Free Republic

BALLSTON SPA — The 105-member Saratoga County sheriffs’ deputies union says new state gun control legislation makes criminals of ordinary citizens. The group also objects, in a six-page letter to state officials, to how quickly new laws were passed, with no apparent provisions for law enforcement officers. As written, for example, a new rule that reduces ammunition magazines from 10 rounds to seven would apply to police officers and National Guard members as well. “I’m sure they’re going to correct it,” said Charles Fuller, Saratoga County Deputy Sheriff’s Police Benevolent Association president. “But if it went through the normal process,...

After taking their exams, Hadiya Pendleton and a group of others decided to hang out at a park on Tuesday just blocks away from their high school on the South Side. But the trip ended in tragedy when the 15-year-old King College Prep student was fatally shot in the back and a 16-year-old boy was wounded in the leg, and remained in serious condition Tuesday night, authorities said. Police said Pendleton was not believed to be the target of the shooting, but that most of those who were in the park were gang members, and that those in the group...

Many Americans have recently become outraged about Agenda 21. Global warming has also been proven to be a lie. But what no one has talked about yet is how organizations that are heavily supported by the patriot community are supporting this agenda and more. The Democrats are overtly supporting this agenda while the Republicans are covertly for the most part supporting it. Freedom Fighter Radio is also the only website and radio show that has been exposing Numbers USA’s globalist connections for years. There are many people who have and are speaking out against AGENDA 21. But they all refuse...

This afternoon in Las Vegas, President Obama reminded most American citizens that they were descended from immigrants themselves. Obama warned that the issue was an emotional one, but that it was important for Americans to not view it as “us versus them.” “It’s really important to remember our history,” Obama continued. “Unless you were one of the first Americans, a Native American, you came from someplace else, somebody brought you,” he said

Dallas, TX - -(Ammoland.com)- A Boy Scouts of America national board member, James Turley, who is also global chairman and CEO of the accounting firm Ernst & Young, recently said he “will work from within to seek a change” to overturn the BSA policy that bans gay Scouts and leaders. But is Turley working on his own initiative, or has the White House prodded him with perks and favors? Is it a coincidence that Turley came out swinging against the BSA’s century-old policy to ban gays from leadership and that he has such close affiliations with the pro-gay Obama administration?...

PITTSBURGH - Private landowners are reaping billions of dollars in royalties each year from the boom in natural gas drilling, transforming lives and livelihoods even as the windfall provides only a modest boost to the broader economy. In Pennsylvania alone, royalty payments could top $1.2 billion for 2012, according to an analysis by The Associated Press that looked at state tax information, production records and estimates from the National Association of Royalty Owners. For some landowners, the unexpected royalties have made a big difference...

Rochester, N.Y. – Gun owners asked police and state leaders how these laws will directly affected them. The question asked by many of the people was why, why was this law put into place, why weren't there any public hearings before it was signed. But Tuesday's forum wasn't a time to debate the law but rather learn about it. “They passed this legislation like a theft in the night,” said Jeddy Tranquill, who attended the forum. “We feel the law is turning good people into criminals,” said 2nd amendment advocate Tony Matuszak. Two weeks after Governor Cuomo signed the New...

The Federal-State Unemployment Insurance program paid out $10.3 billion in benefits in 2012 to people who should not have received the money, according to the Department of Labor (DOL). The data provided on the government website, paymentaccuracy.gov, shows those payments amount to 11.42 percent of all the unemployment insurance checks handed out—an increase from 11.36 percent in 2011 and in excess of the government’s “target” for overpayments of 9.66 percent. The DOL states that most of the data reported on its paymentaccuracy website was for the federal government’s fiscal year, which runs from Sept. 30 to Oct. 1, but that...

A report from the Social Security Administration Inspector General (IG) found 4,317 instances where a non-citizen was able to obtain two Social Security numbers, including 542 instances that happened since 2001. “We identified 4,317 instances where the Numident record of 2 SSNs assigned to non-citizens contained matching first, middle, and last names; dates and places of birth; gender; and fathers’ and mothers’ names,” the IG reported on Dec. 10, 2012. Numident—which stands for Numerical Identification System—is the master file of applications for social security numbers. The IG found that SSA had issued multiple numbers to 4,317 non-citizens from 1981-2011. The...

COLUMBIA -- When Jonathan Proffitt, a 28-year-old infantry drill sergeant, first joined the military in 2003, if a woman was present, “we’d just get real cautious.” Nearly a decade later, he said the division’s culture is still unique. “Infantry is its own little world inside the military.” But that world is changing. And even talking about it changing is making people cautious. On Thursday Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced an end to the ban on women in direct combat. Fifteen percent, or nearly 202,400, of the U.S. military’s 1.4 million active personnel are women. And more than 280,000 women...

As military officials formulate plans to open combat positions to women, the Commander of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command is vowing any changes in job requirements will be handled fairly. "Soldiers - both men and women - want fair and meaningful standards" Gen. Robert W. Cone said. "I think that fairness is very important in a values-based organization like our Army." Last week, Secretary of State Leon Panetta and Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced the end of the 1994 policy that prohibited women from serving in combat positions below a brigade level....

FORT MEADE, Md. — Today’s pretrial hearings in the murder case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators saw all five defendants refuse to come to court and prefer to stay in their cells. And in the Guantanamo Bay courtroom, defense attorneys were arguing that they should have the right to join their clients. Lawyers for Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, Ramzi bin al Shibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi are petitioning for the right to spend 48-hour visits with the accused terrorists. “You want to sleep with your client?” Judge James Pohl asked with a mix...

Rupert Murdoch should encourage Fox News to focus on immigration reform. President Obama should be on notice that he’ll face tougher criticism in the coming months. And Joe Biden has “a set of balls.” So pronounced New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in a free-ranging POLITICO interview in his bullpen-style office at City Hall recently. He held forth on his efforts to move the dial on guns, immigration and gay marriage — an issue on which he lavished praise, in his unique rhetorical way, on the vice president.

The Dale County Sheriff's Department has established a command post location at the intersection of 231 North and Private Road 1539 in Dale County, Alabama following a shooting Multiple agencies are present assisting with the incident where multiple reports are indicating that a bus driver was shot and a student on-board the bus was taken hostage. The incident started around 3:40pm Tuesday near Destiny Church The Sheriff's Department is confirming that one adult male was shot, though they could not say how serious the person's injuries were. There are no suspects in custody and officials would not confirm a child hostage situation Though there's no confirmed evidence of explosive devices,...

What happens when the guy in the costume stops being cute and starts getting real.

The head of Special Operations Forces (SOF) says he supports the integration of women into the elite force. “It’s time to do this,” says the organization’s top officer, Adm. William McRaven. “We’ve had women supporting direct Special Operations for quite some time,” he added in remarks Tuesday morning at the Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict conference in Washington. The necessity, he said, is ensuring that all special operators are in peak physical condition. “The one thing we want to make sure [we do is] we maintain our standards,” McRaven said. .... McRaven said that he has been reading recent Pentagon guidance...

adies, for the first time ever, Uncle Sam soon may be pointing at you. Days after the Pentagon cleared women to take certain combat roles, advocacy groups for military women say another new hour has arrived for all young female adults to register with Selective Service, the giant pool of names collected by the government should America ever opt to revive the draft. The movement to require women ages 18 to 25 to sign up for Selective Service — mirroring the law for all U.S. men in that demographic — is rooted in both active-duty and veteran circles. The Service...

Faced with the high cost of caring for smokers and overeaters, experts say society must grapple with a blunt question: Instead of trying to penalize them and change their ways, why not just let these health sinners die prematurely from their unhealthy habits? Annual health care costs are roughly $96 billion for smokers and $147 billion for the obese, the government says. These costs accompany sometimes heroic attempts to prolong lives, including surgery, chemotherapy and other measures.

Our new Sen. Ted Cruz, of the great state of Texas, has a knack for making himself heard, and I look forward to a tenure filled with such press statements. Dear Rahm, this is what a little state-to-state competition looks like. Companies bullied by Mayor Pottymouth aren’t obligated to stay in the cold, bankrupt, and increasingly inhospitable state of Illinois. And, Cruz is proactive in his pitch to Rahm-targeted Bank of America, TD Bank, Sturm & Ruger, and Smith & Wesson (though not proactive in the subsidies arms race we too often see in state competition over sports teams and...

THE sleep has been long and deep. In 2005 Harvard University produced more scientific papers than 17 Arabic-speaking countries combined. The world’s 1.6 billion Muslims have produced only two Nobel laureates in chemistry and physics. Both moved to the West: the only living one, the chemist Ahmed Hassan Zewail, is at the California Institute of Technology. By contrast Jews, outnumbered 100 to one by Muslims, have won 79. The 57 countries in the Organisation of the Islamic Conference spend a puny 0.81% of GDP on research and development, about a third of the world average. America, which has the world’s...