Free Republic

Storm-ravaged and weary Rockaways residents cornered Mayor Bloomberg yesterday to angrily demand more aid for their devastated neighborhood. “When are we gonna get some help?” blasted one desperate woman, who had to be held back by the mayor’s security detail as Bloomberg stood by with a deer-in-the-headlights look. “When are we gonna get some bleeping help?” she demanded. “There’s old ladies in my building that don’t got nothing,” lashed out a man on video caught by a NY1 reporting crew. Bloomberg’s trip to the Rockaways wasn’t announced and wouldn’t have been caught on cameras if the news crew hadn’t happened...

Seven people, including three children, have been killed after an out-of-control van drove off a road and plunged more than 100ft into New York's Bronx Zoo. The van had been heading south down the Bronx River Parkway when it suddenly bounced off the central section, careered across two lanes and then hit the guardrail. Police said it flipped over the rail and then landed upside down in an area that is used by the zoo to store its monorail trains, some way from the animal enclosures. All seven people in the van were killed in the accident. They have been...

The first time I saw Andrew Breitbart was 2004, I was in my last semester of college, and he was speaking at the California College Republican convention at UCLA. Back then he was really only known as someone who worked with Drudge. Even then we were all very impressed with him. I had a chance to actually meet him at CPAC only a couple weeks ago...he was literally a couple of feet from me at the Marriott bar. I didn't take it because I was chatting with another blogger already, and he was being mobbed anyway, so I passed...thinking there...

Police said seven children, most of whom are very young, could have died because their mothers left them home alone inside a freezing house. Court documents showed their mothers, 37-year-old Maria and 27-year-old Karina Media, were drunk at a party while their children were home trying to survive the night. Police said they found an 18-month-old baby sitting in a car seat. They said they also found children, some as young as 3 and 4 years old wrapped in blankets inside the mobile home with a broken heater.

A three-year-old girl fended for herself for two days by eating cheese and leftover lasagne after her mother died suddenly. Shylah Silbery, from Wellington, New Zealand, hugged her favourite toy - a teddy bear named Possum - as she waited alone in the house near her mother's body. She was rescued when 28-year-old Lauren Silbery's brother alerted the authorities when he did not hear from his sister, whom he talked to every night.

LAS VEGAS (CBS Sports.com) – IndyCar driver Dan Wheldon has been seriously injured in a massive 15-car wreck has sent cars flying through the air early in Sunday’s Las Vegas Indy 300. Paul Tracy, who was involved in the wreck, said a team of doctors were working on Wheldon, but there was no word of his injuries. A helicopter lifted off from the speedway, but there was no indication if Wheldon was onboard. Pippa Mann also appeared to be shaky as she was helped to an ambulance. The wreck coming out of Turn 2 on the 12th lap left Townsend...

Six years after she was deemed cancer-free, Kara Kennedy accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom on behalf of her father, just days before Sen. Edward Kennedy died while battling a brain tumor. However, her own lung cancer treatment -- surgery and grueling chemotherapy and radiation -- left her physically weakened, her brother Patrick Kennedy said. She died Friday at age 51 after her daily workout at a Washington-area health club. "Her heart gave out," said Patrick Kennedy, a former congressman from Rhode Island. "She's with dad." Kennedy was a member of the Sport & Health fitness center, though spokeswoman Nancy...

I don't know about other FReepers, but I am sick and tired of the 9/11 memorials. Maybe you read my headline and thought I am an insensitive jerk, a troll, a liberal or a lunatic who doesn't have the sense to realize the importance of marking this day appropriately. You'd be 180 degrees wrong and that's just my point. I mean I'm sick and tired of the way this day is remembered. I mean the weepy, maudlin preoccupation with the "tragedy" of 9/11. Of course, I don't mean that there should be no solemn observance to pay the proper respect...

A plane crash near the city of Yaroslavl in Central Russia has claimed the lives of at least 36 people. Some reports have the death total at 42. The majority of victims are believed to be members of the Kontinental Hockey League club, Lokomotiv. The crash occurred at 12 noon Moscow time. Eight crew members are also among the dead, according to reports. According to Russian aviation officials, two passengers survived the crash, but are in critical condition. According to Sov Sport, Locomotiv has confirmed that the entire main roster, plus four players from the youth team, were on the...

UPDATE 7:30 P.M.: Mark Stanford, the fire chief for the Texas Forest Service , said subdivisions have been evacuated there but they have no estimate on what structures have been lost. People are being told to evacuate to the First Baptist Church in Smithville and Bastrop Middle School, Stanford said. In addition, State Highways 71 and 21 in Bastrop County have been closed, Stanford said. Update, 6:48 p.m.: Wildfires have consumed more than 6,000 acres in Bastrop County, and firefighters are still working to get the blazes under control. According to Bastrop Police Department Spokesman Michal Hubbard, hundreds of homes...

From the moment Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech electrified the Republican convention, she was seen as an unbending, hard-charging, red-meat ideologue—to which soon was added “thin-skinned” and “vindictive.” But a look at what Palin did while in office in Alaska—the only record she has—shows a very different politician: one who worked with Democrats to tame Big Oil and solve the great problem at the heart of the state’s politics. That Sarah Palin might have set the nation on a different course. What went wrong? It’s hard to escape Sarah Palin. On Facebook and Twitter, cable news and reality television, she is...

The number of dead and missing after Japan's twin earthquake and tsunami stood late Wednesday, officially, at 12,920. In reality, Japanese widely agree, the toll of last week's disaster is likely much higher. In Miyagi, a coastal prefecture that bore some of the tsunami's worst destruction, officials estimate the toll there alone will be in the tens of thousands. Accounting for the gap between the official and true count are places like Otsuchi, until March 11 a town of about 15,000 people on Japan's northeastern coast. Japan won't declare someone missing unless they have been reported missing. In Otsuchi, where...

As the toll of dead and missing continued to mount following Japan's shattering earthquake and tsunami, people and organizations in Orange County already were mobilizing and coming together in expressions of aid and compassion. The horror of massive tsunami waves literally washing away scores of people, cars, buildings and, perhaps, even one of Japan's iconic bullet trains quickly turned to concern stateside Friday as residents of Hawaii and along the West Coast braced watchfully for the arrival of huge waves on U.S. shorelines. We're thankful that . . .

...Yes, yes, The Speech was fine. Full of rainbows and unicorns and signifying nothing. But did the whole thing have to be turned into a campagin rally? Were the names of the victims listed on the back, like a rock band’s tour schedule? Faugh! This is appalling. Do you remember anything like this happening at the memorial for the victims of the Virginia Tech shooting? Nope. Columbine? The Amish West Nickel Mines School shooting? Nope. Sure wish my great grandmother had grabbed one of these when she went to Gettysburg...

The deep, unbridgeable spiritual and ideological divide in our country has been on glaring display even more than usual since last Saturday’s horrific, murderous attack in Tucson by an evil young man—yes, Virginia, evil people do exist. Predictably, the lying Left went into full attack mode before the dead and wounded were scarcely off the sidewalk. Instead of waiting to learn the name of the shooter, they barreled ahead determined to fix the blame for the shooting on conservatives. We’re not going to let the Left get away with it this time. There is one—and only one—person to blame for...

Last Saturday's shooting tragedy at a Tucson, Ariz., supermarket is stunning in its randomness. ... Whenever these awful tragedies: Columbine, September 11, Virginia Tech and others, happen, there comes the theodicy question. Why did God allow this evil to happen to innocent people? Why did perfectly innocent bystanders at a Tucson supermarket on a Saturday morning find themselves at the wrong place at the wrong time?

President Obama will travel to Arizona on Wednesday to attend a memorial service...

The shocking gundown of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has left NASA reeling: Her astronaut husband was due to rocket away in just three months as perhaps the last space shuttle commander, and her brother-in-law is currently on the International Space Station. Shuttle commander Mark Kelly rushed to his wife's hospital bedside Saturday as his identical twin brother, Scott, did his best to keep updated on the Arizona shooting through Mission Control, the Internet and the lone phone aboard the space station. (snip)

JACKSONVILLE, N.C. (AP) — As she walked through the door, Sabrina Parker's big hazel eyes flared with surprise and she raised a hand to her mouth to stifle a gasp. She was a huge fan of the "Twilight" book and movie series, and her friends and family had transformed this greasy garage into a Sweet 16's dream. Homemade strobe lights illuminated walls decorated like the night sky and plastered with cast posters. All around were balloons in red, white and black. An enormous cake, iced to look like the chess board on one of the book jackets, held 16 blazing...

RICHMOND, Va. (BP)--Her pain, grief and sadness from more than a decade ago lie just below the surface. Gloria Sloan remembers the spiritual darkness that enveloped her on that heartbreaking day. "I remember feeling that sense of something evil around me," the International Mission Board worker said, "a very strong sense of evil for a moment." Currently on stateside assignment in Houston, Sloan recently discussed the tragic loss of her husband Gary, 37, and 11-year-old daughter Carla on June 18, 1999. They drowned while swimming along the Pacific coast of Mexico. Two summer mission volunteers from the United States --...