Free Republic

The decision of a St. Louis grand jury to not indict a police officer there of shooting and killing an unarmed man has raised new interest in an officer involved fatal shooting in Salt Lake City. Dillon Taylor, a white male, was shot and killed in August. Officer Bron Cruz, who was described as non-white, shot Taylor once in the chest and once in the stomach after he refused to obey police.

U.S. Air Force Col. William Pitts stands in front of an unmanned aerostat that is part of a new U.S. military cruise-missile defense system during a media preview on Dec. 17, 2014, in Middle River, Md. Patrick Semansky/AP************************************ MIDDLE RIVER, Md. -- The Army showed off a blimp-like airship Wednesday that is designed to help the military detect and destroy cruise missiles speeding toward the nation's capital or other major East Coast cities. The radar-toting vehicle will be launched next week as part of a three-year test of the system at Aberdeen Proving Ground, about 25 miles northeast of Baltimore....

FULL TITLE: Polish retailer caught off guard by pro-life protests after Christmas ads feature Satanist and pro-abort The slogan for retail giant Empik claims the company “inspires everybody differently.” The ads inspired one pro-life group to boycott its stores. Polish pro-lifers organized a boycott of Empik, whose 200 stores sell books, magazines, DVDs, video games and other products. Empik’s Christmas ad campaign seems a better fit for Halloween, featuring a famous Satanist and an author who has boasted of her own abortions. Empik’s controversial campaign consisted of TV spots and posters with famous entertainers advertising various Christmas gifts. Among the...

Yesterday at a lunch attended by members of the Senate’s Republican caucus, Ted Cruz reportedly made an unsolicited apology to his colleagues for ruining their weekend. It’s not clear whether most of his fellow GOP senators accepted the apology. As mad as some of them were for having to cancel their plans in order to stay in the Senate over the weekend, many were also furious about the way Cruz’s decision to oppose a deal that would have passed the Cromnibus on Friday led to weekend sessions that also gave Democratic leader Harry Reid the opening that he used to...

H.R.927 Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act of 1996 (Enrolled Bill [Final as Passed Both House and Senate] - ENR) [....] SEC. 3. PURPOSES. The purposes of this Act are-- (1) to assist the Cuban people in regaining their freedom and prosperity, as well as in joining the community of democratic countries that are flourishing in the Western Hemisphere; (2) to strengthen international sanctions against the Castro government; (3) to provide for the continued national security of the United States in the face of continuing threats from the Castro government of terrorism, theft of property from United States nationals...

MICHELLE OBAMA ONCE GOT ASKED FOR HELP AT TARGET, THINKS IT WAS PROBABLY RACIST By Emily Zanotti 12.17.14 Look. I honestly believe that yes, there are lingering vestiges of racism in our society. You don't exorcise something that pervasive in modern culture in less than a century. Occasionally - not regularly, but occasionally - we've all been known to make varying assumptions about other people based on existing stereotypes. I have no doubt that, in their lifetimes, the Obamas have experienced lots of instances of discrimination based on skin color, and I think that's a tragedy. However, I do not...

George Weigel About a year ago, I suggested to one of the top editors of a major American newspaper that his journal’s coverage of things papal left something to be desired, as it seemed based on the assumption that Pope Francis was some kind of radical wild-man, eager to toss into the garbage bin of history all those aspects of Catholic faith and practice that mainstream western culture finds distasteful. My friend replied, in so many words, look, you know how these media narratives are: they’re like bamboo. Once they get started, there’s no stopping them. They just keep...

Calling it the biggest disappointment of his career, Gov. Peter Shumlin said Wednesday he was abandoning plans to make Vermont the first state in the country with a universal, publicly funded health care system. Going forward with a project four years in the making would require tax increases too big for the state to absorb, Shumlin said. The measure had been the centerpiece of the Democratic governor's agenda and was watched and rooted for by single-payer health care supporters around the country. "I am not going (to) undermine the hope of achieving critically important health care reforms for this state...

What follows is an account from a French ISAF soldier that was stationed with American Warfighters in Afghanistan sometime in the past 4 years. This was copied and translated from an editorial French newspaper. A NOS FRERES D’ARMES AMERICAINS "We have shared our daily life with two US units for quite a while - they are the first and fourth companies of a prestigious infantry battalion whose name I will withhold for the sake of military secrecy. To the common man it is a unit just like any other. But we live with them and got to know them, and...

Internet polls measure the ratio of people who have enough interest to participate in the given poll.  PBS.org has put up an Internet poll with the responses noted above.   You can see that the poll is getting hammered by second amendment supporters.   The message, loud and clear, is that of people who are interested enough to answer the poll, second amendment supporters outnumber disarmists by  24 to 1.   This is one of largest differentials that I have seen in second amendment related Internet polls.  A couple of weeks ago, we had one in Florida that was 15 to 1. ...

Palestinians Get Backing From EU Court Ruling, Proposed U.N. Measure By BATSHEVA SOBELMAN, CAROL J. WILLIAMS A European Union court Wednesday ordered the removal of Hamas from the European Union's list of terrorist organizations, based on a procedural technicality, a ruling that provoked anger from Israel as well as satisfaction from the militant Palestinian movement. A statement from the General Court of the European Union said it annuls the “measures maintaining Hamas on the European list of terrorist organizations.” However, the court said assets seized from Hamas would continue to be frozen pending an appeal. The court ruling coincided with...

Stanford to host 100-year study on artificial intelligence Stanford University will lead a 100-year effort to study the long-term implications of artificial intelligence in all aspects of life. By Chris Cesare Russ Altman, a professor of bioengineering and of computer science at Stanford, will serve as faculty director of the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence. Stanford University has invited leading thinkers from several institutions to begin a 100-year effort to study and anticipate how the effects of artificial intelligence will ripple through every aspect of how people work, live and play. This effort, called the One Hundred Year...

Oy to the World Schlepping through a Winter Wonderland Hava Negilah – The Megamix Bubby Got Run Over by a Reindeer Enough with those Jingle Bells Already…Jeez! Matzo Man (by the Lower East Side Village People) I Have a Little Dreidel (the Barking Dog Version) Come on Baby, Light My Menorah Deck the Halls with Balls of Matzoh Silent Night? I Should Be So Lucky

I first heard of this when John Podhoretz tweeted about it and I thought, “Nope, John’s exaggerating. I wonder what Shep really said.” Then a bunch of other people tweeted that Podhoretz was right, so I thought, “Okay, but obviously a joke.” Then I watched the clip. Actual quote about an honest to goodness police state, no apparent irony intended: “The last thing they need is a Taco Bell and a Lowe’s.” Two ways to read that, I guess. One is that he’s objecting to having the wrong priorities, not to American businesses invading the island. Cubans need basic necessities,...

resident Obama announced plans to normalize diplomatic relations with Cuba today, including opening an embassy in Cuba."We will end an outdated approach that for decades has failed to advance our interests," Obama claimed, "And instead we will begin to normalize relations between our two countries."Specifically, the White House took three major steps today as part of their "New Course on Cuba": Initiating discussions to reestablish diplomatic relations, including a U.S. embassy in Havana, and a Cuban embassy in the United States.A review, by the State Department, of Cuba's designation as a state sponsor of terrorism.Relaxing of regulations to facilitate the...

Handing environmentalists a breakthrough victory, New York plans to prohibit fracking for natural gas because of what regulators say are its unexplored health risks and dubious economic benefits. New York, which overlies part of the gas-rich Marcellus Shale formation that has led to a drilling boom in Pennsylvania and other nearby states, has banned shale gas development since 2008, when the state began an environmental review of the drilling technique also known as hydraulic fracturing. Wednesday's announcement, though not final, means a ban is all but etched in stone. "Never before has a state with proven gas reserves banned fracking,"...

Mark Halperin claims that the MSM has an "anti-Clinton bias." That might send the blood pressure of a Newsbusters reader rocketing. But before downing a dieuretic, consider what else he and John Heilemann had to say on their Bloomberg TV show today. Halperin and Heilemann were riffing off the New York Times report that Hillary's State Department permitted a rich Ecuadorean woman to enter the US after her family donated big bucks to Dem campaigns. According to the Bloomberg duo, there are 20-30 such stories out there, and the media will be eager to research them, with Hillary's scalp being...

A*** D***** of the ***** ***** ***** recalls the night she refused to report on the threats of gunman Man Haron Monis. See, she is one of many reporters who have censored their reporting of Islam - promoting a wilful and deadly blindness in the name of community harmony:

10-year-old Elizabeth Blaine dropped the mic at a Montclair, New Jersey, school board meeting Monday night, sharing her support for a policy that lets parents opt out their children from taking the Common Core test, also known as PARCC (Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers). "I love to read. I love to write. I love to do math. But I don’t love the PARCC. Why? Because it stinks," Elizabeth said. "This is crazy!" she continued. "I am one of the most gifted students in my grade (or so my mom says) and I have not...

About a month ago, Rolling Stone Magazine published a savage story that made headlines across North America, detailing a brutal gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity. Controversy erupted almost immediately, with the same tiresome lines being trumpeted: Feminists declaring that this assault was evidence of the prevalence of “rape culture,” and conservatives arguing that rape culture didn’t exist. As the UVA rape story began to unravel, feminists got rather shrill, justifiably worried that this could result in other anti-rape measures being taken less serious. Conservatives were a bit triumphant, rather ironically stating that this was another example of...