Free Republic

We need law and policing reform, but first we have to want to end state-sanctioned violence against African-Americans. As the countless protests, tear gas, National Guard deployments and looting proved, police brutality provokes more anger than other outrages because it’s the supreme violation of our individual rights in a democracy. It is the state actor, as another person, violently snatching our breath away “under color of law.” That the state’s victims throughout our history have been overwhelmingly African-American stamps it as an indelible “badge of slavery,” which means that nothing makes you feel more black in America than experiencing police...

A couple in Australia has aborted their unborn child at 28 weeks after learning that the baby would be born with a deformed left hand. Mind you, at 28 weeks a baby has over a 90% chance of surviving outside the womb with proper healthcare. But the mother said she was "really, really depressed" about the baby's diagnosis so that would seem to trump the illegality or immorality of late-term abortions. The mother said she believed she would feel guilty for allowing a baby to live with a disability. "I grew up with many people who were disabled, and… there...

Think about it. The left is constantly trying to portray college fraternities as being chock full of white guys who use their "privilege" to demean women to the extent of mass raping them. So how many such cases of college frat gang rape have been found? Try ZERO. The left had high hopes with the Rolling Stoned UVA frat alleged rape case but that fairy tale has fallen apart. If there were instances of rapes at college frat parties wouldn't they have already been discovered and PROVEN? Therefore I have to conclude that the safest place for women on campuses...

British soldiers have “lost their capability” to interrogate terrorist insurgents because of strict new rules on questioning that even ban shouting in captives’ ears, military chiefs have warned. The rules — detailed in court papers obtained by The Telegraph — also prevent military intelligence officers from banging their fists on tables or walls, or using “insulting words” when interrogating a suspect. The regulations replaced a previous policy that had to be withdrawn after a series of legal challenges and the death in custody of Baha Mousa, an Iraqi detainee in Basra. But there is growing disquiet within the ranks that...

A Scottish monk has been arrested for distributing a series of leaflets in the Cambridgeshire area critical of homosexuality, fornication, contraception, euthanasia, abortion, and divorce. Brother Damon Jonah Kelly, head of the Glasgow based charity the Black Hermits, was arrested by Cambridgeshire Police on December 8 on suspicion of a Section 5 (religious/racial) public order offence after he wrote a letter to the homosexual news publication, Pink News, claiming responsibility for the distribution of leaflets in the city of Ely, as well as in Cambridge, King’s Lynn and several other Cambridgeshire towns and cities. Initially police declined to take any...

SALEM, N.H. — John York, who owns a small printing business here, nearly fell out of his chair the other day when he opened his electric bill. For October, he had paid $376. For November, with virtually no change in his volume of work and without having turned up the thermostat in his two-room shop, his bill came to $788, a staggering increase of 110 percent. “This is insane,” he said, shaking his head. “We can’t go on like this.” For months, utility companies across New England have been warning customers to expect sharp price increases, for which the companies...

It’s less than a week until The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies hits the theaters, putting an end to the six-part Middle Earth saga that began with The Lord Of The Rings trilogy in 2001, and continued with The Hobbit trilogy in 2012. So does the series do a good job of tying up all the loose ends in the franchise? Early reviews seem to indicate the third Hobbit film to be not only the best in the trilogy, but on par with that of the original trilogy.

It seems I’ve run afoul of the atheist portal here at Patheos One. More. Time. Nobody sticks in these folks’ collective craw more than I do. They love to hate me and they love to trash me. If one of them was slowly slipping away, I think the doc could show them one of my blog posts to get their poor little heart started beating again. I’m not sure how I do it, and to be honest, I don’t care, but I do get under their skin. They react to me the way Tribbles react to Klingons. I’ve studiously ignored...

The matchup between UK and North Carolina is special every year, but today’s national anthem will give you chills. This is what it sounds like when 24,000 people sing together.

Four Christian children in Iraq were beheaded by Islamic State terrorists after refusing to recite the Muslim declaration of faith. ... It's always impressive when when someone chooses to keep faith with his or her beliefs rather than submit. But the notion that children would have that kind of courage is humbling. It makes you ask yourself: would I be as strong in my faith as a 15-year-old boy facing a horrible death? Christian martyrs are supposed to inspire us. These children's deaths go beyond inspiration and motivate us to examine the strength of our faith when placed against their...

From 1997 to 2004, Republican political strategist John Hancock was the executive director of the Missouri Republican Party. A decade after leaving that full-time role, Hancock is considering a return to the organization. This time, he wants to be chairman. Early last month, Republicans supporting Hancock’s candidacy began informally polling members of the Missouri Republican State Committee about the possibility of a run and even challenging the incumbent chairman, Ed Martin. Their findings were apparently positive, as Hancock has quietly began personally working members of the state committee.

“All I want for Christmas is a penis shaped holiday decoration…” and so the song goes – wait- what ??? I was doing a little searching on Twitter to see if I needed to update my most recent blog about Planned Parenthood using Christmas to sell baby killing through abortion and came across a few shockers. First is this little doozy from tweeter Laura Palmer who suggested that Mary – the mother of Jesus- should have gone to Planned Parenthood, “If Mary had gone to Planned Parenthood we wouldn’t have to deal with all of this holiday bull****,” she tweeted....

Sony Hackers Leak New Data, Threaten ‘Christmas Gift’ To Put Studio In ‘Worst State’ Movies | By Linda Ge on December 13, 2014 @ 2:53 pm Latest data dump, the seventh, related to Sony streaming site Crackle The Sony hacking continues to unfold as the group calling itself the Guardians of Peace have released another bundle of data obtained from the studio’s computer files, and issued another warning. “We are preparing for you a Christmas gift,” reads the message. “The gift will be larger quantities of data. And it will be more interesting. The gift will surely give you much...

On this week’s open from Judge Jeanine, she takes aim at the torture report and the underlying incompetent and naive worldview that produced and released it.

Waterboarding is not designed to kill anyone. None of the other enhanced interrogation techniques that liberals are screaming about are designed to cause lasting damage or death. The reality is that the “torture” that liberals are getting upset about would be called torture only in the First World; in the rest of the world, it would be considered a mild first step. That doesn’t mean that enhanced interrogation techniques are acceptable or moral, but it does mean that they are a far cry from what most of the world thinks of when they hear the word “torture.” On the other...

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee released new information on Thursday that he claims is evidence that the Bush administration misled the nation in the run-up to the war in Iraq. In a speech on the Senate floor, retiring Sen. Carl Levin, a Democrat, outlined a 2003 CIA cable that warns George W. Bush administration officials against making references to claims that Mohammad Atta — the man who led the Sept. 11 hijackers — met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in the Czech Republic before the Sept. 11, 2011, attacks. Levin claims Bush officials used the unconfirmed meeting...

During a presidential primary debate in 2007, I and the other seven candidates on the stage were asked about waterboarding. The question was: As president, would I agree to waterboard a captured terrorist if three bombs had gone off in this country and we were awaiting the “big one” and we had a captive who we believed knew when and where it would happen? I replied, not only would I waterboard the guy, but I’d be looking for Jack Bauer, the superhero character from the television series “24.” That was my answer after all other candidates said no because John...

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It has been a busy few weeks in Washington lately, from the president's executive order on immigration to the resignation of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. (SNIP) Ayotte said she also believes the president's executive order on immigration last week was a mistake. "Right now, as someone who wants to solve this problem, I think it makes it more difficult to address the underlying immigration problem, and he should not have acted unilaterally," she said.

The federal government and the Obama administration are under fire for a variety of unconstitutional programs aimed at both militarizing and controlling local police and law enforcement, including supplying a vast array of sophisticated U.S. Defense Department “weapons of war” to city and county governments. Billions of dollars in military equipment has already been handed to municipal police departments and county sheriffs’ offices nationwide under the rapidly expanding federal schemes, but concerns from across the political spectrum are growing quickly as well. This year alone, over 150 so-called “mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles,” or MRAPs, used by U.S. forces in Iraq, were...