Free Republic

In the videos you can see dozens of girls punching, kicking, and stomping one another. School resource officers even got into the fray in an attempt to break up the fights, which appeared to have also spilled into classrooms. The first video posted on social media shows the fight happening in the cafeteria. “First, I saw teachers and security scattering over each other,” said 11th grader John Rork. “A couple of girls all over each other. I saw scratches, hair falling out, a lot of hair pulling. This one girl jumped off a table and punched another student in the...

It took the Chattanooga gangbanger about two seconds to realize he had mouthed off to the wrong judge. General Sessions Court Judge Lila Statom was presiding over a preliminary hearing on April 16 for attempted murder suspect O’Shae Smith. Smith made a reference to a public housing development known as East Lake Courts, calling it his “hood.” What happened next was captured on video by television station WRCB and has been seen by hundreds of thousands of people since. Judge Statom admonished the gang member with a heaping dose of Southern-flavored righteous indignation. “Sir, East Lake Courts is not your...

On Monday, Israeli officials reported that Iran has upped its delivery of weapons to the Lebanese Shiite terror group Hezbollah in the past few weeks. Channel 2 stated that the shipments have been made to both Lebanon and the Syrian side of the Golan Heights. In addition, the report stated that Iran was sending weapons to Hamas chiefs in Gaza and arming Hamas members in Judea and Samaria. Channel 2 asserted that the ease in sanctions on Iran from the present nuclear negotiations would allow it to spend “billions of dollars” shipping weapons to Israel’s enemies. The increase in Iranian...

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Bob Corker (R-TN) leads a markup on a bill that would provide for Congress to review and approve any agreements relating to Iran’s nuclear program.

The US Congress will have a say on a nuclear deal with Iran, under a new agreement reached with the White House. President Barack Obama withdrew his opposition to a bipartisan bill that was unanimously passed through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The bill means the administration must immediately send text of a final deal to Congress. An outline agreement on the future shape of Iran's nuclear programme was reached after marathon talks in April. The US, Iran, and four other nations have set a deadline of 30 June to finalise a deal which would ease western sanctions in exchange...

Traitor is strong language, but in the aftermath of Tuesday’s vote on a bill that was supposed to reaffirm the Senate’s constitutional power to consent to President Obama’s as yet still undefined and undisclosed nuclear treaty with Iran there is no other way to describe the actions of Senator Bob Corker, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations The bill Corker rammed through the Foreign Relations Committee is worse than no bill at all. What Corker’s bill does is, in its post-markup form, require the president to submit for congressional review the final nuclear agreement reached between Iran, the...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is demanding six world powers and Iran to produce a single outline of the framework agreement reached over Tehran’s nuclear program. “While there appears to be consensus that some agreement was reached … there is no consensus on the actual parameters of that agreement — including such critical items as the scope of Iran's ongoing nuclear program, the extent of the [International Atomic Energy Agency] verification regime, and the schedule for nuclear-related sanctions relief by both the United States and the international community,” Cruz, a 2016 presidential contender, wrote Friday in a letter to Secretary of...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry may have forgotten a thing or two about the Al Gore presidential campaign he helped lead in 1988. In an interview with an Iowa radio station on Monday, the Republican presidential contender explained his role as the Gore campaign’s Texas chairman by saying that “this was Al Gore before he invented the Internet and got to be Mr. Global Warming.”

In an interview with an Iowa radio station on Monday, the Republican presidential contender explained his role as the Gore campaign’s Texas chairman by saying that “this was Al Gore before he invented the Internet and got to be Mr. Global Warming.” But in fact, global warming was already a significant theme for Gore in 1987 and 1988 — long before his activism led to several books, a Nobel Prize and a part in an Academy Award-winning film. It was also well before the right gave him the "Mr. Ozone" nickname and talk radio heaped endless mockery on the future...

Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s just-announced presidential campaign was in large measure base on three pillars; his compelling immigrant family story, his claim on conservative support as one of the 2010 Tea Party wave election’s brightest stars and his commitment of righting the foreign policy failures and world chaos wrought by President Obama and his former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Yet, in his first post announcement test – the vote on the dangerous Iran nuclear weapons treaty bill put forward by Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker – Rubio voted for that dangerous bill and failed to take...

A proposal to make the Bible the official state book of Tennessee, a measure the state attorney general had said would be unconstitutional, was effectively dropped for the year on Thursday by the state Senate, officials said. The bill had been approved by the state House of Representatives on Wednesday over objections by Governor Bill Haslam, who called it disrespectful. Attorney General Herbert Slatery III, religious leaders and others said the measure violated the separation of church and state under both the U.S. and Tennessee Constitutions. Republicans, who hold strong majorities in the state House and Senate, were divided over...

Customer Mary Fuller was so scared by the unruly teens flashing gang signs and raising a “ruckus” in the parking lot of the BP gas station in Memphis, Tennessee, that she expressed her fears to a complete stranger, who offered to walk the elderly white woman outside to her car. “I said, ‘I don’t know if I ought to walk out of here or not, because they’re still fighting,’” Fuller told WMC-TV. “He said, ‘It’s not a problem. I’ll take care of this.’” The man she confided in was Orrden Williams, who had gone to the gas station to use...

In our federal system, states should be able to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Friday joined an amicus brief on behalf of 57 members of Congress in support of the right of states to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The brief was filed in four cases that the Supreme Court will jointly hear on April 28, 2015, in which same-sex couples challenge the marriage laws of Ohio, Tennessee, Michigan, and Kentucky, all of which were upheld by the U.S....

Try as they might, when proponents of early federally funded pre-school education ala Head Start try to make the case for their cause, they can’t quite seal the deal. “There is one study that shows that the benefits of pre-K education will wash out after four years,” Governor Terry McAuliffe, D-VA, claimed at the Center for American Progress (CAP) on Friday, April 10, 2015. He then said, “I’ve talked to kindergarten teachers who say it makes a difference.” But kindergarten would fall within that four-year window and he offered no examples of studies that show differing conclusions. Maybe this is...

Surveillance video released on Monday shows a group of high school students beating a man at a Tennessee gas station. Police said a large group of Northwest Prep Academy students swarmed a BP gas station outside Memphis. “As we got to the car they are in the parking lot throwing up gang signs and putting up a ruckus,” Orrden Williams, Jr. said. Williams told WREG one of the kids “sucker punched” him. After he was attacked, dozens of teenagers swarmed the gas station. Workers held the door shut as the children rushed the entryway. Williams ran to his car where one teen...

New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez said Sunday that he’s pushing ahead with his legislation to give Congress a full overview of the Iran nuclear deal, amid purported pressure from the White House to stop his effort. “I’m not backing off,” Menendez, a Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told “Fox News Sunday.” “I honestly believe it’s a congressional duty to review any agreement that comes about.” Menendez, a frequent critic of President Obama’s foreign policy, declined to discuss whether fellow Democrats or White House officials have asked him to stop pressing for congressional review of the framework deal reached...

Two of the country’s most powerful and politically influential labor unions are backing President Obama in the recent court challenge to his 2014 executive action on illegal immigration, saying they support the president’s effort because "undocumented workers" need more workplace protection and their participation helps the U.S. economy. The AFL-CIO and the National Education Association on Monday each filed so-called amicus briefs in a federal appeals court case in which Texas and 26 other states are challenges the president’s 2014 memorandum on illegal immigration. The memorandum essentially expands work authorization and delayed-deportation programs for illegal immigrants. And it provides similar...

A week after about 150 tea party activists rallied in opposition to U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander's re-election next year, tea party favorite Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said here Monday that he hopes Alexander doesn't get an opponent and wins re-election. Alexander, R-Tenn., has aroused tea party ire for his votes for the immigration reform bill and other measures opposed by the hard right.

The National Rifle Association wants guns at schools, but not its own annual convention. The NRA has banned working guns from its annual convention this year in Nashville, Tenn., according to a report in The Tennessean. Instead the group will require the thousands of firearms displayed at the event to be nonoperational, with their firing pins removed to ensure safety. The group will use the event, with an expected attendance of 70,000, to boast of its opposition to gun regulation of all kinds, including background checks, as well as to host GOP presidential hopefuls who agree with their stance. However...

Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, said Sunday on Fox News that the legislation that would force Preisdent Barack Obama to bring a deal on Iran’s nuclear program before the Senate is close to achieving the support of a veto-proof majority. The Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015, sponsored by US Senators Bob Corker (R-TN) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ), would mandate that the president submit to Congress the text of any pact with Iran, and bar the administration from suspending congressional sanctions on Iran for 60 days. …