Free Republic

I wouldn't be terribly surprised if Richard Dowling's statue ended up saving a whole lot of lives. Here's what happened now. Andrew Cecil Schneck, 25, was charged with attempting to maliciously damage or destroy property receiving federal financial assistance, federal prosecutors announced. A park ranger doing a routine patrol of the area around Hermann Park on Saturday caught Schneck kneeling in the bushes near the statue of Richard Dowling, a commander in the Confederate army

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — A settlement was announced Thursday in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against two psychologists involved in designing the CIA's harsh interrogation program used in the war on terror. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

A 46-year-old Somali refugee identified as Hussein Hassan attacked a police officer in Kennewick, Washington, over the weekend with a large sword, striking at the officer’s head before he was shot and killed. A spokesman for the police said two officers responded to a 9-1-1 call at 6:38 p.m. Sunday about a man walking down Olympia Street near 10th Avenue armed with a sword. The two officers arrived on the scene at the same time in separate cars at about 6:40 p.m. One officer got out of his car to confront Hassan and police say the man started swinging the...

The UK is likely to face an Islamist terrorist threat for the next 30 years, the former head of MI5 has warned. Jonathan Evans, who stepped down as director general of the spy agency in 2013, described the threat as a “generational problem” which will take decades to tackle. Lord Evans also claimed the Westminster Bridge attack earlier this year may have had an energising effect on extremists. Meanwhile, he said he would be “very surprised” if Russia had not tried to interfere in the UK's last general election. Lord Evans, who now sits in the House of Lords as...

CHARLOTTESVILLE — A man accused of plowing a car into a crowd of protesters here — killing one person and leaving 19 injured — has long sympathized with Nazi views and had stood with a group of white supremacists hours before Saturday’s bloody crash. The accused driver, James Alex Fields Jr., 20, of Ohio, had espoused extremist ideals at least since high school, according to Derek Weimer, a history teacher. Weimer said that he taught Fields during his junior and senior years at Randall K. Cooper High School in Kentucky. During a class called “America’s Modern Wars,” Weimer said that Fields...

Forced back into court by an act of Congress and faced with tens of billions of dollars in potential civil liability, oil-rich Saudi Arabia is asking a U.S. judge again to throw out a lawsuit brought against it by thousands of 9/11 victims.Lawyers for the kingdom moved last week to dismiss the massive case pending in federal court in New York City, citing “baseless accusations that Saudi Arabia conspired to commit a horrific crime against its longstanding ally the United States by knowingly funding the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.”The plaintiffs are survivors of the attacks, family members of...

Dr. Sebastian Gorka, White House deputy advisor on national security, was questioned Tuesday on MSNBC about his insistence on the use of the term “radical Islamic terrorism.” Sebastian Gorka Decimates MSNBC Over Term 'Radical Islamic Terrorism' “I don’t understand how calling it by its name helps stop the attacks in Paris or in Belgium or in London,” MSNBC’s Ali Velshi said to Gorka. "So If you, God forbid, caught cancer, and the hospital was forbidden from calling it cancer and said, 'you have the flu, go home and hydrate and some take aspirins,' would you actually have the right treatment?"...

The Australian police described on Friday an elaborate terrorist plot in which two men from Sydney tried to place an explosive supplied by the Islamic State on a flight last month, an operation that officials said was among “the most sophisticated plots that has ever been attempted on Australian soil.” The two men, who have been charged with planning a terrorist act, were scheduled to appear in court via video link on Friday, and they were refused bail. The Australian Federal Police said the charges covered an aborted attempt last month to place an explosive on an Etihad Airways flight...

MINNEAPOLIS - One person is dead and others are trapped under rubble after a building exploded and collapsed at Minnehaha Academy. The explosion happened at Minnehaha's upper campus on 3100 West River Parkway in Minneapolis.

For over six decades Camp Solomon Schechter alongside the Placid shores of Lake Joshua Stamper has been the gateway to Judaism and love of Israel for generations of young Jewish campers in the Pacific Northwest. For some Schechterites though, their blissful camp experience was jarred late last week by the raising of the Palestinian flag over the storied campgrounds. An email sent by the camp administration acknowledged the incident this past Friday, describing it as one designed to “help develop empathy” and a “teachable moment”. Whatever the intent, the raising of the Palestinian flag over the camp was unexpected and...

Trooper Bondarenka said police can't say exactly what led them to believe the incident may have been intentional, but said police labeled the crash an aggravated assault because of witness statements, physical evidence and Mr. Ulus' state of mind. "There are a few more details to the story, but we can't release that right now," she said.... ...Mr. Ulus did not know Ms. Grimm and she appears to be a random victim who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, Trooper Bondarenka said.

ell Middle School teacher Shane Parmely was detained for over an hour by Border Patrol agents at a checkpoint in New Mexico because she refused to say whether she was a U.S. citizen. Parmely’s family helped her film the incident, which she posted Friday evening on her Facebook account in several segments that were widely shared. Parmely told Border Patrol agents that she believed she did not have to answer their questions. One agent showed her a card listing immigration law and a Supreme Court case decision that give Border Patrol agents authority to operate checkpoints within 100 miles of...

The Somali-American council member who represents Minneapolis' 6th Ward is calling for change within the police department while proclaiming the shooting of Justine Damond "is not a Somali issue" but a policing issue. Council Member Abdi Warsame took aim at the media and Facebook users who are calling Officer Mohamed Noor a “Somali killer cop.” Warsame referred to those statements, along with the statement issued last week by former Congressman Michele Bachmann, in which Bachmann said Noor was "an affirmative-action hire by the hijab-wearing mayor of Minneapolis," as “trash.” Warsame told reporters at a news conference Sunday that he has never...

Palestinian terrorists have changed the conditions for maintaining the status quo by bringing their slaughter into the immediate vicinity of the Temple Mount holy site Last Friday, three Arabs killed two Israeli police officers who were guarding an entrance to Jerusalem’s holy compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. The police officers were shot with arms that had evidently been smuggled into the compound and stashed there. This latest attack was another in an unending series of terrorist murders of Israelis, but this time the attack took place at Old Jerusalem’s sacred...

New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick apparently doesn’t even have to try when it comes to triggering the politically correct crowd.... ...The future Hall of Fame football coach donned a T-shirt this week, a parody of the popular “Life is Good” line of T-shirts, which depicted a wacky stick-figure cartoon of an armed man wearing a turban being bitten by a dog as he’s chased by a rifle-toting soldier along with the description “Life is Great.” In true Belichickean fashion, the coach lopped off the sleeves of his shirt, and a photo of him wearing while vacationing on Nantucket hit...

Bravo to Bill Belichick. A Twitter user yesterday afternoon posted a couple of pictures of the prodigious coach wearing a shirt bearing an illustration that shocked some, confused others and pleased many more. The text reads, “Life is great” and features a depiction of an armed man in a turban being attacked by a military dog as he’s being chased by a soldier carrying a rifle. Is this hate-wear? No way. This is patriot-wear the Patriots head coach was showing off. The shirts are sold on a site called www.tridentk9.org, run by Jim Amann, now a deputy sheriff in Los...

The hijabbed feminist heroine Linda Sarsour is in the center of another controversy, and the Leftist establishment media is again rushing to defend her. This time, she called for “jihad” against President Trump. The whole controversy, says Sarsour and her defenders, is just another indication of conservatives’ ignorance and “Islamophobia.” But it isn’t: she really did incite violence. Sarsour’s call for jihad came in the midst of her denunciation of the Trump administration at the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) over the July 4 weekend. Sarsour said : Why, sisters and brothers, why are...

The Air Force is updating its awards to recognize drone pilots and hackers Christopher Woody Jun. 23, 2017 US airmen tasked with jobs like surveillance and cyber operations have a growing role on the battlefield, even though they are often physically distant from it. To ensure that kind of work is recognized, the Air Force has introduced new hardware for its service men and women. "As the impact of remote operations on combat continues to increase, the necessity of ensuring those actions are distinctly recognized grows," Defense Department officials said in a memo published on January 7, 2016.

On a morning when you would have expected the Morning Joe panel to be all about Trump’s CNN wrestling tweet, a Washington Post editor/columnist painted an amazingly positive portrait of the president’s actions in Syria. WaPo’s David Ignatius has just returned from a week in Syria. He was almost apologetic in prefacing his remarks: “I’m going to say something that in some ways is sympathetic to Trump.” He then proceeded to say that he was told by top US commanders that “the most daring and decisive” attack in the battle of Raqqa would not have happened if it hadn’t been...

The final fatality tally for jihadi attacks during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan increased to 1,639, primarily fueled by victims who succumbed to their injuries, reveals an updated Breitbart News count of terror incidents during the period. With a total of 3,343 casualties, including 1,704 injuries, Ramadan 2017 is one of the bloodiest holy months in recent history. The number of deaths this year marked a nearly four-fold increase from the estimated 421 people killed by Islamic extremists last year. There were nearly 160 terror incidents in about 30 predominantly Muslim countries this year, including one jihadi attack in...