Walker, Other Governors People’s World reported that the AFL-CIO announced on Thursday morning during a press conference in Houston that they would spend money trying to unseat Governor Walker. Other Governors that the labor organization is targeting are John Kasich (R-Ohio), Tom Corbett (R-Pennsylvania), Rick Snyder (R-Michigan), and Rick Scott (R-Florida). The American Federation of Teachers backed the AFL-CIO’s plan. President Randi Weingarten said: “In many ways it...

Feds Charge Philadelphia Ironworkers with Extortion, Arson and Racketeering Federal prosecutors today announced an indictment charging 10 members of the Philadelphia Ironworkers Union Local 401 with extorting and forcing businesses to hire their colleagues and defending their turf from non-union workers with violence. U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania Zane Memeger announced the charges at a press conference this morning after the 10 union members named in the indictment were arrested. According to the indictment, members of the Ironworkers would approach foremen at construction sites where iron work was being done and “implicitly or explicitly threaten the foreman...

The federal government on Tuesday indicted multiple union members for burning down a Quaker church in 2012. Ten members of a Philadelphia ironworkers union face charges of arson and racketeering in connection with a fire against the church, which was employing non-union workers. . . . . . The group of self-described THUGS—an acronym for “Those Helpful Union Guys”—allegedly burned down the meetinghouse as part of a wider campaign of violence against non-union work sites across the city.

Nice job ya got there So the union's leaders have come up with a backdoor way to force employees to fork over the dues money. It's a novel variation on the Living Wage/Minimum Wage campaign. Here's how it works: Milwaukee County officials approved a living wage requirement for local government contractors to pay at least $11.33 per hour. SEIU's Wisconsin Jobs Now campaign was the main backer of the requirement. But the new law includes a convenient way for contractors to avoid having to pay the living wage — they can agree to force their employees to join SEIU.

Electrical workers’ union posted signs outside the Trolley Car Diner protesting Weinstein’s organization Philly Office Retail’s decision to hire non-union workers. Members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) placed signs outside the Trolley Car Diner and handed out fliers charging Ken Weinstein, the president of Philly Office Retail, of “helping to destroy wages and benefits” on Thursday, Feb. 6. The labor union objects to Philly Office Retail hiring McCoubrey/Overholser, a Mt. Airy based general contractor, to convert the former St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, located at the corner of Wayne Avenue and Harvey Street into a private school....

They called themselves "the Helpful Union Guys" - "THUGS" for short - and woe awaited any contractor who dared cross them by hiring non-organized workers. For, federal authorities alleged Tuesday, this "goon squad" of members of Ironworkers Local 401 set fires, started riots, and took crowbars to the competition in an effort to protect union jobs. FBI agents arrested 10 of the union's leaders Tuesday morning, including longtime head Joseph Dougherty, in a racketeering conspiracy case that appeared to affirm long-standing business complaints over the tactics employed by Philadelphia unions.